#974 Ive lost one stone Let me bore you to sleep (Jason Newland) (17th February 2023)

Hello and welcome to Let Me Bore You To Sleep. My name is Jason Newland and please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. Now, let's read out a quick message that I had today.

Was it today? I think it was today. Let's have a look. No, wait a minute.

I got a message. Where's the message gone? It's gone. That's weird.

How's it gone? Unless it was... I had a message. Oh, it was on Facebook. It was on Facebook from Hillary.

Little worried about you. You haven't posted a new podcast in a while. Hope you're okay.

Hi, Hillary. And yeah, I think it's it's Friday now. Friday the 17th of February 2023.

I think the last podcast I did was on the Thursday. Last Thursday. Let's have a look.

The 9th, whenever that was, the 9th of February. So yes, just over a week ago. And it's quite unusual, actually, isn't it? I don't... Yeah, it's Thursday.

So it's eight days. It's unusual for me to not make any podcasts for that long. There are times when I don't.

But yeah, recently, I've been a bit more regular, I think you could say. So apologies to everyone. If you've been waiting for a new recording, you're probably getting bored listening to the old ones.

Although that is the point of it is to get bored. But you know, I mean, it's, it's nice to hear new boring stuff, I guess. And I was making them pretty regularly.

Regularly. Seven, six. Oh, but yeah, I do sometimes go a few days without.

So yeah, it's so February the 4th was it? February the 1st, 2nd. And yeah, no, I didn't do anyone didn't do no one till the 6th. So that's what four or five days, isn't it? Yeah.

So it's, there's a few reasons why I haven't made any podcasts. It's not just to let me bore you to sleep ones. It's also haven't made any whispers, whisper hypnosis.

Not made any relax and sleep hypnosis daily. No boring objects, sleepy boring objects or nothing. And there's reason there is a reason a couple of reasons, but I can't really go into it.

It's it's not that it's, it's not secret so much, but I'll be honest, it's not pleasant. And it's not. It's not relaxing.

It's you know, it's, if it's not funny or relaxing, I try not to talk about it. I mean, generally, I have spoken about stuff that's gone on in my life, but all I say is I was worried about something that was going on in my local area. I was worried about my friend and I had a bit of a health scare as well.

A couple of days ago. So it's basically high blood pressure. I had hypertension.

The that's what the ambulances thought. The paramedics thought it was hypertension. And I've got to see a doctor and everything.

But you know, I don't I'm not going to go into the details because it's not particularly pleasant, if you know what I mean. And I'm okay. Obviously, I'm making a recording.

I'm okay. And the other stuff kind of seems to have sorted itself out as well. As far as the my friend and all the stuff going on there.

And he was ill last week. And you know, there's lots of bits and bobs happened. So yeah, none of it's like, it's kind of interesting.

In a way, I think it'd be quite interesting recording. If I did talk about all the stuff that happened. But it's not really my business to talk about if that makes sense.

I'm on the peripheral. I'm the one I'm the person upstairs, the neighbor that's worrying about everyone. And not directly involved.

Yeah, people come to me and tell me all about it and ask my advice. And so you know, they kind of, when someone did say to me, one person said, it's got nothing to do with you. I said, in that case, don't bring it to my door.

Don't bring this stuff to me if it's got nothing to do with me. And he said, yeah, that's a good point. So hopefully that's sorted out.

The health thing is ongoing. I think it's hopefully to do with high blood pressure. And I'm seeing the nurse next week.

I've got two doctors appointments next week. And I'm going to, I don't know if they're going to put me on medication to lower my blood pressure. I have been making some changes since the scare.

And so I'm not drinking coke anymore. I'm really cutting down on my sugar intake. I'm having tea.

So I'm only having like a quarter of a spoonful of sugar in my tea, like the little spoonfuls. But I am having four times the amount of tea. So it probably doesn't work out beneficial.

But drinking more water, although I do drink water regularly anyway. And I have just one cup of coffee a day in the morning. I'm exercising and walking the dog every day, walking, I shouldn't call him the dog, Vinnie, my little boy Vinnie, I take him for long walks.

