#808 Let me bore you to sleep - CAME HOME EARLY- Jason Newland (17th MARCH 2022)

Hello and welcome to Jason Newland dot com. My name is Jason Newland and this is Let Me Bore You To Sleep. Hello.

Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. And this is me returning from my holiday. Yep.

I just want to say big hello to Molly. Thank you for your message. Yep, I'm okay.

So it's Thursday the 17th of March now 2022. I went to visit my dad and my stepmom. And basically just visited family.

And I booked a hotel for a week. And I got there and within about an hour I wanted to leave. I just realized because it's my family, it's my childhood home, the town.

I lived there between seven, age seven and 18. And didn't, didn't love the place, if I'm honest, didn't really like living there. It was okay when I was little.

But just wasn't really. I think once I got to be a teenager, I didn't like it. Yeah, I could probably say that was probably it.

Once I went to high school, I just, I didn't like being there, you know. But especially when I left school, it was just, you know, it was just nothing going on nothing to do. I'm not a pub person.

So enough in it when I was when I was young enough and there's one night club, and there was a bit rubbish. And that was it. Other than that, it was just pubs.

And it just wasn't my thing. You know, I wanted to, well, what I ended up doing when I left went to London, going to comedy clubs for the duration of my 20s. That's what I loved doing.

That's what I was a thing I was interested in. Couldn't do that in this little town. So but I didn't know at the time, you know, when I was young, didn't know that's what I wanted to do.

Or that's what would interest me. Anyway, I so I went there. I set off Monday, probably about midday time got to the town just before two o'clock about half one I think it was.

Couldn't couldn't sign into the hotel till two. Otherwise, it was a 20 pound charge. What's that about? 20 pound charge.

So 10 minutes early as 20 pound. No, you're right. So I went and had a big fried breakfast in a cafe place.

And then I went to the hotel and signed in and lay down for half an hour. And then I thought I'd better do something. So I went for a walk.

And what I did is I knocked on a couple of doors of people that well, they're not there anymore. One one had moved. And that was my goddaughter.

She wasn't living there anymore. And then I went up the road to her sister's house. And this is someone I've known since she was seven.

I used to babysit her when I was 17. And she was seven. So now she's 41.

And I've been in touch with her sporadically, admittedly, but been in touch with her pretty much the whole time. So I then walked, got a bit lost, actually got a bit lost in this park. And I where am I going? Anyway, I use my pigeon skills.

And I found my way back to where I wanted to be. You could say, well, yeah, we used to live there, you should know your way around. But this particular area was of the town is not one that I'm, okay, that's a lie.

I am familiar with it. But just haven't been there for a long time. So what I did is I found my way back.

And I went I thought, I'll do I'll go and see my dad just walk up there. wasn't that far away from where I was, went to the shop, the news agents around the corner from where he lives. And I got him a bottle of whiskey.

I got some chocolates from his stepmom. And I think a bottle of coke for me. That was it.

And I come out of the shop. And who's there across the road, my dad and my stepmom. But they don't see me.

Because they're not looking because they're not expecting me because they don't know I'm coming. You see, it was a nice little surprise or shock depending on what reaction they got. And they walked right across the road.

And I'm just standing there and they were right past me right in front of me and carry on walking up the road. So I walked behind him and shout out. Oh, yeah, shout my dad's name out.

I look behind him and Oh, it's you. It's my son. And they were a bit surprised, I think to see me.

Not sure if it was pleasantly surprised. But you know, it's the thing is, I suppose, in reality, we've all we've got plans, we're doing stuff, aren't we? And they had plans and things to do. So I probably I was probably a little bit inconvenient for me just to turn up.

But it's Yeah, it was it was all right. I think it worked out okay. And I went home with them.

And I think when he got his bottle of whiskey, he was he was not so well, no, I don't think they were upset that I turned up. But yeah, I've done it a few times over the years. And I was saying, let us know when you're coming down.

And I do try to these days. But sometimes it's nice to just just do things on the spur of the moment. Anyway, go around there, do that.

And then I get back. But dad had to go out. So he gives me a lift back to the hotel.

And I'm you don't know what to do, then I'm like, okay. So I went in and had something to eat. See, what I did do something that I never do.

