#341 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (28th February 2020)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland and this is Let me bore you to sleep. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes and please subscribe to this podcast. Now I have, I had adverts on these podcasts for the last six days and I've now removed the podcast, the adverts again, not the podcast.

So I've now removed the adverts at the request of I've had a few people add some contacts and so the adverts are gone. So that's it really, that's all I've got to say on that one. So they're running on there for a little bit but they were, the only reason I had the ads really was to try and cover the costs of running the service.

I mean the cost really is just, it's not a lot of money really. Just the website and the podcast. Well I've got three podcasts but the website costs me $29 a month to host it.

At the moment there's the $70, I think it's $72 or $77 I forget, I think it's $72 for the podcast speaker where all my podcasts are hosted. I'm also paying £10 a month for SoundCloud but I might be getting rid of that one and podcast.co has cost me £16 a month. Plus there's, I think it's £37 a month for the internet.

I mean admittedly the internet, that's about, I wouldn't need, I'd want the internet anyway but I wouldn't need to have the one I've got. I wouldn't need to have such an expensive one, I could get a cheaper one. Which just meant that I wouldn't have such a good connection or maybe such good speed.

But I do need that with, oh do I need it? Yeah I don't think I'd want to go for a slower one. Plus I think I've got half the neighborhood actually using my internet. No seriously, I gave the code to a couple of people, the password, nothing, they've just spread it to everyone.

So now I've got half, I think I've got the whole building using my internet connection. So, which is, I'm not even exaggerating, there's people that I've not even given my connection to that use it. So how they got it, I don't know.

So I mean I can avoid that, I can change the password and everything but I just can't be bothered. It doesn't really, it doesn't slow down to a point that it's going to affect me. The only time I need it to be, to not cut out is if I'm doing a live broadcast, which I don't do that many of those anymore, or if I'm streaming something.

So for example, last weekend, was it last weekend? I was watching Tyson Fury boxing and that was live, but it was streaming live and I was streaming it on my phone and and bluetoothing it onto the telly. So if the connection cut out, that would have been, or if it slowed down, which it has in the past, luckily it didn't this time, then the connection would have broken. It's not quite so bad, or it's less likely to break if I connect the internet hub directly to the thing that I'm using, you know, with a sort of make it so it's not wireless.

But when it's wireless, that's when the occasional issue could occur. Although it's been pretty good lately, but generally a few times a month it just cuts out. And I remember they actually got rid of it.

I was just sky and they got rid of it. That wasn't a proper sentence. My subscription had run out.

So I had a 24 month subscription and it ran out. And I only knew it ran out because they started charging me more. Can you believe it? They would charge me more money because the subscription gave me a discount to have a 24 hour, a 24 month contract.

So I said, why are you charging me an extra 15 pound a month? And they said, well, what's it got to do with you? I said, well, I'm paying for it. They said, so I said, what do you mean? So I said, so what were you telling me? I said, well, because it's costing me more money as 15 quid a month, more than what I was paying before for my internet. And he said, yeah, but we're a bakery.

Why don't you just, we sell bread and cakes, but we've got nothing to do with us about your internet. And I said to him, this really didn't happen, did it? And he said, no, this is made up. I said, okay, thought so.

So, but I just, I sort of said to, I phoned up the internet supplier and they said, yeah, it's run out. It's why we're charging you more. I said, so you're charging me more.

Why? I'm still with you. Why would you charge me more just because I'm not on a contract? That's the way it is, which I thought was a bit rude. You know, it's, and I said to him, in that case, I'm leaving.

You can cancel my internet. And the person on the phone said to me, okay, well, we know how much it costs for other places to have what you've got and to have it unlimited. A lot of other places, they kind of have a limit on, you know, for the sort of price that you're getting it.

And this was a couple of years ago. I mean, it might change now. That was a weird noise I made.

And I said, yeah, so what are you saying? They said, well, do you want to know how much you've actually used? I said, what do you mean? They said, well, how much data you've used on your internet per month on average? And I said, yeah, all right then. He said, you use on average about 200 gigabytes, or it might be even more than that, but it was a huge amount of gigabytes every month. And he said, or she said, I can't remember, that you're not going to get that anywhere else.

And I said, yes, I will. So I started shopping around and couldn't get a better offer than what I was getting, providing I got a contract with them. And because the other places, they said, yeah, you can have that price, but you're going to, or less, but you're going to have limited data.

But it's great because you'll have, you'll have 50 gigabytes a month, a whopping 50 gigabytes or something like that. And I was thinking, you know, I'll do that in a week, mate. It's just, uh, so, um, because I do a lot of uploading, downloading, and it takes a lot of, yeah, use a lot of, um, data.

