#136 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (26th April 2019)

Hello, welcome to let me bore you to sleep. My name is Jason Newland and this is a podcast aimed... I just get... I do these introductions every time and trying to think of new ways to say exactly the same thing. It's a sleep podcast basically.

The idea is I just waffle on and talk rubbish for about an hour and you just get bored and fall asleep. That's one description. There's probably nicer descriptions than that.

It's also something that people, you know, if they... if you wanted just something a bit silly to listen to or maybe, you know, a bit of company, you know, just hearing my voice or hearing a friendly voice. Quite a lot of voices fairly friendly. I don't... yeah, I don't just sound like I'm about to scare you in a shower or something, you know.

It's pretty... I'm not a psycho. That's what I'm trying to say. I'm an okay person kind of.

I only listen to this. I was gonna say when you can safely close your eyes. Well, I feel I might have scared people now.

I only listen when you can safely close your eyes because falling asleep is not a good thing to do if you're, you know, piloting a submarine or something like that or if you're controlling one of those little trucks that are on Mars, you know, you could remote control it and the thing costs like half a billion dollars to send to Mars and you end up crashing it into a a Martian or something because you fall asleep. Oh, I actually asked my friend about the tube trains. Apparently, then, this is for those that have listened the other night.

I was talking about tube train drivers having a stick to hold on to. And I thought it was called an idiot stick. But it's not.

It wasn't. It was called something else. I think the thing is I'd make it more more of a useful paragraph or sentence if I had some more information to give to you but I can't remember what it's called.

I thought idiot stick's quite a good name. You know, if you fall asleep while you're driving a train. I know there's narcolepsy and stuff like that but technically, you know, I would have thought driving a train would be quite stimulating in a sense of, you know, every time you stop at a platform you have to be looking out the window and make sure that, you know, it's safe to close the doors and everything.

And each stop is only maybe a couple of minutes, sometimes a lot less, between stops. Unless you're on the Northern Line. And with my recollection of the Northern Line, you could be on, yeah, it takes about six days between stops.

So what I've done, what I've done, what I did, what I have, I'm not sure if I mentioned, I purchased some soundproofing foam to put on the walls. And that was last week sometime. Wednesday probably, to be fair, last Wednesday.

And I've arrived today and I put them on the wall. Now, that was a boring sentence. Isn't it? It's like, I went to the shop and I bought some bread and I came home and I ate some bread.

See these foam things there? How many did I get? One, two, what's eight? One, two, three, four. I think there was 24 altogether. So if I'm correct, I got two packs of 12, unless it was 24.

It was in a pack. I can't remember. I'm really not sure.

But anyway, I got them. They came today and I thought, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to put them up. So this morning, but I don't know what time it was, I need to get a clock and stick it to the, to my front door so I can see what time I'm being disturbed.

So these, yeah, it was this morning or early afternoon or something like that. And they came in a package, just like a plastic package. So I'm definitely not going to buy any sex toys from that company.

You know, it's like see-through and everything. You'd be like, oh my God, what's this man up to? And I didn't have any glue or any adhesive to stick the tiles or, you know, the foam thingies to the wall. So I thought, I don't know what I'll do.

I'll go and buy some. Because I find that in a situation where I need something, usually, you know, going and buying it is the, kind of the right process. So that's what I did.

And I think I was going to buy some from Amazon, but they were charging nearly as much for the delivery as for the actual product itself. And I ended up getting big two tubes, two big tubes. I say big two tubes, I must have kind of known what meaning to say before I said it.

My brain is working so quickly that the words came out muddled. I need to get a new chair, one that's not squeaky. And I went into, there's a shop called Wilkinson's, and they kind of sell, it's a lot like cheap stuff, but it's also okay.

You know, it's not just like a cheap shop. There's bargains, but there's also some okay stuff in there as well. It's kind of like carrots for the unemployed.

And so I went in there and I've never ever bought adhesive or glue or any kind of sticky substance from that particular retail premises. But I had in my mind an idea roughly where the adhesive would be spatially within the shop itself. And I was right.

It's not a case of like, I bet it's inside the shop, none of that, because that would be a bit obvious. But I did, you know, I thought, I know where I'm going. Because before that, I went into Iceland and I was having a meeting at four.

So I went to have a, I went to Iceland first, but the bus, I got the bus in. So I had a bath, had my breakfast first and had a bath. And then I thought, oh, I better walk quickly, not too quickly, but not enough to get all sweaty.

I kind of, I walk fast enough to get where I want to get to quicker and maybe raise my heart pulse a little bit, but not fast enough to leave me with sweaty balls. You know, it's kind of the two, the line, the line. Sitting on a bus with, you know, sweaty bits isn't, it's, you know, it's okay if I'm coming back from the gym, but it's even okay coming back home from anywhere.