And I haven't done for ages and ages and ages. I had alcohol. Can you believe it? So in the bar downstairs, and I have ends up drinking four pints of I can't remember the name of the thing.

But anyway, it was four pints of lager. And I had a burger and chips. The chips were nice.

Burger was quite hard to eat. I needed a knife and fork really. Because it was a bit too damp.

And because there was lots of salad and stuff like that on it. But it's nice, tasty, but I didn't eat all of it. And then I went upstairs and I was I think I called the reception because the reception notice said you can't have your breakfast unless you order the night before.

Which I find well, I understand the need because it wasn't busy there. So I guess they can't just if I guess if they had a full hotel, perhaps they could be more flexible on that one. But they needed to know who to cook for how many to cook for.

I don't generally like to plan what I'm going to eat the next day. I don't know how I'm going to feel. You know, I don't really live like that.

Like, I'm not a great planner. I can't tell you I'm going to have a breakfast tomorrow. I've got I haven't got much option.

I got two options like shreddies or one I could have toast. So I could have toast, I could have shreddies or I could have porridge. So it's you know, it's one of those, I don't like to plan really, just see how I feel.

So I did I say okay, it was 915 I phoned up the reception for my room and I said, is it too late to order breakfast? And they said no, it's fine. I said what time would you like it? And I said, eight o'clock. Yeah, eight o'clock will do.

So and then I go to bed. Because there's nothing to do. There's nothing to do.

And I was I was quite tired. I was probably was a bit drunk actually. Because it's the most alcohol that I've had in one go for years, actually years and years and years.

And I was a little bit drunk. So I went to bed, I got up about 10 times to go to the toilet for a wee wee. But another thing I noticed is, as soon as I arrived there, and the opposite to constipation occurred, I don't want to go into details, but I was just going to the toilet all the time.

I don't know if it was the sea air that just opened up everything. Because there was the sea, I was near the sea. In case you're wondering what I mean by sea air.

What else could it mean? No, it couldn't mean anything else, could it? No. They had sea air, but they're in the country. It's very weird.

So yeah, I, to be fair, every, if you're not from this country from if you're like in another country, when people say I live in the country, you know, they live near fields, and they live in the country. The fact is, we all live in the countryside, because no one's very far from fields. Because that's all, all this is, is motorways separating fields.

Like every motorway is just surrounded by fields. Every town, London, it's all surrounded by fields. It's, you know, it's, we're never far from the countryside.

You know, you might live somewhere where there's no farms. And you might live in a place where it's just farm, the whole kind of area is farming and country, like thick country for miles. But we're never far away from the countryside.

You know, the little town that I lived in, it's surrounded by countryside. It was in Suffolk. And the whole area is countryside, surrounded by where I live now.

At the end of the road, it's fields. All around fields, this is this is countryside where I live. So I live in the countryside.

Although you wouldn't think it if you sort of looked, if you walked out the house, you wouldn't think Oh, this is a, this is a city. It's not a city where I live. But it's a little village really.

But you'd think it's kind of a normal town. And, you know, you'd have to travel a distance to get to the countryside, but it's just at the end of the road. So never far from country here.

What's the point of that? Probably nothing. So yeah, I went I went to bed early. I woke up very early about six o'clock.

And I was just drinking coffee and waiting for the eight o'clock breakfast. And I had my breakfast, fried breakfast. So it's a second fried breakfast, third fried meal in two days.

So I went to then I went for a walk. I met up with the person who wasn't in because I contacted them. And we met up went around her house for a little while when she was on her way out.

So I got there a bit late. And then I went for a walk down the beach. All the way down from one end to the other pretty much stopped a few times just to sit there and look at the sea.

And I was very surprised that there wasn't much in the way of boats or ships. Because there's docks there. And usually there's more, I prefer there not to be ships.

I love the just the clearness, where you can just look into the distance and have nothing obstructing your views, nothing. So just it's endless almost. And I know you can do that pretty much just by looking up at the sky, but it's not the same as a different for me, it's just a different feeling, different feeling.

And it was quite nice. And there was sort of four people in the sea, all together in dressed as seals. So that was, you know, because it was so much it was very cold in the sea.

But it was a nice day. Nice day it was. And basically the Monday and the Tuesday and the Wednesday were all nice days.

