#306 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (19th January 2020)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name's Jason Newland and this is Let Me Bore You To Sleep. And today, what day is it? It's Sunday, the... I don't know what day it is. I'm trying to keep track of the year this year.

What day is it? Sunday, the 19th of January. And according to my phone, it is Martin Luther King Day. So hey, happy birthday, I think.

I don't... I'm not sure. I genuinely don't know if the Martin Luther King Day is the day to celebrate the day of his birth. I'm guessing it would be celebrating any other day, but maybe I'm wrong.

But happy Martin Luther King Day to everybody out there. Um, did I say I'd elicit when you could safely close your eyes? Um, I want to clear something up. It's not a major thing, but I just want to say that in my last recording, I was talking about a message that I got that was mentioning, asking me to try not to whistle when I talk.

Oh, that's a squeaky chair. I'm surprised this squeaky chair doesn't get complaints. But I just wanted to, um, just let it be known that I'm not upset by that comment, that message that was sent to me.

I just thought I might as well just tell people and make fun of the comment and get me started to talk about it, really. But so just to let the person that wrote the comment know that it's fine. Don't worry about it.

Seriously, it's okay. It's not, it's not a big deal at all. And so, because I think the person that sent me the comment and they sent me a message afterwards, uh, worried that I was upset, but I'm genuinely not.

Really, I'm fine. And I am upset with some other stuff, but that's got nothing to do with this. It's just personal life stuff, you know, um, but you know, we're all upset about something, aren't we? Sometimes that's okay.

But yeah, don't worry. Honestly, it's fine. It's not, it's, it's not important to me, um, because there's not really anything I can do about, well, when I'm talking as far as how I sound, I would probably put more effort, uh, let's say with the whisper, deep sleep, whisper hypnosis.

I, um, I concentrate to make sure that I'm whispering because sometimes it would be so easy to go from, and then as you feel really calm, it's really good, you know, going in between whispering and talking softly. It'd be quite easy to sort of lose track of the whispering bit, especially as I tend to fall asleep a bit when I'm making them. So they're quite difficult to make in a sense of like the sleepy ones.

Even these sometimes I fall asleep doing, but it's not that often. It depends when I do them. If I'm really tired, really tired when I make a recording, regardless of what it is, I have a tendency of drifting a bit, you know, but more so with the sleep hypnosis recordings, like with the sleep hypnosis weekly podcast, I'll practically fall asleep doing those, but I will try and keep alert because I need to keep track of what I'm saying.

Uh, with the, the podcast, the relaxation hypnosis for stress, anxiety, and panic attacks, I don't fall asleep making those unless, um, I don't get too tired making those unless I'm doing a specific, just a relaxation session, you know, like going through my body, uh, some kind of body scan, progressive relaxation, that kind of thing. And then I do, because I basically do what I talk about when I do hypnosis-y stuff, I do what I'm talking about. So if I'm talking about imagining, you're focusing on your left hand and imagining, you know, all the worries moving from your mind into your left hand, making a ball of, of mud and you focus on that, and then you crush the mud with your hand and just watch the, the particles of the mud falling onto the floor.

And then the wind blowing those, uh, bits of mud, that dust, the wind blowing the dust away. So I'd actually, I'll actually be doing that myself in my own mind while I'm doing it. I'll be visualizing that while I'm talking about it.

So if I'm talking about sleeping and imagining, uh, I don't know, you've got a, a hot air balloon and you're taking all the stresses and, uh, you know, problems and worries and anxiety out of your body and you're putting them into a hot air balloon, a basket in a hot air balloon and you, and you release the rope that's connected to hot air balloon basket to the ground. And you watch the hot air balloon, the hot air balloon rising into the sky, taking away those worries and that stress. And you can feel it in your body.

You feel really relaxed as the basket with a hot air balloon is just rising further into the sky. And the further it gets away, the further you can feel that those stresses are moving further away. You can physically feel it.

You can feel that distance. And I'm imagining that in my own head as well while I'm saying it. So, yeah, there was a reason I was telling you that and I've got no idea what it is.