And I haven't been able to do much in the way of exercise because of my fractured back. I've used it as a bit of an excuse not to do much the last couple of weeks, because it's been okay. It's pretty much, I think it's fully healed now.

I've not tested it. I'm not giving my back a test run yet. So I've not really lifted any weights or tried to do any push ups or anything like that.

And I'm not not, yeah, I'm not lifted anything heavy. But it feels okay, you know, it's, it doesn't hurt when I get in and out of bed anymore, like it did and I can get up and out of a chair without it hurting. And just, you know, it was a mock, it was agony to start with once, you know, because I fell down the stairs and that before Christmas.

It's fractured in two places in the vertebrae, two or three places. But as time went past, it got, you know, became less and less. And it was, you know, it got, it became more just of an irritant, a bit like me, just a constant irritant.

And now it's, yeah, I don't think it's there anymore. My back is still there. But I don't think the injury, I think it's healed.

So I'm going to start doing some more exercises, other than just walking around with Vinnie. However, and this is weird, it's not weird, not really, but I didn't have anyone to talk to, really. And I wanted to, on the actual event, this is a couple of nights ago, I knocked on my neighbor's door, and he, he was fast asleep, he didn't hear me.

And usually he's awake, and he hears me, and he's, you know, he's really good. So this is just one of those occasions where no one was available. So I was sitting on the stairs, on the cold stairs out the communal stairs, and the paramedics or the person on the phone said, you need to go back upstairs.

Yeah, are you on your own? I said, I'm on my own. So you need to go back upstairs and sort of be, be indoors in the warm. And I said, I don't, I don't want to be on my own.

And she said, but you're on your own now. I said, I'm not, there's people behind those doors. I just can't get to them.

You know, I don't want to disturb one, because I'm not really close to that person. But the other person didn't, wouldn't wake up. But if I really needed to, I would, I'd make a hell of a din, you know, I'd really, I'd wake up the whole street if needed.

And she couldn't kind of understand it. And she said, what did she say? Was it? Oh, she said, where are you sitting? I said, I'm on the stairs. And she said, why are you scared? I said, no, I didn't say that.

I said, I'm on the stairs. But I am scared. What do you mean, why am I scared? Anyway, I was at the top of the list for them, for an ambulance to come.

And I was in the top category. So I'm not going to list out the reasons or, you know, the, the, we all know that, you know, what the top category would be for. And also, because of my age and that, which is weird, I've never really thought of myself as old before.

And they said it'd be about, it could be up to two and a half hours. And I said, really? He said, yeah. I said, wow.

And I stopped being worried about myself. Well, I was worried about myself. But I was also thinking about all those other people that needed it more than me.

Because I didn't know if I needed an ambulance. And I just thought, wow. I mean, it was, I kind of did need an ambulance, but I didn't, you know, but I thought, okay.

So I just said thanks and bye. I thought, wow. And I called for a taxi.

And the taxi, yeah, they answered and they sent me a taxi. Now, about four minutes after I'd phoned for a taxi, the ambulance turned up outside my house. So I cancelled the taxi.

I just couldn't believe it got there so quick, because I really thought I was going to be waiting for hours and I was going to call a taxi. And as soon as the taxi got there, I'd cancelled the ambulance. Because I figured, you know, I wouldn't.

And even if the taxi got there at the same time as the ambulance, I'd just pay the taxi. You just like that. There you go.

But it was there so quickly. And I still think I really need to call up the, because I cancelled the taxi. And the lady was like, that's all right.

First of all, she laughed when I told her there was a two and a half hour wait for the ambulance. And I said, I'm not joking. This isn't funny.

But she found it amusing for some reason. And I feel like maybe I need to call her up and say, did the taxi driver actually, were they on their way to me? Because if they were, I really do need to pay them. You know, because they came to, they were on their way to pick me up.

And then it got cancelled. And that's not really fair on them. Because they might have been half the way here, because it's not a long way in a car via the motorway.