Now today, Thursday, it wasn't, it was very cloudy and not cold, but not warm either. I know, Wednesday, sorry, Monday and Tuesday was nice. But Wednesday wasn't, Wednesday wasn't.

It's a different day now isn't it? I'm losing track. Wednesday was very overcast and a bit chilly and rainy. So I go for a long walk.

And then I, what do I do then? I head back to the hotel. And I'll, no, the first thing I do, I forgot this bit. On the Tuesday, the reason I was late was because I, I got some flowers for my Nan's grave because it was, it was her birthday on the Monday that I came down.

So I got some flowers and I put it on my, went to my Nan's grave, got a taxi there because it was carrying all this stuff. So, so I spent a bit of time at my Nan's grave. I haven't seen, I haven't visited it for a few years, but a couple, over two years because of the old Waltz in my thing, you know, the thingamajig that's been going on for a couple of years.

And I then wandered up. Then I wandered down the beach. So this was, this was the, yeah, this is the Tuesday.

Or was it the Monday? I can't remember. I can't remember if it was the Monday or the, I think it might have been the Monday. Anyway, either Monday or Tuesday, I took flowers to my Nan's grave.

I can't remember if it was the Monday or the Tuesday. I think it was the Tuesday. I went there.

Then I visited my friend. Then I went down the beach, walked all the way along the beach. Then I came home, back to the hotel, went to the toilet.

I don't know why I'm mentioning that. And then I might have laid down for a little bit. I got a message from, oh yeah, I got a message from my step-mom.

Do I want to go around for dinner? I said, yeah, okay. Be there about six. And then I got another message from my, the friend that I met up, that I went around her house earlier, but she had to go out about 20 minutes later.

She said, oh, I'm in town. This is about three o'clock. And she said, do you want to meet? And so I texted her, yeah, come to the hotel.

And she brought a kid with her. And we was in the hotel reception. I checked with the bar, the bar person.

Is it okay if I have friends? She's got a little kid. Is that okay? She said, it's fine. So I came in and just had a drink.

I had a pint of lager and they were just drinking. And I got a Coke and a, or some other drink. So that was my, that was my first drink of the day.

And the, the little girl was just being, and she's three years old. So she's, she was getting a bit bored and she was, she doesn't, because three-year-olds don't have control of the volume of their voice, do they? I mean, I forget this, but it's true. I go from talking quietly to shouting and a couple of people getting upset.

They're like, it's weird that people talk about someone and they think that they can't be heard, which I find a bit weird. Like they're sitting at a table just next to you, you know, less than maybe 10 foot away, maybe 12 foot away. Of course we can hear what you're saying.

And what I think the woman said, oh, she's had too many, too many E, E numbers or whatever. And she's being hyperactive, like she's just been a three-year-old child. And she's bored because she's got two adults talking to each other.

And she wants the attention and she wants to do something. You know, she's just, just a kid. And my friend, the mother of the little girl, handled it quite good because in the past she'd have just beaten them up.

I mean, there's no two ways about it. You know, 10 years ago, she would just be, she would have caused a big, big old scene. But she's not, she doesn't do that anymore.

She's very calm. And it was like, wow, it's, I was glad, obviously I didn't want that stuff happening. But she, you know, she wouldn't have had anyone be talking about, you know, about her daughter and stuff.

So it was, it was weird because so you can see angry people that would do it. So there's a woman, she didn't seem too bad actually, but the bloke, his stupid face he pulled. And so I looked over there and like, you know, it's hard to explain it, but real, stuck up, quite angry.

And maybe, you know, I mean, maybe he was angry. I mean, it's, it is a bit annoying to have a kid screaming. Although she wasn't screaming, but she was dancing around and, you know, that, as her mum said to me, she said, well, the days of children should be seen and not heard.

That's gone. And that's how we were brought up. You know, sit down, don't ever express any emotions, don't ever do anything.

You just have to just be, sit there quietly. That's not natural. Kids are not naturally like that.

So you're basically stunting them by doing that. I mean, you can't let them just run riot, but there's, there's a fine line, isn't there? I guess. I don't know what it is because I don't think I've ever seen it happen.

