#357 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (23rd March 2020)

Hello, 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 that's it really.

That's the whole recording. And relax. Now, just to let you know, all of my recordings are available on my website.

I'm feeling cold yet the heating is on and the windows are closed. I'm sitting now next to the radiator. And that's quite a good start for a boring recording, isn't it? Because that was quite boring.

I felt a bit rough today. Rough. I still feel a bit rough.

I've been sleeping. I normally, as you might know, I normally sleep during the day and I'm awake at night. Which is when I make my recordings.

I've got new neighbours moving in. And they're, well they're just decorating their stuff during the day and which means I'm not getting much sleep. Which is kind of ironic considering this is a sleep recording.

Why don't you just listen to yourself then, JJ? Yeah, it's not quite the same. It's not quite. The thing is, if I listen to myself, I'll just be sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for what I'm going to say next.

Because I find myself fascinating. So there. So I reckon I'll be alright.

What's the time? It's 4.20 in the morning. So I thought I might as well do a recording. I was in bed.

I've been in bed on and off pretty much all day and all evening. Get up for a few hours and go back to bed. I've taken Andre out twice today.

And the first time I took him out, it was still light, so it was about six o'clock I think in the evening. And we went into the field and I actually let him off. I didn't, I let go of the, like they say, the washing line.

I don't have a washing line. I let go of the lead. I don't disconnect the lead, but let go of the lead.

That way I can put my foot on the lead and stop him walking further. So, you know, I can kind of catch him a bit easier that way. And I just let him, let him run.

And he did, oh, he ran. First of all, he started running back to the path. I had to stop him because he'll go into the ditch.

He loves doing that. And I've struggled to get to him. It's happened twice.

The first time I fell into some water and got covered in mud. And the second time he got right into the ditch. It was all dry at that time.

And I just cut my arm open on bushes and some metal stuff, just basically, because I couldn't get to him. Luckily, he turned back and came back to me, which was nice. But he's cheeky.

He will, he'll run off if he can. So we're in this big field, but it's a proper field field, you know. I don't know, not like a park, a farm, you know, a farm field.

And, you know, things where people grow stuff. So I'm chasing him. Well, not chasing him, he's running.

I managed to divert him, so we went into the field. And we walked the full length of the field, which is a long way. You can't actually see with your eyes the end of the field, as it were, you know, because it's quite a distance.

Or I can't see with my eyes. Maybe other people can. Not see with my eyes, but see with their eyes.

And he's running along, and I'm having to kind of walk really fast to keep up with him. And he stops every now and then. He's rolling around in the mud, but it's dry mud, so he's enjoying it.

It's more dust. And it's interesting because every now and then he stops, he looks back to see where I am. He likes me to think, I think that he doesn't care, he's just doing his, he's going to do what he wants and he's not bothered, but he does.

He wants to make sure I'm there. He's a little daddy's boy, isn't he? He's such a little baby. So he looks back, where are you, dad? Oh, there you are, just to make sure I'm with him.

And I did, I purposely got onto one side, so he could see where I was. And he was running, and he looked back. It looked like he almost panicked, and then he saw me.

He had to look around the other way, so it's quite cool. So it's a nice, quite a nice walk. It was lumpy and bumpy, because probably for the first time in ages, the mud wasn't all smushy and muddy and wet, so I can go in the field when it's wet.

He wants to, but I don't, I like it. But today it was super dry. So it's very hard.

So my ankles had a good old stretch, I would say. You know, my feet moving from one side to the next and stuff. It's a weird visual, though, isn't it? My feet moving from one side to the next, but you know what I mean, like pivotally, because of the ground being so lumpy and bumpy.

So he seemed to enjoy himself. And I thought, we went all the way up to the field, then we walked the pathway back. So we ended up not far from where I live.

And I thought, we'll just go back home. Nope, that wasn't enough for him. He still wanted to walk all the way around the block, through the park, the way we normally go.

And he didn't want to get up, I don't think. I don't think I picked him up once the whole time. I don't think so.

