#310 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (23rd January 2020)

Hello and welcome to Let Me Bore You To Sleep. My name is Jason Newland. Please only listen to this when you can.

Safely close your eyes. And it is Thursday. It's Thursday everybody.

I've got no idea what day is. What day is it? Thursday the 23rd of January. It's one minute past one.

You know it's really weird. Earlier my friend said to me, what's the time? I looked at my phone and I said, oh it's eight minutes past two. And he said, what? And he looked at his and he said, no it's two minutes past eight.

So basically I read the clock as in 08, 02. So eight minutes past two. So there you go.

I think. Or 20 past two. Anyway.

Now that was boring. What a boring start. These sessions are usually really interesting.

So what's the latest? Well, the latest for me is I have, yet again, no one knows how long for, but I've taken my website offline. I've also, I'm not on Facebook or Twitter at the moment. So I've deleted those.

Facebook and Twitter were deactivated. What else have I done? I've also taken the adverts off of the podcasts. So there's no longer any adverts on them.

And yeah, that's it. And there's that bit of cleaning up that I've had to do to change the podcasts so they suit, you know, that it kind of all, well basically I'll put some titles that I had to change due to this. So, yeah.

Why'd you do that, JJ? You may ask. Why do I do anything? I'm always doing this dumb thing, am I? There's a, this weird one really. I've got this, well, part of the reason is I've got this really real emotional reaction to charging for what I do.

Even though it's still free, you can still stream the audios, podcasts are still there, all that stuff. But to charge for downloads, I've had a couple of people download stuff, only like two or three, but it just doesn't feel right. I'm not feeling it.

I'm really not feeling it. So, and I took the, also the adverts on the podcast. I know I've had quite a few complaints over those in the past.

So I thought, no, I'll get rid of them. Yeah, I've had them on there for a day, really, or two days. And with the adverts, I'm probably averaging about $8 a day in revenue from the adverts based on about three and a half thousand downloads a day, which is kind of what I get now on average on the, on the podcasts, you know, I get about three and a half thousand downloads.

Sometimes it's 4,000 plus, sometimes it's 3,200, you know, but it's, it seems to not go below the 3,000 now. And that's if I make just one recording a day. If I do more than one recording a day, because I've got three or four podcasts, different podcasts, where I make different types of recordings, then I get a lot more downloads.

So based on that, I could probably, I was moving towards the $10 a day, but even $8 a day, I don't know why that works out at 30 days, times by 10 is $300. And times by eight, so what's that, eight, 380s, isn't it really? So 80, 90, 100, 120, so 8, 16, 24, so $240, which in pounds would be about $140. So that $240, probably 180 pounds, maybe 170 pounds, something like that.

Because our dollar to pound ratio is really bad. We are, the money in my country is really low. Compared to America, the dollar is a hell of a lot stronger.

We're one of the lowest, it's very weak, the pound's very weak at the moment. But I still love it. You've got to look after weak things, haven't we? We've got to take care of the pound.

So yeah, I've got rid of those, even though the adverts would cover the costs of running the service. But I want to run a service that is useful for everyone, as many people as possible. So I've taken the adverts back off.

And to be fair, it's quite nice to have a little experiment, because I was interested in kind of how much I'd be getting a day if I was to have the adverts on there. And I got a little, as I said, it was a little experiment, but it's just over $8 a day. So yeah, it would cover the cost of running things.

But, yeah, anyway, I've decided not to have the adverts on there. Maybe in future, if there comes a time when I can't run this service, you know, not that it's not hugely expensive, really, but the podcast costs about $77 a month. That's the cost of running the podcast, you know, with Spreaker.

I think it's 50 something pound a month. I couldn't believe it. I got paid yesterday.

And suddenly there was this big 50 pound missing, or 54 pound or whatever. It's like, why? Where's that gone? But that was the direct debit for the podcast. And it was always, I think it was about 30 pound before, or maybe $29.

So it's gone up quite a bit. But it's also unlimited. So I can have as many recordings as I want on there without a limit.

Because before, my limit was 150 hours, all in all. And as you may be aware, I've mentioned it before, I've got over twice that in hours, just on this podcast. That's about all the other thousand recordings I've got on other podcasts.