Yeah. I just, I suppose when I make these recordings, uh, the let me boy to sleep ones, it's a little bit different because I'm not really doing sort of guided, really like guided relaxation. Although I might do, I might do one just to surprise you.

I might come on here and actually do a long hypnosis recording one day and you'll be like, what on earth was that? What's he doing? What, what, what, what? But, uh, there's not necessarily a topic or a subject or even, um, trying to sound relaxing or trying to sound calm when I make these recordings. Sometimes I will, I'll slow down my speech and I like to play around. I like to do different things.

So yeah, I just, I, you know, not just to the person that sent me the comment or the message, but to anybody that's listening, I appreciate you listening. I also appreciate that not everything I do or say is going to be, um, I was going to say palatable, that's probably not the right word, but it's not going to, not everything I say is going to be agreed with by everybody, but I'm not here to be agreed with. Um, it's not, I'm not here to win an argument.

I'm just here just to talk, just talk. That's it. So there's no, it's not a competition.

And I also realized that as the podcast to get more popular, the more people that like what I do means that there be more people that don't like what I do. And I've got to kind of acknowledge that. I guess if I'm able to move on without being personally affected by criticism, I don't like criticism and I don't think anybody does.

I really don't. And I reckon I'm probably, there's a part of me that's very critical and I don't like that part of me that does that. I think I've inherited it and I find myself thinking what other people have said out loud to me, perhaps when I was younger or even now, and I don't like it, but I'm kind of doing the same myself, either towards myself or towards other people.

Very critical about drivers, drivers at speed. There's something about it that winds me up. I just want to shout at them.

Drivers that don't stop when I want to cross the road. But on the same side, when a driver, when a car does stop, I'm ever so grateful. I do, I'll give them flowers, chocolates, you know, give them a big hug and a kiss, buy them a new car.

I kind of, it works both ways. But if someone doesn't stop, that's life imprisonment. That's guillotine time.

So yeah, I kind of go both ways. There's also a reward for, I'd be the worst dictator. That's why I'd never get into politics, because I'm really open-minded and cool and calm, generally.

But if I had the responsibility of making changes, I think I'd be awful. I really do. I recognize that in myself.

I'd really be controlling and want every single person to do what I told them to do and to agree with me at all times. I don't want that now. Well, I suppose I quite like that, but not controlling bit.

But I don't expect people to agree with me. But I think I'd be lying if I said that I didn't want people to agree with me. It would be quite nice.

Imagine going through life and everyone agrees with you. I'd be like, wow, it'd be the complete opposite to what my life has actually been like. So I suppose that's probably why.

I don't know, I'm just talking lavish. But I would have, I thought if your car went over your speed limit, it'd just explode. But a friend of mine said that that's a bit overkill.

I mean, literally, it possibly wouldn't be very popular. So my other solution with speeding cars is this. If the speed limit, whatever the speed limit is in your country, whether it's 60 miles an hour, 70 miles an hour, I know some people go by kilometers an hour, we don't here.

But if it's 80 miles an hour, whatever the top speed limit is on a motorway. I mean, in Germany, I think they have quite a high speed on their German, whatever the equivalent is of the motorway. Well, it's the motorway, isn't it? But they've got a name for it, haven't they? And I suppose everyone's got a name for a motorway everywhere, I guess.

But whatever the top speed limit is, then that, it seems logical that that should be the fastest that the car can go. Which means it never needs the police to look out for speeders on the motorway ever, because no car will ever be able to go that fast. And my friend, we said, what really should be with the technology that we have, every car should have a little box in it, not a cardboard box.

I mean, and if it was a cardboard box, it'd have to be the size of like an electronic toothbrush, that kind of box size, not big, but perhaps fit in your glove compartment. Who wears gloves? You know, do people really used to keep gloves in there? I don't know. So you'd have a, but it would be kind of something that would be traceable.