It's a bit, I think having sweaty balls, it's a bit like if you've been in a rain, coming home with wet clothes, although, you know, maybe not ideal, but it's still a lot better than going to work and getting there with wet clothes. I'm not talking about wetting yourself, I'm talking about the rain. Although I used to get to work, I remember years ago when I was younger, I decided I was working in this insurance company and I lived quite a long way away.

That was a weird noise I made there, wasn't it? I lived quite a long way away from where I worked. Not initially, when I first started working there, I lived around the corner and I could go home at break time, like lunchtime, not break, I mean break time was 15 minutes. I could have gone home, but it would have been a case of walking up the stairs and, I don't know, just walking back, you know, that's about it.

Maybe 30 seconds of juggling and then coming back, you know, there was not enough time to do much in 15 minutes. But at lunchtime, I used to get an hour and I'd get back in six, seven minutes and I'd go lay down and it was great. What I always found though is the closer I live to where I worked, the more often I was late, which is very strange, you know.

I used to, I had this job once when I was younger, I was 18, and this job was in a pub and it was a weird, weird job it was. And I gave up a job that I shouldn't have done really. I think what it was, at that age, I think I just wanted to try new things, you know, I wanted to experiment, I wanted to, instead of travelling the world, I thought, oh, get a job in a pub.

And if I'm honest, I think at the time, I probably thought that it might be a good way to meet people and maybe get a girlfriend or just make new friends, you know, learn some social skills. It didn't work out that way, although I did make one good friend at the time. And he, yeah, I think he was pretty much as weird as I was, so that's probably why we got on.

And also, I ended up living in the house of some of the customers, not, I don't mean like lots, they didn't share me around, and, oh, have you got Jason this weekend? No, no, I've got him Wednesday. Well, can I have him on Monday? No, it wasn't like that. They used to sit on the left-hand side of the bar, and they were builders, and I said, the reason I'm going to live with is two of them lived in the house.

One of them was the landlord who owned the house, and two of the other people that used to come to the bar, and they were builders, and I think they worked for him or with him. They also lived in that house, and not long after I stopped working at the bar, at the pub, I ended up moving in there, and I ended up right at the top of the house, and I didn't have a television, which was the first time, yeah, probably the first time that I didn't watch television, but regularly, but at that time, things were going quite well for me, in a sense of, oh, Andre, Andre, sorry about that. Anyone listening, sometimes Andre makes these weird noises.

And luckily, you can't see that. I've already put him in his cage, and he's not anywhere near here, but thankfully, you can't see that, so I can pretend it was him, and this was the summer of 1989. Yeah, summer of 1989, so I was 18, and I was 19 in August, so this was kind of April, May time, and I finished the job in the pub before New Year's Eve, and then, yeah, that was a weird one.

I know those tools would have been short because of me, but only because, well, I don't know about short, but because I was giving the wrong change out, probably, and stuff like that, but they decided that someone was, like, taking money, and they, someone pointed a finger at me, and it's not really my thing. I don't mean a finger, but, you know, being accused of such things, and after New Year's Eve, which is pretty much the busiest night in any pub or nightclub, you know, it's just the busiest, pretty much the busiest night, and the manager said to me, you're coming tomorrow for extra training, and I said, I can't come in. I'm at my Nan's for lunch, because I worked all through Christmas.

I didn't have Christmas dinner, Boxing Day. I worked all through that, and I said, I've got, this is going to be kind of like my Christmas tomorrow, you know, New Year's Day. Bearing in mind, this was probably two o'clock in the morning by the time we cleaned up, and I said, no, I'm at my Nan's for dinner.

They said, if you don't, if you don't come in, then don't come back. You haven't got a job, so I didn't go back, and they took that as a sign of guilt that I'd robbed them or something, yeah, so what? Mind you, I got my Nan quite a good present with all that money that I stole, so that was good. I'm joking, I'm joking, I'm joking.

So, I said, look, I'm 19, I'm 18 years old, nearly 19. If I was stealing money, why would I still be wearing this coat that I've had since I was 11? And they said, I don't know how to answer that. They said, how come, I think the number one said, well, how come it still fits you then? Okay, that's a different story.

I've got a hormone deficiency, which I didn't. I don't know why I said it. I just, I just discovered the word hormone, and I thought it was funny, so I used to try and, you know, add it into conversations whenever possible.