So in the new year, I don't know when I started this one, I think it was December, maybe November. So in the new year, then in a year's time, it's going to go up to over $100 a month. Because they've given me a discount.

So I'm hoping that they'll still give me a discount. But I don't know. We shall see.

But I'm not going to think about that because it's 10 months or 11 months away. 10 months away, I guess. Yeah.

Nine months, 10? I don't know. I don't know. Because there was a point where I had to keep deleting stuff, like old recordings, in order to fit on new ones.

But now I don't have to do that anymore. So that's good. So the podcast's fine for another month.

And the website, part of the reason I've deleted it, or I've took it offline, is because if I put it back online, first of all, I'll pay for it. And that's due soon. So I don't know if I've got enough to pay for that.

But it's not just that. I've got to change everything again. I've got to go in and change everything back to being free.

And it's not a huge job it's going to take. It'll probably take a day. So it took me about two or three days to do it.

Or two days or whatever to convert everything to. But yes, I suppose it'll take the same amount of time, won't it? It's the same process. So maybe a one or two days to change everything back.

But then it's done. So yeah, I'm not really sure what to do. I'm kind of missing the website though.

Hello, Andre. I don't know if you can get the sound effects for this. Hey.

Hello, baby. Hello, baby boy. Oh, the good thing is I've always got him.

I've always got him. He's asleep. He actually, when he goes for a wee wee, he's almost walking blind.

He bangs into things sometimes. Because he hasn't really got his eyes open because he's asleep. But he knows by direction or maybe by smell or whatever where to go.

So he goes on the paper, goes to the corner of the room, he does a wee wee. And then he walks back to where he was sleeping before. And if I grab him, not only grab him, but if I pick him up, he's asleep.

As he is now, he's fast asleep in my arms, like a little baby. And what's changed is when I first picked him up, his heartbeat was racing. Now his heartbeat slowed down.

I can hear his breathing. It's like, did you hear that? I don't know how much of his sounds that the microphone picks up. The good thing about not having a website or being on Facebook is no one can complain.

They can say, I wish you'd stop having that ferret yawning into the microphone. One of the things he absolutely loves is having his ears tickle. So I stick my finger in his ear.

I say I stick it in his ear, his ear is smaller than my finger, so you can't actually go into the ear, but you can massage the inside bit of it, if that makes sense. And I realized that, well, it has to be a guess. It can only ever be a guess.

But I think that the reason he likes it is because he can't get to that part of himself. He can't get to it with his tongue. He can't get to it with his nose.

He can't get to it with his fingers because of his nails. If he was to start pushing his nails into his ear, he'd end up hurting himself. So the only other thing he's got is to rub himself against something, I guess.

And what he does is when I do put my finger near his ear, he pushes against it. He's doing it now. He's pushing against the ear, pushing against my finger with his head so that my finger gets deeper into his ear.

You really like that, don't you? You want the other one now? And sometimes he moves his head around so I can do the other one. I love you, Andre. Dude, oh, no, he's doing, he's pushing his head against that finger.

Give me daddy kisses. You are my favorite little boy, you know that? You're my little baby. Yes, you are.

You're daddy's little baby. I can't really take him out too much at the moment because of the cold weather. He doesn't like it.

He actually, if I take him out and I put him on the ground, he refuses to walk. And he literally makes me drag him, which I can't do on a pavement. I mean, it's just, even though he can walk, he'd rather be dragged, which got to be uncomfortable at the least.

You want to get down? Give me one kiss. Daddy kisses. Daddy kisses.

Do you want to get down and go to sleep? There you go. Oh, he wants to play now. He's awake.

Basically, I've woken him up. Mind you, I suppose that would make sense, wouldn't it? Imagine if you walk into the toilet to go for a wee wee and then some huge hand picks you up and starts stroking you and sticking his finger in your ear. You're probably not going to be quite as tired as you were before.

That's it, Andre. Find the most noisy surface to sit on. That's it.

He's a good boy. That's him, by the way. It's not me.

See, I don't know. I don't never really listen back to the recordings, so I don't know how much the camera, I don't know how much the microphone picks up him walking around. It was more of a run there.

But he's not skinny. He's not fat. He's got a strong body.