So that whenever you went into a different zone, for example, when there's by zone, I mean, you might go from a 30 mile an hour zone to an area where you can do 40 miles an hour. Well, there might be a road that you're only allowed to do 20 miles an hour for whatever reason. So your car automatically cannot go over the speed limit of that area, which means there'd be no more speeding.

I mean, it would save thousands and thousands of lives every year. And also people wouldn't, you know, the amount of people that might lose their jobs because they lose their licenses because they keep speeding and, you know, things like that. So it'd just make a nicer society.

But, and I probably with most, probably all countries, maybe they rely on that money for no speeding tickets. They need people to speed so they can give them speeding tickets. They almost want people to speed.

The government need speed. They need people to be speeding, but they're, they don't want people to speed too much. So if there's a 30 mile an hour limit, they just want people to do maybe 31, 32 miles an hour, 33.

They don't want people to be doing 40 or 50. No, that's naughty. But 30, maybe just a few miles over the hour, that's a, you know, that's a speeding fine, a speeding ticket, which gives loads of money to the government.

Okay. And as a non-driver, I'm kind of in the, I'm in a position of talking about something that I know nothing about, but it doesn't stop me. That's a good thing about it is it doesn't stop me.

I haven't got the first idea about driving, never driven a car outside of a couple of driving lessons. I'll tell you about that in a minute, but yeah, but this, this, I used to have this friend in Nottingham and I think he was friends with Robin Hood. I think he was.

They were lovers. And we, he got a speeding fine. And even though he lived there, they kept changing the speed limit for different roads.

So you'd turn a corner and there'd be another speeding zone. So you'd have to keep slowing down speed, not, you didn't have to speed up, but you know, it'd be 30 miles an hour, then 40 miles an hour, then 20 miles an hour, you know, cause it was in the countryside and bridges and there was trees and clouds in the sky. That's not really relevant, but the changes in the speed limits were changing constantly.

And even myself as a, basically a dictator when it comes to drivers, I could see an issue there. I thought, oh, that's not right. That really isn't right.

Because I could see it was upsetting him and I was, you know, staying with him for a couple of days. So I didn't want him to be upset because he might not cook me any food. So I wanted him to, you know, I wanted him to buy me beers and basically just look after me.

So I didn't want him to like, I expected him, as the royalty that I am. I was at that point, that's before I left the royal family. I was going to move to Canada, but I, I decided just to stay in England.

Used to have ginger hair, dyed it and yeah, it was all right. And my driving lessons, I had driving lessons in 1991, the first one. I was living in London, East London.

And I'm going to generalize here because I've not been in every single road in East London or, or London itself, but there's a heck of a lot of roads where there's parking on both sides of the roads. So two cars can't actually go by each other. I don't mean purchase each other, but I mean you can't drive past each other.

So they always have to pull in, in a gap and let the other car go past. Now that didn't suit how I wanted reality to be. Didn't fit in with my reality.

My reality is I drive through, everyone gets out of my way. And, and also in my reality, people didn't park on the side of the road. All the roads are clear.

You can drive past other cars and it was just easy. It's like how roads were built to be, but that wasn't the case. And I didn't like it.

I mean, it didn't, didn't really fit, didn't sit well with me, you know, because I figured, well, okay, if I pretend that I accept that the cars are parked both sides of the roads and bearing in mind little roads, little roads. And there are parts of London with big roads, like wide roads, wide pavements, but not huge amounts. You know, if you're going to the West End, of course, there's lots of big roads and big pavements and even parts of East London, there's some, but those are the parts where there's possibly the more expensive parts where there's, you know, nice house, not nice houses, expensive houses.

A nice house doesn't have to be expensive, does it? I've got a nice flat, but it's not expensive. So yeah. So it kind of put me off a little bit because I didn't, especially having been royalty, I didn't, I didn't want to be, I wanted to be able to give right of way the whole time and pretty much drive where I wanted, when I wanted and everyone just move out of my way.

That was, I wanted to have the same experience as I have when I go on a bus and people move out of my way. Admittedly, that's because I never wash, but I just like, I'd like to have that with a car as well, you know? And, or maybe when I'm on a pavement, people get out of my way on the pavement. It's because I've got a crocodile as a pet.