But it is a good two and a half hours walk. But in a car is like 10 minutes, if that. Especially late at night, because this was 3.30 in the morning.

So they can pretty much go very fast. But anyway, and ambulance got here and everything, they did what they need to do. And they checked everything, you know, like they do.

And they were, they weren't sure whether or not to take me into hospital. They said I had a possible couple of strains in my heart, in the right side of my heart, but they weren't sure if that was just already there before or, you know, recent or if it was relevant to anything. Blood pressure was high, but not, not dangerously high.

It was just very high. And they basically phoned up their GP, it's a general practitioner, the NHS one, to get advice about whether or not I needed to come in. Because they've done all the CCT scan or whatever it is, you know, heart scan.

And I was in there from probably quarter to four to just gone six. I was in the back of the ambulance. It was outside my house.

And the GP didn't get back to them. So we were waiting for about half an hour. And in the end, they said, well, we're going to send a letter to your GP, to your doctor surgery.

So they'll get it first thing in the morning. And they sent it at 5.56 in the morning. And then they gave me a form.

And like they said, are you okay to go? We can still take you to the hospital. It's up to you. Or do you feel you'll be all right? And call the doctors at eight o'clock.

I said, yeah, I'll do that. And they were brilliant. They were, I'd said you are heroes.

And not even in a like, the word hero is chucked around quite a lot, I think these days, without meaning. You can mean it, but in the moment, I meant it like they, they were so good. overworked, you know, so so amazing, and really helped to calm me down because I was going into anxiety and stuff.

I didn't know what was panic attack or what was real if you know, I mean, it's very strange. Anyway, I said I wasn't gonna talk about this, but I ended up talking about it. I'm sorry about that.

Oh, I'll talk about other things in a minute. So anyway, that was that. So I didn't go back to bed.

I just sat in my chair with Vinnie and we just sat there for a couple of hours just listening to some music and I did fall asleep, which was good. I called the hospital, I called the doctor surgery. And they had no record of me, of me being seen by an ambulance.

And I said that they did send it to you about six o'clock. And they said, No, it's not here. You're gonna have to chase it up yourself.

You're gonna have to phone up the hospital. So I phoned up the hospital. I mean, this is a big old place with lots of different departments.

I didn't know where I was supposed to go who to speak to or anything. And I kept getting put through to the answer machine and put on wait and there was no one to talk to. And then I thought, Wait a minute, I'll have a look at that.

The the written information they gave me that had my heart scan on it. And there was a telephone number on there a patient advice line. Okay, I'll try that.

And I did. And I tried it a few times before I actually got through to anyone. And they said, Yeah, we sent it at 5.57 this morning.

You have to just call up the doctor surgery again. It's definitely been sent by email. Get them to check this spam folder.

I was like, Whoa, spam folder. So I called them up again. And the person at the reception at the doctor's surgery said, Yeah, yeah.

So they said it wasn't no response. Okay. And, and this was literally an hour after I just spoke to him.

Because that's how long it took me to find find out the information. And the lady on the reception of the doctor surgery said to me, because they had one appointment at 430, which was an emergency appointment. And they couldn't offer that to me unless they had evidence that I had seen an ambulance.

Now they had the evidence, she still wouldn't give me the slot without a doctor's approval. So she said, we'll call you back once with the doctors, we spoke to a doctor. This is about 10 o'clock, half 10, I think in the morning by now.

I sat by the phone all day. Or I had the phone with me, and I took it into the bathroom with me. I didn't have a bath, I just thought I'd just like to look in the mirror sometimes.

Pretend to be Wonder Woman, twirling around and that. But didn't call back. So this was yesterday.

And today, they've made an appointment for me for next week. So I've really not sure as I got two appointments next week. I'll go to the first one.

I mean, I must know why it must be for this. I knew I needed blood tests to see about the high blood pressure and they were going to test me and see how I was getting on and everything. So that was, I didn't realise it was kind of serious.

I didn't, I just didn't, didn't realise that it could actually cause me problems. To me, it was like, oh, I've had high cholesterol before. That didn't really do anything that I just got it down.