He's got a double coat on at the his fur or his hair or his whatever you want to call it. It's really nice. He feels much nicer than it does during the summer.

And the colouring, his colouring is beautiful. I just, I'm biased though, aren't I? I just love him. And he's really good now because when I'm in bed, it doesn't bother me anymore.

I mentioned this the other day, probably, but I've probably mentioned everything I've ever said at some point. But he doesn't bother me. He goes, he has a little play.

Sometimes he'll jump up and come to sleep on the bed. But he doesn't hassle me like before he used to. He used to try and wake me up and doesn't do that anymore.

Because now he knows he's got the whole place to himself. He no longer goes in a cage, which is what he used to do. Or I, you know, for the, I think he's only been out of the cage since the summer.

Although it might be more time. I mean, time goes quite quickly, doesn't it? Unless you're constipated. And time doesn't seem to go very quickly at all.

Or having a prostate exam. You know, I'm just saying generally, time goes quite quickly. Sometimes it goes too quickly.

You know, you're waiting at the bank, in the queue at a bank. And you know that you have to get back to work in 15 minutes. And you know, it's a 15 minute walk.

And there's an elderly person, or a young person, but possibly on this for this story, an elderly person, asking lots and lots of questions. Because that's how banks used to be, used to be a very friendly place, didn't it? And, and then next to them, there's another person that's, for some reason, wanting to exchange their piggy bank and have it all into bags and counted out. Okay, yeah, great.

And then next to them, there's the other person that's decided to go for lunch. And I'm standing there. And that's a time where you'd like things to go slowly.

But that clock don't go slow. It starts going fast forward. But what does go slow is the people at the counter.

And the people behind the counter almost going in slow motion. How can I help you today? Well, first of all, I'd like to ask you about my pension. I had a pension that I started paying into in 1946.

Would you like a cup of tea while we discuss this? Oh, yeah, great. I'll tell you what, I'll make the cup of tea if it gets you moving quicker. Maybe put a few extra spoonfuls of sugar to get you going.

Kickstart that adrenaline. So yeah, I am. I don't know how long it's been, but he's, but he's he seems to like not being in a cage anyway.

Never liked being in a cage. Even though it really was only at bedtime, but also when he was being naughty. And I put him in a cage and that's when he'd be rattling in it and just really, you know, very unhappy.

Mind you, I should know that he didn't like cages when I very first got him. And my friend gave me a wooden cage with, it was probably more like a rabbit cage really, but it was a short term thing until I got a proper, you know, bigger cage for him. I ended up getting him a Dulux one, not Durex, Dulux, not like the paint, but it's got one, two, three, four levels, I think.

It's basically like a really flashy apartment for him, but great for a ferret that never goes out or perhaps is only out for an hour a day to have that space in a cage. But that space in the cage means nothing compared to all the space outside the cage when he's got one, two, three, four rooms to play in. Four rooms, yeah.

This room, kitchen, bathroom, a bedroom. There's a fifth room, but that's a storage room. I don't let him in there.

And there's the hallway as well. I mean, that storage room, it's a weird shape. But if it was long, right, it basically, it's like an L shape.

But if it was, if it was long instead of an L shape, you could fit a bed in there. And, but there's no, there's no window or anything. So I wouldn't personally, well, I mean, you couldn't rent it out because that would be illegal.

But I can't imagine it'd be very healthy to be sleeping in a room like that without any, I mean, there is, there's air, there is oxygen in there, but there's vents, there's two vents. So there's plenty of air getting in and out. So it can't get damp in there.

But I think, I'm thinking of maybe turning it into an office or something in the future or maybe, I don't know, something. Because it seems a shame to have that much space and not use it other than storage. And I've got stuff, I've got a wardrobe in there, which I don't even use.

Well, it's in there, obviously, because I don't use it. And I moved it out of my bedroom because I've got, I've got clothes racks attached to the wall. I've got two, I'm going to get another two as well.

And the, it's for anything that I put on a coat hanger. So that's trousers, jumper, anything, any jumpers, t-shirts, shirts, everything that basically that I can put onto a coat hanger is all hanging up on those, those bars, which I've got attached to my wall. That's what they're for.

