#371 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (9th April 2020)

Hello, welcome to Jason Newland dot com. My name's Jason Newland and this is let me bore you to sleep. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

And little Andres laying on the floor. You want a cuddle? Do you want a cuddle? Come on then. Come on.

You can have a cuddle. He's being a bit needy at the moment. No, mind the microphone.

Mind the microphone. Good boy. So today, well I suppose I should just mention that you can listen to this podcast on my website without adverts at the beginning and continuous play.

So just go to there, it's in the menu on the website and you can just press play and it will play every single recording which will last probably about 400 hours. So you might not be listening to it for the whole time. Hello.

You can sit on my lap if you want. I haven't got to get down unless you do need to do a wee wee. Oh you want to sniff that, okay.

So I got this, I think this is number 371 I think. Which is quite weird because it doesn't seem very long ago that I was at number 300. So now we're here, it's getting towards 400 and it now means that I've literally or had the equivalent of doing one recording every two days for the last two years of these recordings.

I may admit at least sometimes I do loads or a day after that day and then maybe have a gap. I've had gaps of weeks, maybe more sometimes 10-14 days in the past but it sort of works out about once every two days. So I'm quite, I'm really impressed with myself.

Oh wow. I don't know if the word impressed is the correct one but I'm pleased. I'm pleased that I've stuck at it.

I mean sticking at things hasn't always been my greatest skill. I mean you know I suppose I've stuck at this free service since 2006 but you know particular podcasts or series of you know recordings for example the Hypnotic Buffet. How many did I do of those? 28 I think and then I stopped.

And they were fairly popular on YouTube when I first started doing them and you may be thinking you know what Jason, no matter how often you mention Hypnotic Buffet or HypnoChats, we're not going to listen. Sorry, we're not listening to them. Doesn't matter how good you think they are, doesn't matter how much work you put into them, we're not listening to them because we don't want to.

Can't make us. Which is true, which is true. We're not the bitter base.

Well yeah, it's all true. It's all down to an individual person but I quite like them. I actually got a podcast just for the Hypnotic Buffet.

Not a podcast, an app. But I cancelled it in the end. I had an app for the Deep Sleep Whisperer as well but I cancelled it in the end.

So yeah, I'm just quite pleased. I've stuck at this. I've stuck at the Deep Sleep Whisperer.

I think I did number 206 or 207 today or yesterday rather. And the relaxation for stress and anxiety, I did number 114 I think today as well. Just like about an hour ago actually, just over an hour ago.

And that was a deep relaxation session. It's really good. It's really, really good.

I do recommend it. I've done two versions, one with me just talking and the other one with me with fart sounds in the background. So yeah, I'm not sure which one will be most popular.

It's music, it's music. It's weird that I kind of have to correct myself and just just make sure that people don't really think that there's farts in the background. Mind you, listening to this, you might think, well, we're used to the background farts.

But they're not mine, they're André's. I tell you, they're André's. Swear on a banana skin, they're André's.

Don't you mean squirrel? Swear on a squirrel. Swearing on a squirrel was your thing last time, wasn't it? Yes, I tried it out. Didn't feel it really worked.

Swearing on a squirrel, it rolls off your tongue. But you know, can you imagine people listen to this for the first time? I don't mean this particular recording because everyone listens to it for the first time, the people that are listening to it. But if no one's ever listened to any of my stuff and someone said to me, you should listen to this bloke, he's so boring and he will just lull you to sleep by just talking about absolutely nothing for an hour.

And you start listening and I'm talking, and this is me talking about farting and swearing on squirrels. Probably be quite weird. I don't know, really.

Seems normal to me. But. So the, what was I going to say? It's been quite a productive day, really.

I've not been to bed yet, but it's, what was it, 2.57 in the morning. And I was in bed till about one in the afternoon. And then I got up.

I went to bed again about just before six for a couple of hours. Just had a little afternoon snack or an afternoon nap, rather. It's kind of like a snack of sleep.

And I haven't watched much in the way of television. I went and got a little bit of food because I needed to go and get some milk. And I got, yeah, really, that was it.