So it's, it's those little things that help, but in a car, you can't have that. I mean, if you had a lion in the back of the car, a lion, not lying, lion, as in those things, that's not going to make any difference to the traffic. Car's still not going to get out of your way.

So I gave up. I thought, nah, nah, mate, nah. So I decided not to do it.

Plus the amount of times I would walk to the tube station and I would overtake the same car over and over again, walking down the road. I'd overtake buses because it was the traffic, which is ridiculous. And I thought it's actually quicker.

It's quicker than driving. It's quicker than getting the bus just to walk, apart from those times when it wasn't. So the next time I did drive, in essence, was in 2004.

Yeah, I remember I was living in this, this place, this room at the top of a house, no central heating. That should be illegal, shouldn't it? How can you rent a room out that has no heating in it? I don't know if you're allowed to do that anymore. But yeah, it was a big room.

Yeah, bigger than this room, I'd say. Or maybe, maybe not. Yeah, it probably was bigger than this room.

I'm in the living room at the moment. Or maybe it was the same size. It'd be difficult because I'd have to take everything out and put the bed in, a single bed.

And I had a couple of bookcases. The thing is, although it's quite a big room, it had a slanty window thing. You know the, what do they call them? They, so the room wasn't square.

Part of the room, you couldn't actually walk to the wall because the wall was slant, it was slanted. And then there was a window on top of it. Which is the window, I think, I think.

I think I had two windows in there. One at the top and then one that I could look out of as well. So one at the top I couldn't look out of because it was, well I could look out of it because it was a window.

It was see-through, but it was the sky. And, you know, or did I have a window? I might not have done. There's definitely a slant in the wall, which for me, although the room was quite big, it took away a quarter of the room because I couldn't actually stand against the wall.

Not that I used to spend a lot of time spending against, you know, stand against the wall. I mean, it stopped really being my hobby. Probably the middle of 2004, I kind of, I took up Wing Chun, Kung Fu instead.

But during that time I thought, eeeh, I want to give driving lessons a go. Why not? Yeah. Yeah, why not? So I did.

Now, the problem I had was the person that was teaching me was, I say young lad, I mean, I was still fairly young then. I was still 33, so I wasn't exactly old. But he was, he couldn't have been more than 20, 21.

And he, and this is going to sound negative, but I'm just being honest, he was way too enthusiastic for me. He really was. It was, it was practically cheering me on and saying, yeah, we can do this, we can do that.

It was moving about a hundred miles an hour and it might surprise you, but I don't really, I don't move around too quickly. You know, I'm not really into that. Generally, some, I've got friends that talk fast who I care about and it's fine, but generally I'm not, I'm quite, you know, I talk slowly.

Everything I do is pretty slow and this person was way too, way too optimistic. And for some reason it annoyed me and I just wanted a quiet lesson to take me time, you know, and just see how it goes. That's all I wanted.

Didn't, you know, wasn't asking for much, just that. Well, he got very enthusiastic and sometimes he was almost shouting. He like, don't drive in the wrong side of the road.

You're driving on the wrong side of the road. You're too near the pavement. You're on the pavement.

Get off the pavement. And he just, he was ever so excitable and I just, just having him in my ear. Watch out for the traffic.

Watch out for the zebra crossing. You're by a school. You can't go this fast when you're near a school.

It's just like, just, you know, it really just got on my nerves after a while. And I just packed it in. I thought, you know what? I've had enough of this.

I've had enough. So yeah, I packed, I packed dinner, driving lessons. I never looked back, never looked back.

So what I do is look back. Sometimes I look forward. I actually had a dream last night.

It was a really weird dream. Part of it was weird. It might have been today.

I don't know. It was sometime when I was laying down on the bed and I spent the whole day laying down on bed. Pretty much since I last made a recording.

I spent a long time laying down. I had one of those days and I dreamt that I couldn't stop a car that I was in. But the simple fact is I don't know how to stop a car.

I don't know how to start a car. I don't know. I don't know.