And get another two, possibly another, another one, maybe another two above the window so that I can dry off stuff. Um, but wet, wet t-shirt, wet t-shirt, when I've had a wet t-shirt contest, yeah, I want to have done some washing. So I don't have a tumble dryer, but I do have a washing machine.

So what I do is I hang up the stuff, spread it out and hang it up and let it dry. And I usually put it above the radiator so that it dries a bit quicker. And I spread it out.

I've got all the windows open, you know, or at least on the latch. I've got no, got no damp in this place at all. It's brilliant.

That's one of the best parts of living here really is not having any damp. Because after the last place I lived in, oh, it was mold and damp. It's just really not, not good.

So, you know, but I don't have, if I was to get a tumble dryer, I suppose I'd need to have it, or the only place I could have it would be in the storage room. Unless I moved the freezer into the storage room and had the tumble dryer where the freezer is. But I've been here five years or four years, no, it's getting on to five years.

And I got the washing machine within probably a couple of weeks, a week or two of moving in here. So it's all worked out fine. The clothes dry, they don't stink too bad.

They smell fine. There's no dampness or anything. There are times I shouldn't really, I mean, there's been occasions, not very often, not very often, the odd occasion where I've turned the heating on in the summer to dry some clothes.

But that was like in an emergency situation where I had nothing to wear. So I had the underpants and some socks and maybe, you know, on the radiator drying so I could wear something to go out. But generally, you know, I wouldn't have the heating on in the summer.

And also, when it's warm, the clothes dry a lot quicker anyway. You try and tell me that story was anything but boring. Even I realised, and I was telling you an interesting story.

For me, that was interesting. Wow. Oh, the fridge has just stopped.

I'm thinking about getting that, that is stuff you can put into your washing machine. Was it washing machines live longer with Calgon? That's it. Wow, I am affected by adverts.

Washing machines live longer with Calgon. So I might get a Calgon, but I don't know. When I'm doing something new, I don't enjoy it.

Well, it depends what it is, I suppose. But I kind of get a little bit, oh, is this working? Is this, you know, I don't like to, I'm okay with, I don't know what am I, I'm okay, I'm okay, like online, that kind of stuff. And apps on phones, although I don't really use and do much in the way of phone stuff, really.

Other than, not that much at all. I've got, I've got a good phone, but it's old now. I've had it for, what, three years, I think.

So it's well outdated, but it's an Apple, an iPhone, but it still works fine. It still works, you know, perfect as far as I'm aware. And the software gets updated automatically anyway.

And I rarely make videos anymore. And the screen's a little bit scratched and stuff, but it does the trick. And also, it's got Bluetooth, so I can, I've only just started using Bluetooth.

I say only just, I mean, the last probably five months, six months, maybe. Never used Bluetooth before. Didn't really understand it, so I was a bit scared of it.

Didn't really get what it was about. And then I got some headphones, which use Bluetooth technology, which pretty much every headphones, well they're wireless, so they're wireless headphones. Because the ones I had on a wire, I just kept falling out of my ears.

And I don't know if it's the way I walk or maybe even the earlobes, the craters in the ears are too big. I don't know what you call on that, the whole bit. Ears, how many holes do I have? I suppose the eyes are classed as holes, aren't they? Ears and nostril and mouth.

What's that? So it's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Nine holes. Nine ways in.

But the eyes, they are blocked though, aren't they? Although it's a hole, it's not really a hole, because it's got a plug, hasn't it? I know the eyes aren't really plugs, but yeah, so maybe they're not classed as holes. Mate, I'm just thinking maybe my ear holes are a little bit bigger than they should be, which is why the head, the headphone things, the ones that go inside your ear, keep falling out. So I've got some, probably about six months ago, I don't know, it's quite a while back, I got some wireless ones and use Bluetooth to connect it to the phone.

And they seem to be fine. And then I'm walking down the street and they're falling out. Like what? So I was thinking it was the wire and I was somehow like, maybe pulling them out.

You know, the wire was pulling them out my ears, but now I've got no wire connected, which means I really don't want them falling out my ears because they land on the floor. Unlike the others with the wires that land, they dangle around, probably dangling around my ankles. I get fed up with things dangling around my ankles.