I've had high blood pressure before. That was never really an issue. You know, so I'd lose weight or get exercise and I did and it's all been fine.

But this time, because they told me, I think it was last month, January, they actually said, yeah, you had a medical in February last year and your blood pressure was very, very high. So you waited a year to tell me. I was like, okay, thanks.

And since I've had Vinnie, I've lost weight because I've been walking for at least four times a day. I'm walking for miles every day. And the first thing I do when I wake up, apart from going to the toilet, look in the mirror for a little while, twirling around like Wonder Woman, you know, it's just a general, it's a routine.

Don't judge me. It's a routine. And I take him out.

And I think that gets my metabolism started by actually doing something. It's not strenuous, but it's physical. It's walking, it's breathing in the air and, you know, being outside and that.

Breathing in the air, I'm breathing in the air all the time. It's kind of compulsory, isn't it? I thought I'd lost as half a stone. Well, I weighed myself yesterday.

I've actually lost a stone. I lost one whole stone. So I was 16 stone before Christmas.

Now I'm 15 stone. Now I was saying to my friend last week, don't you think I look slimmer? I know I've got, I've still got a way to go. You know, I've not got a flat stomach.

But it's only really my belly. The rest of me is, say, the rest of me is firm. Not every part of me is firm right now, but, you know, but my stomach, I feel like it's slimmer.

And it must be. A stone is at 14 pounds. And, you know, it's quite a bit of weight.

So I've lost, I've reduced my weight without really doing anything. And I have, I do drink less Coke than I did before. I rarely drink more than one or two cans a day.

I've now stopped completely on that one. What else? I don't eat as much chocolate as I did before. Yeah, I think I'm kind of just eating probably less.

That's why I was quite so surprised that my blood pressure was so high, especially as I've actually lost a stone. So I will start doing some more exercise. And as I said, I've stopped drinking Coke now.

I'm not gonna eat any more chocolate. I'm not eating biscuits or any of that. It's not like I'm all day eating biscuits and chocolate and just pouring it down my throat.

And I'm not blending up every single unhealthy thing I can get and just blending it and like into a smoothie and just constantly all day long just sucking on it. It's on a Saturday evening, maybe not every day. So I'm hoping that perhaps I can, and I don't want to lose weight really quickly because I don't want to end up with like big stretch marks or loose skin or anything.

And which could happen, I guess. I'm not sure. I've never had that, but I have lost weight before.

In 2004, I went down to 11 and a half stone from about 13 stone. So 11, 12, 13, maybe 13 and a half. So anyway, I lost, it was a lot of weight at the time.

And I was, my stomach was flat. You know, I was exercising, I was doing Wing Chun Kung Fu, I was doing weights, I was doing press-ups, sit-ups and all that stuff. I was physically active.

And I was a vegetarian as well. So I find when, I'm a vegetarian now as well. When I, I find vegetarian food is, well, okay, I'll word it in a different way.

When I eat vegetarian food or vegetarian diet, I'm never constipated. That's, that's, that's one way of putting it. It kind of keeps things moving.

The traffic keeps, there's no, there's no traffic jams, as it were. There's a smooth, slippery slide. Yeah, it's a, it's a grease, it's a greasy pole.

That's not a good description. Anyway, so I'm thinking by the summer, the summer, because it's now February, March, April, May, June. By the summer, I could, I could easily be down to 14 stone, maybe even 13 stone.

Now, my worry is I don't want to get little. I don't want to, I don't want to get, I don't think my body could take being 11 and a half stone again, because I got too much muscle. And I might sound like arrogance, like I'm showing off.

I'm just not. I just am. I got more muscle than I had when I was, you know, in 2004.

I just have. I got more fat as well. So I don't, I think it's just age.

I just got bigger as I got older. And because I've been doing weights and boxing training and stuff like that, I've just sort of grown into my frame, kind of. It sounds like complete nonsense, doesn't it? Compared to what, Jason, what all the other podcasts.

OK, fair enough. Oh, this is number 974. Blimey.

