#457 Let Me Bore You To Sleep - A SHORT HISTORY OF HAND WASHING” - Jason Newland (22nd July 2020)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland. This is Let Me Bore You to Sleep. Please only listen, you can safely close your eyes.

I'm laughing because I'm just, I don't even know what it is I'm looking at. It's a video of someone. Just I don't know what they're doing.

It's on Facebook. Wow. Okay.

Andre is being a bit of a pain at the moment. He's been very naughty. I took him out for a walk a little while back and for some reason, that was not enough for him.

It was not enough. And now at half past ten in the evening, well for the last half an hour really, he's been scratching at the front door trying to get out. Not constantly, but backwards and forwards.

Every time I move my little finger, he jumps up thinking I'm going to take him out. And I'm not. I'm genuinely not going to take him out because he's been out.

I'm not going out again. And I think the time I took him out, we'll put it this way, I got home half seven. So it's only three hours ago that I actually got home with him and we were out for probably 40 minutes, maybe longer.

I actually put a little video on Facebook. I need to start putting the videos and pictures and stuff on my website, I think. There's a little bit of stutter there, website.

Well, so I think Andre deserves his own section, his own unique place in the website. So I just called it Andre's World or something, I don't know, Andre the Ferret or something in the menu, and you can just click on there and there'll be pictures and videos or whatever. Oh, here's something.

Well, it's probably not exciting, but not going to bother too many people. But the recording I did of Andre, I did a like a podcast episode, where it was Andre, Andre's Let Me Fall You To Sleep. That's lost forever and ever and ever.

It's lost, it's gone, it's gone. And because the laptop broke, and I lost everything that was on the laptop. How can something that weighs less than a bag of sugar make so much noise? He's climbing up onto the big black squeaky dirty, fallen apart chair.

He's now on the table next to it. I've moved all the plates off so we can't push them onto the floor, which is his favourite thing. And now he's looking at me.

He's like, okay. He wants me to pick him up. And then I go to pick him up and he pulls away.

He's like that sometimes he wants to be cuddled. And he wants kisses and cuddles and attention and all that stuff. But at the same time, he doesn't.

I don't know, it's weird. He's a weird, weird. Give daddy kisses.

Should I tickle your belly? Should I tickle your tummy? Should I tickle your tummy? Sometimes he's pretty good. Oh, bless you. I think he's allergic to me.

He just keeps sneezing. Are you allergic to your daddy? No? Oh, I'm massaging his hand, his right hand, like the part of his hand, you know where the pads are. Just massage, he likes that.

And if I massage the pads on each finger, or underneath each finger, he likes that as well. Because when I do it, he just lays there and he doesn't move. I think it's acupressure, isn't it? Acupressure for ferrets.

Why do you like that so much? I don't know if it's because it feels nice, or he just he's happy the fact that my fingers getting covered in whatever muck he's collected. Because I definitely need to wash my hands after doing this. Because he's been running around in the park, in the field, everything, haven't you? He said to me the other day, he said, I said, yeah.

He said, how come adults have to be told to wash their hands? I said, what do you mean? He said, well, there's adverts on television, and in the papers, and on the internet, telling adults to wash their hands. I said, yeah. He said, but they're adults.

I said, yeah, what's your point? Well, these are people that are allowed to drive cars. They're trusted to drive cars. Yeah.

They're trusted to have mortgages. Yeah. They're trusted to have children.

Yeah. He said, in some parts of the world, they're even trusted to have guns. I said, yeah, what's your point? He said, well, if they can't be trusted to wash their hands, how can they be trusted with that stuff? With anything else, really? Because if they can't, if they can't wash their hands, then they're just little children, aren't they? He is so rude.

Honestly, I couldn't believe it. It's like, Andre, you can't go around saying stuff like that. You can't mock practically an entire world of adults.

It's just, billions of people he's making fun of. Yeah, but they should be able to wash their hands. I mean, it's a very basic, simple thing, isn't it? If their brain can't cope with that, why are we allowing them to use metal cutlery? They should be using plastic cutlery, surely.

He's so rude. I mean, sure, it's dangerous, isn't it? Should we be taking their shoelaces away and stuff? I mean, who knows? They can't even handle washing their hands. You know what I mean? You don't give them a front door key, do you? Don't mind a mortgage.

Come on, that's enough, Andre, yeah, but they can't wash their hands. I mean, how complicated is it? I mean, really? Bar of soap, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash, wash. That's it.

Really simple. I said, well, do you wash your hands? He said, I don't have to, I'm a ferret. He's always got an answer, always got an answer.

He ran away laughing. I mean, it's amazing, really, you think about it, about 100 years ago, I think it was discovered that we needed to use soap and hot water. With surgeons, I'm talking about surgeons.

Can you believe it? Okay, I've got to Google this. I'm sorry, I have to. When did surgeons start using soap? The only reason I'm going into this, because I've already researched it before, but I just want to kind of, I don't want to say unless it's true.