I might have done once, but generally, he just wanted to walk the whole time. And he went to sleep straight away when he got home. And I took him out again this evening, probably quite late.

And he took me all the way around the block, all the way around the estate. And again, when he got back, went to sleep. So lots of exercise, lots of sleep.

And he's happy, it seems. Doesn't take much to make the boy happy. He's never that happy.

So yeah, I'm just, weird times, weird times. That's what I'm going to say, they are weird times. So there's nothing in the news that I can really talk about.

I'm trying to think, what is in the news? Harvey Weinstein is ill, so that's not bad. That's pretty good. He's, what other things? No, I can't think of anything else.

Oh, there was a video of Madonna in the bath on Twitter. And I don't know what it was, if it was the lighting or the camera, but she looked really different. It's just the face, didn't show her body or anything, but they showed her face and it was her own video talking and stuff.

She looks different. I don't know what she's done. Might, as I said, might just be the angle.

And who cares what she's done, it's up to her. But she looks good for 90 though, doesn't she? I used to love Madonna. True blue baby, I love you, I love you.

No, no more sadness, kiss us goodbye. Papa don't preach, I'm in trouble, please. Papa don't preach, I've been losing sleep.

But I've made up my mind, I'm keeping my baby. Ooh, I'm gonna keep my baby. Ooh, oh.

Yeah. Maddie. Maddie, Maddie, McMaddie.

I was a young lady called Maddie, used to work at the club. After I stopped being, when I moved away, I used to go and visit at the comedy club and she was so beautiful. Name was Maddie, but unfortunately she didn't acknowledge my existence.

I was invisible to her. It's weird, you know, when you're somewhere and you're, not that you're somebody, but you are a part of the machine. I was part of the comedy club for 20 years in some capacity, whether just as a, you know, performing there or just hanging out there, going out weekends, meeting friends, other comedians, or just, you know, or being a DJ there, which I did for a while.

You know, lots of different like roles I had, helping out in the office and stuff. But then to not have any role at all, it was weird. And for the first like year or so, I'd visit and I'd still see people that I knew, but gradually the staff changed.

The waiters and waitresses left, the new ones came in, they didn't know who the hell I was. The bar staff changed, they didn't know who I was. It was just kind of, oh, luckily the door staff stayed the same for most of the time, so that was quite good.

But it was just, oh, they don't know who I am. Because when I first started going back, they used to make a little fuss, a little bit of a fuss, like, oh, it's Nob Ed, he's revisiting us. Oh, and then it changed to, oh, it's another Nob Ed.

We're having to drink. Oh, I want some love. That's what I'm looking for, some love, some recognition.

I'm sure, I'm sure, I'm sure I tried to impress the the bar manager, it was a lady, I forget her name, I tried to, and she didn't know who I was, and I was trying to, because she had no interest in talking to me, I was trying to impress her by pointing to one of the, it was like this big pillar that held that part of the scene, and I tried to impress her by saying, see that pillar there, that red pillar? I painted that. You see those toilets there? I cleaned up after the people that built those toilets. She just wasn't impressed.

I said, you see this bar? I remember when it was a different bar, before it was, you know, before this bar was built, it was a different one. Again, nothing, no sign of twinkle and excitement in her eyes. And I said, you know, I was here before those doors were put in.

She said, what doors? I said, those doors in the middle of the club that stop the, you know, connect the bar to the actual comedy bar. They didn't used to be there. She said, oh.

But still, I'm not sure she was actually excited as, as excited as I thought she might be with that information. So I thought I'll start mentioning names, maybe she'll know them. I said, you know, Tom used to be the, well, he used to be the manager, actually, but he was a bar manager, but he was a manager of the place, of the club.

And she said, no. I said, you know, Georgia? She said, no. And, oh.

She said, can I ask you something? I said, yeah. What are you having to drink? That's all you're interested in, isn't it? Just serving the alcohol. She said, yeah, that's why I'm standing behind a bar, getting paid to serve alcohol.

Quite a matter of fact. The weird thing about it, not, not weird. I liked her.

And I suppose I was trying to kind of get her to, I suppose I wanted her to like me. I'm a human being. Sorry about that.