I don't think I've ever seen a child just sit there and not say anything or do anything. And that's, that was the way that I was brought up. Be seen and not heard.

But I don't think we took any notice of it either, to be fair. We were, me and my three, me and my two brothers, my older brothers, I think we just kind of did what we wanted to do and just accepted that we were going to get in trouble. It was part, it was a by-product of it.

It was worth it though. Um, so yeah, that was nice to see her. I hadn't seen her child before, so that's, I hadn't seen her for years.

So to see her new baby, well, new little girl, not new to her, obviously three years old. She's got another one on the way. And, and then I got a taxi back because she lives around the corner from where my dad lives.

So I got a taxi back to hers, dropped me off on the way and said goodbye to her and then had my, went to my dad's and had my dinner. Lovely dinner it was. Very nice.

And it's almost like a little roast dinner, but without a roast potatoes and stuff. It was very nice. And, and then I had another pint of lager with my dad.

And I had another pint of lager when I got back to the hotel. And, uh, this, uh, I mentioned lager and all the greasy food because I'm building up to something. Um, anyway, the highlight, I'm home now, by the way.

And basically I had another greasy fried breakfast on Wednesday morning, yesterday morning. And basically the two breakfasts I had, I had one on the Monday, that was at a cafe, and then two mornings in a row, I had breakfast cereal, a croissant, loads of coffee, starting from when I first woke up, waiting to go and then we did breakfast. And then during the breakfast, I was drinking coffee.

And then after the breakfast, I was drinking coffee and I had a big fried breakfast the two days. Now on the Wednesday, I had my breakfast. And then I lied down.

Didn't feel too good, I'll be honest. And I lied down and I woke up and I felt ill. I really, I was already having like, keep going to the toilet anyway.

But this, this was even worse. This was like, almost I just felt sick. And I had a pains in my chest and my stomach.

I wasn't sure because I do have what's it called reflux, acid reflux, and I've got tablets for them. But I don't take the tablets very often because I don't get it very often now. But the problem with not taking the tablets every day is when I do get it, it's absolutely awful.

Now, I'm still not sure if it was that or not. Because I took a tablet, didn't do anything. I felt sick, I felt really, really didn't feel well at all.

I went to the co-op, which is a supermarket, which is literally just across the road from the hotel. So I went in there. I waited for about an hour, I think before I went in there, I wanted to see whether or not the tablet would work.

And I wasn't sure if it was safe to leave the hotel because my stomach was, I thought I was going to be ill. And anyway, I went to the and got some Gaviscon. And then I sat down on a bench, which was just across the road from the hotel, like outside.

And I sat there, I drank like a big mouthful of Gaviscon. And I just waited, waited for the inevitable, inevitable massive burps. But they didn't come.

I had a couple of small burps, that was it. I thought I was gonna vomit in the in the street. I just didn't feel well at all, really.

I started to feel a bit dizzy. I was getting pains in my chest. I thought, oh, have I got a, should I phone for an ambulance? So what am I going to do? Because, you know, when I was in my 20s, I, you know, it's like, oh, it's just a bad stomach.

But now I'm like older, and I could be something else, just like, oh. And because the Gaviscon hadn't worked, not properly, I just didn't know what to do. And then I went back to the hotel.

I sat there for about half an hour, 40 minutes. And I went back to the hotel, and again, just waited. I cancelled all my stuff.

I phoned, because I was supposed to be seeing my dad for lunch, I think. And I was supposed to be going to see my brother at two o'clock. And, but I just couldn't, couldn't go.

I didn't want to leave the toilet. I didn't want to, I want to make sure, do you want to leave the toilet? I was so close to the toilet, I didn't want to leave her. No, I just wanted to make sure I was close in case I needed it.

And I did need it, actually. But, so it's weird, I just wasn't able to get rid of that gas, which I don't, that's what I tried to figure it was, what it was, it was gas, I needed to get rid of the gas, man. So I lied down, because it had been a couple of hours since I'd eaten.

So I knew I was, you know, I mean, that might have been part of the cause of the, of the feeling, because I lied down too soon after eating a big breakfast. So I laid down and for about two hours, I sent texts to people saying, I'm not coming out today. I'm not coming out to play today, because my stomach.

