#44 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (7th September 2018)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland and this is a let me bore you to sleep recording. So only listen to this when you can safely close your eyes. Also, due to something that one of my listeners called Cutter Kite said to me that he was listening to me whilst sitting on a chair and fell asleep and nearly fell off the chair.

So if you're going to be sitting on a chair, please make sure it's one that you can relax into comfortably. A safe chair, you know, something with a supportive. Yeah, I suppose a chair that's supportive.

By that I don't mean like yelling, come on, come on, you can do it. Not that kind of support, but just to support your body. So if you fall asleep, you're not falling over.

In the same way, I suppose, don't listen to this if you're wearing stilts. You know, it's just one of the kind of a basic thing, I suppose. I can't really cover single scenario where perhaps you shouldn't listen to this at certain times, but maybe I could.

Maybe this could be that session. I could just think of a few different places where perhaps it's best not to listen to this. So yeah, so that's what I'll do today.

So only listen if you can safely close your eyes. This session, which is aimed at boring you to sleep, may cause drowsiness. I often amaze myself at how I'm able to say that with a straight face.

Well, I haven't got a straight face and I've got a nose and a, you know, if it was straight, it wouldn't be straight, would it? I've got a curvy, I've got a voluptuous face. No, it's not voluptuous. Fleshy? I'm not sure.

But we're not here to discuss my face. We're here to... What is this exactly? Don't worry, I've not just found something. I'm not looking at anything when I said that.

I think it's, it's an opportunity for you to relax. It's an opportunity to let go. An opportunity to just, I suppose, zone out a bit.

To not really, not need to think about anything at all. A real chance to feel relaxed. And you know, even if you're not listening to me, which would be, well, I suppose you would be listening to me.

But even, even if you get bored, which is part of what I'm doing, and your mind wanders, that itself can lead to sleeping. Perhaps you could use this session in a way, think of it in a way of training your brain and your body and your mind to fall asleep more easily at night or whenever the time is right for you to go to bed. And you can just let go.

And the more you do it, it's a roll on effect. And I'm not sure if that's the right term that I was looking for. Roll on, rollover.

Onwards and upwards. I'm not sure what the correct term I'm looking for, but snowball, snowball effect. Maybe, you know, building up momentum.

And yeah. So the more you listen to my voice, the more boring you, you can find me, the more your body, the muscles in your body just start to relax even more than maybe they already have so far. And what you may or may not notice is that the things that you were focusing on before you decided to listen to me for the next 40 odd minutes seem to just drift away to the point where you may struggle to even remember what it was you were thinking about before until it's time for you to think about that stuff.

So I want to say 40 odd minutes. I did kind of mean it'd be around 40 minutes, maybe a little bit longer. But the word odd probably does fit into this scenario.

Because it's a strange thing, really, isn't it? You think you think you're perhaps you're lying down on a bed. You could be living, you could be in Australia, or Africa, India, America, Israel, Spain, France, England, Wales, Scotland, Belgium, India, Australia. I'm running out of countries, Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, you know.

That's Andre, by the way, in the background. He's decided to. He's just doing a. He's going to the toilet, which is nice.

So you're lying there on your bed, whatever country you're living in, or you may be visiting, you might be on holiday. And you're listening to my voice. And although this isn't live, as in I'm not broadcasting this live right now.

I do upload it within about an hour of me recording it. And there's no editing. So everything you hear during this session, this recording is what happened at this particular time.

So Andre jumping up, running over to his paper, and squatting down and sticking his tongue out at me in defiance. That what happened while you're listening. It's what's happening right now.

And the idea that you're lying down on your bed, or maybe sitting in a comfortable, supportive chair. So ideally, don't sit on a stool, or a backless chair. Although a chair isn't really a chair unless it's got a back, is it? It's like a table without a flat surface.

That'd just be four legs. It's not really a table, is it? Unless you wanted to spin plates, I guess, on each of the four legs. I suppose stools are quite good for some things.

Let's say you're doing pottery. Because stools allow you to get a little bit closer to that thing that you're doing. So if it's a physical thing, let's say it's a potter's wheel.

Or another thing, possibly playing the harp. You just have to get fairly close to the harp. You have to get it right in between your legs.

So I suppose if you need to get close to something, a stool is useful for things like that. But not if you're going to listen to a recording such as this, and have me talk boringly about nothing to you, so that your mind starts to just switch off. Because when there's no stimulation, the mind does switch off.