Milk, some cans of Coke and a couple of chocolate bars. So probably not the healthiest shop, but I just thought I'd get a few little bits. The milk was the important one, really.

I was going to get some bog roll, some toilet roll, but I didn't have any, which is okay. I've probably got enough. And the, I came home, I went on my own, so I didn't take Andre.

I think he was asleep, or he might have been making love to his girlfriend, so I'm not sure. One of those things. But I went out.

I came back. It was a lovely day. And I, what did I do? Yeah, that was probably about three o'clock.

Yeah, it was because I watched Minder at 3.40. I left here about four minutes past three. So I walked up there, went downstairs, turned right, then turned left, went across the field, turned left, crossed the road to the end, to the next road, turned left a little bit, then turned right, crossed the road, then turned left, and walked down, turned right, and got my stuff. I turned right into the door, opened the door with my elbow.

I'm lucky I've got fingers on my elbow, so it's quite good. And I haven't, I don't know why I said that. It'd be quite handy though, wouldn't it? Would it? I don't know.

If you were arm wrestling, can you imagine if you were arm wrestling, you had your arm on the side, the edge of the table, but you were able to grip the edge of the table, as well as have your hand there, and be arm wrestling. That'd definitely give you some leverage. I'm not sure what other benefits there could be, I suppose.

I suppose you could get up to sort of no good, couldn't you, and say, wasn't me. Look, wasn't that, my hands are here, wasn't me. Be good for pickpocketing, shoplifting.

I mean, you could literally shoplift sweets while your hands are there, while you're doing a card trick to the person in front of you. You could be pickpocketing them. I mean, I don't know any card tricks or magic tricks, but I'm just saying, if you were a magician, but then if you was a magician, you might not want to be a pickpocket.

I don't know, really. It's hard to know, isn't it? Hmm. Swimming, I suppose it'd be quite handy, because you could just put your arms out straight and just wiggle your fingers on both your hands and your elbows, so you wouldn't have to really do much effort.

Just wiggle your fingers a bit, especially if you had fingers on your knees, as well. I mean, I'm not saying automatically, because you've got fingers on your elbow, that you can have fingers on your knees, but I'm just saying it'd be handy. Handy, but uncomfortable when you're kneeling down.

You'd have to have very, very loose trousers, so when you kneel down, you could put your hand out flat, which then would stop you from falling over. In fact, you could actually, if it was equivalent to a hand, but it was a foot, so you had a foot on your knee, and a foot wherever the normal foot is, and then a foot on your knee, as well. You could kneel down and pretend to be really short, but literally have a foot there, so you could do like a magic trick.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I have to edit that to make it sound a bit quieter. Quieter, yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So all in all, yesterday was a fairly okay day. Got some stuff done, got some website work done, and yeah, didn't do any work on my course, because I've got an online course that I enrolled in the day before yesterday, so I need to start.

It's not a long course, to be fair. I could probably finish it quite quickly, but I'd like to maybe go through it again tomorrow, start going through it a bit more, because I've done part of it, and then maybe go through it again, and just think what bits I can take out of it and use inside my recordings, because it's an anxiety course, so I thought I'd maybe try and use it to help others, really, and myself as well. So that's kind of what I'm planning.

And the other thing was I've not heard anything from the NHS hospital yet about the job application I made, so I've not heard anything. So yeah, just waiting for that to see what they say, if they're going to give me an interview, or if they're going to... I don't know how they do interviews now. It might be by Skype, you know, it might be by video call, maybe on the telephone.

It probably won't be in person, you know, so I don't know. That might be a benefit to me, because if it's by telephone, I can just say, yeah, hi, I really, really want to work. Yeah.

I just think I'm creepy, won't I, if I did that. But the... Yeah, I'm not sure how it works now, really. Everything's a little bit weird at the moment, so I don't know.

But they are definitely looking for people. I mean, the job is actually called urgent. It's got the word urgent in the title.

And it's, as I mentioned in my last recording, I think it is a paid position. So, yeah, I'm just, I'm interested. I'm interested to see if they even interview me, because I put down my date of birth, which you don't have to.

