#248 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (3rd November 2019)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland and this is Let Me Bore You To Sleep. Please only listen to this when you can safely close your eyes. Now, so I will be reading a bit out of the Australian book that I got a couple of days back.

But today, I shan't, today, it's Sunday afternoon. I wonder what the day is. I think it's the third of November, I think.

And last night, I stayed up till about six o'clock in the morning. Or this morning, I stayed up till six o'clock this morning and watching the boxing. And so that was, I quite enjoyed that.

And yeah, today was kind of the first day that I felt fairly well physically for, I don't know, maybe two weeks really. And the cough's gone. I said that, I'm going to probably start coughing, but the actual cough-cough that I had, the cough-cough? The cough-cough-cough-cough.

And I didn't think it had anything to do with me feeling unwell until I went into town last week and there was a lot of people coughing. So I'm going to do the English thing and I'm going to put it down to the weather changing. That's what we do here.

Must be the weather. We love the weather here. I love talking about the weather.

I'm not really sure why. It's an English thing. Oh, it's weather.

It's too hot. It's too cold. It's too sticky.

What do they say about rain? Oh, it's spitting. It's spitting. That's when it's just little bits of rain, just a tiny little bit.

It's a bit horrible really, I think about it. So when I was a kid, we used to get told that God was causing the weather. So, oh great, God's spitting at me.

That's nice. So can you please explain what snow is? So yeah, sleep. But I think really in this country that I'm living in, although we don't have, we don't really have extreme weather.

I mean, some people think we do, but we don't really. We have occasional periods, like we'll have a really, really, really hot day, or maybe three hot days in a row, like really hot in a whole year. For us, that's like a big deal.

So in the summer, we might have a fairly nice summer, but everyone is always moaning about the weather. You know, oh, hope we get a summer next year. We didn't even get a summer this year.

Well, don't you remember the days when we couldn't actually go out because it was so hot? We were sitting indoors naked, rubbing ice on our nipples. Do you remember that? And the answer I normally get is I don't remember ever doing that in my life. Is that what you do, Jason, is it? I said no, I just send pictures of my knees to strangers.

That's what I do. I send pictures of my knees, my hairy knees. So I think, I think we're quite lucky, really, here.

Not in a sense of, we have very grey winters. Not even winters, really, from October and November all the way through to maybe February. It can be very grey, very grey, very dull, you know.

Starts getting dark about three o'clock. I completely forget what I was talking about there because I had to put it on pause because someone just put some crap through my door. And Sunday afternoon.

What is the time? It's 4.24 p.m. Post midnight, is it? P.M. Oh, I've got an election coming up in this country on the 12th of December. Oh, what a weird time to have an erection. It's like, I've never known there to be an erection at Christmas time.

I mean, literally, was it 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25. So, basically, I'll have an erection 13 days before Christmas. That's just, I've never known it.

I mean, last time I remember that was, I think it was 1921, when I was about 23. And yeah, it's like, wow, I've been through quite a few. I've had quite a few erections over the years.

And I, the first erection I really remember, sort of in my kind of adult memory, because when I was a kid, I wasn't interested, really. I didn't really, I was at school. I was busy spinning around till I got dizzy, you know, hoping that one day I would turn into Wonder Woman.

And I just remember the first one, which I think was in 1987. The first one that I remember. And I sat up all night watching it, even though I was working the next day.

I just, those were the days, you know, I was 16. I was, yeah, 16. I was, I was able to stay up all night with an erection and carry on working the next day.

It's, you know, I think I was tired, but I couldn't do that now. Wow. But I know I was working in a chip shop at the time.

That's really irrelevant to the story. And I always had a blue t-shirt on. Yeah, and I had a bath that day.

Yeah, I had a bath every day. I was very clean. You've got to be clean, especially if you're working with food, and the food that you're working with stinks you out.

So I never understood. Chip shops smell lovely. Chips, frying, it all smells really nice.

Yeah, if you work in a place like that, I think it's maybe it's just the oil or whatever. I don't know. Really gets into your clothes and your skin, which is the last thing you want when you're a teenager, is to have even oilier skin.

Honestly, my face was so spotty. Oh man, it was bad. I remember one day I was just sitting there, having a tea, having a break, sitting on a chair, the other side of the counter, and some woman started touching my face.

She thought it was braille. She thought she was reading a book. It's embarrassing.

Mind you, she said it was an interesting story. So I can't remember the last time I had a spot, really. That's one of the good things about not having spots.