I know you have to turn the key and is it the gas pedal that you have to push down on? And then the, I don't know, something else, accelerator or something. But I never understood all the gears. See, when I was a, when I was a cyclist and I use that term very, very vaguely, when I had a bike, for me, gears were easy to figure out.

You know, it's, I was happy just to have a bike with no gears, never cared. But then I got a racer when I was 13, I think. So it's a nice bike and it had, I don't know how many gears, there were loads, but it was, it had some gears.

And I noticed a difference, you know, when going up hills, changing the gear, it was just so much easier to get up the hill with the gear changes. But in a car, I couldn't physically feel it. You know, I was like, I can't change the gear now, change the gear.

Why? Why am I changing the gear? We're still flat, not going up, not going up a hill. We're just, why, why change your gear? Let's put it down to the, to the standard one. What difference does it make? And I remember he pulled me over, he said, look, I don't mind you asking me questions, but can you please look at, look ahead? You know, I said, look ahead? He said, no, look ahead.

Look where you're driving. I said, what's, what's, what are you talking about? He said, you'd literally turn your whole body and look at me when you're talking to me and you're supposed to be driving and looking the other way. I said, I thought you were driving.

He said, what do you mean? I said, well, I thought you had control of the car, you're able to stop it and stuff, aren't you? He said, well, yeah, technically. I said, what do you mean technically? He said, well, yeah, I can. I said, what are you talking about then? He said, what do you mean? I said, well, I knew that you, you know, I figured that you could have control of the car, so I didn't need to.

What? Yeah, I thought you could control the car. In fact, I thought for the last half an hour, you have been controlling it and you've been driving it. No, I haven't.

Oh, one of us must have been. Oh, I actually had a little nap. So yeah, I didn't really go to plan.

I don't know how many people are listening to this thinking, who's who in that conversation? Which one was the driving instructor and which one was Jess on? Nobody knows. Does anybody really care? Do anybody care at all? So it's Sunday today. Another Sunday.

By the way, I want to recommend something for you. If you, um, there's a radio show, there's a radio DJ called, or actually there's a podcast called the Nick Abbott Habit. So Nick Abbott Habit.

That's the podcast name. He's a DJ. He does, uh, he's on LBC radio on Friday and Saturday nights.

He's very funny. He is funny. And, um, he's on at nine, 9pm to 10pm to 1pm.

And I'll actually sit and listen to him for three hours on a Saturday night and a Friday night, rather than watch television. That's how entertaining he is. I'm not just listening just for something to do or for background sound.

I'm actually listening because he's, he takes calls and the people, he seems to get some of the worst callers that really phone up to have a go at him. And he just makes fun of them. And he's, he's even got, what I've noticed is people phone up and they're fans of his, but they're almost, they disagree with him.

It seems like they're phoning up for him to, to make fun of them. So yeah, he's, uh, his podcast is called the Nick Abbott Habit. So, you know, just, just give me a little insight into my life, what I do.

I didn't get to watch it last night, but I did on Friday. I sometimes forget it's on. And, but yeah, it was on Friday and I watched, I listened to it.

And he's just funny. Some of the things that people come out with when they call him up, he just, just rent him. It's, uh, he had one on there and the bloke, I'm not sure if it's a man or a woman, but they were literally shouting at him and he was trying to talk to them, but they were ignoring him.

So he just put them on hold. So on mute and he'd be talking to the audience and come back on mute and they'd still be talking. And then he'd come back and talk to the audience again and they could go on for like 10 minutes.

The person would still be yelling and shouting there. And it's just funny. It's almost, you know, I was going to say you couldn't make it up, you probably could, but it's, it's entertaining.

It really is. Um, yeah, he's quite, I suppose in some terms you could call Classroom a bit controversial because, you know, for some of the things he says, but the, it's not held by the same standards as the BBC broadcast thing where, you know, he's not, with the BBC, I don't think you're kind of allowed to have much of an opinion about anything when it comes to radio and stuff, but because LBC, he just says whatever he wants to say. And yeah, it's quite funny.