But I put down my date of birth on the cover note of the CV, because they can work it out anyway, roughly, by looking at the CV and looking at when you went to school, you know, because it says I left school in 1986, which means the oldest you can leave school is 18. And the youngest, well, I was actually 15, but it's generally 16. If you leave, or if you do your A levels, maybe you stay till you're 18.

In the UK, that is, in England. So what they've got to do is, at 18, and at the years up to now, so they're going to be looking at me thinking, well, he's, oh my God, I'm 49. My goodness.

So they'd think I'm at least 47. Even if I left school at 18, I left at 15. But I was just, I was the youngest person in my year.

I think, I might, there might be someone else, but I'm pretty sure I was the youngest, because I was born in the end of August, and I went to start at school at the beginning of September. And some people were having their next birthday in September. So there's people there that were a year older than me, which is okay.

I mean, didn't have a huge effect on my life, really. But I was pretty much the younger year. I should have been in the younger year, really.

If I'd only been, I think if I'd have been, um, yeah, if my, if my birthday had been something like 10 days, a week or two weeks later, I would have been in the younger year. So, you know, it's just the way it is. But it wasn't, so there you go.

So I'm just thinking, yeah, I wonder, I don't even know what kind of job is available in this NHS thing, because it says urgent, non-clinical position, which to me, that would say non-clinical would be, well, what is clinical? I mean, obviously surgeons are clinical, nurses are clinical, psychiatrists are clinical, psychologists, healthcare workers are clinical, aren't they? Clinical, wouldn't that be more kind of up personal with doing personal care, being like close to the patients? I might be wrong. So I generally don't know what they're, what they're going to be looking for. I mean, I think quite a good job for me would be a hospital porter.

And I don't mean like a kitchen porter, like you're washing pans and stuff. I've done that. I don't really fancy doing that again.

But pushing the trolleys, pushing people around in trolleys, not trolleys, in their beds, in pushing people around in the supermarket trolleys, but pushing people around in the beds and taking them to the wards and taking them to have x-rays and stuff like that, that would suit me very perfectly. I just think it'd be fun because I'd be able to talk to the people and hopefully make them feel a bit more relaxed, you know? So it might, it might be a really, that'd be quite a rewarding job with very little responsibility as well. Be able to go around and people know me and say, Hey, it's Jason the bed pusher.

And I don't know if they would call him, they'd call him the porter, wouldn't it? Jason, it's Jason the porter. It's JJ the porter. Or they won't know.

They won't know I'm not there. I'm JJ the hypnotist. Or JJ the most boring man in the world.

Really? Yeah. So yeah, I'll be interested to see what's going on, what's going to happen there. But they had a cut off of the 9th and I do believe it's the 9th today.

So today is the cut off point for the application for that, or those jobs. I don't know how many there are. If they give me the option, I might apply for a nighttime position.

But the flip side to that would be at the moment I can sleep at night, I can, I can be awake at night and sleep all day. But if I want to sleep at night, I can, you know, if it's noisy outside in the summer, I can get a little bit boisterous and people are out cutting their lawns and just enjoying the summer, I suppose. That wouldn't be ideal if I was working night shift.

And also if I was working night shift, when would I make recordings? Because I'd be awake, or I'd be asleep during the day. Would I make the recordings when I got home? Which would probably be sort of eight, nine in the morning, maybe seven, eight, I don't know, whatever time. Let's say if I work from 10 to six, 10 in the evening to six in the morning, it's going to take me a minimum of an hour and a half to get home from work.

Because it's two buses, plus the wait, plus the walk from the buses. So that's a minimum, probably what's it, 20. The first bus from the hospital takes me to the bus station, get off and then wait for the next one, which could be anywhere up to half an hour wait.

Get that and then that's about 40 minutes. And then when I get off there, there's walking home as well from there. So probably about an hour and a half.

So hour and a half there, hour and a half back. So it's three hours added on to the eight hours. So it's 11 hours.

So I'll be getting home at six, seven, eight, 7.30 in the morning. And yeah, it means I'll be awake in the afternoon, not early evening. But then when would I, when would I make a recording when it's quiet? I don't know.

I don't know. Maybe it's, maybe it's a fantasy. I don't know.