Your mind is like... I like to think of it, because I used to be a security guard years and years ago. And one of the jobs, I used to work in a few offices, but big offices, office blocks. And I think the biggest one, well, the biggest one I ever worked in was Canary Wharf in the Docklands.

It's one of the biggest buildings, if not the biggest building in the whole of my country. But I didn't turn out all the lights at that. So that's not really a good example.

But I did work in another building, which was... I'm just trying to think how many floors there were. So I remember it was just round the corner from London, Liverpool Street. So Liverpool Street in London.

And because at Liverpool Street, there's a McDonald's. So those of you who have never been to Liverpool Street, it's one of the biggest train stations in the country. So you've got Liverpool Street, you've got Kings Cross, Euston, Waterloo.

I'm not sure if I missed any others out. Of course, there's other big stations in other parts of the country, but in the South, they're pretty much the biggest. Stratford's pretty big now as well.

So if I missed any, so you've got Waterloo, Kings Cross, Euston. You know, whenever I hear the word Euston, I just think of the airport in America. You know, sort of, is it okay to land in Euston? Euston, is it okay to bring the train in? So I used to work around the corner from London, Liverpool Street.

I've seen it grow actually over the years. Because when I first was in London, I first moved to in, I think it was 1989, something like that. And over the years, I saw it grow, because I was a teenager then, and I saw it grow up, grow up, saw it grow in size.

And I'm sure they kind of added new lines, new tracks, and they refurbished the whole place. And it was, it was a little bit grotty when I first moved there. But now they've got all shops, all at the top, all around, they've got shops, and I think a restaurant, I think there's a hairdresser's, there's a pub there as well, a bar or something.

And maybe there always used to be people selling flowers. Used to be quite busy. But I don't know how much passing trade they get though.

Because people get really busy, don't they? They're traveling to work, or traveling somewhere, and you know, you need to catch your connection between whatever train to wherever you're going. So I suppose, I imagine not everybody's got time to stop to buy the flowers, never mind smell them. I'm quite pleased with myself with that one.

Let's have a little drink there. And I used to work around the corner from the McDonald's there. That's what I remember, because I used to go into the McDonald's.

So I used to sneak out of work. I wasn't the only one working there. There was other, I think it was usually about three security guards there.

It was a big building, big, big, big building. And we'd take turns really to go and get the McDonald's for all of us. I take, I said take turns.

I mean, we didn't, we weren't going out every hour. Otherwise, I'd have, I'd have struggled to fit through the door. You know, if I was eating McDonald's constantly all day long.

But those were the days where I could just pretty much eat anything and never, never put weight on. Although that's not true, because I did put weight on. So that kind of really, that voids exactly what I just said, but I didn't put a lot of weight on.

I think I went up, probably about a stone. I'd put about a stone, maybe a little bit more. Which I was pleased about, actually.

I liked that. But then I was sitting down on my bum all day. I wasn't doing, apart from doing a patrol or pretending to do a patrol.

You know, we'd walk around the building and have these little monitor things. And you have to like press it against the wall. There'd be this little, I don't know what they were, but it would detect that it had been touched.

So it was letting the security company know that I was doing my job properly. One of the things that, one of the tricks that the security guards had was if they had a particularly, if they felt particularly lazy, and especially if they were working on a job, because there was lots of different sites for the security. And because I lived in London, it was, there were sites everywhere, office blocks, as well as, what did I do? I worked, I worked, the first job I had in security, because it was the same firm, same security company, but I worked in Canary Wharf for, I'm not sure, a few months.

Then I moved to a different place. I worked at a nurse's home. Did that for a few months.

Then I moved to a printing firm, but it wasn't printing as in like heavy machinery. It was more a printer firm that printed magazines. So they, it was their head office and they printed, they did the designs and the editing and writing the magazines.

It was all like computer magazines. And I think they did Kerrang, some of the heavy metal magazines. So it was a very, I forget the name of the person, but he was very, quite well known for doing those magazines.

I think he then went and did like Loaded and like some of the men's, lads' mags, as they called them, in the 2000s. So I did, I worked on a reception there and I was doing shifts where I'd start about, I think I started about four o'clock in the afternoon or five o'clock in the afternoon and I'd finish about eight o'clock in the morning or maybe nine o'clock in the morning. So it was a very long shift and I'd do that five days a week.

But then they'd, want me to do extra shifts and I couldn't go home until the next security guard turned up. So sometimes the security guard didn't turn up. So I was left there for a few hours.

I still need to go back the next morning or the next afternoon. So yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't always ideal, but I did try to get some sleep though. I remember I was, so I was there, it was in this, yeah, this printing firm.