And then I woke up at about three o'clock. So I lied down, listened to the radio on a TV radio station, and clutching my stomach basically. When I woke up, I did feel better than I had.

I still didn't feel right, I still didn't feel good. And it was, it was affecting my mental. It's affecting me, not just physically, but mentally.

And I think maybe it was more to do. Just wanted to, I didn't want to be there anymore, I don't think. I don't know, not quite sure.

I haven't really given it a lot of thought yet. But anyway, I decided I'm going, I'm coming home. Because if I was going to be ill, I'd rather be ill here.

I'd rather be in my own bed. And just, you know, have that comfort of being that safety, I guess of being in my own, my own home. So that's what I did.

I basically I phoned my family, let them know that I'm going home. I'm not feeling well, rather be at home. And I spoke to the reception and said, look, I need to, I've got an emergency.

So I need to leave. I didn't want to go into details of feeling ill, just in case they thought, COVID, COVID, you know, it wasn't, it's just a bad stomach. But I didn't want them to worry.

And so I thought, okay, I'm just gonna, I've got an emergency, I need to go. And they said, well, I said, it is a cancellation, because I paid ahead. So I'd already paid when I arrived for the full week.

And they said, well, you'll have to pay for tonight. Books, we need notice, but we'll see if we can get you a refund for Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. And you'll have to come back and we'll let you know what we've sorted out.

I said, okay, well, I'll go and pack my stuff up and I'll come and see you as I'm leaving. The bloke was very nice, very friendly, and helpful. And so I packed my stuff up, came downstairs, the train, again, train station just across the road.

Everything's quite close to where I was. The only thing that it wasn't close to was the beach and my dad's. But as far as amenities go, the hotel is perfect, right in the town centre.

Train station across the road, big co-op supermarket across the road. And then just up the road, all the shops, the whole town centre. It's not much there, but it's still, you know, all the shops you need, you could have to visit and stuff.

So that was handy. So I just walked across the road, about quarter past five to get the half past five train. I had an open ticket as well, so I could travel back anytime.

So I just used that, got on the train. Yeah, they've got a whole new train system now. Before, for years, I've had these old fashioned trains that I quite liked.

Now it's all new and updated. So I don't know why, but it's nice, but it's just weird. It's really kind of up to date.

So, you know, we get all the way, I basically get to where I'm going and I get home, I get a taxi from the train station and I think I'm home by I'm home by seven. Pretty sure I was home by seven. And yeah, I think I was.

And then I get home, right, and I realised that my keys are right at the bottom of my bag. So I have to start unpacking my bag outside my front door. And then I get in to the flat and it's cold because I turned the heating down below 15 on the thermostat.

So I guess the heating hasn't come on. And all the windows were open on the latch, so they were locked, but they were all open. So I wanted to air out the place while I was gone.

I turned off all the plugs and everything like that. So I turned on everything, back on everything and turned the heating up. Well, turned the heating on really, but there was a weird smell in here.

Now, I was thinking, is that how the place smells normally? I'm just not aware of it, because every house has got its own sort of smell, isn't it? But then I'm thinking, well, no, wait a minute. I went to, it's not the first time I've been away. I've only been away for two days.

I haven't been away for a week or two weeks. When I went to, where the hell I went to in the end of May last year, Cornwall, I came back, there was no weird smell in there. So I don't know what it was.

And it lingered all the way through the night to the point where I had to open up. I had the heating on and I couldn't open the windows wide because it was too cold. And the heating took probably about six hours to heat the place up.

With the windows open already, without them being open wide. Eventually, the heat kind of, and it's okay now, the heat managed to heat the place up. It took ages, hours and hours.

So very surprised at that. But that smell was almost fumey. And it was unpleasant.

So it wasn't me either. Thanks, unless you're thinking that. It just wasn't me.

It wasn't. I like my smell. I've never had this.

Okay, I don't like all the smells I produce, but definitely that wasn't me. It was you. It wasn't me.

And then I was in the bedroom. I went to bed fairly early because I just had enough. And I couldn't get comfortable.

I kept, I had these weird things sometimes when I go to bed at night where I almost stop breathing. And I know I've got sleep apnea and that, but this is when I'm on my side. I shouldn't happen when I'm on my side.