974. But if I keep going like this, I might not even reach 1000 by the end of the year. Because if I keep having a week off and it'd be nicer, I'd like to reach that 1000.

I'd like to, I'd like to do something to mark the occasion, but I don't really know what. Maybe I'll just do a special recording. Maybe.

Maybe I'll get Sebastian to come and talk with me. That would be a, that'd be special. I don't know.

Maybe, maybe. Sebastian, where are you? Sebastian. He's quite well known, Sebastian.

He's, he's known. People kind of know who he is or they've heard of him now. So I've mentioned him quite a few times over the years.

I even did a podcast with him, one episode. So I can't remember what it was. If I put in Sebastian, Sebastian.

Conversation with Sebastian, 18th of April 2022. What? According to this, there's two. That's number 823.

But in 19, 19. On the 6th of March 2019. I've got a, with his number 107 live with guest Sebastian.

Both of those recordings were an hour and 50 minutes. One's an hour and 51 minutes, 36 seconds. So they're not the same recording.

Because that would be weird, wouldn't it? But there's literally what 19, 20, 23 years between them. Unless the, unless the 823, the conversation with Sebastian was just me talking about Sebastian. I don't know.

Maybe I've done two recordings with him. Two podcast episodes. Wow, I don't remember.

I kind of vaguely remember doing one with him. But I don't, don't really remember. I mean, I've done too many of these things to particularly remember a specific thing.

I know we did one, but I don't remember doing two. And yeah, I'm sure I would have had to put adults only with him because he does have a tendency of coming, coming out with stuff that's sometimes slightly rude, slightly, slightly rude, just a bit rude, a little bit. But that's strange.

I didn't know that. So according to that, I've done two recordings with him. I'm sure he'll want to upload this onto YouTube in the next few days or whatever.

If he listens to it, he'll probably point out to me that yeah, we did and how dare I not remember it. But I can't remember everything. Can I? It's not fair to expect me to remember everything.

I tell you what has been good though. Please don't let me mention the stats. Please don't.

No, no, don't mention the stats. What has been good is the stats. Now they've been way down since I haven't made any new recordings.

However, they're not gone down as low as I thought they would. So, you know, when I make three recordings in a day, let me boy to sleep. What's your whisper sleep, whisper hypnosis.

If I do two recordings a day, I generally get about between 18 and 20,000 a day downloads. If I do three, it might go up to 25. So I haven't done a recording since the what did we say the eighth.

So look, look at my diary. The ninth. So I did it last time I did a recording was a knife.

And I got 24,106 downloads the next day. But I didn't actually make any new recordings. I didn't make anything on Friday night for Saturday or whatever.

So nothing on Saturday. I didn't make any on Friday at all. But the ones I did on Thursday were released sort of during the early hours of Friday morning.

So Saturday, nothing new. I got just under 18,000. And then Sunday, nothing do again.

I'm gonna say the word nothing new. That's not a word is it's a sentence. Nothing new for every day.

So Sunday at 11,296. Monday, just over 10,000. Tuesday, just under 10,000 9938.

Wednesday, 10,134. Wednesday, was that Tuesday, Monday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. No, because it's Friday today.

So the ninth is a Thursday, isn't it? Not Friday. So Thursday, on the Friday, nothing new. Got 11,000.

So Saturday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, okay. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, no. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Friday, Thursday, Wednesday, Tuesday.

So Tuesday, I got 10,134. Wednesday, 12,000. Thursday, 10,000.

And today, just under 9,000 so far. And it's three o'clock in the afternoon. So I was quite pleased that even when I'm not making new recordings, people are still listening.

Thank you. Thank you very much. For those that still listen to my podcasts, even when I'm I don't know, out of action, unwell, it was a bit of both, to be fair.

It was yeah, my stress level was probably the highest I've been for a long time this week, which would explain why I had the hypertension episode. And I'm determined that's not going to happen again. I'm really going to focus on being calmer, keeping away people if they're if it's stressing me out, just, you know, keep away from that, for my own health.