Just, just send you an opportunity to, you know, if I can help people. It's nice to help people virtually from a distance. And when I say helping people, it might sound like I'm being arrogant and cocky, but I'm just going on what other people tell me.

I'm sure there's plenty of people listen and think, what's she going on about? What's she keep... And other people to think. And then more people might think, you know, different, different reactions from different people. But to be able to be, do something face to face, seems like possibly quite a good opportunity.

And it's, you know, the rate of pay I think is, I think it's like 17 grand a year. So it's just above minimum wage really. Or maybe it's, that is minimum wage now.

I don't know. So it's not like huge amount of money, but I'll feel like I've won the lottery for the first couple of months. Because suddenly I'll have money.

It's like, wow. Not for the first month, because I won't get paid for probably a month. But it's like, wow.

What would be 17 grand, 1,007. I think 17 grand should be at least take home a thousand pound a month, which, you know, is 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. Maybe more, maybe 1,100 pound a month, but at least a thousand pound or so.

And then take off the rent, bills, food. I won't feel rich at all. I might feel rich seeing the number and then just see the number dwindling down.

But that's all right. Or is it? Or is it? Oh, I should readjust my bum. I've got, I took Andre out earlier.

He's really been hassling me to go out. And even earlier, just when I first started doing this recording, he was hassling me. And I took him out.

I thought, okay, fair enough. We'll go out. It was dark outside, so it was definitely about eight o'clock, I'd say.

About eight o'clock. Went and walked around. And now that I've got the extension lead on his lead that, you know, extends, he can move further and further away from me, which means he never comes anywhere near me when we're outside.

Doesn't want to be anywhere near me. All he wants to do is get away. I sometimes think, well, just let him off the lead.

Just let him go. It's a little bit childish of me. I sometimes think, well, if you really, if you really hate me that much, then go.

But I know it's not because he wants to get away from me. He just wants to explore. He's excited, you know.

It's just all the smells, all the fresh smells of the grass and the dog poo and who knows what else he's enjoying. He just loves digging and rubbing himself against everything. He just loves it.

He's really happy. And he's not even aware that I'm there, apart from occasionally I look back. So he remembers I'm with him, or sometimes remembers, oh, wait a minute, where's daddy? And he stops, he looks back to see who I am.

So that's quite cute. But I know that I really think that if I let him off, I do sometimes let him off, but only when I know I can catch him. There's enough space, you know, don't ever do it near bushes or a ditch or anything, because he will just run into the ditch.

And he's done it a few times and I've struggled to catch him. When I went to school, the actual strap broke. This is last year.

And he ended up the other side of the fence of the school. And he was just running into the darkness. And I didn't know what to do.

It's a high fence. The fence is about as high as my chest. But I had to just, I had to jump over it.

I had no choice. So I did. Landed on my back, glasses were in the dark, they just fell off me, hurting my leg a little bit.

I managed to get up and I think he stopped running. And I called him and he came and got me. I went and got him.

But I was like, what the fuck? I think he was surprised I wasn't actually with him. So yeah, and then I was stuck there. I don't think I had my phone on me.

And what I needed is a hand to get back over. Because this time I had Andre in one of my hands. So I couldn't use both my hands, which would have been handy if I'd had one on my elbow.

And I was waiting for people to pass by so I could sort of get them to hold Andre while I kind of climbed over. Not one single person to be seen. And this was, I don't know, half 10 at night.

And I'm literally opposite where I live. And there's no one around. I thought, should I shout, try and get someone's attention? Or should I just kick the gate in? Because I'm pretty sure if I put all my weight on the gate, it'd probably buckle if I really kind of went at it.

But in the end, I found a telegraph pole, which is also right near the part of the gate. So I was able to climb up, hold on to the telegraph pole, and hope that I was able to jump out from the gate. Because my feet look like they might be stuck in the gaps of the gate as I was trying to sort of balance.

I did manage to land on my feet this time. And I walked back like a little wounded hero. Absolutely, really ridiculous.

The reason why the strap broke on his harness is because he gets underneath the fence, or he goes into one of the railings and he starts rolling. That's a little crocodile roll. He's now having some crunchies, some dry food, having a big old crunch.