So, I went to my Nan's New Year's dinner, and that was one of the bad decisions I've ever made, I think. It wasn't because it was a particularly amazing dinner, but all her dinners were lovely, you know, they were all, she was a brilliant cook, and to be fair, it wouldn't have made any difference if she'd served us porridge. Just being there with her was pretty good anyway, because she was lovely.

So, I think I made quite a good adult decision, because I chose, I kind of stood my ground. I lost my job over it, but I stood my ground, and I put my Nan first, or I put myself first, I suppose, because it wasn't, it was, you know, anyway. I haven't thought about that in years.

But I was the worst barman, or bar person. Back then it used to be called barman, and barmaid. Those were the official terms of those jobs.

Headmaster, headmistress, policeman, policewoman, or PC, or, you know, that's, those were the terms that people used. But I know that we can't kind of use those terms anymore, but no one used those terms in a sexist way. That's the thing.

It was just because those were the terms that people used. It was just how we were brought up, and taught, this is, that's, that's a nurse, that's a doctor, and nurses are women, women are nurses, when clearly men can be nurses, and even then men could be nurses, but there wasn't pretty many of them. I've thought about being a nurse.

I like the idea of caring for people, but really, I know it might sound weird, I don't always find it easy to care when someone's not, I don't know what sort of word, but when someone's really not in a great place, I find to, I don't like to think of it as compassion, or caring, or empathy, but something happens inside me, and I quite like that, I don't like the feeling, but I like maybe the way I am. So I had this conversation years ago, back in 2004, and it was with my friend Will at the time, and yeah, we were living in a Buddhist community, and we were walking to town down London Road, and I couldn't tell you the name of my last girlfriend, but I can remember that conversation.

I think we were talking about chess, because I lived down that road, no, maybe, no, but I went through this little phase when I bought an electronic chess set, like one of those computerised ones, it wasn't expensive, it was like 30 or 40 pounds or something, or 29 pounds, 42, I don't know, and I decided I was going to be a chess master, and I was going to learn every move, and I was going to be the best chess player ever, and I think my friend Will said, shouldn't you learn the rules first, just learn

how to play the game first, you know, he was, I didn't realise how pretty amazing he is, or he was at the time, he's still, he's still around, but he's a Buddhist Order member, so he's been ordained and everything since then, but he's a pretty amazing person actually, but the last conversation I had with him was when we was in the Buddhist community, and I was upset about something, and so I was sitting downstairs with Will, I was sitting facing him, I find that's probably the best, best communication way, isn't it, if you look, not

necessarily look at the person, but at least be in the same room, unless you're on the phone, Skype wasn't about that back then, you may say, well, you live in the same room, why would you Skype, I have, I've Skyped people in the same house I've lived in, it's, I've phoned people in the same room, it's room, not womb, room, I wasn't a twin, I used to think that I was a twin, like my dad pointed out, it was a mirror, no, I used to think that I was, like there was something missing, like I'd,

you know, that kind of separated at birth feeling, but as far as I know, I wasn't, although twins do come in the family, and also ginger hair, I know we're not really talking about ginger hair, but my nan's brother, Anthony, he had ginger hair, I mean, not when I met him, he was grey, he was fairly elderly, he was younger than my nan, oh no, yeah, he was younger, a little bit younger, and apparently he had a proper ginger hair, and because my nan's side of the family are Irish, both her parents were Irish, and

then before then, you know, and the thing is, my nan was born in England, she was born in London, East London, she was a proper Cockney, and she moved to North London, I think, maybe after the Blitz or something, because the East, the East end of London was pretty much, a lot of it was destroyed during the war, and I'm covering a lot of subjects here, and then she, he had a little, yeah, her brother, and my nan, were brought up by two Irish people, both Irish mother, Irish father, and they both obviously, well, had

Irish accents, because they were from Ireland, and then her dad used to work on the roads, so I don't know if it's like building the roads or something like that, when you say building roads, it sounds like some kind of Lego, doesn't it, or building a road, like Fraggle Rock, do you know what Fraggle Rock?

The one thing I remember from Fraggle Rock is the, the thing, but the, just the one saying, the trash heap has spoken, and just reminds me, I used to love Fraggle Rock, the thing is, I used to like it, and it wasn't really aimed at me, because it was on when my brother was young, so I used to watch it with him, but I wanted to watch it anyway, just like the Muppet Babies, that used to be on in the 90s, I was in my 20s, and it used to be on Saturday mornings, and I used to love it, I could even sing you the song, Muppet Babies, do, do, do, do, do, Muppet, Muppet, Muppet, Muppet Babies.