The other radio show that I listen to fairly regularly is Steve-Anne. His show starts at four in the morning till seven. So I don't always listen to the whole thing because I quite like to be in bed by about five, six really at the latest.

And because the other day, um, what day was it? Was it yesterday? All my troubles seem so far away. It was Friday. Friday, I got woken up by the postman putting the letters through the door making a heck of a, honestly, I was like, I don't know what he was doing.

Like he's using some kind of toolkit to get the doors, to get the letters through the letterbox. Really making a fuss. And I mean, half the things that, probably even more than that, I'd say probably 60% of what comes through my letterbox is junk mail.

And I don't recall post, the post office or the postwoman, postal service, whatever you want to call it. I'm so PC, aren't I? And the, I don't, I don't remember them delivering leaflets. I just don't recall that happening.

That seems to be quite a new phenomenon. They used to deliver letters. Do you remember those things? I mean, I know perhaps people don't write letters anymore and I'm one of those that doesn't write letters anymore.

I don't even send, recently I've not even bought cards. I just go online and buy the cards online and send them, send them in the post still. I don't do e-cards because, and I only really send cards to a family and an e-card to remember your family is, well, it's just, it's a nothing, isn't it? A picture on a screen is, there's no, it would be nice for a friend, but I don't think it would.

If I send my dad a birthday card, an e-birthday card in an email on a screen that he had to look at his phone to see it, I don't think he'd be hugely impressed with me. Not that he's ever been impressed with me, but I think he'd be even less. That would be like, what on earth is that? So I don't generally buy cards and so I'm, I guess I'm one of the reasons why another sector of the retail business is, is struggling a bit because of websites like Moonpig.

Is that Moonpig? Moonpig.com and I know another one, but I generally use Moonpig. Moonfruit? No, Moonpig. And it's still expensive though, like £3.95 for a card.

And I'll tell you what annoyed me is I saw a card there and I thought, that's a nice card, some lovely, lovely photograph on there. So I went to send it, I think it was to my sister, went to send it, and it came on, we need to personalise this. Okay, I am going to write, write a message in there, happy birthday sis.

And that's it really. And it wouldn't let me purchase it until I'd personalised the cover of it. I didn't want to personalise the cover, you know, the front bit of the card.

I liked it as it was. And I phoned up Moonpig, the, the help desk thing. And I said, listen, I've got a problem.

And the lady said, yeah. I said, I'm online now. And she said, no, you're not, you're talking on the phone.

I said, no, but I'm still online. I'm still, you know, I'm in the process of creating a card on your website. And she said, oh, okay.

I thought you meant that you were talking to me online because we do offer that service. But this is an actual phone conversation using phone technology rather than internet technology, or like an app that would be embedded in the website. I said, yeah, I'm not sure where you're going with that.

But what were you talking about? She said, no, I'm just explaining to you that the modality we currently use would be probably quite an old fashioned way of communicating with a website. And when you can actually just press a button and talk to us for free or text us, and it doesn't cost you anything. And you don't have to have, you know, have a phone to do it.

They can all be done on your, or you can do it on your phone or your laptop or your tablet. And I said, what, did you not want me to phone you? She said, so what does that mean? She said, well, you know, and I said, no, I don't know. She said, well, it's a little bit, it's a little bit like if you work in a shop, right? Let's say you work in a WH Smith or you work in Sainsbury's or a supermarket and there's a self-help machine where you can go in and you can pay for your items yourself and then, you know, leave.

But instead of using that machine, you go and queue up and you get a human being to take your money. I waited, I thought she was going to say more. I didn't realise that that was the end of the sentence.

That's the problem with verbal and writing. So if you hear something, you know, and if you, if you read something, you can see there's a full stop. So you can, you kind of know that that was the end of the sentence.

But it's not always obvious with verbalisations. And when I said to her, okay, well, what are you talking about? She said, well, it's the same thing. If you've got a self-service machine, then you'd use it, wouldn't you? I said, well, actually, no, I don't use those machines.