Oh dear, oh dear. The last couple of days, I've been working out on my punch bag. My shoulders and my back and my arms are a little bit sore.

It's quite nice. I did think that the right side of the bracket or the rack looked like it might come out again. But I think it's just the seal where I put some extra glue around it.

The seal's broken a bit. But it looks like the actual nut that's in it is solid. I could have had a right go at it a couple of times and it seems to be fairly sturdy.

So that's good. And it's nice to have a little workout. I haven't done any weights today.

So perhaps I need to do some. I would have done this. The one thing that's very prominent in this room is my sit-up bench, my abdominal body sculpture.

Since 1965, I really don't feel drawn towards it. It's weird because I can do a lot of sit-ups as long as I don't go all the way down. I don't go all the way back because it's curved.

So I literally would practically have my head on the floor because it's a very high bench with things to grip my feet under and so I can put my hands on as well while I'm waiting to do it. But I can do the sit-ups where you go down and you go up again, up and down, whatever. And I can do a lot of them.

A lot. I could probably do about 50, which would be more than I'd be able to do if I just sat on the floor. Again, I'd need something to grip my feet.

I just can't do it without something holding my feet in one place. It doesn't work for me otherwise. But I'm surprised I can do 50 sit-ups without too much problem.

So there must be some remnants of muscle still in there. Very hidden. Very, very well hidden.

Just like my talent. Very, very well hidden. Almost unrecognizable.

But the fact is, and I do say this in some of my recordings, not these ones, but the simple fact, physiologically, is we've all got very, very strong stomachs. Regardless of whether you've got a six-pack or not, you have to have a strong stomach in order to walk, to move around, to bend, to stretch. You if you're overweight, you've still got a strong stomach.

So all of us have got muscles in our stomach that are very strong. Now that's my little pep talk to myself. But it's true.

I do. I believe it to be true. Therefore, it makes me feel all rosy and cozy inside.

Andre's just done one at the moment. Now some water. He's now, he's just done a poo on the paper.

I know I shouldn't get excited about such things, but I didn't have to mention it, didn't I? Because over the last few days, I've been saying, on the paper, please, baby. On the paper, you know, whenever he's gone to do it on the floor, on the carpet. And sometimes he backs up.

Because, you know, he's a good boy, generally. But right now he's just done it on the paper. So I've been sort of kind of leaving him alone to try and... I started putting less paper down because it was getting too silly.

I want him, I want it to be right in the corner, so he knows where it is. So that I can also have a bit of access to some of the floor. I mean, it's supposed to be my floor.

And that poo he just did, it really stinks. And it's right near me. Oh.

Oh dear, oh dear. That's the downside of sitting in this chair in the corner. Because it's not in the corner, but it's near the corner.

In reality, they only really smell like cat food. It doesn't really smell of anything bad. It's, it's quite good.

He, he was a bit naughty earlier though, because I was in, I did a deep sleep whisper hypnosis session last night in my shed, my recording studio. And then I went back an hour or so later, or a couple of hours later, and I did a relaxation for stress one, but it was a relaxation session. So I needed to be quiet.

So I went in there, closed this door in here, closed the door in the bedroom and went to the recording studio. The shed. Let's call it what it is.

It's a shed. It's a shed covered in bubble wrap. And everything was going quite nice.

It's, it's, it's a quite good sound. It's quiet. As it was until Andre must have woken up because he was scratching at the door, but really scratching, not just mildly interested in what's going on.

This was, open this door now. Daddy, daddy, I said, open this door now. And he was getting really, I could hear it, which was a little bit surprising because I didn't think I'd be able to hear it as much being in the shed, but it was, yeah, I could hear it through the wall because these walls, the, I think the wall between the bedroom and the living room isn't like a thick wall.

It's not, it's, yeah, so I have to get some soundproofing into the bedroom on a bedroom wall. So I thought, what should I do? So I had to pause the recording. I came out, I told him off.

I held him up. I looked at him in the eyes. I said, stop, stop.

He was kissing me. I said, okay, so he's understood. I put him back down and closed the door.