It's nice to, you want to keep everything tidy. So I want things tucked up. I don't want, that's why I got rid of the wired ones, because I thought if I put the, because I don't want to start tripping over it.

I've had enough of that in the past. So I thought if I just put the, the wireless ones in my ear, well not, not both in my ear, just one in each ear, and they'd stay, but they didn't. Even being indoors.

I mean, they're really good quality and everything. And, but they were just, I've got them on the catalogue, so I'm still, I'm still paying them off. But I stopped using them because I had to end up getting some headphones because it's more of a reason of how can I block out the sound, the constant sound of traffic and people talking and all that stuff when I'm out.

So I got some headphones and they're noise cancelling and they're really, really good. It was my, I say my Christmas present to myself, but actually it was a Christmas present paid for, paid for by, by some people that send me some PayPal gift. So with that and some of my own money as well, I kind of bought these.

So that was my, that was my Christmas present to myself. And I would say, because you know, some people say, oh, this is like a buyer's remorse and stuff and oh, I wish I hadn't bought that. And yeah, I can relate to that.

There's a few things I've got around here that I'm just like, why did I, why did I buy that? But I wouldn't make use, because I don't have much in the way of possessions. And I kind of make use of most of the things I've got on a tablet, laptop, the, the Amazon Echo thing I've got. So I use it every day.

It might just be to sort of find out what the time is or what the temperature is or, or a question, you know, just some random thing that I'm thinking about. So, okay, how old is the celebrity that I'm thinking of? You know, that kind of thing. And it's an instant answer.

It's like, quite cool. I'm thinking, you know, as far as things that I really, really have got the most benefit from, personal benefit, apart from my books. If it wasn't for my books that I bought and read when I've got them, although I've replaced them from old times, you know, because I lost all my books a few years back, but I've replaced a lot of the important ones.

I have read them, you know, years and years and years ago, back in the nineties, some of them. And that's what led me to where I kind of led me to, you know, get into hypnosis and to try and use it to help people. So even though I might not be reading them regularly, they're on the, they're on the shelf, they're available to be read, but they're, they're a part of my life.

They're, the content are in my brain, part of, I feel it's like part of my nervous system, you know. And the books I've read on, what's his name, Carl Rogers. Of course, that was part of my course.

It was, when I went to do the degree, the first two years was for the diploma. So basically the first, first year was a certificate, second year was a diploma, third year was a degree with honours. I mean, it wasn't, I signed up for the three year degree, but I could have signed up just for the first two years to do, to get the diploma in person centred counselling, and then chosen at the end of that, if I was successful, whether or not I wanted to do the third full year to go on and gain the, what I needed to get the honours degree.

So each year was worth 120 UCAS points, I think it is, because you need 360 in all to have an honours degree. So for the first two years, I was studying person centred counselling, as well as, you know, mental health, a bit of sociology, not just person centred counselling as well, other types of counselling, psychotherapy, things like that. And so yeah, Carl Rogers was a very important part of my life, because that was what we, the first two years was based upon, his therapy, you know, ultimately, because I became a person centred counsellor, a diploma with that.

And then the third year went on and we were no longer, we were no longer studying person centred counselling, but much more other types of therapy, other types of counselling. And again, mental health. And that's what it was about, it was more about the academic side of things, really, rather than the practical side, which was the first two years, especially the first year, very practical based.

And then the second year, well, they were both, yeah, the third year wasn't, it wasn't so about practical. It's very much about, because yeah, by the end of this, by the end of the second year, I'd qualified as a counsellor. I'd done all my hours, done all the counselling hours I needed to do.

So the third year, it was just all about academic stuff, all about essays and the final dissertation, which was, I think it was a 50,000 word dissertation, I think. I can't even remember what I talked about or what I wrote about. I don't remember.

Isn't it weird? I really don't remember. But it must have been about something. And I passed.

I got, actually, I passed every bit of coursework I did. But I got minimal grades on some of them, because I handed it in late. But I did pass everything, which I was very surprised with, because academics wasn't really my strongest suit.

You know, I kind of focused much more on the practical side of things. I concentrated on counselling, you know, all the aspects of counselling, including being a client as well. So I was in therapy the whole time, pretty much, I think, that I was at university.