And it was really cool, because every, every week, they'd go into this kind of dreamland, you know, it's the whole kind of creativity of, you know, young children, and they'd just get carried away in a really believe what they were doing, and it's like, I used to love it, but I know it wasn't aimed at me, wasn't aimed, not, I mean, personally, I'm not saying that they, I thought that they'd all got together in Hollywood, got me this cartoon, Mr. Henson, there's a bloke called Jason, and he's, he really liked the Muppets, but it was a bit too sophisticated for him, a bit too adult, I was like, maybe we could water it down a little bit, make something a bit more childish, so that you can understand it, you know, maybe in cartoon form.

Jim Henson probably said, oh, what do you want me for, then, I'm a puppeteer. He said, oh, okay, fair enough, but we still need your permission, because you've got the copyrights.

Oh, I have, haven't I? Does that mean I'm going to make some money? It might do, if it's successful. Oh, that's good. Anything else you want to say? Well, no, no, you're looking a bit bewildered.

Well, I was just, Mr. Henson, I was thought you'd sound different in real life. I said, well, would you expect me to sound like Kermit? That's a voice I put on. I said, no, I thought you'd have an American accent.

I said, no, no, I do really, but Jason's too lazy to try and put an accent on. I mean, you know he can do it, don't you? Yeah, I know he can, he's very, very talented. He's got an array of different accents.

He's phenomenal. Sometimes I do wonder, like, why he's wasting himself doing what he does. He should be just, I don't know, doing voiceovers, doing impressions.

There's no, he's such a master. Yeah, you would say that, wouldn't you? Why? Well, it's you, isn't it? You are him. Oh, don't go through that again.

What do you mean, again? Oh, we did something like that a couple of days ago. Oh, well, it's supposed to be repetitive though, isn't it, this listening? Yeah, I suppose so. Oh, yeah, true.

It is. It's kind of a win-win situation really, isn't it? Because whatever I say, if it's boring, then it's ticked the box. And there's no other insult you can really give to it.

So it's a compliment, it's boring. If it's an insult, it's boring. And it's a win-win.

No one's ever going to say, wow, that was exciting. That was, oh, I was on the edge of my bench listening to that. It's like, oh, the hairs on my toes were standing up on end, wondering what's going to happen next.

No, no, no, no, that's not going to happen. No, no, no, no. Before I got the job in the pub, I worked in this factory, putting electric meters into boxes.

And to give you an idea of that memory, I lived in this little room in a house full of women. I mean, everyone that lived there, it was just a rental, and all the other rooms in the house were rented by women. And the landlady was a woman.

Or should I say the landlord was a woman. And they made a bit of an effort with me to sort of get to know me a bit, and they kind of made me feel welcome. And I kept myself to myself.

I tried to, generally. And I was working long hours. I did a lot of overtime.

But I just remember, I remember this, a couple of things in there is we were standing around on the second floor. And I think it was just before my bedroom, just before when my bedroom was. And I think there was me and maybe the landlady and maybe one other person, maybe two.

And I think I was laughing and I smiled or something. And the landlady said, you should do that more often. I said, well, she said, smile.

She said, you're always so serious. You never smile. I said, what? She said, yeah, because we've been watching Hayland Pace on television.

And again, I'm not even sure if I had a television there, which would be weird. Why wouldn't I have a television? I was earning enough to rent my own flat. And technically I probably would earn enough to have my own mortgage.

Because I was working loads of hours. It wasn't a bad paid job. But I didn't know what to do with my money at the time.

So I just wasted it on stuff. I'm not sure what, I can't remember. If I should chuck pound coins into the sea, probably not.

So I was watching through the doorway with all the other people in the house. We were kind of standing in, kind of in the door, not in inside the door, because I suppose there are some doors that you could fit inside if they were hollow. But that's a big door, isn't it? The size of a tree.

Technically, you could say a tree is a door. It's made of wood. Well, most trees are, aren't they? But if we were standing inside the bedroom, watching Hayland Pace on television, and they were a comedy act.

And they were really, really popular in England, back in the 80s, maybe even the 90s. Well, I can't remember how long they kind of were about for. But they were like top of the game.

They were the biggest comedy act at the time. And there was this, there's two sketches that had me and just couldn't stop laughing. One was in a hospital, there was a man in a hospital bed.

And he was in the, he basically just had really bad breath. And that's why he was in there. And the nurses and the doctors all had gas masks on.

It was really silly. But it was, I was very young, but I did find it hilarious at the time. You had to be there, you know, I'm not describing it in the best way, you know, I'm not doing any justice to them.

But they were really funny, funny. And there was another one, another sketch. And someone was in need, basically of an ambulance.

Someone was on the floor, they collapsed or something in public. And someone was shouting out, we need a doctor. Is there a doctor here anywhere? And there was probably like 20 people surrounding this person.