And normally, I don't put myself first. And I realised I have to in this situation, because it could, well, it could be not good, as it were. And I tried this, I did say that to my friends.

You know, I do try and be there for people. But there are thousands of people around the world that I don't know if the word rely or depend or need or benefit, I don't know whatever the word is. But there's thousands of people that listen to my recordings, you know, in a month.

Well, I don't know how many people I know how many downloads, but I don't know how many people. So the last 30 days is 527,000 downloads. But it might only be, I don't know, 10,000 people.

How many would they have to listen to 527? It'd be no 52. Yes, it might be about 10 fat no 1000 people listening to 527 recordings during the last month, 10,000 people listening to 52 recordings, or 100,000 people listening to just under six recordings in the last month. So it's anywhere between isn't it really so 10,000 people listening to 52 recordings that is possible in a month, I guess, isn't it 30 days in a month.

So, so let's say I did work it out once, I think it was about 4040 to 50,000 people listen to me regularly, not maybe every day, but you know, throughout, you know, maybe a couple of times a week, maybe a couple of times a month. So there's, it's hard to know, I'll be honest with you, it's quite hard. Because it doesn't, I can't do it over the year.

I do over last month, no, I can't even do it over last month. Last 30 days, sources, nope. It doesn't give me it gives me individual podcasts.

So I can look at the stats for the individual podcasts. So let's we look at listeners. So if I do last 12 months, listeners for a 1012 is it's hard, it's weird to try and work it out.

To see how many because we've got a downloads, they say 80,000. So this doesn't make sense to me. Okay.

This is January. So I had 80,831 downloads for my deep sleep whisper podcast, a heck of a lot less this month when you had 24,000. But we're halfway through the month, another week off.

So I guess that makes sense. Anyway, out of 80,831 downloads, it says here that I had 4126 listeners. So that's, that's a lot, a lot of listens, isn't it? 80,000 and just how many, how many times are people listening? And I used to have a calculator on him.

What doesn't he just get on with it? Why is he talking about this for? So 80,000 divided by 4,000. It's not that much is it really? It's only 20 listens a time. 20 times four is 80,000.

So 20 listens, it's not even one a day, is it? So I guess, yeah, it's not, not that much. Didn't really think about it. Blimey.

Wow. Isn't that interesting? No. Yeah, it is.

No, it isn't. Yes, it is. So over the last, the last 12 months.

So here, here's the weird thing. Yeah, it's not weird. But January, what did I say I had 4,000 listeners.

For the let me bore, no, for the most popular one, I've got Hypnosis for Sleeping Deeply. I had 11,766 listeners in January. And there was 152,000 downloads.

So let me bore you to sleep. But I'm a bit embarrassed. I don't even want to do this one in case it's really low.

Last 12 months. Okay, so that's higher than not the one I just did, but it's higher than the Deep Sleep Whisperer. In January, I had 6,536 listeners, according to this.

And there was 32,336 downloads. That's for the let me bore you to sleep podcast. This month's awful is 8,000, just under 9,000.

But again, that was for only for a few days, wasn't it really? It's like the first, the second of February, and then the sixth, seventh, eighth. So it's only for about four days, five days of recordings. But yeah, weird.

How strange. What if I can do a custom and see if it'll actually go like further up. Back to January, January.

I won't go that far back. Okay, January, listeners. So January 2021.

Till now I've had 433,000 downloads. The biggest month, wow, the biggest month was yet last month. For listeners, for downloads, again, the biggest one biggest month ever.

But for listeners, yeah, it averages four to 5000 a month. It was 4000 whatever in February 2021. Wow, that's two years, isn't it? And 5000, 5000, 300, 700, 5000, 6000 nearly.

So it ranges between five and 6000. And this month about 3000. And I've only had 8000 downloads.

So, blimey. I know you love hearing about the stats. Come on.

Come on, you know, it's fun. It's not, is it? I'm sorry. I mean, the listeners have gone down on the days when the recordings are down.

Like how many I've done, if you know what I mean, last, the last 12 months. So another one of my most popular podcast, okay. This is the hypnosis for stress and anxiety.