And I was trying to, because for years and years and years, I always made an effort with the bar staff and with the waiters, waitresses, kitchen staff. Seriously, I got to know them all. But years and years and years, for 20, you know, since 1991, before I even started that work in there, in, no, but I was, for years and years and years, always made an effort to get to know people, even dated one, one of the waitresses, for a while, for a very small while.

I always used to take girlfriends there. I used to take friends there for nights out and stuff like that. You know, I love the place.

It was my favorite place in the whole wide world. It was, it was the only constant that I had in my life, other than my nan, really, for those 20 years. In fact, it was longer than 20 years, because it was 25 years, but I was, I kind of became less and less involved.

And once, once we got into the four, we had to, yeah, once I got into my 40s, I'd had very little contact. It was the middle 40s onwards, because they changed the venue and everything. So I didn't I still got contact as far as I was still friends with the owner.

But I didn't, I didn't know any of the stuff apart from one person. And, you know, everything had changed, everything. But the, it was my favorite place in the world.

It really was, it was so important to me. Like, just, I'd go there, and my friend who, like, owned it, he always like, be nice, friendly, and come and say hello. There was once he actually, I took a girlfriend in there.

And I was a security guard at the time. I was a security guard. And this is a different time, but two different times, I went in there.

And I wasn't, you know, just going out for the night. He showed us so much courteousness, and showed me respect, kind of like, hello, sir, come in, showed me to the table, all that stuff, you know, I mean, it was really quite nice. And another time, I think she came to the club a few times.

At the time, she was pretty much the love of my life. So we were for, was with her for a long, long time, but it's still been quite a while for me, one of my longest relationships. And absolutely, yeah, I was just, I loved her, like, proper, proper loved her.

Especially when she was asleep. She's one of these silent sleepers, but I'm a snorer. But she was a silent sleeper, so me being a snorer didn't affect her.

So once she went to sleep, that was it. So it was kind of almost a perfect, possibly one of the only people that I actually enjoyed sleeping with. I mean, sleeping, like being asleep.

I almost nearly turned into an adult with her. I started thinking about the future. What can I do for the future? How can I build a future for me and her? And, you know, started thinking a bit more positively and bigger, you know, instead of, I had a security job.

It was fairly secure. But it was, it wasn't high paid. It was quite low.

There was no minimum wage back then. So if there was a minimum wage, I think the minimum wage was £8.40 or £8.20 an hour. And I was doing, I was generally doing a lot more hours than an average person.

But the 40-hour week wasn't, I had to sign a form saying that the European 39-hour week or 37-hour week, I had to waiver that when I was doing, when I signed the contract for the security. And I was doing 12, 12, 12. I don't know what seven 12s are.

I generally don't know what seven 12s are. Don't judge me. I'm good at other things.

Like talking rubbish. I'm good at talking about nothing. That's my skill set.

In a, in a kind of listenable voice, possibly. I don't know. I felt quite tingly then when I said I was quite good at something.

You know, my dream in my life has been to be good at something. Hello, Andre. I think I'm a good dad to Andre.

I think I am. You know, I cuddle him every day as many times as I can. I tell him that I love him many times a day.

Sometimes I chuck him against the wall, watch him slide down like one of those little octopuses that stick to the wall. But that's, that's rare. It's only like twice a day.

No, I don't do that. I don't. And I know technically you could say, well, he's a pharaoh.

He doesn't know what all that means. But I don't know. I suppose I'm trying to give him what I didn't have.

But right from the start, you know, I suppose unconditional love, unconditional love. And I didn't really understand what it was. And I suppose maybe because I've never had a baby, never had to go through that process of changing nappies and, or diapers, whatever you want to call them.

Because you could only do that for someone that you loved, couldn't you? Like day in, day out for long periods of time, staying awake, getting woken up, feeding from your boobie or from your, from a bottle or whatever. But that whole process, that's unconditional love. And I realized that it doesn't always stay that way for some people.

For some reason, I don't know how they managed to lose it. But I think I learned to have unconditional love with him. I think I had it with my nan as well.