And one of the comedians, he's like, walks through. Can you let me through, please? Can you let me through? Let me through. Everyone like parted out of the way so he could get to the patient on the floor.

And he just stepped over and carried on walking. So that's something that would have fitted right in with Monty Python, I think. It was that kind of visual absurdity kind of thing.

But I found that funny. It wouldn't be funny if it was real life. But obviously, most things, not many things are that funny, if you take the humor out.

But obviously, that would make sense, wouldn't it? I still think the funny, one of the funniest things that ever happened to me, or one of the things that I found the most funniest, and I've talked about this before, was Andre was my boss, not Andre the Ferret, my son. But I named him after Andre, who was my best friend when I was in my 20s. And he's one of the closest friends I've ever had.

And so I named Andre after him. Well, he was my boss at the time. And he was gone somewhere.

And my friend who I was working with, Terry, came in. And he'd just gone off as well. And he came back.

So I was waiting around for him to come back. And I said to Terry, have you seen Andre? And Terry said to me, Oh, yeah, I just passed him in the toilet. I was practically rolling around on the floor.

At one point, I thought Terry was going to punch me because he seemed to be getting really annoyed with me. But I found it hilarious, just I got this visual of him pooing out Andre. And just, I passed him in the toilet, just I couldn't stop laughing.

There really is a tickle bone. I think within all of us, where it just gets tickled, and not obviously on your elbow, because that's the tickle bone in your elbow. That's not a thing, is it? But you know, when something just tickles you, and it's like, you try not to laugh.

And it keeps coming back. And it keeps coming back. And it keeps coming back.

And I'll stop laughing. And yeah, I quite like that. When I do that with people sometimes, sometimes, although, especially if the person's really serious, I've met someone, maybe at work, and they're really serious.

And I'm thinking, Oh, I had a girlfriend that was like that once. I really liked her, but she was really friendly, but I never heard her laugh. You know, not really laugh.

And then, I don't know if I was in bed with her. I'm not, don't worry, I'm not going to say first time she saw me naked, she couldn't stop laughing. Because I don't want to talk about that.

But oh, she's talking to her, like a normal conversation. And I don't know if we might have been in bed, or we might have been in the middle of doing something, I can't remember. I, within the conversation, all I said was the word fanny fart.

And she could not stop laughing. It tickled her. And she could not stop, she laughed and laughed and laughed.

It couldn't stop. And it's like, wow. Because I love it when that happens to me.

Although, usually when it happens to me, it's at the wrong time. Like a wedding or a funeral. It's, you know, or during a meeting, a work thing when it's supposed to be all serious.

And I suppose a lot of it may be through nerves, or just, there's that energy that just needs to be released. But, I mean, I went to a funeral. I can't remember, I shouldn't be talking about funerals.

But anyway, I went to a funeral a few years back. And the organist who was playing the music sounded like he was drunk. I'm not even joking.

If I played you back, if I'd have recorded it and played it to you, you'd laugh. You know, you'd think, or you'd all think, how, what? You know, and the music was off key. It was all over the place.

And that was difficult, because, you know, it's not the right time to be, you know, it's not a time of levity, is it, generally? You know, but I think the pressure of being serious is, I'm trying to think of an example of when, oh yeah, there was one, I'd, I was queuing up in a, I was queuing up in a cafe. This was actually when I was working at the factory with the meters, because I worked there three times. So I'm not sure if it was the first or the second time, but there was a cafe around the corner.

So I used to go around and I'd sometimes get an egg roll, and that's what I was doing. I was, the thing is, I hadn't actually had the egg roll, but I was queuing up to get an egg roll. So everything kind of happened in the wrong order.

And this, I'll give you an idea if you walk into the, yeah, because that road, let's say walk out the factory, it's quite a bit of area, but when you actually get out of the factory onto the road where the general public are like driving up and down, turn left, walk up to the traffic lights and turn right. And that's the same road which on the left-hand side is where the video shop used to be. The very first video shop in that town was, and that was just when videos were kind of introduced, when people started having video players in their houses and stuff.

And next door to that, there was this antique shop, but it also had military stuff in there as well. And when I was 15, I got, I was working in the chip shop, and I was getting paid 60 pound a week before I went onto the YTS scheme in the September. So I started in April, in September, I went down to 27 pound 30 a week.

So it was a quite a big drop, but before that I was getting 60 pound a week, which was pretty amazing. So I didn't have any rent to pay, didn't, you know, still kind of living at home at the time. That was kind of a bit wobbly, but you know, it was kind of, and the first thing I bought, because I was all into like martial arts and stuff, the first thing I bought, I went down to this military slash antique shop next to the video shop.