Well, first of all, this is the first thing he says. The concept of preoperative body washing, washing with an antiseptic solution before surgery was introduced over 30 years, 30 years, with the aim of reducing skin bacteria load. Where did doctors start using soap? It wasn't until the mid 19th century that some doctors in the United States and Europe began to wash their hands before examining patients, and even then only in certain cases.

Oh, wow. Okay, so basically 1867. Okay, so it's over 100 years.

1867, 1967, 77, 87, 97, 2007. So 140 odd years. You know, I mean, it's a long time if you're constipated.

But it's, you know, in in, like, Earth years in, you know, planetary kind of time scale, 140 years is not a lot. I mean, is it? I guess if you live in a really young country, and you think, you know, 400 years is a long time, when actually, you know, there's countries that have been around, well, we've all been around for millions of years, probably. But, you know, look at China, I think China's the oldest, the oldest people, as far as blah, blah, blah, got no end to that sentence.

But as far as you know, see, I don't understand. Why doesn't Trump like China? I mean, they built a pretty good wall, didn't they? I thought he'd be impressed. Anyway, Doctor's Redemption.

In 1867, two years after Semmelweis death, Scottish surgeon John Lister also propelled the idea of sanitizing hands and surgical instruments to halt infectious diseases. His ideas had their critics too. But in the 1870s, physicians began regularly scrubbing up before surgery.

The idea of washing hands only 151 years old. Basically, Joseph Lister, he published an article in the Lancet, which is the surgeon medical thing, and address on the antiseptic system of treatment in surgery was a description of the new way of doing operations that he first presented in Glasgow, Scotland, where he practiced medicine. Why did I have to mention where he practiced medicine? I mean, where he stacked shelves in the supermarket? Obviously not.

He's a surgeon. At that time, the germ theory of disease was just a theory. So germs didn't exist 150 years ago.

Okay, germs did not exist. They were not known off. Didn't have an idea.

Didn't have a clue. 150 years ago. I mean, can you imagine there's people alive now who, when they were born, there was still uncertainty about germs.

There's probably still people not sure. There probably still are people. The flat earth society.

Anyway, the earth's not flat. It's not round. It's bumpy.

No, it's bumpy. It's lumpy. It's a lumpy thing.

So Lister's innovation was simply to try to kill the germs. Lister used a spray made of carbolic acid on wounds, breast implants and surgical tools. He also washed his hands.

Very unpopular back then. A bit like now really. Well, it's a like December last year.

It was in January this year. Became a bit more popular. The acid killed the germs before they had a chance to cause infection.

And the hand washing kept new germs from being introduced. Lister. Do you reckon that's where Listerine came from? You know, the mouthwash from his name.

Lister described the positive outcomes that this new way of doing surgery had for his patients. Wounded limbs, which would be unhesitatingly condemned. I wouldn't want to read that.

This is a bit too... So basically start cleaning wounds, which led to less serious problems. So they didn't know about germs, but they realised that was working. What he was doing was working.

I suppose they worked backwards from there. As there appears to be no doubt regarding the cause for this change, the importance of the fact can hardly be exaggerated, he wrote. Although British and American surgeons were irked by the Scottish upstart, according to Harvard University, by 1875, sterilisation of instruments and scrubbing of hands were widely practised.

Carbolic spray was exchanged for other antiseptics by 1885. So basically it's because of Lister. So I'm not going to... Wow.

Before this, before this, before Lister, it says here bed linen and laboratory coats were not washed and surgical instruments were only cleaned before they were put away for storage. The same probe was used for all, for the wounds of all patients during rounds to look for pockets of... basically just shared the same instruments and stuff. Wow.

So there's this another, there's another strain to this. So there's another strain to this, have a look. Here we go.

Because I was surprised at this when I first read this. Okay, here we go. So this is the story, this is the story of a man whose ideas could have saved lots of lives and spared countless numbers of women and newborns feverish and agonising.

The nurse said could have. The year was 1846. This is a really interesting story, by the way.

The year was 1846. And our would be hero was a Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis. Semmelweis.

Semmelweis was a man of his time. According to Justin Leszla, an assistant professor at John Hopkins School of Public Health. I know how this ends as well.

I'll watch a documentary on it. It was a time Leszla described as the start of the golden age of the physician scientist, when physicians were expected to have scientific training. Because in the old days, if you go back far enough, I think they used to have like barbers used to do operations.

When they said anything else for the weekend, they were talking about hysterectomies and I don't know, whatever else men have done. It's just... So doctors like Semmelweis were no longer thinking of illness as an imbalance caused by bad, air or evil spirits. 150 years ago, 150 years ago, illness was caused by bad air or evil spirits.

Wow. Mind you, there are parts of the world where people still think that. Okay, there are parts of the world where some people still think that.

Mind you, there's probably parts of my town that still think that. Do you occasionally see people like, what's that? What's that? Oh no. It's a streetlight, just a light bulb.