But I don't know. I'll be honest with you. I don't think I could have ever lived with her.

I think if I'd have lived with my nan, I think we'd have fallen out. I'm not even ashamed to say that, because it's probably true. It's probably just a realistic thing.

I loved her. And anyone that's ever heard me, you know, listened to me for a while, you know that. Just like anyone loves someone.

I'm not the only person that's ever loved someone. It's not a unique human thing, is it? But I'm not a loving person. I don't have strong emotional feelings towards people, generally.

And she, you hear them crunching away. See, if he was doing that while I was trying to do a relaxation session, I would be getting so wound up. But because I'm just doing this, not just doing this, this is as important as any of the other recordings I do.

Don't get me wrong. Otherwise, I wouldn't still do them, would I? I mean, over 350 now, I've made of these. But the relaxation for stress and anxiety is more popular.

I hate to say it. Well, actually, no, it's not. The podcast is, but more people listen to these recordings than listen to that podcast.

Because they're on other podcasts as well. So that's, yeah. But that podcast is overtaken, because I've got about 118,000.

Oh no, he's talking about the statistics again. I've got over 118,000 downloads and plays on this podcast. But on this relaxation for stress one, it's over 120,000.

And my top podcast is about 189,000, I think. In fact, in fact, in fact, in fact, I think I'm getting about 26,000 plus downloads. I think the last week had about 26,000.

Altogether. I don't know if that's good or not. I'm not sure.

But my estimate is in about a week and a half, I will reach the million mark. I really feel like I should do something to celebrate that. Because I celebrated, didn't I, when I reached the 500,000 mark, I think, did a live recording.

I think I celebrated when I did the 600,000. Because I've never had... I think the most I've ever had on a podcast before was 200, just over 200,000 downloads on a kind of, I think it was SoundCloud. And then 500,000 was the most I've ever had on a YouTube channel.

But now I'm at 900, I think it's about 979,000, I think, downloads, something like that, maybe a little bit less, maybe a bit more. I could find it out by walking across to the laptop, but I can't be bothered. But it's around that.

So in a week, probably by the end of this month, beginning of April, I'll have reached a million. And that's one of my lifetime goals. I don't mean, you know, I wasn't five years old, thinking, I want to get a million downloads on my podcast.

Even though podcasts has not been invented yet, and the internet's not been invented yet. And computers, basically, well, 1975, no one used computers today. Home computers haven't been invented by then yet.

It wasn't until probably 1979, 1980, that home computers kind of started being available. But I might be wrong, I might be wrong, I might be wrong. So to reach a million is actually a big deal to me.

It's worthy of a cake. But unfortunately, actually, I could go to the farm, the farm market. There's a farm shop around the corner.

So I might be able to get a cake there. And then just share the cake with my neighbor. I couldn't eat a whole cake on my own.

But maybe they might sell candles and stuff there. That's if they're open. But I don't want to go to the supermarket or anything like that.

But I won't be till next week anyway. But maybe this whole thing might have blown over by then. And I'd be so cool just to have a million.

It's hard to kind of explain really. Because in some ways, it's, I mean, perhaps it is ego. But I don't care.

Because my, I don't mind. I don't mind that, actually. But I think to me, it feels less of an ego thing as an accomplishment thing.

I feel like I've accomplished something much bigger than I imagined I could. See, Andre's part of the show. He's stealing the show, even though all he's doing is eating in the background.

How can someone fall in love with a ferret? It's strange. Honestly, my, I dream about him when I'm when I was in bed. I do have dreams.

I sometimes dream that I've lost him or, you know, there's a real, I've got a real protection of him. Like, I suppose, like with my nan. When I was with her, we were out.

I just felt really protective towards her the whole time, you know, even when she wasn't elderly and frail. She's always been old to me because she must have been, must have been in her 60s when I was, when I first kind of got to know her when I was seven. Even though I knew her before that, I just didn't remember her, because it was when I was a kid, like very little.