I don't know. I can probably check it. I don't know what it is now because I've not been uploading any videos for a while.

That's the one that takes up the most sort of space when you upload YouTube videos. And I guess also watching YouTube videos. And I do, I do watch quite a bit of, uh, I do stream quite a lot of stuff on the telly using the internet.

And I got Alexa. So use the internet for that. Use the internet for my printer as well now.

Use the internet for the laptop. Use the internet for my phone. Use the internet, I suppose, for the Kindle.

And so, yeah, the internet's being used quite some bit. I think the microwaves and the kettle is the only thing that doesn't use the internet. So I might be getting through quite a lot, actually.

So yeah, that's kind of where I am with that. So it's, I ended up staying with them. But I thought it was a little bit rude.

I am thinking of changing over to BT, though, or Virgin. See, in England, we have, because, you know, for those listening in other countries, you, well, I know for a fact, I've looked into it, you have different providers. In England, we have, the main providers are, and there are others as well, but the main ones really is BT, which is British Telecom, Sky, and Virgin.

They were kind of the ones that used the telephone lines, you know, and kind of, Virgin has their own telephone, they have their own system. So they actually dig up the road and put their own copper wire, fibre things into the road, but they still share the same, I think they like these green, green, is it green or blue, boxes that British Telecom have BT. So they still use the same, I think, I think they still use the same sort of boxes, but they have their own service.

So they don't rely on BT phone lines. Every single other internet, wireless internet, broadband, rather, home broadband, relies on BT telephone lines. And it's a really silly system, because anyone that gets broadband, and I'm saying this, it might, might have changed, there might be something that doesn't, might be a new system that I don't know about, a new service that I don't know about.

But as far as I'm aware, the only broadband provider that does not need a phone line is Virgin. And maybe they need, maybe they provide a phone as well, I don't think they do. So Sky and BT, and then you've got all these other, the first ones that kind of got into it after the original, after those two, was the mobile phone companies.

So they started offering, because they had internet on their phones, WAP, do you remember WAP, W-A-P, in the old days where it was just funny, kind of funny internet, like a special kind of internet thing. And then eventually, you had internet, like proper internet. Once the, I don't know, the smartphones became popular, or it came out.

And so now most of, I think most of the internet, the big internet suppliers, the big mobile phone suppliers, provide broadband for people. So you've got, that might be how Virgin started, to be fair, but I think they, but anyway, you've got EE, which is, I think, the biggest network in the country, phone, mobile phone network, EE. They used to be called Orange.

And they used to have a slogan, the future's bright, the future's orange. And what a catchy slogan. I reckon in 20 years' time, even 30 years' time, you could ask people, sort of my age group, well, I'll be, I'll be like 90, I'll be 90 in 30, no, I won't be 90, I'll be 79 in 30 years' time.

Wow. So, you know, but if you still see, I reckon 30 years' time, if you said to me, end this sentence, the future's bright, and I'll say, what would you say? Because I might be hard of hearing by then. Well, I'm a little bit hard of hearing now, actually.

The future's bright. Oh, what, what, what? And I'll guarantee I'll say, the future's orange. The future's bright, the future's orange.

So Orange was the name of the company. And they were really big. They were really popular.

And, but the most popular one to start with was, oh God, One to One. Was it One to One? I think. And so One to One was the, it was, they got together, why am I thinking it's called something else? But anyway, they got together with Orange and became the biggest.

This was, they got together for years before they changed the name to EE, but they've been called EE for over 10 years, I think. And they, of course, they don't say the future's bright, the future's EE, because it kind of, well, to be fair, future's bright, the future's orange doesn't really make sense. I mean, if it's an orange, they could sort of be just, the future's bright, the future's yellow.

Would it be just as, well, the future's bright, the future's lemon. So One to One is one of the companies, I'll talk about that well. And then there's Vodafone, there's O2, and I'm pretty sure, I might be wrong here, but I'm pretty sure that BT had a mobile phone, had mobile phones, and then they sold it, and the company became O2.

And then BT started their own mobile phone company again. They started selling mobile phone contracts again. So I might be wrong there, but I think I'm right.

That's my vague memory. So those sort of all the main mobile phone companies, what are they, EE, but in the past, Orange, One to One, and Vodafone, I can't remember any others. And then O2 came along, and you've got Plusnet, you've got Giffgaff, that's one of the newest ones.

TalkTalk, I think that's another one. And then I think every supermarket has their own telephone contracts as well, like Tesco does, I think Sainsbury's does, Asda might have one. Aldi, I don't think they have their own yet, but they might.

The Pound Shop, I don't know. And Summers, I'm not sure. But you know, I guess that'd be a different kind of network.