The young Dr. Semmelweis was no exception. When he showed up for his new job in the maternity clinic at the General Hospital in Wiener, he started collecting some data of his own. Semmelweis wanted... It might be Semmelweis.

It doesn't matter. He's dead. He's not going to complain.

Semmelweis wanted to figure out why so many women in maternity wards would not survive in childbirth. He studied two maternity wards in hospital. One was staffed by all-male doctors and medical stewards.

I'm sure I've read this before. Anyway, I know I've read it, but I'm sure I've read it out loud before because this bit doesn't even... It's not surprising, but it doesn't seem realistic. It's almost like you're making this up.

This is just pathetic. This is like the kind of news story that you'd read today, just sensationalist, exaggerated. But it's true.

It's like, really? It can't be true. Anyway, here we go. He studied two maternity wards in hospital.

One was staffed by all-male doctors and medical stewards, and the other was staffed by female midwives. And he counted the number of fatalities in each ward, so women that didn't survive the childbirth. When Semmelweis crunched the numbers, he discovered that women in the clinic staffed by doctors and medical stewards, and that's the one that was looked after by men, solely men.

I guess the pregnant people were women. It doesn't say. Okay, five times higher death rate than the women in the midwives clinics.

But why? Okay, here it is. Semmelweis went through the differences between the two wards and started with their ideas. Right away, he discovered a big difference between the two clinics.

In the midwives clinics, women gave birth on their side. In the doctors clinic, women gave birth on their backs. He tested it out, changed it, and he said there's no effect.

So it made no difference whether you did it on your side or your back or on your head, or maybe not on your head. That's just a side. Then Semmelweis noticed that whenever someone in the ward passed away from childbirth, a priest was walked slowly through the doctor's clinic, past the women's beds with an attendant ringing bell.

This time Semmelweis theories that the priest and the bell ringing so terrified the women after birth that they developed a fever and got ill. He tested this out on the other ward, no effect. By now Semmelweis was frustrated.

He took a leave from his hospital duties and traveled to Venice. He hoped the break and a good dose of art would clear his head. I've never gone on holiday for a good dose of art.

I like to have a good fart, but I've never had a good dose of art. When Semmelweis got back to the hospital, some sad but important news was waiting for him. One of his colleagues, a pathologist, had passed away.

It was a common occurrence according to a teacher of medicine at the Queen's University of Kingston, Ontario. She says this was a revelation. Childbed fever wasn't something only women in childbirth got sick from.

It was something other people in hospital could get sick from as well. Ah, so it's not related to the birth or to the baby or giving birth. This often happened to the pathologists, Duffin says.

There was nothing new about the way he passed away. He pricked his finger while doing an autopsy on someone who had passed away from the childbed fever and then he got sick and passed away. I'm trying not to focus on that part of the thing, but the good stuff as well.

It's quite a grim story really, but it brings us to something important. Semmelweis studied the pathologist's symptoms and realised the pathologist had the same thing as the women. He caught the same thing.

So he's like, how can that be? How can it be? And then he said, why were more women dying from childbed fever in the doctor's clinic than in the midwife's clinic? Five times as many. Duffin said, it offered him a clue. He said, the big difference between the doctor's ward and the midwife's ward is that the doctors were doing autopsies and midwife's work, she said.

So Semmelweis hypothesised that there were cadaverous particles. Yeah, okay. So basically spreading germs, basically.

If Semmelweis, so basically go from one thing to another without, you know, and spreading that. If Semmelweis' hypothesis was correct, getting rid of those cadaverous particles should cut down on the rate of, you know, fever and illness. So he ordered his medical staff to start cleaning their hands and instruments, not just with soap, but with chlorine solution.

Chlorine, can you believe these surgeons, doctors had to be told to wash their hands. And chlorine, as we know today, is about the best disinfectant there is. And Semmelweis didn't know anything about germs.

He chose the chlorine because he thought it would be the best way to get rid of any smell left behind by those bits of a thing. So that's what they didn't know about germs, but they, at that time, something had a bad smell, then they would contribute that or attribute it to something being wrong, you know, like, oh, it's a bad smell, something not good there, but didn't know about germs. So he chose something to get rid of the smell.

That was his main thing. So he could easily have just got some washing up liquid or, I don't know, what kind of things have a weird smell, paint, I suppose, but that strawberry milkshake. I don't know, I suppose lots of different things with, you know, funny smell, isn't there? But there was that medicine when I was a kid, and it was really tasty.

It was, I think, strawberry, might be banana, I think it was strawberry. And I think it was penicillin, but it was strawberry flavor, and it was gorgeous. And I still think, well, why, why can't we still have that? You know, why, that's one of the, I used to look forward to get an L so I could have it.

It's just so nice. And so basically, Semmelweis didn't know anything about germs. He chose chlorine because he thought it would be the best way to get rid of any smell left behind by, you know, the bits and bobs that were on their hands.