I'll tell you what's weird, and I'm going off subject a little bit. On the last day, this is more for Molly, actually, because Molly asked me to, this might be interesting to Molly, because she asked me to maybe say more about my childhood, but I don't talk about it too much, because I like to keep things light if possible. But this isn't an, um, it involves my nan anyway, so it's nice.

Something that I didn't find out about until probably a few years before my nan passed away, and she told me, and I didn't realise. And then I remembered as someone, but it's just like, anyway, my dad and his new wife would be visiting them and going and staying with them for a few months, and then they decided they wanted to keep us, or they got permission to have us and adopt us. I think that she adopted us, and he was already our father anyway, biologically, so I'm sure that was, there was no adoption from his perspective.

And it's amazing, she was only 21 years old, and my dad was young as well. I mean, he was, I think he was 25 when I was born, and I was seven, which means it had been, what, 32? Suddenly, but I'm thinking more from her perspective, from his wife's perspective, he was 21, married my dad, I suppose they were like, I guess deeply in love, they got married, and going through the honeymoon period, and then suddenly they got three grown children. I don't mean like adults, but fairly grown up.

There was me, I was seven, well, I was six at the time, but I turned seven pretty much just as I moved with them. One who was nearly nine, and one who was nearly 11. And then after moving in with them, a year later, they had another baby, so they had four children, went from zero to four children.

I mean, that's zero to misery in one year. That's a lot. That's a lot for anyone.

It's a lot, not just for her, I mean, for him as well, to suddenly have all his kids and another one pop up, or pop out. And so anyway, we were all due to move there, to move in with my dad and his wife. Well, we called her mum.

I don't know when we were allowed to call her mum. I don't know if it was when we first moved in or before, but it didn't take much convincing for me to call her mum, or mummy, because I was still little, you know, seven or six. And then it was literally just before my birthday that we moved down there.

And the reason I remember is because it was the summer when Elvis passed away, 1977. And so we moved there. But that day that we moved, officially moved out, it was Nazareth House in Southend.

You can check all this if you think I'm lying. I do lie a lot. But Nazareth House, it used to be a children's home run by Catholic nuns.

It's now a residential home run by Catholic nuns, the Order of Nazareth, or something. The Sisters of Nazareth, or Poor Sisters of Nazareth, something like that. And I think it's been a residential home since the 90s.

And they're even talking about knocking the whole place down. I would love to be able to go there with someone else. I wouldn't want to go there on my own.

But to go there and just walk around without anyone with me, apart from the person that's with me. I mean, without, well, I've been there twice, I think. I've been there three times since, just to visit as an adult.

But there's always people there. You can't go into the rooms because there's, you know, there's elderly residents living there, so you can't go into the places. I'd like to go in and have a look at the... Ideally, I'd like to go in with a guide who used to work there.

And it wouldn't be one of the nuns, because the nuns were pretty elderly then. Although nuns do have a tendency to live for a long time. It must be that lack of guilt.

And there were support workers. I didn't know the name back then, but they were just civilians. They weren't nuns.

They'd come in, they'd be wearing normal clothes, and they'd be lovely, most of them. And they weren't that old. I mean, I might, you know, I was there from the age of probably five to seven, or something like that.

But they probably weren't much more older than, like, maybe late teens, early twenties. So they weren't, they're not that much older than me, not really. I remember, I remember one girl, and she wasn't very old, but again, she might have been in her early twenties, late teens.

And we were watching Planet of the Apes, but I think it was the one where they were on the horses. The original Planet of the Apes, not the ones recently, but back in the seventies. In fact, it might have been the sixties.

I don't know, but we were watching on television. I think it was a Sunday afternoon, but I'm not sure. And one of the girls, the care workers, was tickling me.

And it was, I couldn't stop laughing, and she was laughing. I think I tickled her back or whatever, but it was, for whatever reason, I remember it. It's one of the experiences of my childhood.

It was, I was three. I probably loved her, you know what I mean? Maybe not romantically, because I was, I was a small child. But I, I don't know what I'm supposed to do, you make some weird noises.