So there's a big office to the right. So I walk in there, there was a reception on the right hand side. So I looked after that and I got people to sign in and sign out and, you know, just basically, you know, took deliveries.

And once everyone left in the evening, I'd lock the doors and I'd be on my own until the next morning when the cleaners arrived about maybe six or seven. I'm just remembering the layout of there, because it wasn't, yeah, I remember it turned around to the right, there was an office and I'd have to go into the different offices just to patrol really, just to have a look around and make sure that everything was safe. Make sure that the doors were locked, you know, the external fire escape doors, things like that.

And I don't, I don't think there was that many floors. I'm pretty sure there was a lift, but there wasn't, there's like maybe five floors, maybe six. So I'd go around and just check.

There's also a downstairs as well. And there wasn't really much involved. And I remember I used to sleep in, oh yeah, there was a lift, that's right.

Because where the lifts were, you couldn't see that little hallway from the front door. So I used to sleep sleep in that little bit near the lifts, try and get a couple of hours sleep during the night. Also, I used to sing, used to sing at the top of my voice, like Michael Jackson songs and things like that.

And I remember that, yeah, there was one time and the alarms went off and I thought, oh, someone had, you know, it was an intruder or I don't know what it was. So, so I phoned up the, my security office to let them know. And then I went to investigate.

And it was just a balloon. I remember now, it was, it was a balloon in the shape of a shark or a whale. And so I think they'd been, someone had been celebrating a birthday or something like that.

And yeah, so maybe the heating was on or the air conditioning was on or maybe one of the computers had a, a fan was going. So the balloon moved, which set off the sensors. That's right, yeah.

I remember I used to go, I must've turned off the, the alarms in some of the places because I think one of the, yeah, I used to use the microwave on one of the floors because I had a kitchen and I used to heat up my pasta and have that for my dinner or mid, mid-morning, I don't know, whatever you want to call it. Not sure what time of the day or night it was I was eating. I used to enjoy it though.

It's very tasty. A lot of things are tastier though when you haven't eaten for a bit, when you're hungry. Eating when you're hungry is kind of the best time to eat, but it's the worst time to shop.

I always kind of thought that. I've been shopping when I'm hungry before. I used to live in, but again, one of the places I lived in in London, there was a shopping, basically a row of shops, all big stores right next to where I lived.

So I think there was a Tesco, a Sainsbury's, Iceland. It was like everything you needed right, you know, right next door. Like there wasn't, it wasn't even a minute's walk.

And I used to go shopping and I'd come back with four shopping bags full of stuff. And when I took it out of the bags, one by one, I put it onto the counter of the kitchen. I realized there was nothing that I could just eat there and then, unless I wanted to eat chocolate or cakes or ice cream.

So I try to not go shopping when I'm hungry. That way I don't buy too much stuff. And I don't, you know, I think it's a bit like watching a food program.

I don't know if you have MasterChef where you live. It's a, I don't really watch it. But it's a bunch of people that just make food.

I'm not, I'm not explaining what a chef is, but it's a competition where these, a bunch of chefs all try to outdo each other and to, you know, to win the award of MasterChef. And they get judged on what they cook and I'm not, I know I'm not really selling it to you, but I'm not trying to. It's okay.

I'm not really into cooking, generally. I'm not really into cooking programs. I've seen, for me watching a cooking program, it's like watching a gardening program.

Or it's just something that I'm never going to do. I'm never going to go into a garden and garden anything. It's just not my thing.

It's, there's a, you know, I don't, that's why I did watch a documentary the other day on sewage cleaners, people that go down into sewers and clean out the sewers. I found that interesting. But again, it was kind of the same reason.

It's not so much laughing at them, but kind of finding it amusing what they have to do, but they choose to do it. And so I imagine it's really well paid. It's something that I'm never going to do.

And yeah, I don't think you could pay me enough to, no, or fly in a helicopter. I know it's not quite the same thing as cleaning out a sewer, but not something I'm ever going to do, ever, ever. I mean, even if I became, you know, a special agent like James Bond or something like that, I still, I'd have to draw the line at helicopters, you know, volcanoes.

I'm fine with that. Just not helicopters. I'm not quite sure what the connection is.

Oh yeah, I suppose the James Bond film where the volcano opened and there was actually people inside. Yeah, that must be what the connection there was. So this office block that was just around the corner from Liverpool street, where I used to go and get McDonald's.

It had probably one, two, three, so one, there's a big entrance you'd go in. It was a big entrance. And in my mind, I'm looking at it from a distance, not from like a long way away.