And again, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, like even more so. So what I did is I went back into the shed and I thought, no, it's too, I'm not sure if it was even eligible or recognized on the recording, but I could hear it. And it was, it might just be me being oversensitive, but you know, I wasn't pleased.

So in the end, I put him into the bathroom cupboard, which sounds worse than it is because he likes that cupboard. He likes going in there and playing and going to sleep in the carrier bags. So I thought, you know what? I'll put him in there for the next 15 minutes because I just needed to finish the recording.

And when I went in there, he was just asleep. So what I might try and do is sort out that cupboard and make it, so I make it nice so I can actually put him in there for during when I'm doing like a long recording in the garden shed, or maybe just on those occasions when he's being naughty. Because quite often I'll close the door, he'll be asleep.

He'll be totally oblivious to what's going on and he won't care. I mean, sometimes he'll look at me and he'll watch me close the door. Does nothing, just lays there.

But, you know, earlier he was a bit too excitable. I don't know what goes through his mind. I mean, it is a lot to do with just closed doors.

He does not like doors that are closed. He expects every door to be open at all times. It's just a thing, a thing within.

And I think it's a thing with, probably just a thing with ferrets generally, maybe. But it's definitely with him. Plus he's got a foot fetish.

So he's, there's a few different quirks he's got. There's some other things but I won't tell you everything. I don't want to spoil the mystique of Andre.

But he's a strange one. He's probably not strange at all. I'm probably stranger than he is.

Probably. Let's have a little drink. Mmm, yum, yum, yum, yum.

So what is it today? It's Thursday now. So yeah, I'm just gonna, I've got enough milk to get me through for the next couple of days. So I don't have to do anything on that front.

So I don't have to go to the shops tomorrow, or today rather. But Friday, maybe I need to. Although it's, it's a bank holiday weekend this week in England, or the UK.

And there's, so it's Good Friday on Friday. Saturday, I'm not sure if it's called Good Saturday, is it? Or maybe like Average Saturday. Then there's Easter Day, Sunday, Easter Sunday.

And I think Easter Sunday is normally on a Sunday. And then you've got Easter Monday, I guess. Or it's Bank Holiday Monday.

And it's really weird because it will mean very little to a lot of people. There was, I remember there was a time when I was working, and especially in call centres, they'd ask us to choose a bank holiday that we were willing to work. And we get paid double, because we were allowed, officially allowed to have a bank holiday off.

But they had to staff the offices, so they'd ask us to volunteer to work a bank holiday Monday. Because I think there's, how many bank holidays are there? You've got one in April. I think there's two in May, one in August.

And then you've got, I suppose bank holidays don't have to be Mondays, do they? Because Boxing Day is a bank holiday, I think. Anyway, the office, especially the one I was last at, I think even other ones, they'd say, which ones do you want to work? Can you choose a bank holiday to work? And you'll get, yeah, I think it was you get a day off in lieu. You know, you get the day off that you're supposed to get, plus you'll get paid double time or something like that.

So I used to choose Easter, because, oh no, August bank holiday. Did I think, you don't remember that one? So there's always an August bank holiday. So one, two, one, two, because my birthday is often on a bank holiday weekend.

Because if my birthday is on a Friday, a Saturday, a Sunday, or a Monday, it comes, it falls on a bank holiday weekend. Because it's the last weekend of August. If it falls on a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, so if it falls on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, then it doesn't.

So the odds are greater that it's going to fall on a bank holiday weekend than not. There's a, I don't know what the percentage is, but four out of seven. So you could say four out of seven years, my birthday would be on a bank holiday weekend.

Yeah. So that's quite groovy. I think I share the same birthday as Michael Jackson.

So I would choose the Easter bank holiday, just one of them. I wouldn't want both. So I could still have three days off and just work for one, you know.

And I would say, I have to have the bank holiday weekend in August, because I don't work on my birthday. I haven't done since I was a lot younger. I stopped working on my birthday, like 20, 20 odd years ago, probably longer actually.

Probably early, early 90s. I decided, you know, because I actually had, on my 18th birthday, I was given tickets to go and see Michael Jackson in concert at Wembley. I think it was Wembley.

Yeah. And Wembley stadium, or arena, I don't know. I just got a new job.