I realise it just means my skin is dead. But it's, yeah, what was I talking about? The weather. Yeah, the weather.

It's a bit chilly today. Starting to get a little bit chilly, a little bit chilly. But I have the heating on.

Got a new boiler a while back, probably four or five months ago, because my boiler kept breaking. Every year, it'd break once or twice a year. It'd just break down.

And eventually, eventually, and it was June of summer, so I was quite lucky that I didn't have to wait, because I didn't have any hot water or heating. I didn't need heating because it was summer, but I didn't have any hot water for over a week. Because I reported it, they came over fairly quickly to have a look at the boiler.

And the man who was looking at it said to me, it's not working. I said, yeah, I know. Yeah, I did notice that.

Yeah, I wish I'd called you to come round. Oh, wait a minute, I did. Of course, I know it's not working.

He said, no, what I mean is there's, it's just not working. The whole thing, it's just sort of broken down. I said, yeah, I know.

He said, no, what you don't understand is I can't fix it here and now. I said, are you going to take it away with you? He said, no, it won't fit on my bike. Okay.

I said, what are you going to do? He said, well, what we'll do is we'll go away. And this is the weekend, so I wasn't going to hear anything till Monday. I think this was a Friday.

This was Friday afternoon. So he said, well, you won't hear nothing till Monday. If I can't get the spare bit to fix it, it'll only be temporary anyway, as it always has been, because these are the worst spoilers that's ever been known to mankind.

I said, what about womankind? He said, what? I said, you said mankind. What about womankind? He said, well, that's included in mankind, isn't it? I said, yeah, I suppose. Yeah, technically.

Yeah. I just thought you'd been a bit sexy. He said, no, I wasn't being sexy.

I was just saying mankind as a generalization. He said, I've never been sexy in my life. I said, good, because I don't like that.

And he said, what did you say? I said, nothing, nothing. Love you. And so he went away.

I didn't know what was going to happen. I didn't know if I was going to get the spare part, which is kind of how I felt about myself for many years. Like I'm a spare part, not like I'm a boiler.

I always felt like a boiler, and a boiler about to break. So I got this, eventually they called up and they said, we can't get the spare part. I said, why is that? He said, I don't know, but we're going to replace the boiler.

I said, okay. And I thought they were going to replace it, you know, like Monday or something. They said, yeah, it'd be next week.

This is on Monday. So I had to wait till, yeah, I had to wait that, I think about 10 days or something before they came. And I don't know if I used my friend's shower or not.

I can't remember. Or I just stunk. No, I probably just used the kettle and had to have washes from the, not from the kettle, you can't, it's too hot.

You know, when people say, well, just use the kettle then, they don't warn you. They don't warn you. You can't just pour it on yourself.

You have to let it cool down and mix it with cold water. It's very, very important. Use the kettle.

Plus you can't fit in it. I've never known a kettle big enough to fit me. Yes, use the kettle.

You use a bloody kettle. I want to turn the tap on and have hot water come out. I don't want to use a kettle.

Do you know how many kettles it takes to fill a bath? A lot of kettles. I don't mean individual kettles. You know, you have to buy like 45 different kettles and then just put them in a bath.

Yeah, it takes 45 kettles to fill them. It's a very expensive experiment. Kettles, I mean, I think what I did is I boiled, yeah, I did have a bath.

I didn't have a full bath because that would have taken me about all week to fill it. But I think I had three, I had the kettle going, then I had three saucepans full of water. A couple of big ones and a small one.

And I was filling the bath with the hot water from there. But at the same time, I had to be really careful to make sure I didn't trip on Andre. Because he's got a habit of just, one of the things he likes to do, and he hasn't done it for a while to be fair, I think he's eventually learnt.

But for example, I'll be at the sink doing the washing up. I haven't got a female to do it, so I have to do it myself. Ooh, that was sexy.

And, but no, I'm sitting there, I'm standing there rather. I don't sit. To be fair, it's sometimes I could do with sitting at the sink, but to be fair, I just don't do it.

There's times I can't face doing the washing up. But if I'm standing doing the washing up, Andre has this habit, or used to have this habit of laying down right behind my feet. I mean, right, literally practically touching the heels of my feet, which I don't notice because I've got shoes on or, you know.

And then I turn around and I ended up standing on him. And he goes, he doesn't really like having a go at me. Well, you know what? I don't mean to be rude, but you kind of brought this on yourself a little bit, me old matey, doing that.