I'm not sure if the video shop was still down there though, because I don't recall whether or not that video shop moved around the corner from where I lived, or it was a different people. But I know I stopped using that video shop when the video shop opened around the corner, because why would you travel, you know, for an hour and a half, walk for an hour and a half there and back to get a video, when you can just walk up the road and around the corner.

And plus the amount of time I used to spend in the video shop, looking at every single title, reading the backs of every single video cover to try and decide which video to get, because decisions have always, I've never found decisions particularly easy at times.

I think sometimes choice, when there's so many choices, you know, sometimes things are a bit simpler when there's like very little choice. But having lots of choice is also quite lovely really, isn't it, I suppose. But next to, so at the time, that video shop might not have been there anymore, because it did move, or it closed down at one point, I'm sure, yeah, it must, but it's not gonna be there now, is it, because I don't know video shops anymore.

But it's, yeah, definitely, I think it definitely might have closed down. But the shop next door to it was still there. I just have this recollection of the video shop having a board up against the door saying that we're closed now.

Yeah, I think so, and it's like little, I'm sure that the close sign is like closed now, but it was C-L-O-S-E-D, but the O had a little face drawn in it, a couple of eyes and a mouth. The mouth might have had a, like, that might have been like the first ever emoji. Wow.

Anyway, the shop next door had what I wanted, and I'd already decided what I was gonna get with my first week's wages. Went in there, and I picked up a samurai sword, and that's what I took home with me. And I spent, I think I spent the full 60 pound, maybe 55 pounds, something like that.

And I had this samurai sword in the, what's it called, scrabard, scadard, stadard, stabbard, scabbard, you know, the case, the thing that the sword goes into. And I was so pleased. I always wanted a sword.

I had, like, some practice, like, wooden swords and stuff from martial arts shops, but I've never, never had, like, a real proper sword. And I ended up selling it back, I think, or to someone. I can't remember who I sold it to, but I think once I started earning £27.30 a week, I needed to sell it so I could buy some ice cream or something.

But I loved that sword. I still remember how it felt. The handle was, because it was, I'm guessing it wasn't, like, antique in a sense of being thousands of years old, but it was quite an old sword.

It wasn't new. So it might well have been from the war. Who knows, you know.

There probably wasn't a huge market for swords though back then, generally. I don't, there's probably not a huge market now, apart from the rare ones. Plus, you know, nowadays, a 15-year-old couldn't walk into a shop and buy a sword, probably.

You may say, yeah, but some 15-year-olds, they look like adults. You know, I didn't. I probably looked about 13, 12.

You know, I didn't look, my voice had broken. Luckily it fixed, so we're all good now. But I remember when I was 13 or 14, I can't remember that kind of age period.

I was quite a slow developer, really. I still haven't finished, I don't think. I hope.

And I used to come down in the morning for breakfast and my voice would be croaky and I'd be like, morning. I'd try and make it as deep as possible. I'd like, and they'd say, do you want, I'd be asked, do you want cornflakes or rice krispies? I'd say rice krispies, please.

And I'd be asked, do you want some orange juice? Want some orange juice? I'd say, yes, please. Oh, and I'd die. I really thought my voice had broken.

I really believe every day I'd wake up praying that my, I didn't want anything else out of the world, out of life. I wanted my voice to be deep, not deep, deep. I didn't, you know, I didn't have any kind of Barry White aspirations.

I just, I just wanted to have, I suppose, because I didn't look like a man. My idea of what a man, you know, I wasn't, I was still kind of quite childish looking. I didn't have, I didn't feel like a man, but I wanted to, if I had at least the voice, I could walk around talking like this all the time and then people would, I don't know, I just wanted it.

One of those things, I wasn't, I suppose, different periods of adolescence and puberty that I went through. Maybe everyone goes through it, but, you know, at first growing, growing hairs in different places was a novelty. Oh, that's weird.

But eventually I got bored of counting the pubes and I thought, well, what's going to happen next? And then there is the incident in the shower. I'm not going to talk about it, but I was just doing what I always did for the last six months or so. And then something happened that hadn't happened before.

And I thought I was going to have to call an ambulance. I really just, I thought, oh God, I'm leaking. I'm leaking, you know, and to this day, it's still the best one I've ever had.

So, and then I wanted to be big and muscly, big and muscly and manly and it never was. I was little and muscly and boy, I wasn't manly. And I don't even remember when my voice did break.

It was probably about 15. I think it wasn't one of those nights when I kind of went from to, I think it just happened kind of gradually in stages. So I went from sounding like a girl to sounding like a woman, to sounding like a woman that's been smoking for 40 years, to sounding like a teenage boy, to eventually sounding like a young man, which is kind of what I've been kind of stuck with.