Once a week, I'd have therapy. And I was learning from my counsellor, if that makes sense, learning how she did things. And probably, I say probably, I imagine, guaranteed, I was mimicking her in some ways when I was a counsellor, because she was really lovely, really kind, really attentive.

And I wanted, I'm just guessing this is such a long time ago, but if I remember rightly, I wanted to be as good as she was, and to give, but yeah, just to be as good as she was. And also, I used to practice with sessions with people, other students. So we'd practice doing client sessions with each other, as well as being the client, being a therapist, swapping over, as well as seeing, I don't know, six to eight clients a week, probably, at the university.

And I used to get free therapy with students. So yeah, that was good. But then the third year, whilst I was actually at university, doing the third year of my degree, I started to work as a therapist, because I was qualified.

I had my counselling diploma. So I started my own business as a counsellor, and I was working with a charity as well. So I didn't perhaps give as much attention to the academic side of the third year as I could have done.

I think I'd have benefited more. I'll tell you what it was. It was just, I didn't really, I didn't really have huge self-confidence in myself academically.

But now having done it, I finished it over 10 years ago now, which is weird. But I know I could do it again, because once you've done it, you realise, yeah, I could do it. And I think I wouldn't want to do that course again.

Because, but if I was going to do another degree, I reckon I'd get higher, well, I would get higher marks, because providing I hand in the coursework on time, I think I'd put more effort in, because now I've got the, I've got a better environment, a better living environment to do the work in, you know. I'm not just in one room the whole time now. I've got my desk.

I could work on that. And yeah, I just, I think even just having Andre, you know, it's, it makes a difference. Just the little things.

Have a little ferret run around and go into the toilet everywhere. That's, oh yeah, everyone needs that. He's fast asleep.

He sleeps about, I reckon he sleeps 20, at least 21 hours a day at the moment. And those other three hours is split up. So I've maybe 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there, you know.

So he's up and about a few times, quite a few times a day. But he's not normally awake for any long period, apart from when he'll like, have a little, he spends some time with his girlfriend in the bedroom, which is my old slipper. So sometimes he's, he's doing that for about an hour, sometimes longer.

A very attentive lover. Yes. Honestly, I'll come into the bathroom, the bedroom sometimes, I turn the light on.

I don't realise he's in there and he's underneath the chair with the slipper in his mouth. He's just staring at me. He's completely still, just staring at me.

So I said, oh, sorry. I turned the light off and I'd leave him to it. I don't like to interrupt him when he's, I don't like to interrupt him on date night, basically.

That's the, that's the thing. Date night. So yeah, I'm going to be, my plan, my plan, plan, plan, plenty, plan, plan, plan is to make more, I'm going to make more recordings, but I also need to do more studying.

I feel the need to read more upon a few subjects. One would be stress, anxiety and stuff like that. And I'm kind of, I would say I'm fairly knowledgeable from an experiential perspective, my own experience.

And also having dealt with people, like personally, with stuff, both professionally and as a friend, as well as online. I've had people contact me online and sort of ask for help and stuff. But there's always more to learn.

So I just want to learn more, find more ways that I can integrate that with what I do. I'd also like to learn, you know, just maybe start rereading some of my hypnosis books. And yeah, that's, that's kind of as far as I'm planning right now.

But it's not a bad, a bad plan. As far as the website goes, I don't know. I don't know.

I didn't know. It's, if I put it live back online, I've got lots of work to do to make everything free again. So I might just not bother.

Well, that's just kind of, it's not going to make any difference really, because all of my recordings are still going to be available. There's still going to be new recordings uploaded to the podcasts. I get a very minimal amount of people from Facebook and Twitter going to my website.

I get a very minimal amount of people from Facebook and Twitter going to the podcasts. Some, but most people that go on the podcasts search for my Facebook after that. And when I close my website, the podcast stats never go down.

Sometimes they even go up when I close my Facebook page and stuff. So I'm not, really not difficult to find online. There's a lot of podcast hosts that host my podcasts on there.

Spreaker is the main one, as far as that's where my podcasts actually live. And I pay rent for that privilege. But then they're shared on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Preacher, Litcher, Mitcher, I don't know, all different ones.

Cat Box, Cat, is it Cat Box? Cat Box, Cats, something. There's lots. There's quite a few.