So he doesn't do it so much now, but it took about, I reckon, a good half an hour to 40 minutes to get enough hot water into the bath by, you know, after boiling it up to just have, I don't know how many inches was in the bath, but as we all know an inch is a lot. So there I don't know, one, two, plus because it's boiling water and what I thought it would, I just have to fill it with cold water. But because it took so long to actually fill the bath or to fill part of the bath up that the water was cooling down, almost felt like, why don't we make baths out of the same material as flasks?

You know, flasks keep tea and coffee hot, don't they? Why don't we make baths out of that same material? So I don't know about you, but I always find that the bathroom is by far the coldest room in the house.

All these tiles, cold tiles, the bath's cold, the sink's cold, the taps are made of metal, the flush for the bog, that's the toilet, that's made of metal, the toilet itself is cold, and I do have heating on so I don't let the building get cold, but sometimes it's a bit, it's a bit chilly on me really, you know, and it's distracting from the business I'm aiming to achieve, the, what do they call it? I forget, I forget the technical term. Yeah, so I'll say hello to Michelle, a new listener of mine, Andre, Andre's just appeared and made some of his weird noises, and I need to open the window.

So Michelle, I spoke to her yesterday on the phone and she told me some really lovely things about how listening to me is helpful and stuff like that, and I do get quite a few, well, not loads and loads, but I've had quite a few messages, testimonials on my website, comments, private messages, things like that, telling me that what I do is useful and helpful, and I don't normally hear it, um, because if I read it, it's in my voice, isn't it? It's like I'm kind of written it to myself in a way, but when I hear another person's voice saying it, it just, it's kind of different.

I've never really had that before, I don't think, um, so it was nice, it was a definitely a different experience. I need to put up my, I've got some things I need to put up in my, my flat. So I've bought a shelf case, and I've got a television stand, you know, the ones that go onto the wall, the bracket, I'll wear them for the TV.

I've got two racks, um, for, that I'm going to put onto my bedroom wall for my clothes to go on. I'm trying to get everything off the wall, off the floor as much as possible, so that Andre has more space to run around, and also, um, because I've got these bookcases, and to be fair, I think they're too heavy to go on the wall. I really do, I think that they're just too heavy.

I know I've got a punch bag on the wall, but that's half hanging off, um, but the, the bookcases, even without the books, are heavy, but when they're on the floor, I can't fill them with books. I can only fill the first half with books, the top half, because, um, it's basically top heavy, and the bottom part, Andre gets onto and knocks stuff off. So I'd like to be able to have the bookcases on the wall, so then I can use all of the shelves of the bookcase for my books, because I intend to, sort of from now onwards, I want to continue my book collection, aimed mainly at hypnosis.

That's what I want to do, I want to get, I want to get as many hypnosis books as I can, because I like, I collect them, that's just one of the things I collect, and I read them as well, like I collect them, and I do have the Kindle as well, and I do, the Kindle's really good for reading books that I don't want to collect, if that makes sense.

So I'm in the middle of reading three books on Kindle Unlimited, and I only discovered Kindle Unlimited, or maybe I didn't only discover it, but I'm sure it's different to what it used to be, because I'm pretty sure that you could read, like, one book a week or something, but it's now, um, I might have it wrong, but the Kindle books now, there's over a million books, and you can read as many as you want, it's just unlimited, and it's £7. 99 a month, but they gave me the first two months free, because, um, I'm, well, I suppose like anyone else, I'm an Amazon customer, so, so that's quite cool.

So I've downloaded a few books, and I've already got quite a few on there anyway, as well, from the past.

I haven't used a Kindle for absolutely ages, but now I have, and I kind of, I like it. I'll tell you why I like it, as opposed to reading a book, and I've got like an old, it's not an old Kindle, but it's, it's like the basic one. I did have another one, but it broke, and I don't know why.

I had one of the, is it Kindle Fire, which had, it was colour, it was internet, it had all kinds of stuff, but it broke, and it was just very weird. So I got a basic Kindle with a case and stuff. The thing I like most about it is I can have the text at a size that's really comfortable for my eyes, which may seem strange to some people, not to me, and if you, if you was to watch, not watch me reading, because that would be even boring to listen to me talking about reading, but the text is quite large, probably, possibly even to someone with visual issues.

Now I'm, I'm, I'm, I have glasses for distance, but by distance that also includes the television, which isn't that far away. See, with my glasses on, I can, I've got the television on now, it's on mute, and there's a bar down at the bottom, it says sound mute, you know, where I turn on mute. If I take my glasses off, it's foggy, not the weather, the TV, the, not the whole TV screen, it's foggier, but the writing, where it says sound mute.