When I'm on my back, yeah. But on my side, it doesn't happen during the day. It only happens at night.

If I sleep, if I went to sleep now, it's because this is early morning, I'm making this recording. If I went to sleep, anytime during the day, I fall asleep easy. For some reason at night, I go, it's almost like there's something is making me go a bit weird.

And I just couldn't get to sleep. I didn't give up. Then what I did, I opened the windows wide, both in the living room and in the kitchen, the bedroom, because it was now it's warm enough to do that.

And the air started to clear and I started to feel better. So I don't know what that smell was or where it was coming from, but it didn't smell nice. It didn't almost had a bit of an effect on me.

It's almost like stale kind of pungent. I don't think it was coming from this flat. It was coming from somewhere else because there's nothing in here.

There's no stale food. There's, you know, I cleaned up before I left. There was nothing left out.

There's no bin. I emptied all the bins. There's no, no rubbish.

There was nothing in here at all that would could cause that kind of smell. I mean, the carpet, I guess could do with probably replacing really, unless it's that, but I don't normally smell it. I do get the weird, some weird smell sometimes, which is why I had my windows open most of the time, but that was really strong.

So now, I'm thinking, well, where's it coming from? Because this isn't an ideal situation to have the windows open all the time. Firstly, when I'm making a podcast, I don't really want the windows open. And when it's really cold or really windy, I don't want the windows open either.

Not wide open. You know, having them open on the latch a little bit should be enough, but it wasn't. Anyway, so that's where I am now.

I'm back here now making this podcast, but something very strange happened on the Tuesday night when I went around my dad's for dinner, or for an evening meal. We went into the living room, sat down, and they said, Oh, here's your present from your, here's your 50th birthday present. Because I haven't seen him for over two years.

And I turned 50 and 51 during that time. I said, Whoa, they said, Yeah, it's your 50th birthday present. Because we haven't seen you, we couldn't give it to you.

So I opened it up, it was all wrapped up in wrapping paper and stuff. And it was a photo album full of photographs of me and family members and stuff. From birth onwards, starts with a picture of me as a baby.

I didn't even know there were any pictures of me as a baby. Pictures of me as a little boy. Like seven years old.

Onwards, as well. Pictures of me with my brothers, picture, there's a picture of me. In fact, what I might do is maybe in my next podcast, I'll actually go through the photo album.

I know it's a bit weird, you can't see the pictures, but I can, I can describe the pictures to you. And there's a picture of me with my dressed up in my karate kit. My gi with my yellow, my yellow belt, so my first belt, and I'm holding my nunchucks.

There's one with me in my sea cadet uniform next to my brother who had his, what was it? Air cadet. Yeah, he was in the air cadets. So he had his uniform on.

We're both standing there together. When the picture was taken in front of the veranda doors or whatever outside the living room. But outside.

So that was very weird. I mean, I haven't seen those pictures before, I don't think. And other pictures.

There's pictures of me right where I had long hair. But it didn't look great. And like it grew long.

And I did ponytail but the sides were still like, they hadn't grown long enough. Eventually the whole of the hair grew long enough to go into a ponytail. So it was all pulled back.

But you don't know he didn't have any pictures of me like that. He had pictures of me where my hair was long, but really, really thick and curly. I was basically a walking microphone made of pubes.

It was just ridiculous. It took a long time to grow my hair long. Well over a year, probably a year and a half, two years for it to be long enough to have it all into a ponytail.

And then what other ones? There's just pictures of me because in the 70s, we all had 70s hairstyles, which basically was just, you could reproduce it by just not cutting your hair for maybe a year and a half, a year and just maybe brushing it to one side. Honestly, that's kind of the 70s hairstyle. Very long, very curly.

If you have curly hair, very unkempt. So yeah, that was weird seeing pictures of myself like that. Very, very strange.

Very, very strange. But it was nice though. It was, it was quite emotional actually.

And I ended up talking to my dad about some stuff from the past and he opened up and I opened up a bit and we hugged and you know, it was quite emotional actually. And it's been through a hell of a lot, my dad has. He's had to deal with a lot of stuff and it's, I don't always, I don't always appreciate what he's done.

You know, because ultimately, you know, I said it to him. I said, you rescued us regardless of what happened afterwards or whatever. You rescued us from the children's home.