But there's quite a few, and they've all, there's lots and lots of different broadband to choose from. Loads. And I think I had TalkTalk in one of my places that I lived.

And I've had broadband in different places. So the first place I had broadband was at home and out in London. That was BT.

And then the second time I had broadband was with BT again. But that was a couple of years later, beginning of 2004. So I literally went 2001, September onwards, through 2002, and you hear Andre sneezing.

So from 2001, September, to 2002, 2003, maybe I got the internet in 2003, near the end, possibly. But I went for a long period without the internet. I wonder I was miserable.

So I wasn't, you know, I wasn't doing the things I like doing. So I enjoyed the internet, especially in the early days, sort of the finding out new information and, you know, but anyway, and other stuff. So I used to like building websites as well.

That's one of the things I used to do. Back in 2000, I started really getting into building websites. And I stopped doing that for probably about three years, two and a half years.

And I actually, I don't know if I've mentioned this before. But at work, I was working at Churchill, and they had this intranet, which if you don't know what intranet is, it's basically like a personalized internet that's only for the company. So it's, you can't connect it to outside to the actual internet.

So have, for example, because I was working in insurance, so there'd be information about the different insurance companies and stuff like that. But we weren't allowed to have access to the actual internet, unless you're a supervisor, and then you could spend all day on it. So I had this intranet, but it wasn't very good.

It didn't have enough information and it wasn't getting updated. So what I did is I built a website on the internet. And well, basically, I didn't, it wasn't on the intranet, so I didn't have access to put it on there.

So I built a website using the computer because I knew how to do it. It wasn't anything spectacular, just basic pages with information. And I was just putting in information and, you know, with links to pages and stuff like that.

And someone in, it was for me, and it had a little calculator on there to work out your stats and, you know, just little bits that were useful. And also had the scripts we were supposed to read. So I just had some bits on there.

It was a nice little thing that was very used. It was useful, I found. And someone else in my team wanted to use it because he was new.

And I said, yeah, so I forwarded it to him. So he started using it. Before I knew it, other people in the sales team were using it.

It was getting spread around. And I had a tap on my shoulder by one of the managers, like the upstairs managers. And there was an IT manager with him.

And they escorted me out of the building, not out of the building, but out of the office. And I thought I was going to get sacked. I thought, what the heck's going on here? And they literally took me up to the, into a room and started questioning me, saying, what is this thing you're using? How did you do it? How did, and I said, what do you mean? They said, well, we've got an IT expert here that's been, and he was with us there.

It was like two IT people and the manager. They said, they've been planning to do this for the last six months. And they've kind of been working on it.

And you've just done one and just, it's not as, it's not as complete as their one. And it's not as flashy in it. But you know, we've been paying them to do this.

And suddenly you've just done your own sort of miniature version. And do you want to know how you did it? I just said, well, I know how to build web pages, you know, from the source. It's just, I learned to do it in 2000 and I got obsessed with it.

And that's how I learned. And that's why I did it. I did this, did it for myself and shared it with someone and they shared it.

And they said, we want you to, we don't want it to be shared because we want people to use our one that we have not yet built. So they took it off everyone and I still use it because it's mine and they still didn't build it. Probably, yeah, I'm sure they did, but not while I was there.

And I was like, what? You know, we'll just, why not just use the one I've done until you've got your one built. And the bloke left. The bloke who was supposed to be building it left.

So I don't know what he was doing with his time. And it was easy to do. I was just, and I was busy.

I was doing it in between calls and just adding information as I needed it. So if a customer asked a question, for example, what would happen if in a, you know, as far as their no planes bonus goes or no planes discount goes, if they were hit by an uninsured driver and stuff like that. And, and of course it would depend on what kind of cover they had.

So I'd, sometimes I'd ask my supervisor what the answer to the question was, and then I'd put it onto this little miniature website that I built. For me, it was, it was there for me, not, and then other people started adding bits to it as well. I didn't mention that.

So the, the calculator was someone that knew how to do spreadsheets, how to use Excel. So he, or she, I can't remember, could have been a woman or a man, made a calculator so that we could work out the certain things that we would, you know, some calculations that we needed, because, you know, doing that is something that I wouldn't at the time know how to do. I did learn how to do that actually, a different job.

I used Excel all every day. I was quite competent. Not now though, I've got nowhere I wouldn't, I know roughly how to use it, but all the, the different, what do they call it, not variables, the, the, there's a name for it that you, that you put into, into the different cells, so that it works a certain way.

But it's very clever, very clever stuff. And I used to be able to use it, but it's a long time ago. It's 2007 was the last time I used that software.

So yeah, so mobile phones went off on a tangent there. That's unlike me. I did say to them, to the, the management, I said, I'm happy to help you build it.