But I think I probably, I suppose she's like an older sister or something to me, maybe in my head. Because I was surrounded by boys and girls of various ages. So chances are, she might have actually lived there.

She might not have been a care worker. She might have actually been there, because there was teenage girls there, there was teenage boys, there was young, small children like me. And yeah, I suppose I probably had quite a few friends.

I suppose you would, wouldn't you, if you're living with them, you're sleeping in a room with lots of other kids. We didn't have bunk beds, we had just like individual beds, spaced apart, but there's still quite a few beds. But I'd like to visit those, just to have a look, and then go into the bathroom that used to be there, connected.

And it's quite weird, but this almost, and it might be an institutionalism kind of thing, is being institutionalized. So, but there is a degree of security, emotional security, maybe with the others, with the other inmates. It felt, it did feel like that.

And the nuns were the prison guards, and there was a couple of nice ones, but it was a case of, we all kind of, well, kind of had each other's back, you know, looked out for each other. But I've got very, very vague memories, because it's such a long time ago, and I was pretty, pretty young back then, of course. But that, laying on the floor, giggling, but uncontrollably, was, it was a special moment.

And I might have had a little bit of a wee come out as well, because I lost control of everything, but it didn't matter. Because I think if you're a little kid, and you wee yourself because you're laughing so much, it's not traumatic, you know? Weeing yourself because of fear, and that's traumatic, but weeing yourself because you're being tickled, that's funny. So, yeah, I kind of, I would like to, if I knew who they were, I'd love to be able to say thank you to those people who were kind to me back then.

Genuinely. Just like my foster parents that I lived with for about a year and a half, from the age of six months, or three months, three, I think it was about three months, actually. So my mum took off, and I lived with foster parents until I was about two.

I'd love to just know where they are, or who they are, and contact them. Perhaps not knock on their door, but even that would be quite cool, just to knock on their door with a bunch of flowers, and just say, don't know if you remember me, I look a little bit different now. And just sort of say, yeah, it's Jason, you looked after me, you were my parents for nearly two years, when I was a baby.

And I just want to thank you, and I'd be so cool. I've come to collect my inheritance. And they wanted to adopt me as well.

So they must have loved me. So that's cool. And I'd love them as well, didn't I? Obviously, I would have loved them.

So I'd love, I really would be brilliant. The chance is, you know, no one's going to be listening to this who knows them. But if you do, it was in Enfield, in the very early 70s, 1970 to about 1973.

Or no, 1972. Enfield, North London, or Edmonton, something like that. I'd love to be able just to say thank you.

I'd love to be able to say thank you and here's a million pounds. Seriously, but I suppose I could write them a cheque for a million pounds, but it might bounce, possibly. I wonder who else I'd like to say thank you to.

I'd always like to say thank you to my Nan. I can't, but I'd like to. Just for being her.

I think what I got from her is kindness. I'm not saying that I'm kind. I just, I got the, I saw what it was like to be around someone that actually cared, and more about other people than about herself.

And I'm not saying that's a unique thing at all, because there's plenty of people out there that care about other people. It's just, I hadn't really, I hadn't met many of them. So, it was really nice to, it's just very much about helping other people, going out of her way.

And I found that to be a quality that I admired in her. And I don't know, I don't know if I wanted to be like her. I don't know.

I like the idea of being kind. I never wanted to hurt, well, I've wanted to hurt people, but I've not, it's not like been my life's ambition to hurt people. I'd be lying if I said I've never wanted to hurt anyone.

I think that said anyone would be lying if they said that. But as a rule, generally, I didn't used to have the wish to help people, really, when I was in my 20s. Or in my teens.

And it only really kind of started to kick in in my 30s. Before that, I suppose because of my lifestyle, living hand to mouth, I was very much thinking about myself a lot of the time, trying to get by, you know, trying to have enough to eat, pay the rent, you know, just general stuff that most people, you know, deal with. But my coping mechanisms weren't particularly useful.

And that's one thing I kind of miss, being able to teach a child. If I did have a son or a daughter, I quite like to be able to formulate what I've learned in my life to pass on some of that stuff to that child. And I don't know what it would be, I don't know what format it would take.