You rescued us from the nuns. And I thought he was going to start crying. He was very emotional.

But that's true. He did it. He rescued us.

He looked for us. He looked for us for years because we were taken away when I was about two and a half by my mom. So between two and a half and just before I was seven, he didn't know where we were.

And we didn't have the internet back then. Didn't have easy ways. You know, if you travelled up to, I was, I lived in Newcastle.

You travel from London to Newcastle, you can pretty much disappear. You know, you could disappear forever in Newcastle back then. Because, you know, where would you look? See now, you know, with the internet, with Facebook, it's quite easy.

Well, it's not, not always easy, but it's easier, easier to locate people or find out roughly where they are. If you really do the research, if you're willing to put in the hours, I imagine most people have findable, at least roughly where they where they are. And, you know, with the social services, they weren't, I guess they weren't as organised as they are now.

Back then. But, yeah, he found us. And I think that's why they found us.

And we, we were moved, we lived in Southend, Children's Home. And he used to start visiting us. And eventually, you know, after a few months, we started to visit, you know, go home with him, with him and his new wife, and stay for the weekend and then come back on a Sunday.

He'd pick us up on a Friday evening and bring us back on a Sunday evening. I remember there was one weekend where they couldn't come. Because I can't remember, I'm pretty sure his his wife had, I don't know, mumps or something like that.

Or glandular fever, or it was something I can't remember. A long time ago. And so she was too so we didn't go there.

But my auntie picked us up and took her back to her home. So we stayed there for the weekend. Which is really good because she took us out to the sightseeing places and Manitou swords and Buckingham Palace and I'm trying to think what else we went to Tower of London, probably, maybe the zoo, Trafalgar Square, different places.

That was really nice. I remember her boyfriend had a massive beard, really big beard. Yeah, I remember that.

I said to my dad, I remember Sunday evenings, we used to watch Rent-A-Ghost on telly. And it'd be on as we were getting ready to go. As we were getting ready to leave, to go back to the south end to take us back to the old the nuns, the nuns.

So yeah, it was weird. It wasn't weird, it was just, it was what it was. It's weird now, but it was, I guess, trying to think what else.

That's pretty much it really. So we had like a bit of a, I mean, it wasn't a, it was a deep conversation. We didn't last a long time.

It was just quite nice to talk a little bit. Looking at the photographs, I mean, it's one of the first photographs was me. And I just look so damn tiny.

So tiny. I was absolutely tiny. And, yeah, weird, very strange, but it's nice.

I haven't looked through them since. I looked through them on Tuesday night. I will look through them again.

And what I'll do is, when I do, um, maybe the next podcast, I'll go through the photograph album and just sort of tell you what's on there. Just, you know, there's some pictures of my Nan. There's even a picture of Misty, our dog, when she was a puppy.

She looks so cute. She was cute, but she was too big. It was a, it was a major error to buy or to get a dog that size.

It was just, it was, it wasn't a good idea. She was so much fun when she was a puppy, but all dogs are fun. When they're puppies, they're just brilliant.

Um, but they need to be looked after. They need to be taken for walks, you know, for the rest of their lives. And she just didn't have that.

His, you know, the family was just not really together in a sense. And both the older brothers were pretty much getting to the point of leaving school or had left school. The dog was too big for me.

I couldn't take it for walks. He'd just be pulling me around. Yeah, so that's about it, really.

I'm trying to think what else. So I got back. I'm feeling better today, which is nice.

Stomach's still, still a little bit iffy, but I'm feeling okay. I'm feeling okay. I took my tablet this morning for my acid reflux.

I did that about a half hour before I ate. And just gonna relax today, relax, maybe make another podcast, maybe another two podcasts, hypnosis ones. But other than that, I don't have much in the way of plans.

I suppose I could go out, but I think today I'll stay in and just relax. Because I do feel better than I did. And last night, I didn't feel very well at all when I was in bed.

But I do feel considerably more groovy today. I could so easily go back to bed. So that's pretty much it for me.

I'm gonna go and I guess just say thank you for listening. So remember to be kind to yourself. Be gentle.

And I will be back again tomorrow with another let me bore you to sleep. So take care. Lots of love.

Bye.