Because I thought, wow, this would be quite an opportunity to be able to get a job in the IT department and start learning other stuff, you know, so I could go in there, help to build the website because I knew enough about the basics at least, and then I could learn the other stuff. But they didn't want me. They, they basically said, well, we've got, got people already here doing this, and we need you on the sales floor.

What a great opportunity that could have been. I could have ended up being an IT expert like my brother. But mind you, I still could have been, I still can be if I want, you know, there's still time, I'm still young enough.

I'm only youngie, I'm only youngie, a yummy youngie. I'm just a youngster of 49. The reality, I can't retire for 20 years.

Not that I want to retire. I feel sometimes I'm semi-retired, but I do also feel like I'm working or, I suppose, voluntary work. This is what I would class as voluntary work.

I'm volunteering my time, my energy, you know, to doing, to running this free service. So that is voluntary work, isn't it? Really, like logically, realistically, it's, I mean, in some ways, there's nothing I could be doing better with my time. I mean, it's weird because the last few days I've spent a lot of time asleep.

I've not really been in the, it's not that I've been down, I just had really, really low energy. And that's part of the bipolar with me, sort of, it's not always about, not, sort of, from a mood perspective, sometimes it's like a complete lack of being able to do anything. And I felt a little bit like that.

But luckily, some of the stuff I do doesn't take much effort. So I'm just sitting here, just chatting. But there are times when I just need to go to sleep.

Like last night, or I don't know when it was, early hours of the morning or last night, I don't remember. Or yesterday, you know, because early hours of the morning now on a, I don't know what day it is, Friday. But I was doing a recording for the Relaxation for Stress and Anxiety podcast.

And I think I'd spoken probably for about 10 minutes or something. And when I make that recording, quite often I stand up and I kind of walk around a little bit because it's very, it's not for every recording, but some of them, because my brain is quite stimulated when I'm doing it. Because I'm talking, I'm talking about I was going to say important stuff, but I don't know how to explain it really.

But that's, that's kind of the mode that I get into. I'll talk about that. I had a knock on the door today.

See, my friend was here. And I had a knock on the door and I sort of shouted, who is it? I couldn't be bothered to look for the letterbox, not the letterbox, the the peephole. So I just said, who is it? Oh, it's the, it's the gas man or the meter man.

That's what he shouted out. I said, the meter man? I've never had anyone knock on my door about the meters because the meters are outside. They don't have to come inside to check or, but he, he'd clearly read, he said, I've read both your meters, the gas and electric, because I've got the same.

I've got both with the same company. Although I think it should just be government provided. See, socialist.

Shouldn't be different companies doing that. It should be all by the government. That's what I think.

Oh, yes. And the, it was a really nice bloke. And he said, did you want to sort out a, um, what do they call it? Smart meters? Are they called smart meters? And I said, I don't care.

And he said, what? And I said, one, I don't, I'm not, I don't care about smart meters. If you need to put, if I have to have one, if I have to have meters put in, then go ahead and put them in. But I want nothing to do with it.

I don't want to be involved because I just don't. And part of the reason is that is because I phoned up about having a smart meter about a year ago and I was kept on the phone for about 50 minutes. Not, not waiting, but 50 minutes talking to this person who was asking me question after question, reading me script after script after script.

Seriously. In the end, I just said, that's enough. Our relationship has been terminated.

And I just, I had to sort of say goodbye. I couldn't take it anymore. So it put me off the whole thing.

So I said, if you need to put them in, put them in. I'm not answering any questions. I'm not filling any forms in.

I'm not doing a survey. I'm not listening to no scripts. I didn't say it rudely.

I just said, that's just how it is. And he said, you get that thing that you can check to see how much you're using. And I said, I don't want that.

It's not entering my home. I don't need the guilt trip. I have the heating on to keep warm.

I don't need to be looking at how much money I'm spending when I'm in the winter, when I'm keeping warm. So I turn it off. So I'm sitting here cold just to save money.

No, not doing that. And he said, yeah, but you could put it in the cupboard. I said, no, not having it in my flat.

And he said, oh, fair enough. He said, I said, not having that. You can put the meters in.

Nothing I can do to stop you doing that. And if it's the law, then do it. But I'm not having anything to do with it.

I'm not touching any of that, that little thing, you know, screen telling me. I sound so bitter, don't I? But it's not. I just don't.

Why should, why should we have to look at a screen? I mean, I've spent years, come on, that little soapbox now. I spent years of my life at different times with meters, watching them go down, you know, looking at them and realizing I've only got £1.50 to last me the whole weekend. And it's sitting, watching television, wondering when it's going to cut off, wondering if I can boil a kettle or if I've got enough electricity to cook a meal.