And she said, you're just saying that to be awkward, aren't you? I said, no, I'm not. I'm, well, I am, but that's not the reason. And it's partly the reason, but it's, the fact is I don't use those machines.

And she said, why? I said, because I've just had problems with them. I don't like them. She said, why? I said, I said, am I talking to like a three-year-old? Why? Why? Why? Why not? Why not? Why? And she said, that's a bit rude.

I said, what? You just said that I was like a three-year-old. I said, no, I wasn't talking to you then. Who are you talking to then? I'm talking to the, to the listeners that are listening to this podcast.

She said, oh, hi, everyone. Hi. My name is Susie.

I said, no, that's not, that's not relevant. She said, it is relevant. I said, why is it relevant? Well, that's what I'm called.

That's what my friends and family call me. Relevant to them. Yeah.

I don't mean, I'm not saying that you're not relevant. I'm just saying that your name is not relevant to this particular part of this recording. She said, well, I'm contributing quite a bit, aren't I? I said, yeah, probably about 5%, probably maybe 4% of the recording you are contributing towards that.

She said, well, then why wouldn't you want to know my name? I said, well, I don't normally do that. I don't normally introduce people. She said, well, why not? I said, because you're not real, are you? It's an imaginary conversation.

That's a bit rude. It's not. Why is it rude? Well, I just told you my name and now you're telling me I'm not real.

First of all, I said that I'm not important, not relevant. My name doesn't, I don't need a name. And now you're saying that I don't even exist.

I mean, if it's not rude, what is it? Oh, fair enough. It does sound a bit rude when you put it like that. And she said, so we'll just get on with it then, shall we? I said, yeah, I think we should.

And she said, well, where were we? I don't know where we were. I really can't remember. Something about using a telephone or use a, what is it? A self service thing in a shop.

She said, yeah, that's right. You don't use self service things, do you? I said, no, I don't. Because there's a few reasons.

One reason is I don't like them. And I don't want to be touching a screen that lots of other people have touched with their dirty fingers. The other thing is the amount of times that I was told that the item was in the wrong part or whatever.

And also the amount of times that the machine didn't, wasn't able to recognise the item. So yeah, I didn't enjoy the experience. Therefore I decided not to have the experience any longer.

Plus, I waited, I thought I was going to, I thought, what's her name, who's going to say something, but nothing. I said, plus, those machines take away jobs. I want to deal with a human being, always, apart from when I'm online.

And she said, well, you're online now, aren't you? I said, yeah. But you're dealing with me, and I'm a human. Oh, wait a minute.

I'm not, am I? Because I don't exist. What was that? What was what? Well, you just said, oh, all that about you don't exist. And then you're going, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Well, what are you doing that for? She said, I don't know. And I said, how can you not know? She said, well, you're making me say it.

I don't know why I'm saying it. I said, oh, come on, let's just get into that again. Yeah.

She said, what was that? Yeah. I said, it was a sound. It was a sound.

Don't repeat what I'm saying. Don't repeat what I'm saying. Okay.

Can we just get back to the point of the card? Okay. All right. Certainly missed a new land.

And I said, well, there's an issue. I mean, I've done everything correctly, and it's not working. It's not going through.

I'm not, I can't process it or pay for it. And she said, well, clearly it's not all been done correctly. And then I said, I said, okay, let me tell you what it's told me.

The error that's come up on the screen, because you're likely to ask me that, aren't you? She said, yeah, that would have been normal. The normal way to have presented this conversation really by me asking you that to start with. But it's okay.

If you want to mention it first, seem like you're in control. Yeah. You make quite a good dictator.

Oh, really? Thanks. No problem. Wasn't a compliment.

And, well, basically what it is on the screen is saying, but I have to personalize the front of the card. And she said, yeah. I said, well, I don't want to personalize it.

I want it as it is. She says, you want it as it is? I said, yes. She said it's a generic picture.

It's a generic photograph of actors posing. And you want that sent? I said, yes. So you'd prefer to have pictures of people you don't even know on the front of the card instead of a personalized picture, maybe of the family member or whoever.