I know what it says because I know what it says, but I can't read it, it's, it's very, I can see there's an S, and I can see there's an O-U-N-D as well, because I know it's there. It's, I suppose it's a little bit like, you know, if you, if you're on a bus and you do a fart and you're a little bit unsure of the result of that fart, you don't forget it, you kind of get home as quick as possible.

It's a little bit like that, I, I know it's there, I can't forget that it says sound mute, but it's only clear when I've got my glasses on, but I can walk around without my glasses, because I don't need them for walking, but I can walk around, but the thing I notice is I can't see faces, I can see there are faces, but I can't, I can't really tell who's there, this is even in the daytime, so there's some people I know, they've got dogs, some people wear certain clothes, same, you know, every day, and

so I can kind of get an idea who's who, and then as I get closer, I can see them, but other than that, I can't tell, I can't, you know, even with my glasses, someone has to get, for me to really see their face, they need to be probably at least 10 foot away, 6, 10, yeah, I think 10 foot, I can see them, I can see their face, it's weird, isn't it, and then before that, if they're further than that, I can see them, I can see their body, and whatever's wobbling, you know, I

can see the body, but the face is kind of, oh, I'm not sure, which is a shame, because I like faces, it's a weird statement, isn't it, I like faces, I like eating, it's nice, and so if I don't have my glasses, like my normal day-to-day glasses, and I go out, and sometimes I do go out, I forget them, I just, you know, just forget, I just put them down, doing something, and I forget, maybe I'm plucking my eyebrows or something, and then I just, oh, and I just walked out, and I think, I ain't

got time to go back, I've got to catch the bus, if I go back now, I'll miss the bus, what shall I do, I better hurry up and just continue, or I'll miss the bus, so I just, I just carry on, and sometimes, and the thing is, I can see a bus coming, because they're big, I cannot see the number on the front of the bus, to know what number it is, now, when I'm going into town, it doesn't matter, because only one bus comes through, so that stops, put me out, put me hand out,

wave, and the bus stops, and I get on, so, all right, love, I mean, sir, because of course, I can't see their face, and I walk up, never said love to anyone, I don't mean like, I love you, does that mean we can have sex now, I don't, I don't mean that, I mean, I, I've never done that, you know, where I've known people said, you all right, love, yeah, love, you know, it's all to, to women, right, babes, right, love, not even to women that like me, temporarily, I've not even had that, I'm not,

I had a girlfriend once, she said to me, why don't you call me babes, that wasn't a good example of her voice, that was very bad, it was more like, why don't you call me babe, that was actually her voice, wasn't me saying it, she's actually here, she just said it, I've, I keep her in a box, I don't, I don't, and in the cellar, so I, I had, yeah, she said that, said, why don't you call me babes, or sweetheart, or darling, or love, I said, because I'm educated, she said, what, I said, I

don't know, it's just not me, I don't, it's a, I don't know, it's kind of a cliche, I don't know, just, I've never done it, so my dad does that, he calls his wife love, or sweetheart, I think, and I don't know what he calls him, I think she calls him by his name, because it's probably a bit like me, she's just like, what's the point in that, I feel like my dad is, he forgets her name though, because he calls me son, I've never once heard him call me by my name, I'm not sure

he knows my name, it's like that really awkward one night stand, which is a weird connection between me and my dad but just, I don't think he knows my name, honestly, I should ask him, mind you I don't know his name either, it's dad, I used to think his name actually was dad, that's what I thought is, if I ever had a daughter, I'd call, I'd name her after my nan, I'd call her Nan, her name was Eileen, but I'd call her Nan, I might really try and annoy people, and if I have a son,

call him Trump, Trump Newland, I don't know what names, I always like the name Paige, Paige is one of my favourite names, even, yeah, I don't know what it is about that name, just something, it's always beautiful about that name, I don't know why, another Tamara, so when I was in my early 20s, I thought, if I had a daughter, I want to call her Tamara, I wonder if my dad had a daughter, because he's never had any kids, like, well yeah, obviously he has, but would he call her daughter, he calls me son, would

he call her daughter, hello daughter, do you see what I mean, nah, don't want to do it, yeah, I should ask him, maybe I have got some sisters somewhere, I could have, I was on the internet, Tanita Takaram or whatever, there's a female singer, Tanita Takaram, I think her name is, and wow, in some of the pictures, she really looks like Elvis Presley, and, but I mean, really looks like Elvis Presley, more so than his own daughter, and it's like really, you know, kind of, it's quite weird, because Elvis Presley, really pretty man, but not

a pretty girl, isn't that weird, really pretty man, but actually, that face on a woman's, that sounds bad, doesn't it, but it doesn't, it's, I always thought it was a feminine face, but it's not, because it's, I mean, I've not seen it on a woman, so that's a weird statement really, but it's kind of an unusual face, I mean, he was like beautiful, wasn't he, but I'm a big Elvis flan, flan, a big Elvis flan I am, I've got my first Elvis album, and it was Elvis's greatest hits, his greatest hits was, kind of had,