And when he imposed this, the rate of childbed fever fell dramatically. What Semmelweis had discovered is something that still holds true today. Hand washing is one of the most important tools in public health.

It can keep kids from getting the flu, prevent the spread of disease and keep infections at bay. You'd think everyone would be thrilled. Semmelweis had solved the problem.

But they weren't thrilled. Seriously, they weren't. So this is someone that had basically saved millions and millions, maybe billions of people's lives.

Well, millions. But they didn't, they weren't pleased with him. For one thing, doctors were upset because Semmelweis' hypothesis made it look like they were the ones giving childbed fever to the women.

So the men took it seriously, you know, they took it personally. And Semmelweis was not very tactful Yeah, that probably didn't help, did it? He publicly berated people who disagreed with him and made some influential enemies. Eventually, the doctors gave up deploring hand washing and Semmelweis, he lost his job.

So they gave up on it because they didn't like him. Because he annoyed them so much, they decided not to do it. Even today, convincing the healthcare providers to take hand washing seriously is a challenge, he says here.

I don't know how true that is. Why do we do adverts for the population to watch? Please wash your hands. Wow.

Really? Do we really need to be told that? Clearly people do. Semmelweis kept trying to convince doctors in other parts of Europe to wash with chlorine, but no one would listen to him. Hundreds of thousands of hospital patients get infections each year.

Infections that can be very hard to treat and just really awful sometimes. The Centers of Disease Control Prevention says hand hygiene is one of the most important ways to prevent these infections. This is the thing.

So it's a really positive story. Because other people did pick up on it later. A few years later or whatever.

And then they, I guess they had a bit of more charisma about them or a bit more higher up or respected or maybe had money or fame and sort of people listened to the person, but they didn't want to listen to him. For some reason, over the years, Semmelweis got angrier, and eventually even strange. I'm not sure.

There's been speculation he developed a mental condition brought on by possible syphilis or even Alzheimer's. And in 1865, when he was 47, he was committed to an asylum. And it says that he was probably beaten in the asylum and eventually died of sepsis.

Okay, we'll move on from that. But the point is washing your hands is quite good. I just remember hearing that story or watching the documentary on that.

It's like, why don't people, why is this not public knowledge? Wow. I just read in there says it wasn't until the 1980s that hand hygiene was officially incorporated into American healthcare with the first National Hand Hygiene Guidelines. The 1980s.

Oh my goodness. Wow. Oh, man.

Okay, I suppose I shouldn't spend the whole time washing hands but I find it really, really interesting. There's actually a web, there's a website called the Global Handwashing Partnership. Andre, hand washing has been a central component of personal hygiene and religious and cultural custom for many years.

However, the link between hand washing and health was first made less than two centuries ago. And he's talking about Ignace Senoise. So that a few years after him, it was during the Crimean War brought about a new hand washing champion, Florence Nightingale.

At a time when most people believe that infections were caused by foul odors called miasmas, Florence Nightingale implemented hand washing and other hygiene practices in the war hospital in which she worked. While a target of these practices was to fight the miasmas, Nightingale's hand washing practices achieved reduction in infections. So again, he still believed that during Florence Nightingale's life, still believed that the infections were caused by the smell, but didn't know about germs.

And so sadly, the hand hygiene practices promoted by Senoise and Nightingale were not widely adopted. In general, hand washing promotions stood still for over a century. It was not until the 1980s, when a string of foodborne outbreaks and healthcare associated infections led to public concern that the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention identified hand hygiene as an important way to prevent the spread of infection.

1980s, are we serious? In doing so, they heralded the first nationally endorsed hand hygiene guidelines and many more have followed. In recent years, hand washing with soap and other forms of hand hygiene have been gaining recognition as a cost-effective essential tool for achieving good health and nutrition. Now that its effectiveness is no longer in question, the main focus is on how to make hand washing universal.

This challenge, sustained hand washing practice at key times, is being met with new thinking about behavior change, such as habit formation and nudges. I guess I mean by that is like a sign above the sink saying, or perhaps on the door of the bathroom or toilet, wash, turn around, go to the sink and wash your hands, you dirty, dirty person. And wash that poo on your hands, increase some research into the impact of hygiene and the collaboration into organizations such as the Global Hand Washing Partnership.

Everyone can promote good hand washing behavior. Wow. There's even a global hand washing day.

Seriously, October the 15th. So this isn't a new organization. This is something that's been going for quite a while from the looks of it.

October the 15th is Global Hand Washing Day, a global advocacy day dedicated to increasing awareness and understanding about the importance of hand washing with soap as an effective and affordable way to prevent diseases and save lives. And that's the thing, soap is really cheap, isn't it? Yeah, it's really, I've got, yeah, soap. What is that soap that stinks? You know, you sometimes smell someone who's got a certain soap and it's like, oh, what is that? I don't know if it's, is it medicated soap or, I don't know, but it's, there's a certain soap and I've only smelled, probably smelled about 12 people in my life with it.