No, I'm not doing that anymore. Even though I'm on a bill, because as soon as I moved in, both the meters were on pay as you go, like cards that you put in to pay. And quite often people get those either because they want to, or because they just haven't changed and they've just got along and had it, or because they haven't paid their bills.

And that's one of the things that the gas and electric companies do. If the bill's behind by, I don't know how much they let it get behind by, and then they change the meters so the person can't get into any more debt. And then they do the meters so that they adjust them so that every time you put money in, money gets taken off the debt.

So you might put £10 on the meter, or the electric meter, but only £5 actually goes onto the meter, and the other £5 goes off to pay the debt. And I've lived in sublets that had that, so that I ended up paying off, me and the other person living there as well actually, but ended up paying off other people's debts. I'm not doing that anymore.

So I moved, when I moved in here, there was I think £600 debt on the electric meter, and there was lots of stickers saying how much it's owed. And I phoned up and I said, yeah, you need to change the meters, mate. When I first moved in, I said, it was all cut off as well, so I need it put back on.

And they said, well, you'll have to pay the bill first. I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And he said, what? I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

He said, oh, okay. I didn't hear you the first time. I said, okay.

And I said, no, you need to get rid of that debt. I'm a different person. I'm not paying someone else's debt.

And they did, they were quite cool. So they cleared it, cleared off the debt. And after a couple of months of getting the cards, I had to go into town because the local garage didn't sell them.

The local shop didn't, the 15 minute, 20 minute walk away shop didn't sell the cards either. So I had to go into town just to get the, to top up the card for the meter or for both the meters. So in the end, I phoned them up and said, I want to get rid of the pay as you go, just have bills.

They said, are you sure? I said, yes. And they said, well, the bills would be every three months. I said, no, I want a monthly bill.

And they said, are you sure? I said, yes. And that's what I've had for the last, well, for the last four years or whatever, more, more than four years, because, yeah, I've had the bill. So it'll be five years that I moved in here in April, and it's now the end of February.

And having, see, some people like to pay, you know, like to do the quarterly bills. I'm not such a person. And the water bill comes in every three months.

And I don't think there's an option on that one. It's just the way they do it. But the electric and gas is too high to be, because that means in the winter, I'd be getting a bill of £350, if not more, for the three months, instead of £110 a month, possibly.

You know, that's more doable, although it's a lot of money. It's a lot less in the summer. It's probably about £50, £60 a month in the summer.

But the idea of having such a big bill in one go is just too much. So I said, I'll do it monthly. And it's worked out fairly well.

So, and they said, we'll do direct debit, because you'll get a discount. I said, why should, why would I get a discount for doing direct debit? They couldn't really answer that. I said, so you're charging me extra, basically.

You're charging me extra for paying it. This sends me out a bill, me paying it. You're charging me extra for me doing it that way, rather than you just taking the money out without me knowing how much it's going to be.

Yeah. So that's no use. So I don't always have the money straight away to pay it.

Sometimes I've got to wait a week before I pay it. Sometimes I'll pay part of it, and then the next part of it, you know, in a week's time or two weeks time, I'll try and pay it as soon as I can. But if that got taken out of my account straight away, without me knowing whether it's £70 or £120 for the month, that's a bit of a difference.

So they, they've been quite good. And then a couple of months ago, probably six months ago, I had this bill come through. I hadn't heard anything from them for a while, and I didn't understand it.

I had a bill, and it was a big bill. I said, why have you sent me such a big bill? And they said, oh, that's just, that's just what it is. It's every three months.

What? So I'd kind of lost track of how long it'd been since the last bill. And I said, I don't get three monthly bills. They said, you do now? I said, no, I don't.

I said, well, you have, haven't you? I said, well, no, this bill's for two months. They said, yeah, but it's, it's going to be three monthly after this one. I said, no.

They said, yes. I said, no. He said, yes.

Yes. I said, no, this is out of order. Why did it get changed? I don't know.

I said, I've had it as a monthly bill the whole time, pretty much, that I've lived here. And there's a reason for that. You know, I'm on benefits.

I'm unemployed. I'm on sick benefit. I don't have a wage coming in.

So I need to, I need to have it monthly. It's more manageable. And he said, well, it's a bit more information than I needed, really.

You know, and I said, well, no, I'm just not, it's not about the information. I'm just telling you that I need it to be monthly. He said, I'm not sure if I can do that.

I said, what? He said, no, it's now, you're now going to get it quarterly, every three months. I said, no, I know what quarterly means. He said, what do you mean? Well, I know that, you know, there's four threes in a 12, or 12 divided by, I don't know, whatever, is three, yeah, a quarter is, you know, four bits.