I don't know. Because I'm quite, you know, I'm pretty much a reclusive person. I'm not, you know, I don't like crowds, I'm not really into long conversations, unless I'm doing the talking.

And, you know, I do prefer monologue to dialogue. But I do, at least I'm being honest. You know, it's not all I mean.

To be fair, honesty is not always a great thing. You know, someone's being like, really horrible, they say, well, at least I'm being honest. Well, no, you're being horrible.

I'm quite sociable for short periods of time, sometimes. You know, some people might be thinking, Jason, all you do is talk about yourself. Well, I can't talk about you, can I? I have to talk about what I know about.

So that would be really cool, if I could. For me, it's not enough to have the feelings to want to help people. For me, it's not enough to have the intention.

I need to do it. I need to feel that I'm doing it. Which is why I do these online things.

You know, this free service I do, because I need to do it. I need to feel that I'm having, hopefully, a positive impact on some people's lives. And I don't really feel equipped to do it on a personal level, like one-to-one, because it drains me.

I didn't realize it would. And I realize, really, really realize why therapy sessions only last for 50 minutes. Because it's a long time to be giving someone else full attention and to allow them to just unload, you know what I mean? Completely, bleh.

And you may think that that's what I'm doing, but I'm not. I'm not unloading, otherwise I would be talking about something very different. I wonder if you can guess what.

Does it begin with a C? Is the next word O? Is the next word R? No. Maybe. So, I think my name was more personal, in-person, helping people.

It's very personable, yeah, I suppose that'd be the word. And I can be, but I also can't be. You know, I can and can't.

And it's down to my mood. So, that's the thing with the bipolar, I guess. I never really know which mood is going to kick in.

And sometimes I don't get a lot of notice. And it's not split personality. That's not what bipolar is.

But I guess from the outside, it can seem like the person is being completely different. But they're not, they're just being a version of themselves. So, when I've got different moods, when you've got a mood, it's just a different version, isn't it? It's still you.

It's just you in that mood, whatever the mood might be. Some people wake up grumpy. I do sometimes.

But if you see me later on in the day, I'll still be grumpy. No, I might be really, you know, up. Then you see me later on and I might not be, you know.

And I guess that's the same with everyone. It's just, I think, with bipolar, it's kind of more extreme. More extreme than it can be.

But anyway, I'm not here to talk about bipolar. It's sort of friendly. And I said, it's not a different personality.

He said, I know what bipolar is. I know all about it. There's a difference between having bipolar and living with it every day of your life compared to understanding about it intellectually or even working with people that have bipolar.

It's different. It can never be the same. It's a different experience.

And also, everyone experiences bipolar differently. So it's, you know, it's a very, like any situation, we all experience things differently. Isn't it? Yeah.

Most of the time, I sometimes wonder if my next word will rhyme. So, oh, yeah. So I'm in the children's home with my two brothers.

Actually, when I was born, both my brothers were older than me. And two years between each of us. And we were sort of in Southend.

And out of nowhere, my mum, the biological, you know, I used to live in her tummy at some point, that one. She came and took us out for the, I don't know, the morning or for a few hours. Now, I recollect that there was a woman with us.

But I don't recollect who it was. And my mum took us out. We had chips in a chip shop, I guess.

It was like one of those cabins, porter cabin things on the beach. So we had that. Then she took us and we bought some pens.

Well, I bought some pens that had things like a rake and a spade and a pitchfork and stuff like that on the ends of them as lids for some reason. And I guess we walked on the beach and there's no parachuting. We didn't do any parachuting.

But we, you know, we did that. Then we came back and that was kind of the last time I saw her. But I didn't realise that my nan was with us.

And she said she came with us to make sure that my mum didn't run off with us. So even then, even though she hadn't really... I did know who she was at the time, because we used to visit London and see my nan and granddad, you know, even before we moved back with my dad. But I just don't... I'd forgotten it.

But my nan said she insisted on going. No one else was allowed to go because it was my mum's time with us, you know. My dad couldn't go and his wife couldn't go.