And, you know, during my lifetime, I smelled like, what is that? I think it's, I think it might be, maybe it's Dettol soap, I don't know. But it's definitely got a certain smell about it, which is fine. To be fair, Dettol soap is probably the best thing to use, isn't it? Whatever is the best, whatever does the job, really.

I mean, get caught up in, I use Dove. Because it's soap, but it also is moisturiser as well. Because, you know, I like to keep my hands nice and soft.

And, wow. So the Global Handwashing Day, all this, this has been going on long before this year. So what I might do is see if there's an about page about us.

Who are we? Our history. Well, 1998, they started public-private handwashing programmes. They started in 1998.

Oh my goodness. So I tell you, I think the reason why people get away with not washing their hands is because they're not being observed. If someone's being watched, they're more likely to do it.

But you can't watch someone when you're in the bathroom, or in the toilet, public toilet, whatever. You can't watch them, can't put a camera in there, not legally. But if they're being watched, they're more likely to do it.

Because when I'm in a public toilet, and, you know, there's someone else in there when I come out of the stall, then, you know, I'll pretend to wash my hands. If there's no one there, I'll just like, yeah, just walk straight out. I beat the system.

I shake hands with as many people as I can. No, I don't. Weird.

How strange. Very weird. So I've been using the iPad and uploaded yesterday's recording.

And it was a lot quicker this time, a lot quicker. Because I used the, I forget what it's called, something wave, sticky, sticky wave, isn't it? Twisted wave. So I'm using twisted wave to edit the audio.

And I've also got, I'm now doing the, I've figured out how to do the images as well on the iPad for the individual podcasts, because I'll put the number and the time, or the length of the podcast episode, just, you know, just to make it easier for people to sort of decide if they can handle a whole 20 minutes or a whole hour. And I started looking at, well, I did a Deep Sleep Whisper recording, which I uploaded again today as well, which was good. No, yesterday, yesterday, today, yeah.

So I did that today, Deep Sleep Whisper, number 50, no, 252 or 253. So that was uploaded. So that went quite well.

I'm still not, well, you know, I'm not, I'm kind of getting used to it, but it's still quite, I had to use the pencil to do it. So because it's very, the screen's smaller, because with Audacity, you could just click on the mouse, click on the increase size, and it will just increase it really big quite quickly. You can just go into, sometimes I could go and delete a tiny, tiny, tiny bit, and it would take out the sound, like a clicking sound or a buzzing sound or, you know, this is a little bit more complicated because the screen's smaller.

It's not hugely smaller, it is smaller. And I'm having to, to enlarge it, I'm pulling my fingers apart, you know, to make it bigger. And I lose my way a little bit, where it is, where I am on the screen.

So it's just about getting used to it. I've only edited two recordings, no three, no two, two on using this one. So I think I'll give myself a break on that.

And I relaunched the website yesterday, or early hours this morning. So I was hoping, because I wanted to get all of the latest recordings on there before I not relaunched it, I just put it back online. It's not, no big relaunch, but it was a case of, I wanted it to be complete and up to date, but it isn't because I didn't realise that just in the last two weeks, I've recorded quite a few sessions, not huge amounts, but quite a few.

And so I'm still a little bit behind on that, but I will, I'll get it done. And then there's the learning how to use the thing, because I do recordings sometimes that are both with and without background music. So I'm figuring out how to do the recordings and add the background music.

Because it's like an overlay, pasting overlay on it. So it's just very different because I need them to both be at different volumes. So the background music needs to be a lower volume than the recording.

So yeah, it's, it's okay. It's just a bit of a learning, sleep, steep, weep thing. But I kind of was, I was pushed to do it.

I've been looking at doing it for ages, you know, the last month or so. But with the laptop, going to heaven, I had I had to sort of get on the board and get it sorted. Otherwise, how am I going to upload stuff? I can record this.

Andre, shut up. Oh, he's in his tube. There's no point recording stuff if I can't upload it.

And other stuff, I've been looking at video editing as well. But for some reason, I don't know why, because I used the editor that came from, is it Garage? No, I'm sorry, iMovie. For some reason, basically, what I was going to do is just to start with having an image, podcast, episode image, and then just the audio underneath, and have that for 20, 18 minutes or whatever the deep sleep one was.

And then build on that, you know, start to look at other ways of doing stuff and eventually have animations and things like that. So I learned, I figured out how to do it, how to edit the video, how to make the, add the audio, how to add enough pictures, because there's only a certain amount, you know, so I figured out how to do that. But the end result was this oversized picture, and it didn't have the whole picture in it, it was just part of the picture, which wasn't what I wanted.

So I guess I can, it's a case of just watching some YouTube tutorial videos and stuff and figuring out how to change that. But ideally, I want to get some swirling images, maybe some spiraling and things like that. And then my voice underneath, so it's a moving video, but my voice underneath, ideally with subtitles as well.