I just turned 18 and the tickets were for, this doesn't even sound right now. I might've got it wrong. But anyway, I didn't go to the concert because I didn't want to take time off in the first week of this job.

And I regretted it because I was a big fan of his music. And it would have been a great opportunity, I think, back then, because he was pretty much in his prime, you know. Well, because I was in prime when he was 10, but you know, in the early 80s, and this had been 1988, and he was doing the Bad Tour, you know.

So, yeah, I never got to see it. I never got to see him. And it was after that that I thought, after sort of contemplating and thinking about it and, you know, trying to learn from what I've done, I came to the conclusion that I should never work on my birthday.

Nah, not doing that no more. So I did, I did, I didn't, you know. What I did is, even when I was earning like practically no money, I'd always take the day off for a birthday.

If I could afford to, I'd go up the West End. So I'd buy, I'd go to get a travel card from the tube station, walk to the tube station, get a travel card, and then just go up to Oxford Street, or Tottenham Court Road tube station would be probably one of my routes that I would take. Come out of there, turn right, or maybe go the other exit.

Sometimes I'd have a walk up Soho, have a look in the windows, and then I'd go to the bookshops, and there was, I'm sure there's books, etc. I don't think it exists anymore, but waterstones, books, etc., foils, blackstones. There was an American bookstore that was really good, but I think it closed.

So down, I think that was, was it Charing Cross Road? It's the road that leads where all the theatres, lots of theatres are. But anyway, that's where Foils, which is, it was one of the most famous book, and the oldest bookshops in the world, one of them, in the Western world anyway. And I say that in Bethlehem, might have a bookshop.

That's going to be an old one, unless it's a new one, then it's not. So I just used to go there. If I had the money, I'd buy a book.

If I didn't have the money, I'd at the very least try and have enough, and I'd buy a McDonald's, which was opposite Tottenham Court Road tube station. And next to that was the, I'm sure it was the Virgin, the Virgin store. But maybe it was the HMV, unless HMV and Virgin were both together, next to each other.

It's possible. So I went, used to go there, have a McDonald's meal. Always the same thing, quarter pound of cheese, and a shake, strawberry or banana.

That was the only thing I ever had at McDonald's. And it was rare. We didn't have a McDonald's where I lived.

They did, they do now, but they didn't in the early 90s. So the only time I got to have a McDonald's was if I went all the way to the West End, or there was one in Leighton, or Leighton, no, Leighton Stone, but that was a bit of a walk to get there. And I think they had one in Wardenstow as well.

Again, a fair walk. But there's one in Stratford, and I say there's one, there's probably more than one now. But they used to be Burger King.

So if you go into Stratford, again, it's all changed, so I don't know if it's like that now. But I can tell you what it used to be like. There is a, the entrance to Stratford Shopping Centre, not the shopping centre now, like the Blueberry, Bluebird, or whatever it's called, that they built when they did the Olympic Games 2012.

But this was just a, it was a cool, it's a nice shopping centre, actually. I can't complain about it. It had everything you needed, everything that I needed anyway.

But there wasn't anything else. That was it. That's all there was.

And there used to be, I think, a Pizza Hut, as you saw, just on the side, just before you got to the shopping centre. On the right-hand side, if you looked at the entrance, the right-hand side was a shoe shop. I was actually dating someone that was friends, I think she worked in there.

Yeah. For a little while. And on the left-hand side, I can't remember what was there, but that, I think, got taken over as a McDonald's in 2000, maybe 2001.

Maybe it was late 90s, but I'm sure it was very, very late 90s, if anything. And then going down through, there's like a little archway and you go down through, the corridor's quite big and it would be absolutely packed full of people, like literally up each other's bums as they walk along. It was that really stuck together, which I didn't really enjoy.

But I kind of, I suppose, just got on with it, really. On the right-hand side, there was a newsagents, big, big newsagents. And they had sweets and drinks and all that stuff and loads of magazines.

This is on the right-hand side. On the left-hand side, I think there might have been some women's shops, like women's clothes and stuff, so I didn't ever look at them. Possibly a jewellers, so I never looked at that either, because that's pointless.