So it was really either my nan or maybe my aunt. But my nan came with us and I thought that was really nice that she came just to make sure that we got back safely and weren't kind of taken away again. It's weird, isn't it? Apparently, my auntie and my uncle only found this out last year.

And my auntie told me that they tried to adopt us, you know, to look after all three of us. And they got a house and everything like that, but they weren't allowed for whatever legal reasons. It brought up some questions in my mind, to be fair, which I need to post towards the individuals connected.

But I just thought it was really nice that my nan was there looking out. I think one of the things that's one of the weirdest parts of sort of living that kind of life is there's not much in the way of photographic evidence of my existence. I think there was one black and white picture of me in a push chair.

And I had blonde hair, apparently, when I was, well, I guess push chair level, so a year. So that would have been, I don't know, it might be when I was living with foster parents. Or it might have been when I was two, three months old, I don't know.

I'm sure I didn't look like a baby. I'm sure I looked, you know, a bit older. I wasn't in a pram.

I was a proper buggy, you know, proper. And I think there was one other picture. And then there was a couple of pictures that the children's home had of me and my brothers that were from the school, my school pictures that were taken.

And then outside of that, my dad and his new wife, they took lots of pictures constantly for years, from the age of seven to the age of... They probably stopped taking pictures probably when we were about 14, when I was 14. Everything kind of came to a standstill pretty much by then. But there's lots of years of pictures being taken.

And they all got missing. They all went. Destroyed, I think.

But my nan had pictures of me. Again, they've gone. I think one of my aunties took them all.

So I never got to see them. But occasionally, my nan would get them all out. She had a huge, huge collection of boxes of photographs and photograph albums, like going back to you know, pictures before she was even born, like her grandparents.

And the... I have to be careful with the... To be fair, some of them are so old, the photo albums are made of rock. But the... It was really nice. It was like drawings, drawings of her grandparents in chalk.

And there was some pictures of me when I was growing up, because we spent a lot of time with our grandparents, like weekends, you know, Christmases, birthdays, all that stuff. For years, for... Since I said from seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, a good six, seven years. And there were lots of pictures.

There was a few... It wasn't huge amounts, but there was pictures of me and my brothers and stuff, which was nice to see. But as far as the pictures taken by my actual parents, all just disappeared, gone. It's almost like the childhood didn't happen.

It's weird. Like photographically, I mean. And I'd love to see those pictures, just to see myself, see what did I look like when I was 12, 13, 14, 9, 10.

I don't know what I looked like. I've got no pictures, no photographs. It's the wish I did.

So I'd like to just look, you know, just for myself, really. And so I don't know what happened to my Nan's photographs. I assume that one of their kids took them, and that's it.

And I've pretty much not taken any photographs my whole adult life. I have no photographs of anything that's ever happened, ever. There's a picture frame that my dad gave me when I moved in here, with a few pictures of family members and stuff on it.

But I have no photographs of me or, you know, ex-girlfriends, which I would have really liked to have. I'd like to be able to look back, to look at sort of some of those situations. I've still got no photographs.

I've got loads of photographs of Andre. But they're all on disc, you know what I mean? They're all on digital, no actual photographs. Although I could, I've got a printer now, so I could use, I could get some photographic paper and get them printed out, which is something that I might actually do now I'm thinking about it.

I've also got hundreds of videos of me talking, so I've got, you know, I could make photographs out of those, and that's spanned over over 10 years. Because I suppose I have kind of got photographs, kind of. There's a photograph in the newspaper from 2006, where I'm bald, completely, I'd shaved my head.

I look awful, really terrible. Not everyone can pull a bald head off. That sounds weird, doesn't it? You know what I mean? Not everyone can pull it off.

I don't have the right face for it. So that's the end of that recording. It's another one done.

Yeah, another one done. So just, you know, try and keep positive. Remember that whatever's happening now is only temporary.

Remember to be kind to yourself. And this might be more important now than ever. Do something nice for yourself today.

Do something nice for yourself today. Because you deserve to be happy. Lots of love.

Bye.