Because apparently, it's become quite a popular thing to do, to add subtitles. I suppose the only other way of doing it would be to just get back on camera. And I just don't really fancy that.

Yeah. Even when he's asleep, he can't keep quiet, he can't keep still. He's hyperactive.

Bless him. So I'd like to, yeah, maybe try and do something on YouTube, because I've got an audience on this, not a big audience. But the reason for that is because I've got no videos.

And that sounds like an obvious thing. I've got hundreds, about 900 videos, if not more. But the most recent stuff is just podcasts uploaded.

And it's just a static page, which does, you know, and it's not many people really want to watch that. Because of the image rather than the sound. So if I can do a spiral, like some of the other hypnosis videos do, I think I could probably start to get a larger audience on YouTube pretty quickly.

It's just going to take a bit of work and figuring out how to do it. I've been online, trying to figure out, trying to, because also apps, apps are very strange, because they don't always work the same. Quite often, they don't work the same as websites.

For example, I made that video and I was going to upload it to YouTube and I couldn't. Yeah, I can make a video on my phone and upload it to YouTube instantly. Well, you know, it just goes through easily using the YouTube app.

So there's all this new stuff to learn that I hadn't, not really been involved in YouTube, like making videos or any of that stuff for years. The last time I got involved really was when I was making, it's still on there on my channel, I was making videos with candles. It wasn't an adult film, don't worry.

It was, it was a, so I filmed a candle on a candle holder. It was all nice, all sort of jewellery and, you know, all kinds of stuff. And I just record film, the candle for maybe an hour and a half, two hours.

And then I just cut the, cut down the video length to suit the length of the audio. They were quite good. They've got a bit of feedback.

Everyone likes to give feedback, don't they? Oh, feedback, feedback. Everyone in the comments, a few people, oh, this is boring. Why can't you do the spiral like the other videos? Why can't you show your face what you scared off? There was one person that said something really kind of, I took the advice actually.

They said, maybe you get more views of your videos if you actually lit the candle. Oh, okay. Oh, fair enough.

So I did that. I also had a, what's it called? The waxy things, not my ears. Yeah, I took a video of my big ears flapping.

No. Lava lamps. I bought two lava lamps.

This is a couple of years back. And I filmed them. Yeah, so I thought that'd be a little bit different from doing graphics or anything.

So there is ways of doing it. I've just been lazy. I've been lazy.

But part of that is because YouTube, I fell out of love with YouTube quite a few years ago. And I'm starting to think maybe, because I do have, I do have an audience on there and the people that do still listen to my old stuff from, you know, 10 years ago. They're still listening to me.

They're still watching me on YouTube and, oh, okay. Maybe, maybe if I put a bit more effort in to the YouTube videos, because I can definitely, I know how to put a YouTube video together. You know, the introduction and adding some graphics and all that stuff.

I can do that. I used to use Windows Video Maker for years. I learned how to use that.

And I've also used a few other video editing software packages. I never became good at it, but I became adequate. I mean, if you really searched through my video catalog on YouTube, you'll find some of the videos are quite good.

As far as the introduction, I had one with music, you know, some of them are quite good, but they're hidden as far as, you know, you just have to go through a lot of them to find them. And because there are about 900, if not more, you know, good luck with that. So, yeah, I mean, I suppose, yeah, I would look into that over the next week or so.

I'm going to try and spend a little bit of time every day learning a bit more about the video side of things and how I can put together some decent videos, as well as trying to learn a bit more about the editing side of things. Because I want things to be, I want things to improve, you know, I want this, the recordings to be a better quality, if possible. It's just this, I think the only limitations apart from myself, you know, getting in my own way, sometimes it's the, this, you know, the background sounds that I have, and even in my shed in the bedroom, I still hear a pigeon in the garden, Horace the pigeon, he's followed me around for years.

And it's like, something about pigeons is so loud. So, and also, this is weird. I was about to take one directional walk, and I heard this banging against, I don't know what it was, this banging outside the hallway.

So I go out, I can't figure what it is, and there's a bird, it was like a pigeon, or a dove. And it was trying to get out, it was smashing against the windows trying to get out. So it come in one of the back doors at the bottom of the block of flats.

So I kept trying to get it and he was like trying to get away from me. You know, it's like, so I put the knife down, and then there, and as I just grabbed him, managed to get a little bit of a mini end. He was like, get off me, get off me.

It's just like Andre. And I opened the window. So I'd already opened one of the windows and let him out.

The actually sealed shut because it was falling apart. So instead of replacing the window, they sealed it shut, the council. And so I let the, I let the bird out.

That was nice. My stomach's making some weird noises. I had my food delivery today.

So nice. So nice. I've actually got enough food to last me until next week.

I mean, enough of everything. Don't even need to go to the shops for milk. I got four, four, I think they're one liters of milk.

And because they're Cravendale, they just last longer. And the best milk I've ever had in my life, Cravendale, once you go Cravendale, you won't want to go back. Unless of course you do.