Although, I know, I don't think many people sound the way they look anyway, but it's hard. I find it hard to judge someone's age by looking at them, but by hearing them on the phone, some people sound old. I've spoken to people and they sound like they're, not old, but they sound like they're adults, like in their 40s or 50s and find out they're only 17.

And you may think, well, why, what am I doing talking to 17 year old boys? That's in my job I had. I'm not just randomly calling people up. I'd get phone calls, you know, for car insurance, and they'd phone up and I'd hear this like, you're old lad, I want you to get some insurance.

And I think, brilliant. It's a middle-aged man. They're the best people.

Well, middle-aged people, men, women, they're the best group to sell your car insurance to, because they're the, generally get the cheapest insurance, providing, you know, everything else is good. And then I feel, oh, good. And I'll be all friendly, which I should be anyway, regardless of who they are.

And then they say, yeah, I'm 18. Okay. And then I have to go through the quote, even though it's pointless, because either they were going to get turned down by the insurance or the insurance was going to be like 20,000 pounds or something ridiculous like that.

Because instead of getting a little old Ford KA or a little mini, something that's worth maybe 800 pound and very low engine, you know, of low value, that doesn't go very fast or do very little, they'd end up getting the closest thing to a speed car that they could get. And they wondered why they couldn't get insurance or get decent insurance that was cheap. Unfortunately, we couldn't sort of just say, oh, sorry.

Can you call back when you're an adult? In 20 years, when you get good insurance for you, then good prices. I did a quote for someone once and they had a, I think they had a Mercedes and he was 18 and he had a Mercedes. And I just went through the whole thing.

I didn't bother really chatting to him. I was like, this is just another wasted 20 minutes. Because that's the kind of, you get used to it after a while, you start expecting, this is some Mercedes, 18 year old, when he gets such a, if you do get a quote, the price is going to be tremendous.

I was amazed we did get a quote, a price came up. And I said something like, okay, this is going to cost you 8,000 pounds for the insurance. And he said, oh, okay.

I said, what? I said, yeah. He said, so you want to pay it monthly, obviously. I said, no, no, I'll just pay it now.

And then he shouted, dad. And his dad paid on the credit card. So it just shows you that you can't, you can't always, you can't judge.

You can, it's natural to judge, but we all do it. It's just human nature, isn't it? But I did find it very, very interesting how that worked out though. I'd already predetermined that it was going to be a waste of time, but it wasn't.

But it's so easy to use that as an example of, well, it just shows that people, you know, it's not a waste of time quoting people of that age. And the actual reality was in the job I had, because 99.9% didn't buy anything because they couldn't. Because who can afford that kind of money for car, for car insurance? It's just, it's ridiculous.

People used to get sacked for that though. You know, when I first got there, old Ann, not Ann Summers. What's her name? Ann, I can't remember her name anyway.

She had a chat show, no, she had a game show that was really popular all around the world. This was the early 2000s, 2001. And I was in training and they played us a call of someone that we shouldn't do, basically how we shouldn't treat the customers.

And this is a call from someone that was working there that had just been sacked for what he did. So they were sort of letting us know that you cannot be rude to the customers, otherwise you get, that's it. Which is fair enough, you know, should be respectful to the customers.

And basically what he did was the customer was being rude to him and just being awkward with every question. Some people would do that, they'd phone up and they'd say, you know, like a quote, a cast and take, take your name first. What do you want my name for? Well, we can't do the quote without your name.

Just give me a quote. No, I need your name. Okay.

Name, your date of birth. What do you want my date of birth for? It's like, and they go through every single question and they say, is this going to take long? Why is it taking so long? Well, if you answer the questions as I asked them, just answer the questions and it will be done quicker than if you don't answer the questions. But again, that can be sound rude, can't it? Anyway, this person, this man on the phone was being rude, like just awkward all the way through.

And in the end, the person didn't get a price. So the computer system refused to insure this man due to, I don't know, maybe whatever reason, I don't know why. It can be a multiple, it could be convictions, it could be the type of car, if it's import, if it's, you know, it's lots of different things.

And the bloke started complaining. He said, what do you mean you won't insure me? I've been on the phone for 30 minutes now and you won't insure me. He said, why is it? And the bloke on the phone said, sorry sir, you are the weakest link, goodbye.

And he put the phone down on the customer. The customer phoned back and all the calls were recorded, which is how they managed to play us the call, otherwise we didn't get an actor to reenact it. And even the managers that came in told us not to do that.