I think it was about 40, 40 songs, it was a double album, and I got given it to me by the dinner lady, I've got no idea what that was about, but she, I think we were sitting there talking about Elvis, because my brother was a massive Elvis fan, you know, as big as you get, and he was four years older than me, so he had all his albums, but I didn't have nothing, didn't have any, but I knew the songs, because he was constantly playing them, and the films, and you know, he used to

collect them on VHS recorder tapes, and yeah, he had loads and loads of stuff, I think having a collection is a really quite healthy thing, providing it doesn't turn into hoarding, you know, and there's a big difference between hoarding and collecting, you know, well, sometimes there isn't, is there, I suppose, but a collector usually is, in my experience of knowing collectors, they're usually quite specific about what they collect, now for me, books, and I'd say pretty much that's it, the only thing I've ever really collected in my life, apart from happy memories, is books, and

my book collection is very poor these days, used to have a heck of a lot more, and I will again, it's just going to take a few years to get, you know, to build it up again, because I don't want to rely on Kindle, you know, it's, I don't know what's going to happen to the internet, I don't want to be too reliant on all my information coming from a computer screen, or a telephone, or the internet, because what happens if it does shut down, or suddenly it costs too much to have access to the

information, you know, suddenly there's a big charge, not just internet, you know, paying for internet, but suddenly you have to pay a huge amount of money just to have access to the internet, suddenly, like, no one would have any books, be no books, be no music, so I kind of, I don't want to be too reliant on it, although it's really, really amazing stuff, I think I was so lucky to have the ability just to play music, like any album, pretty much, that's been produced is available to just listen online, stream it instantly, and with

the books, I mean, it's not every book, because not every book's got a kindle edition, but a heck of a lot of them have, every film, again, it's not every film, is it, but a lot of films are available, I think with some of the streaming services, like Now TV, which is run by Sky, they only have, they have a thousand movies, and you might say, well, that's a lot, which it isn't, is it really, compared to how many movies have been made over the last hundred years or whatever, but I'm guessing they only have

enough space, they could only afford to have enough space to serve a thousand movies, instead of having every single movie that's ever been produced, now that is a library, that I'd like to dip into, you know, sometimes I'd like to be able to watch some of the old martial art films that I used to watch when I was a kid, or maybe watch an old comedy that I watched when I was a kid, is it Bud Spencer and whatever his name is, there was like a couple, a team, did a lot of westerns, is it

My Name is Trinity or something, very funny films, they're not available to watch, never on telly, I've never seen them on telly, and they're not available on any of the streaming sites, brilliant films, Bud Spencer and someone else, wait a minute, I think it was called A Town Named Trinity or A Town Called Trinity, yeah, Bud Spencer and Terence something, very funny, the films they did together, and I used to watch them when I was about 13, 14, and I just used to laugh, like proper, because it was, it was a mixture, it wasn't, I

mean, it's verbal comedy, but there's a lot of physical comedy, which I quite like, must be the French in me, because I know French, a lot of French films are quite physical, I know comedy wise, so I'm just watching something on telly while I'm talking, and I'm just interested in what's gonna, what they're about to open, they've got this thing and it's full of something, full of money, oh wow, 50 pound notes, that's a lot of money in there, wow, I bet they're thinking now, because this is the, can't pay, we'll take it away, you

can see in his eyes what he's thinking now, I wish we weren't being filmed, because they could just, they could have took a, just a nice little bundle, you know, 10, 20 grand, but they can't, because they'd be filmed, mind you, the film camera's not on them the whole time are they, yeah, there are people with them though, oh, that's a shame, nice little windfall, that's not windfall is it, windfall, windfall, windy, windy fall, why do Americans, or not Americans, but why in America, is this autumn called fall, that's the question I've got, why is

autumn called fall, don't make sense does it, don't make sense at all, I don't know, so I'm gonna go, because I need to eat some food, so you take care of yourselves, remember to be kind to yourself, because you deserve to be happy, lots of love, bye