I'm also thinking about, are you ready for this? Are you ready for this? I'm thinking about not looking at the stats. As often as I do, because I'm looking at them all day, keep going online and looking. And it's, I don't know, it's exciting for me.

I kind of, it's just amazing to see that by like nine o'clock in the morning, or sometimes eight o'clock in the morning, six even sometimes, I've got over a thousand downloads already in the day. And then by two o'clock, one or two o'clock in the afternoon, I've usually got at least, usually at least 2000 downloads. This is kind of just weird seeing it.

And I like it. And it's just one of the little things that gives me pleasure in life, seeing the stats. I'm thinking of stopping myself looking and just wait until the end of the month.

And only look at the stats once a month to see how the month's been. But I don't know if I could stop myself. It's, it's almost like, you know, when you get, I don't know if you get them now, but when I was a kid, I used to get advent calendars.

But at Christmas, they start on the first of December all the way up to Christmas, where you've got 25 boxes. A little, it's like, like a, you know, a board or whatever. And you stick it on the wall or whatever.

And it's got, it might have a chocolate in it behind each door. There's usually a picture, lovely, nice little Christmassy picture. Snow or snowmen or whatever, you know.

And it's Father Christmas. There's, and as I said, there's sometimes a chocolate. The chocolate's the hook really.

But then that's the thing. On the first of December, well actually it's not even that. Normally you have it in November and it's there sort of waiting to be opened, the first door.

And it's really, really tempting to just open all the doors and eat all the chocolates. And I remember when I was a kid, looking at the clock, waking up at night and thinking, oh, it's half past 12 because I've been in bed since eight o'clock or in the evening or something. Oh, it's half past midnight.

I know what I can do. And I'd go to the advent calendar and open it up because it technically was the next day. I'd go down and the whole family would be there, all eating their little chocolates.

I'd look through and you could look through the window and you could see all the other lights in the other houses. You could see through and they were all eating their little chocolates out there. Now they weren't, I'm making that bit up.

Isn't it really weird? As I was imaging that in my head, I had a completely different neighborhood than what I actually grew up in. It was almost like an American neighborhood that I see on TV shows. Nothing like where I lived.

Because I lived in a, well I lived in a few places, but the main place I lived when I was, from the age of nine or just before nine to 15, was this big old cold house. Dark and cold it was. It was, I think the only thing missing was a dungeon.

Seriously, it was very, very... How many bedrooms did I have? Let's see how many rooms I had, I was thinking. One, two. There was two rooms with them.

My dad knocked it into one room, but they were still the same size of two rooms. So technically it's two different rooms and they were both used as two different rooms. And they both had doorways, but also an archway you could walk through, which might have been turned into a doorway.

I can't remember. But anyway, there's two rooms there, two. Bathroom, three.

A toilet, rather, on the bottom floor, three. Another room, which was like a dining room, four. Then a kitchen, five.

So there's five rooms on the bottom. Then upstairs, there was one room, bedroom, bathroom, toilet. So it's a separate toilet as well, as well as a bathroom and a toilet.

If you've got that many people, you need to have... We had three. At one point, we had four toilets because we had an outside toilet, but that got turned into... Well, but that extended it, extended the toilet. We extended the bathroom into the toilet so that we could have a seating area and eat in the kitchen.

Now, no matter how nice it was, I always remembered what used to happen in that bit where we were eating. I always remember. I can never forget that.

It was a toilet, wasn't it? It always used to be a toilet. You shouldn't be eating. But it wasn't because it was all done nicely.

But anyway, so what have we got? How many rooms? One, two, three, four, five. Five downstairs. Then there is one bedroom upstairs, a bathroom, a toilet, one bedroom, another bedroom, another bedroom.

So six rooms on the bottom floor, onto the next floor. Then upstairs, one, two, three rooms. So what's that? Six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 rooms.

But out of those rooms, the bedrooms are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven bedrooms. So that was just upstairs.

So there was three floors, or the ground floor, the next floor, and then the top floor. And the top floor, initially, how did that work? One, two, oh, yeah. Basically, when we first moved in to that house, my little brother had the box room, but it was still a fairly good size.

But he had his, he lived in there. He was only little. He was only like a year old or something.