He said, are you going anywhere with this? I mean, I said, what? He said, well, you're now talking about cutting things up into quarters. And I got an image of, like, an apple or something. I said, yes, funny enough, I was thinking of an apple.

He said, yeah, but what's fruit got to do with the conversation about your bill? I said, oh, don't be so fruity. And we laughed. And he said, I don't think I can change it back.

I said, but I need it changed back to monthly, because just the way that I'm able to manage things, because, you know, most of the money goes out every month that comes in, there's very little left afterwards. But at least I'm not left with a bill, because if I didn't have that, I would spend more every month. Because then I'd be able to buy some clothes or, you know, just to do, maybe go out occasionally, sort of socially.

So it's good that it goes out every month, because then I can sort of keep track of it. And he said, yes, yet again, you're giving me way too much information. I said, this is a little bit rude on you.

He said, yeah, I know, a lot of people tell me that. Oh, okay, fair enough. I said, well, I need it changed back to monthly.

And he said, I don't think we can do it. I said, in that case, can you please find someone that can? That's it. He said, well, if you don't mind waiting, I'll speak to my manager and see whether or not, you know, it can be done.

I said, okay. So he went away. And well, I don't know if he went away, he put me on hold.

I got to listen to some lovely music. And then after about, I don't know, it could have been a minute. It might have been two minutes.

Might have been three minutes or four. It could have even been more than five minutes. I'm really not sure.

I didn't write it down in my diary. You know, my special personal journal. I don't think I kept track of the precise time that I was waiting on the phone for the gentleman to sort out whether or not I was able to change the bill payment back to monthly from quarterly when they had been changed to for monthly.

I wanted it to go back. And he said, he came back, he said, yeah, we can do that. I said, oh, okay, thanks.

And that was it, really. It got turned back to monthly. Very weird, though, as well.

They just suddenly change it like that for no reason. I never phoned up to do that. I never said to them, oh, can you please, you know, can you, I don't know.

So what else happened? Oh, yeah. Back in the days of mobile phones, one to one, Andre's dreaming. He's asleep.

Sometimes I have to pick him up and cuddle him. Because he's probably just having a lovely dream. He's probably dreaming of, I don't know, biting my feet or something.

He's probably really enjoying himself. And I got woken up earlier by my friend. And I was grateful because the dream I was having was really weird.

It was a bit too strange. And I was sort of almost grateful. Oh, good.

But I don't like, I don't really like to disturb him. But I don't like the idea of him, in case he's having a dream. I just want him to have nice dreams.

I know that I've got no control over that. I try and give him a nice life. And I took him out earlier for a nice walk.

And I try and give him as many cuddles as I can every day, lots of kisses. But I've been telling them off a little bit lately, because he's been naughty. He's basically, I think, on heat, actually.

There's something he does, I can't not get into it. There's certain things he does when he's on heat. He basically is almost dribbling the whole time.

He does it every year. But it just seems a bit early in the year to be doing it. It's like almost he's sprouted before the daffodils have.

I've not seen any daffodils yet. But one to one, they were really the groundbreakers for mobile phone contracts. Well, not even contracts, to be fair.

Because when mobile phones started out, they did have contracts, because I had a girlfriend in 96 that had a mobile phone and a contract. And I didn't get mine until the end of 97. So I was still using pay phones and stuff.

And they used to offer, I mean, she was a student nurse, actually. And the contracts were really kind of offered to students. And so it was very much, I think, younger people that had them first, when they were popular.

And then before that, it was people with money, because they were very expensive to have. And they had, you know, the big bricks that they used to walk around with. Big, massive phones.

I guess before that, it was car phones, wasn't it? And most people that had those probably have sports cars and expensive cars, and Rolls Royces and such like. Before that, I guess it was CB radio, wasn't it? That was the only way to kind of communicate before that, smoke signals. So you had one-to-one in the late 90s, even early 2000s, actually, but the late 90s, one-to-one with a place to get paid as you go.

Because it seemed, especially where I was living in London, that nobody bothered with contracts. I'm sure lots of people did, but at that time, it was so easy. You'd go in, there's mobile phone shops everywhere.

And you'd go in, and you'd get a pay-as-you-go SIM card, one-to-one. And you'd pay like £20 or £10, and you'd get the same amount of money credit on the phone, even if sometimes even more, which is ridiculous. Then it wasn't cheap.

It was like 10 pence a minute, I think, then. But you'd get however many minutes, in the sense of you'd get £10. So when that was run out, you'd just spend 10 pence a minute.

But then they started doing these contracts, which were for life. And it was one-to-one. And they did this thing where they said, and I don't know if you got a phone with it as well, possibly, the Ericsson phones.