Although I am quite a long way from London, but right now, I'm not actually looking at it because I've got my eyes closed and my eyesight's not that good to be able to see, you know, 60 or 70 miles away. Even with binoculars, I don't, I wonder what the strength of binoculars are. So how far away can you see? So if you were in like the flattest place ever, and you're looking through binoculars, how far can you see ahead of you? Can you see a mile ahead?

Yeah, don't you ever think about things like that? It's like, oh, I wonder how far the binoculars can see? Because you'd want to know before you bought them, wouldn't you? Things with binoculars, when you go to buy them, apart from the the weird looks you may get, you can't really test them.

You can't look up into the sky because the sun's up there, ready to pounce out, and you can't, you don't want to be looking through binoculars. It's harmful. But at the same time, you can't just start staring out of the shop window into cafes and the people walking around, because not everyone likes that either.

Mind you, I'm not sure where I'd get a pair of binoculars from. In the past, I would have said, have you tried the binocular shop? But I don't know if there are such things anymore. So where I live, there is a, there might be binoculars there.

They sell cameras. I bought a camera specifically really for making videos. But then when I actually started to make videos, there was a time limit on the videos that I could record, which was, yeah, it wasn't, it didn't make me tap my tummy in a, you know, happy rhythm.

I wasn't excited at the prospect of having spent all that money on something that wasn't giving me what I needed. I'm pretty sure that shop also sells binoculars, because if I remember, I'm sure, I'm sure, I'm sure I saw a pair of binoculars in the window. And for some reason, in my mind, I'm thinking that they were camouflaged.

But why would they be? What reason would I need to use binoculars that are camouflaged, unless I was hiding in someone's garden? Talking about that, I was, I quite like to get one of those, what are they called? Interlights or, you know, the ones that you can see at night, at night vision, I suppose would be the right term. Some night vision binoculars. I like the idea of that.

Or even just nighttime goggles, so you can just see with the normal strength eyes, but through, you know, just being able to see clearly. I like the idea of that. I don't think I'd wear them all the time though.

I mean, it seems a bit silly to wear them, you know, every day of the year when you're out. You know, just an off chance of a solar eclipse or finding yourself walking into a cave. I mean, really, I suppose it depends where you live.

For me, to be in a cave would, that's something you kind of need to plan. It's not an accidental thing, generally. So, I do wonder about that.

Some of those things that people do as a hobby, always for fun, climbing around in caves. See, to me, that's not fun. That's, yeah.

Mind you, if you had night vision goggles on, and you could see what you were doing, maybe then it's, maybe it's more of an adventure. Perhaps things look differently through different lenses. I'm not really sure.

But this office block around the corner from Liverpool Street Station, there is, I don't know how many, one, two, three, four, maybe 10, maybe 15 floors. So, there's a few floors, quite a few. So, it's a big, big reception area.

And I've never really understood why the reception was so big. Anyway. So, I went in there.

I'd go in, the reception would be at the end of this big room, and then there'd be lifts or elevators. When I say the word lift, to you, that might mean elevator, where you live. In England, we call them lifts.

Other countries may call them elevators. To be elevated, to be lifted. It's kind of like one of those synchronicities.

Synchronicity. I forget the word. Synchronicity.

Idiosyncrasies. That's it. Idiosyncrasies.

I prefer idiosyncrasies. That's better. So, yeah.

When I got there, when I first started working there, the other security guards were just all on the best behavior. And after I'd been there for about a week, I said, or maybe it was two weeks, I said, where do people keep disappearing? Because I noticed that one, pretty much, there'd be two hours when one of the security guards had gone, and then it'd appear, and then the other one would be gone for two hours. I said, I couldn't figure out, what are they doing? It doesn't take two hours to patrol a building that size.

It's 10 minutes, maybe 20 minutes at max. It wasn't a lot to do. All the officers just looking into the office and then go to the next floor.

I wasn't going to have to go around and didn't have to sit in each individual chair and tap your feet three times and then move to the next chair. It wasn't anything quite as drastic as that. It was just checking and then moving on to the next floor.

So it was a fairly quick process. Well, I found out that they were just all skiving. They were going for a sleep, taking turns to sleep for two hours.

And they found there was a place, because the place was full of cameras, but there was a specific area that had sofas where there was no cameras. And they'd all take turns to sleep there, have the radio on in case they needed to come down. So I was let into this little secret after about two weeks.

I quite liked it there actually. Very, very, very easy job. But then I got moved to a different place.