What would I look at a jewellers for? And then, why? I don't wear jewellery at all. Not even a ring. I don't do anything, no rings.

I, further up on the right-hand side, I think there was a bakery, like I suppose a Gregg's. It could have been a Gregg's, Gregg's has been around for a long time. And then there's the left-hand side, I'm not sure, it would be like a big circle, a big space with shops around one end and shops around the other end.

I know there was a bank, there was definitely a bank, I think it was a Barclays Bank, and there was seating in the middle, like a big round seat that people could sit on. I think there was a travel agency as well, maybe Thomas Cook or something like that. On the right, going around, oh okay, I don't know what was around there, but a little bit further on there was a clothes shop, but the clothes they sold were quite good, but they were cheap.

So I used to shop there, I used to get my jeans, I used to get shirts, silk shirts, but they were cheap. But I don't know, that's why I used to buy my clothes. So that was it, and there was a turning off to the right, which led to an area that you wouldn't even know was there.

I'll tell you about that in a minute. So where the clothes shop is, we keep walking down, that leads towards two entrances. There's shops on the right and shops on the left, and there was also market stalls, I think, in the middle.

And there were steps going down, which led to the tube station, so Stratford tube station. Or you could go straight across, walk outside, and there was a, I don't think there used to be a traffic light, I think it used to originally have traffic lights there, but they put traffic lights and so people could cross easier to get to the bus station, Stratford bus station, and then walk over and get into the tube station entrance, which is just near the bus station. But on the right hand side, as you walk towards the entrance or exit from the shopping centre into the tube station, there was, I'm trying to think what was on the right hand side, there was definitely a Sainsbury's, and that was the last one along, so I guess that quite took up quite a lot of room.

So there was a Sainsbury's there. I think there was a Boots chemist, we didn't used to call them pharmacy back then, we called them chemists. I'm not sure what else was on the right.

On the left hand side, one, there was two that I remember, there was a, I think it was a pram shop, or like a shop for babies, not for babies, but for people that are thinking of giving birth to babies, and sort of selling prams. So it was quite a big shop, mother care, would it be? And next to that, there was a health food shop, which I used to go into. I don't think it was one of the big brands, it was like a private, you know, thing.

But I used to go in there, and I was friends with the owner. And as I'm sure you're aware, me being as health conscious and stuff that I am, I did actually used to be, I used to take a lot of vitamins when I was younger, still trying to, I was trying to sort of put weight on. Who would have known, I just had to wait, just give it time, and it would just happen naturally.

But yeah, I used to take a lot of, and also during the period when I was unwell, the end of 2004 until the summer of 2005, I had some problems, stomach problems, and I was trying everything, not everything, but like anything, everything I could sort of give a go at from the health food shop, just trying to kind of ease the symptoms. I went vegetarian, then I went vegan. And yeah, so I used to get on really well with him.

And what's the other place? Turning left. So if you turn back, and actually, what eventually became, there was Burger King opened up, I think where the mother care was. But that was early 2000s, probably 2000, 2001.

So turning back, going backwards again, turning left, it led to a place you didn't know was there. First of all, there was an exit, or an entrance, whichever way, an entrance, exit out of the shopping centre and then entrance into the shopping centre, which was behind the, it was the Stratford Theatre. And there was some pretty cool shops down there that sold all kinds of weird like trinkets and just cool stuff, you know, gadgets and that.

So I used to go in there sometimes. I'm trying to think how you got in there, but I think you turned left. And this is whole area that had, there was a, it was like a restaurant.

There was a bunch of shops, some big discount store. Like big, big old place. It was just hidden out that you wouldn't even know is there.

And so I used to go in there and buy stuff as well. And sometimes go inside to eat. And there was these market stalls and just, it was amazing, really.

This was before Stratford was in the Olympics, before they made it all nice. This is when it was grotty. It was still, the shopping centre was quite cool.

It was, honest. Would I lie to you? Right, I've got to go because Bob's telling me it's time to go. So I shall speak to you again.

And just, you know, remember to be kind to yourself. Because you do deserve to be happy. Do something nice for yourself today and tomorrow.

And I'll speak to you very soon. Probably tomorrow. Lots of love.

Bye.