So they had the Nokia, and they had the Ericsson. The Ericsson was like a flip-up phone, like a, not a flipper, flip-up, a bit like Star Trek, you know, a BB-up Scotty kind of thing. And I had one of those in the late 90s.

I loved my Ericsson. And also because of Milton Ericsson, I just love the name Ericsson. Big fan of Milton Ericsson, me.

So I got this, what was it, yeah, the contract was, I think it was Everywhere, Everything, Everywhere or something. It was called, I forget. Basically, it was a certain pound a month, a certain amount per month.

But you got free taxes and free calls forever, as long as you paid the monthly rate of whatever it was, £25 a month or something. Maybe it was £30 a month. But you could use it 24 hours a day, calling any landline or mobile phone number.

I'm not sure if they offered international calls. I doubt it. But it was very much, you know, you could call any other mobile phone number.

And that was expensive. I think at one point, if you phoned a mobile number on pay-as-you-go, it could cost like 40 pence a minute. It was cheaper to phone a sex chat line than to actually call up, be like, your dad.

Not that those two would be connected, I'm saying, price-wise. I'll phone up my nan, but actually it's going to cost more. I'll phone up Doris.

No, anyway. Dirty Doris. So the thing, that deal was so popular and people that I knew were all getting it.

I didn't get it because, I don't know why, I just stayed on pay-as-you-go until I actually worked for Orange. I got a job selling, it wasn't actually Orange, but it was a company that sold mobile phone contracts for Orange. And I got a job in that call center.

And that was my first full-time sales position back in 2001, the summer. Well, I'd say this summer, it's probably spring leading into summer. I was there for about six or seven months, I think.

And before that, I was just pay-as-you-go. But these contracts, the ones that you could phone anyone for as long as you wanted, became like gold dust. Because one-to-one stopped them.

Because they realized they did it as a gimmick, they did it as a way of getting people to promote the network, to get people to buy contracts, pay for contracts, and to sign up, and all that stuff. And it worked. They became so popular.

And then Orange came along, and they become really popular as well. But one-to-one were the leaders for quite a while. And then they stopped, they wanted to, they stopped this pay-as-you-go, this monthly thing.

But they couldn't stop it for people that had the contract, because it was ongoing for life. It was a guaranteed for life as long as you paid your monthly bill. So they started offering people to buy the contract back off of them.

And some people got offered a lot of money. And there was a lot of, I don't know how much of it's true, so I don't know, but I've heard stories of people being offered thousands of pounds to buy the contract back, because some people had got the contract, and they'd share the phone with their friends. So there, you can use it.

You want to make a phone call to another mobile, you use it. And it was costing the network so much money, because the phone was, you know, someone might have a phone that was being used, you know, all day, every day. And as the prices went up and years went by, I don't know anybody that's still on it, because one-to-one got together with Orange, now it's EE.

But there might still be people out there that have that contract. But I guarantee written into that contract would have been their company's ability to put the price up. I bet you, so that price might have been £25 a year then, but they might put it up to, or a month rather, but they might put it up to, you know, £199 or £200 a month.

And no one's going to pay that for a phone contract, not now. So maybe they found a way of getting them back that way. I don't know.

It's something I'd have to look into. But they're a good company. They also had, some of them had deals where you could, you could talk for an hour.

You could choose somebody on another, as long as they were on the same network. This might have been Orange, it might have been one-to-one, I don't remember. But you could choose, I think, two numbers.

And this is pay-as-you-go. You could choose two numbers, or at least one number, who you could phone for free for up to an hour. Or there was a set charge of 10p for an hour or something.

And then every time it went over the hour, you start getting charged at 40p a minute, you know, from mobile to mobile. And it was, I mean, it might be hard to sort of imagine it now, but there was a time, and I used to do it, and I knew other people did it, you'd have a timer. So you'd be talking to your boyfriend or your girlfriend or a friend.

And as soon as it got to about 57 minutes, you'd hang up. And then they'd phone you for another 57 minutes. I mean, it seems, you know, who'd want to talk for that long? I wouldn't now, but back then, you know, I used to be quite chatty, quite chatty, you know, sort of with girlfriends or new people that I've met.

And yeah, so although I still can chat a little bit, but, you know, it's been a while since I've met someone that I wanted to talk to for long periods of time. I think it's because, partly because I worked on the phone, talked on phones for a living for so many years, that I kind of didn't want to do it anymore in my spare time. Plus, there's so much more on television these days than there used to be.

I'd rather face-to-face conversation, really. I don't mean Skype, necessarily. How can such a little thing like Andre be so heavy-footed? Honestly, he shakes the building when he walks around.