And I was going to say earlier that if people are really lazy, sometimes what they would do, like, I remember we worked in a hospital and it was an old hospital, Middlesex Hospital in London, and it hadn't been used for years. It was derelict. It was all underground.

And we had to do a patrol. There was no lights. And it was a very, it wasn't a very nice place to be walking around, and it took ages.

But they had the little scanners so we had to scan so they knew whether we'd done the patrols or not. But for those that wanted to have an easy life or wanted to have a night off, what they'd do is they'd put their scanner into the microwave for 30 seconds. And what it did, it just, apparently it just wiped out all the data from this thing.

I'm not suggesting put anything into the microwave unless it's food, of course, but this is what they did. I never did it myself because I think it's best to be honest. And what I said to my supervisor, the boss, when he put me onto that night shift in that old hospital where there was no lights or heating, I said to him that I would not be walking around in the dark on my own.

Therefore, there would be no patrols for me. And I let that be known before I even went to the place. So I got away with it.

So sometimes I think, I think honesty is sometimes the best thing. Maybe. I quite like honesty.

I'm not a big fan of the honesty that's, you know, some people feel that they need to tell everybody exactly what they think and at all times, and they feel that their view is so important. I'm not really into that so much, but I got, I got, okay, this is what I did. I got two Häagen-Dazs ice cream tubs and it was two for five pound.

So that's going to last me the weekend. Put them in the freezer when I got home. I'm so looking forward to eating them.

I can do them in four sittings. So in the past, I've managed to just eat a whole tub of ice cream in one go, but I don't do that anymore. I generally, if I can, I try and last one tub for three, three little adventures.

I've eaten it, but sometimes two is all I can manage. So this should be enough to last me because it's Friday night now. It'll be Saturday tomorrow, then it's Sunday, and then Monday I'll be buying some more food.

So this should keep me going for the weekend. But I do, I don't need to. But I probably could do with getting a bit more food for tomorrow, just like general food.

I've got most, got pretty much enough of most of the stuff, but there's a couple of little bits I could do with getting tomorrow. So I might do that, go and get a few bits. A couple of bread rolls.

I've got some moist tissue paper. Earlier today, what else did I get? I got Andre a little toy, a little stuffed thing. It's like a blue, like a little blue teddy rabbit thing.

And so I picked Andre up and I showed him, I introduced this little toy to him, little stuffed bear. It's a bear or a rabbit or... Well, it's blue, so it's not really any of those things, is it? It's a teddy, it's a cuddly toy, but it's only little. It's smaller than him, smaller than Andre, but not tiny, not like a little mouse.

And I introduced him to it and he was like biting it a little bit and sniffing it. And then he wanted to go down, so I put him on the ground, on the floor, and I let him up and I put the teddy, blue, blue teddy thing on the ground and he picked it up and ran away and put him in somewhere that he wanted him. He was basically saying, telling me to keep away from it.

He doesn't like me touching his stuff. How weird is that? The living room is just full of his toys. He's got stuff all over the place.

It's just his stuff, apart from the things that are mine. I've got a television, I've got a little table thing that the television's standing on, that's mine. I've got a table that I inherited from my grandmother.

So I'll be keeping that forever, well, for the rest of my life, including the table that I inherited from my grandmother and the chair that went with the table, that was my grandmother's. So that was nanny Newland. That was my nan.

So I'll be keeping those things forever. That's my keepsake, I suppose, which is cool, which I'm going to keep. But I live a quite a sparse lifestyle.

There's not much going on here. Andre's cage, he's got a big old cage over there. He sleeps in it.

Sometimes he sleeps during the day in there, but of his own accord, I don't put him in there during the day. But when I go to bed, I put him into the cage. And then when I get up out of bed, I let him out.

And the rest of the time, he just does whatever he wants. So the whole time I'm awake, he's out of the cage. Other than that, there's not really a lot left in there apart from my black chair.

And I've got a little side table. It's a little bit like the ones you get in hospitals or where they can turn around and you can actually have it over your lap when you're in the chair or in bed, that kind of thing. Anyway, I do believe that that's pretty much the end of this here recording.

I'm going to watch Big Brother. It's a celebrity Big Brother. Not extinction, not ex... I'm a bit tired.

My brain just slows right down. Eviction. Celebrity Big Brother eviction's on right now.

So I'm going to go. I wish you lots of love. Speak to you next time.

Have a wonderful weekend or week whenever you're listening to this. And bye. Bye bye.

Bye bye bye bye bye.