Is that what you're saying? I said, yes, that is what I'm saying. That's exactly what I'm saying. I would prefer to have that picture that's already on the card because they look very happy.

It's a very pleasant card and I'm pleased with it. I'm pleased with the card and it fits my particular criteria when it comes to sending a card. She said, that was a bit of a mouthful, wasn't it? I said, yeah, but maybe.

She said it almost seemed a bit false, like you were choosing your words very carefully, almost trying to sound clever or something. I said, no, that's just the way I talk. She said, no, I don't think it is.

You don't strike me as being particularly articulate. I said, what? Did you say articulate? She said, no, I said articulate. I said, no, you just said that I didn't come across as being particularly articulate.

She said, no, I didn't. I said articulate. I know what I said, they're my words, they came out of my mouth.

I said, no, you definitely said articulate. So what is articulate then? I didn't say articulate. How do you say it? I said articulate.

How do you say the word that you say and that I said? Oh, you mean articulate. There's no such thing as articulate. Oh, you can say it then.

Well, yeah, I can say it. I choose not to say it because I would never say it ever in any situation. I said, no, you definitely said it.

I remember, and I remember everything. She said, everything. Everything.

She said, I don't believe you. I said everything. Everything.

And she said, look, just repeat in the word. Doesn't make it any more real. Everything.

And she said, real. Doesn't make it real. Doesn't make it real.

And I, at this point, I thought, I've had enough. And I said, I'm going. I've had enough of this conversation.

I'm going. And she said, where will you go? I said, yeah, what? She said, what time will you be around for dinner on Sunday? I said, what? She said, well, it's my birthday, isn't it? I said, well, why does she think I don't want to come around? She said, well, you're going to send me a birthday card, weren't you? So I assumed you're going to come around for dinner. I said, yeah, all right, then.

See you there. One o'clock, is that all right? She said, yeah. And I said to her, before I go to dinner, might as well just ask you, what picture do you want on your birthday card? And she said, I don't know, possibly a badger.

A badger. Yeah, a badger. A badger, but I don't want just an ordinary badger.

I want a Photoshopped badger. I said, what do you mean, what, like playing a banjo? She said, no, nothing silly like that. What I want is a picture of the penguin circle in the Arctic, you know, and all huddled together and taking turns to stand on the outside to stop the wind and the cold.

But in the middle, I want a badger skating around on ice skates with a big hat full of fruit. So I'd quite like a picture like that. And I said, okay, Lucy's not silly.

And she said, yeah. I said, that wasn't even a real laugh, was it? She said, yeah, it was. No, it wasn't.

She said, how do you know? I said, well, I've lived with you for, what, 17 years. I should know what your laugh is like. She said, how would you know? I said, what do you mean? You never made me laugh, did you? Oh, oh, that's crossed the line.

That's crossed the line completely. And I said, I've got to go, got stuff to do. And she said, all right then, Whistler, speak to you later.

I'll see you on Sunday. I said, wait a minute, what did you call me? She said, Whistler. So who do you call me Whistler for? She said, everyone calls you Whistler.

What, what are you talking about? Didn't you know? No. Well, behind your back, everyone calls you Whistler. I said, why? Because you whistle when you talk.

I said, what are you talking about? She said, everybody knows. You're well known for being called Whistler. Did you not know that? I said, yeah, I've heard of Whistler.

I didn't know it was me they were talking about. She said, yeah, no, that's you. She's telling me that when I'm in the pub and people are saying horrible things about this Whistler, how he smells of cow poo and, you know, all these other things, they're actually talking about me to me.

And she said, yeah. Isn't it funny? I said, kind of, I suppose. I want to go now.

She said, all right then Whistler, speak to you later. Yeah, okay, bye. See you Sunday.

Love you. I think. Bye.

And she went. And that was the end of that story, really. That never happened.

So I'm going to go, as I always do, in the end. I said, thank you for listening. Remember to be kind to yourself.

Because you deserve to be happy. Lots of love. Bye.