It's really, it's purified. Which means it's probably not as healthy as normal milk. I don't know.

But it's just, you know, it doesn't go off as quick. And so I thought, so I think the date, the run out date is August. And we're only what 23rd of July, 22nd.

So I bought four, four of them that got delivered. So now I open one up. And I only, I only have it on a breakfast cereal.

And I have one cup of coffee a day, generally. Unless a friend, my friend comes up, I might have one as well. He comes up by in the afternoon, in the morning or something.

But generally my routine is, I get up, I mean, my routine, this is my routine. And this is my preference. I actually set my alarm to do this this morning.

I was talking about it yesterday and I thought, I'm not going to leave it to chance. I'm going to do it. I'm going to make sure, because I love that start to the day.

So I set my alarm for a quarter past seven in the morning. I've only been in bed for about three hours or four hours. But I sleep through the day anyway, so it's fine.

But I just wanted to make sure I was awake. And because there's been a lot of building work, the council's been here digging up the garden, there's some gas stuff being done. So I haven't really been able to get the best sleep during the day this week, or last week, or whatever week we're in.

No, this week. Which is fine, I'm not bothered. And I set my alarm for a quarter past seven.

Andre was just sitting there waiting for me to get out of bed. He was, he was actually on the floor staring at me. I was like, really? It's weird.

I mean, I don't know if he'd already been on the bed, you know, poking me in the ear and stuff, trying to get me out, waking me up, biting my toes. So I get up out of bed. Those 15 minutes are enough for me to get up, turn the kettle on, go to the toilet, do a wee-wee, clean my teeth.

Go to the toilet. Sometimes, you know, it's not always a wee-wee. Go to the toilet, clean my teeth.

And then I wake me up. Andre, shush. I'll tell you something, I could not live with him.

I mean, I know I do live with him, but if he was a girlfriend, I doubt do. The fidgeting is so fidgety. If I was sleeping in bed, in fact, I do sometimes sleep in bed with him.

And what he does is he's so still and quiet, and suddenly jumps up and starts scratching himself, or he jumps up and moves to a different part of bed, or jumps up and runs off and gets off the bed because he needs to go to the toilet, or he needs to come eat something or get a drink or whatever, or he sneezes. But he's so silent and suddenly, and this is a couple of weeks ago, I actually was cuddling him. And this doesn't happen that often.

He likes to be left alone, even when he's in the bedroom, he likes to just have a little bit of space, which I do as well. But sometimes I also like to cuddle. So I'm cuddling him.

And he kind of pulls away and then I put my hand down and he rests his face on my hand, which means he's probably, he's quite close to my face, which is unusual. He doesn't want to get that close. Who would want to, you know, you see my face.

And I mean, when I'm doing my hair, when I brush my hair, I actually look at the mirror through binoculars. So I don't like to get too close to the mirror. Anyway, so so nice.

I was looking at him, beautiful little fairy face looking at me, his eyes are closed. And it's really, he's calm. His face is resting on my hand.

It's just calm. And I'm drifting off to sleep. And suddenly, he wakes me up, he just jumps up and like, looks at me.

Who are you? What do you want? Get off me. He's so childish, he's like a, he winds me up. So it really, you know, it just wakes me up.

And I'm just literally, so yeah. So I've got me shopping. And everything I need for the next week.

I paid off all my bills that I needed to pay off. I paid back the money that I borrowed to get me through to this week. And thankfully, I was able to pay for the website and the podcast.

Thank, thank, for, thankfully, or thank, thankfully, or thank you to, yeah, whatever, to the people that I've already mentioned, to help me to get those payments done. So thank you very much for everyone that helped, even though most people would be asleep by now. And yeah, so everything's done.

I've got seven pounds left in my bank. It's like seven pounds. So it feels good because everything's paid.

And then next week, I'll have a, so I wasn't going to pay my gas bill. I had my electric and gas, no, electric and gas bill that was overdue by a week. So I had to pay that.

But then I had the water bill, which I was not going to pay till next week, but I paid that today. I thought I'd get that gone. The shopping was about 100 pounds, 90 pounds or something.

So that's done. And then yeah, 40 pounds that I borrowed to get me through until this week, the food and stuff. I paid that back.

And then yeah, it's on now. There's something quite good about just having, not about having no money, because it's not always that great, but knowing that I've got everything I need for the next week. You know, I've got as many yogurts as I need to eat.

I had one yogurt a day. It's really good for my stomach. Helps to increase the stomach size, which is good.

I have, I treated myself to a few chocolate bars, but not many. A little packet of Twix's, a little packet of Frito Frog chocolates I haven't had for years. And also got a box of Mars Bar ice creams, Mars Bar ice cream things, which is four in there.

Box of Iceland, they're not Iceland. They might be Cornetto's, I don't know. But some ice cream Cornetto things, four in there.