He said, we were laughing when we were listening to it, but we had no choice, you know, because it's funny, but you can't do that. You know, I mean, if you imagine if you was in a supermarket and some customer was just being rude, really, really rude. And you put a cake on their head, like a chocolate cake and just squashed it in their face or something.

You're going to lose your job, aren't you? Although it's a funny thing to do. And it's a lot better than some things that could be done, but waste of a chocolate cake though, if you ask me, everyone else would be going, I see, I can't believe you did that. We sat, people would be laughing.

It'd be me licking the chocolate off her face. I love chocolate. Again, that might have sounded a bit weird.

It wasn't about licking. It was more about the chocolate. Mind you, I had a bath today.

I had my haircut last night. So I've got a grade two, I might have mentioned that in yesterday's recording, but I think it's probably time to bring this thing to an end because I've been rabbiting on for longer than I expected to be, an hour and 10 minutes. So I've got these thingies on the wall and I'm going to get these soundproof things on the wall.

I'm going to get the whole wall covered in them with different colours. So otherwise the room will be black because these are black foam tiles. So it would be a very dark room if I had that.

So I want to get some blue and red ones and have the whole room soundproofed and get some soundproof curtains and also get a soundproof mat to cover the entire floor, as many mats as I need to. So I get the whole floor, maybe in the same material as you have in the children playground, you know, with their little kids jumping around and it's all foamy. Have it so this whole room is just soundproofed.

Not just for making recordings, but also so that I don't disturb anyone else. I like the idea of being able to get up at three in the morning or still being awake at three in the morning. It's half two now.

And to be able to think, I no longer do. I'm going to sing an ABBA song as loud as I can. And I'd like to be able to do that without disturbing anyone.

I don't want to disturb people. So I can't do that at the moment, but I like the idea of being able to if I wanted. Also, if in the future, whoever moves in downstairs, in the future, if they happen to be loud, let's say, just, you know, whatever they're doing, I'd like to have it so I can't hear them either.

I'd like to be a perfect situation. I'm just worried that the place might look like a big padded cell. So I need to sort of be a little bit mindful of that.

And I'm probably going to, once I've got the foam on, I'm probably going to put other foam on as well on top. I want to make it, I don't want to put so much foam that I've only got, I can only move, I'm sort of stuck in the middle of the room and I can only move three inches either way. Because that would be silly.

But I want to make it so it sounds nice and I've got no background sound. And when I've got the, so I've got these tiles, these soundproof tiles to the right hand side of me and to the back of me. If I had them to the left of me as well, and on top of me, then in front of me.

So yeah, I don't know. Just wait and see. I'm also going to do the ceiling as well.

Because what I remember is at Graceland, I'm not comparing myself to Elvis. I'm just saying in Graceland, Elvis used to have a carpet on the ceiling. And you might say, yeah, but he was on all kinds of drugs.

No, it's not about that. It's, mind you, if he was on drugs and there's a carpet on the ceiling, that would be really weird when you sort of wake up. But it was an acoustic thing because Elvis loved music, loved singing.

He wasn't doing it for the money. He loved singing. He wouldn't have done, according to documentaries, he wouldn't have been doing what he was doing.

He wouldn't have been doing all those concerts when he wasn't well, but he loved singing. And if he'd been treated properly, he might still be around singing. He'd be in his 80s and he'd just be just like an old, like Johnny Cash, you know, when he was elderly, except a sexier version.

Yeah, I'm a big Elvis fan. I love myself a bit of Elvis. I've only known one other Elvis though, Elvis Costello.

I can't think of any other Elvises that have been famous before or afterwards. That must've been a gamble for Elvis Costello to take the name of Elvis, because that's not even his real name, I don't think. It might be.

But to have that name when you, the most famous singer, pretty much of all time in the West anyway, Elvis Presley, the most successful singer of all time. No one, not even Michael Jackson touched him when he came, well, use different words maybe there, but you know what I mean? He's, I love Elvis. I mean, part of me would have liked to have been around in the late 50s when he was first in, when he first, you know, 1957, when he was first big and all the way through the 60s and going to the cinema, watching his movies.

But then I'd be in my 70s. So, you know, I don't, I'd probably rather just stick to being 48 and having kind of missed, missed seeing or being around when he was young and that excitement, I still, yeah, I still kind of, there's nothing wrong with being in the 70s. I kind of look forward to it.

I love the idea of being in my 70s and looking back and feeling that I've actually accomplished something. That's a feeling I'm looking forward to. You know, I've talked for way, way too much time.

I'll speak to you later. Remember, you deserve to be happy and be kind to yourself. And I'll speak to you next time.

And if you are still listening, you can like my specific Facebook page that I've got. Just let me bore you to sleep and join me and the other people that like these recordings. Bye for now.