And I lived in, the parents lived in a room next to him, and I lived in a room, I slept in a room next to them, which was quite a big room. Yeah, it was a big, big size room. And that actually was quite bright, big windows, and it was yellow on the wallpaper, or yellow, it was yellow on the walls anyway.

And then, my brother and upstairs, my two brothers lived. And there was a big room where we had a, it was our playroom. So we had a record player up there, there was a, we had a snooker table, not full size snooker table, but it was a decent size.

And the, a tennis, a tennis table that actually fit on top of the snooker table. Or was it a pool table? I We had snooker balls and pool table, and pool balls. And it kept getting wet.

No, it wasn't that kind of pool. It was a table tennis table as well. And some chairs and stuff.

So yeah, that was like a playroom. And then, as my little brother got old enough, he moved into my room. My oldest brother moved into the playroom, so it was no longer that.

And, and I moved into my oldest brother's room. Yeah, so, and that was a weird room, because it was dark. Never got any light, because opposite the window was a brick wall, probably the length of five foot away, you know, maybe six foot away.

You know, it wasn't a big, because that's where the alleyway was between the houses. So although we weren't connected to that house, we were right close to it. And it was the width of a gate, you know, that's basically what it was, the back gate and a pathway.

So I never got any light, no light at all. So I had to left the light on all the time. And I kind of liked it actually.

Kind of liked that room. And I spent a lot of time reading, a lot of time reading and listening to music and stuff like that. Just the standard teenage stuff.

So I don't know how old I was. So I've got memories of the, I don't think I could have been up there that long. Because I've got memories of the table tennis table being up.

And my oldest brother wasn't in there at that time. Unless he moved out. Ah, maybe he moved out and then he moved back in again.

I don't remember, such a long time ago. But yeah, I used to quite like the, I like my room. It's very, it's fairly quiet up there.

Because both my older brothers, they were doing other things. You know, they both pretty much left school by the time I was, yeah, by the time I was 14, they both left school. So I was upstairs and, you know, they'd be coming and going and, you know, just having fun and stuff, I suppose.

And yeah, it's fairly quiet. I remember once during my period of, yeah, I was doing karate at that time. And, and going to the gym and everything.

And I remember I had a mirror that was the other side of the wall. Near my bed, for some reason it was on the thing near my bed. So I was standing in the hallway just outside my front, not my front door, outside my bedroom door.

And I was flexing. I mean, it just would have looked embarrassing. I mean, I was probably about eight stone, you know.

But I was flexing my muscles, thinking I looked like a bodybuilder. Because I was trying to be a bodybuilder, but I was never going to be a bodybuilder. But I was, you know, it's like I was just one big muscle.

It was, I was muscular. But I was little, you know. It doesn't make sense.

It's just I didn't have any fat on me at all. But I didn't have any fat on me at all anyway, before I started training. And my brother walked up the stairs and he caught me.

He started laughing at me. I was like, because I was going like trying to look like the Incredible Hulk. The sad thing is, Bill Bixby had bigger muscles than I did, you know, before he turned into Lou Ferrigno.

You may have to Google that, if you don't know who Bill Bixby is. But he was, he was a huge star when the Incredible Hulk was on television. And Lou Ferrigno, we used to say Lou Ferrigno.

Because we couldn't say Lou Ferrigno, because it doesn't make sense. It's got to be Ringo, not Rigno. But it was Rigno, Lou Ferrigno.

No, Lou Ferrigno. No, Lou Ferrigno. Does it matter? Is he ever going to hear us say his name? We make fun of him because he wears a hearing aid.

No, I just mean, we're never going to meet him, are we? I'm not going to meet him. I'd love to meet him. You know, I was a huge, huge fan of his for years.

And then, you know, especially with the bodybuilding as well. But being the Hulk, I mean, come on, who wouldn't want to meet the Hulk? Provided the Hulk's not angry. You know, about the, um, it's time for me to finish now.

Time for me to finish now. The, um, I don't know, I heard that Bill Bixby, when he was buried, they put an extra big coffin in case he got angry. So I'm going to go, thank you for listening.

And remember to be kind to yourself because you deserve to be happy. Do something nice for yourself today or tomorrow. Take care.

Lots of love. Bye.