I think they're just nutty ones. And a ton of ice cream. And I think I've got four sponge puddings.

So that might sound like a lot, but this is over the week. I'm not going to be eating all of it in one go. In fact, I might not even eat all of it over the next week.

Might last me a couple of weeks. It won't. It really won't.

But it sounds good. But it's there. It's just because, you know, it's sometimes nice just to have it there, to have it in the fridge, just to say, okay, you know what? If I want a little Twix, they're only not one finger.

They're not like double fingers. So, you know, it's not going to stretch me just to have one finger Twix. And I just, you know, it's a little snack.

It's a tiny little bit. It's not okay. It's not gonna nutritionally probably increase my health.

But yeah, you know, yeah. So I've got everything I need until next week. As long as no weird surprises come along, and some bill that I'd forgotten about, but I'm pretty sure I've got everything covered.

Pretty sure. And yeah, the next big payment that I've got to pay is next week for the catalogue. That's about a hundred pound.

And the week after, well, I don't know what the date is. But the first of every month, that's when I have loads of things go out. So I have the, or do I have television license, the council tax, the broadband internet, my phone, and the iPad.

All goes out on the first. So that's a big chunk of money just all kind of gone. And I think I'm trying to think what else there is.

I don't think there is anything else for the rest of the month. Well, this month, July, I mean, yeah, this month. You know, I'd much rather just have everything that I need, and then I can relax.

It's here. But I do have to go to the pharmacy to collect my medication. Medication.

Because they missed out one of my prescriptions. That's the one, the mood stabilizer. I mean, I thought that would have been quite an important one for them to actually include.

But they forgot. They forgot it. And I phoned up I think 30, 40 times.

Let me have a look. You probably think I'm just exaggerating. And I might be.

Let me have a look. Let me have a look. Doctors Monday, 46 times I called them on Monday.

See, last Thursday, I called them 17 times. Did it? Did it? See, previous time to that. No, I just accidentally called someone, but I hung up hopefully quick enough.

So, 46 times on Monday, eventually I got through to them and the lady was so friendly and just you know, sort of put it all together really quickly, I couldn't believe I had to phone that many times. That's a lot. That, yeah, that is a lot, isn't it? That's a lot of times to have to phone to actually get through.

So, yeah, I'll collect that prescription. Hopefully I won't have to have anything to do with a doctor's surgery for at least three or four months before I have to get another batch for my prescriptions. So, that would be nice.

So, that would be to near the end of the year. And I'm hoping that things will be back to kind of normal by then. Yeah.

So, that's it. That's the end of this recording. I didn't mess around too much in this recording, but there were some pretty, there were some good gems in here as well.

You might have missed them, but there was a couple of real good gems. I can't remember what they were, but I remember them being brilliant. They were fantastic.

Oh, yes. So, I'm going to go. I'm going to go.

Thank you very much, everybody, for everything. I'm sure I had another message that I'm going to read out even though no one's listening. Probably now, but let me have a look.

I'd like to say thank you to William for his kind message as well earlier. Yeah, there's a thing doing the rounds on Facebook. And I can't believe, so I posted a little video of Andre on Facebook, just running.

He's on his lead, but he's running just to show his legs. I posted it, was it Andre's legs seems pretty good now, which is what it was. It's like 15 seconds or something.

And I posted it kind of hours ago. It had 199 views. It's like Andre's so much more popular than me.

It's not fair. If I put a video of myself on there, I'd probably get about five views. Seriously.

I'm not jealous. I'm not jealous. Not at all.

Oh, I've got a lovely note. I just wanted to read out Ella's thing. I had something that someone shared.

Oh, yeah, this is interesting. Sarah Hitchcock says, this is underneath the episode number 452, Let Me Fall To Sleep. My Life Hasn't Always Been Glamorous.

She says, I have replied to this, but I've only just seen it again. Yet another alluring title, Shame I Always Fall Asleep So I Never Make It To The End. I Wake Up, Go Back To The Last Bit I Remember Then Fall Asleep Again.

I wrote, My Job Is Done, which is true. One message on, here we go. Sebastian, Uncle Sebastian, just a message.

Send me a message on Facebook that I can actually read out just once. And then I will read it out. How about that? Someone shared, let's see, wait a minute.

That's what I remember. Someone shared a video of mine. 14 others.

I can't find it. Someone shared, that's annoying. Well, it's not that annoying, but it's a little bit.

Anyway, someone shared a video. They shared one of my posts and said, this is, oh, that's it. That's it.

Wait a minute. I found it. Wait a minute.

I think it is. I think it might have been that. Anyway, I've lost it.

Someone said, well, I haven't lost it. And someone said, this is my friend walking his ferret, something like that. Anyway, that was nice.

I just like being called a friend. Didn't know anyone. I didn't realize I was anyone's friend.

That's nice. It's groovy. So I'm going to go.

And for those still listening, go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep. Thank you very much for listening. Remember to be kind to yourself.

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