Can you hear him? Anyway, I'm going to go. So thank you for listening. That's my brief memory of phones, although I haven't really gone into much detail.

But maybe I'll talk about some of the phones I've had another time, because I've had lots of different phones. Oh yeah, I used to really like phones before they became smartphones. And don't get me wrong, I think smartphones are phenomenal.

We're just so lucky to have the technology that we have. If it wasn't for this technology, I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing now, and to spread it with you and other people. If it wasn't for the internet and all the different things, computers and the programs and the apps and stuff.

So I'm very grateful for that, and to be able to stream, you know, Netflix. I do love Netflix. I just watched a TV show.

I'll mention it perhaps another time. I forget what it's called, but it's a new show, but I've just watched the whole thing back-to-back over the last two days. It's... I'm not... What's it? I'm not happy about this, or I don't... Something like that.

It's basically about a young girl, young girl. She's, I don't know, seven. She's at high school.

I mean, in America, you're at high school until about 29, aren't you? So you, whoever, I mean, here at Daily School, they're a lot younger than in 29. I don't know. Is it 18, 20? It's... I can't believe you can't drink till you're 21, yet you can drive when you're like 16.

How does that make sense? You know, I've got this. This is my theory. I think you should be able to do, based on the country you're in, whenever you're old enough to pay taxes, you're old enough to do everything else that anybody else does who pays taxes.

How about that? So whether it's drinking, driving, making love, having a house, a mortgage, whatever, voting, whatever it might be. If you're old enough to pay tax, you're old enough to do everything that anyone else that pays taxes can do. And you should get paid the same amount of money hourly rate.

If it's a minimum wage, it should be the same for everybody, not less for someone that's younger. That's what I think. And why should... I did a, I don't know what you want to call it, at this like discount store.

A few years ago, I did a work trial. And there was this young lady, she was putting out, I don't know, 22. And anyway, she was at an age where she got less money hourly than I was going to get.

I think this is broken down. If you're under 18, and then between 18 and 25, if you're over 25. So the minimum wage is three different levels, I think.

And she was saying in front of the manager, it's ridiculous. Why should I get I'm an adult, why should I get paid less an hour than someone that's over 25? And I said, I agree with you. Completely agree.

You're doing the same job. Why should you buy even further someone that's 16, 17, 18? They should get paid the same amount of money on an hourly rate. If it's an hourly rate job, they should get the minimum wage, all the same, the minimum wage.

Because let's face it, they're going to spend, they're going to put more money into the economy, because they're going to spend everything they've got on cars, going out, nightclubs, clothes, retail, restaurants, whatever. People in the early, you know, early 20s, late, late teens, early 20s, are going to put more into the economy financially than someone in their 30s or 40s, who might be a bit more frugal, possibly, and save some money. It doesn't have that, that spending, the money to spend.

But someone maybe if they're living at home, or living at home, if they're still living with their parents, or family members, and don't have lots of rent and mortgage to pay, they're going to be spending that money on stuff. That's why, that's why unemployed people shouldn't really get too much of a hard time, because they're unable to save, and everything pretty much you get when you're unemployed, goes straight back out on bills, the companies that run the things, the bills that goes towards the government, goes towards society, food, all that stuff. So the money goes straight out again, which feeds the economy, which creates jobs.

Yeah, I use a socialist. But that last point is actually what I do think. It's like, you know what, I've got no savings, and I know a lot of people of my age might not have any savings, but I have a lot of people at my age that have a mortgage, and they have a house that's worth way more than what it was when they bought it 20 years ago.

And they might have an insurance policy that kicks in in 10 years time, or when they hit 50, they might get a nice little bit of money coming in. So I've got none of that coming. It's not no one's fault.

I'm not moaning about it. I'm just saying, I've got no mortgage, I've got no house, I've got no property, no equity, no savings, no insurance. Where is me? Where is me? And I'm not worried about it.

I'm just, it's just everything I get goes back into the societal pot of money. It goes back into the economy, because I buy food. That's kind of all I buy, really, buy food and pay bills, and that's it.

And if I use services like Netflix, again, that creates jobs. Okay, there might not be jobs in this country, but a lot of actors are English actors, like from England and not just from America. In fact, worldwide, Netflix employs, you think the amount of programs they make, thousands and thousands and thousands upon thousands of actors, as well as all the other people.

So hundreds of thousands of people are employed to produce programs for Netflix and the other streaming services. So I'm paying towards that. I'm paying as everyone is that pays their $5.99 a month, or whatever it might be.

So yeah, I am a hero. There's a hero, if you look inside your pants, you don't have to be afraid of what you see. And so I'm going to go.

Thank you for listening. Remember, remember to be kind to yourself, because you deserve to be happy. Lots of love.

Bye.