Last month 5672 listeners. I don't know what on earth that was. What am I doing? I don't know what it was.

So I had 181,000 on this podcast last month. But there was just under 6000 listeners. I don't know how it works out.

I don't know how they figure it out. And from what I know, from what I understand, the they don't get all the stats. There's some podcast provider podcast, other apps or whatever that don't give the don't give all the stats that are available.

So they can't be exactly precise, but they're pretty precise, as far as I'm aware. So hypnosis and stress anxiety. I just had a knock on the door, the front door.

And it's a delivery driver. Now they're supposed to leave it, you know, I'll put down unavailable. They're supposed to leave it on the doorstep for me.

He's knocking on the door so I can go and help him carry it up. I'm getting a delivery so that I don't have to carry it up. And it's not a big delivery either.

It's 28 items or something. So it's a small delivery. And it's on Amazon is part of the Amazon Morrison supermarket delivery.

So I'm paying above the prices in order to get it delivered by Amazon. And a good thing about it is it gets delivered the same day. And I couldn't get any slots from the supermarket.

But he's knocking on the door, wanting me to go down and one of the delivery drivers did that two times before. Last time it was fine. They just didn't even knock and left it on the door doorstep.

But the bloke before so you can come and help me. And I ended up carrying everything myself. He just took it out of his car and put on the pavement for me.

But no, it's the reason I get deliveries because of my lower back, you know, I don't. And I'm lazy. It's my lower back is lazy.

I can't help it. So I had a little look see who it was. I thought he delivered it.

There was no one through the keyhole people. I opened the door. There's nothing there.

But he saw me through the window because he was unpacking it. So I just closed the door and I'll ignore him. So hopefully he'll deliver it.

If he doesn't, then I just have to come back and deliver it. I'm not carrying it upstairs. Not doing it.

That's the whole point of getting a delivery. And it's not heavy stuff. It's, you know, it's just things like tea bags and breakfast cereal.

And, you know, it's no heavy tins. Not the tins are heavy, but they can be heavy if there's lots of them. No tin stuff.

There's no potatoes, you know, no big heavy things. Just light stuff. So yeah, time will tell.

I'll know when when I finish this recording, I'll go and have a look. Now I wonder whether or not he'll leave them in the communal area. That would be interesting.

Because I can then complain to Amazon. Because I'm a complainer. No, I wouldn't complain.

I just wouldn't use them again. After that. I didn't I wasn't going to use them last time.

Because when in bloke knocked on the door, you can help me. What? This is what I'm paying for. That's why I'm paying probably nearly twice as much money for the groceries than I would do in a supermarket in order to get them delivered.

Because this is what this was. I still had my back was still hurting from the fracture. And then I took he gave me this stuff.

He put them on the pavement. I said, So I'm carrying them upstairs for you. I'm so I'm delivering my own groceries to myself.

He's like, Well, I said, and then I put them in at the bottom of the stairs. And he said, That's everything. He said, Do you want to help getting them upstairs? No, no, just go.

I can't be bothered with you. It's like, No, I can get help with this now. Just should have just delivered them.

He should have put them to upstairs and delivered them. And if you have to go upstairs, you get one of those little truck things, don't you? You know, those trolley things. And nothing I get is heavy.

I don't get any heavy stuff. Do your job delivery people. Now I only really ever had one person.

Now I've had two people with an attitude with the delivery. I've had a couple of grumps, but generally they they're really nice. The supermarket people, they're cool.

And I've had deliveries for the last eight years. Because I'm in the middle of nowhere. There's no supermarket, no shops, nothing near me.

But this there's one during lockdown. This bloke, he just shouted upstairs, I don't have to come in. I don't have to come in the building if I don't want to.

I said, What? And he had a proper attitude on him, a real proper attitude. And he wouldn't come into the building. I said, Are you serious? Because I because of my lower back, I need to help with the delivery to take upstairs.

And he wouldn't. I was willing to give him a hand, but he wouldn't even help. So I knocked on my friend's door.

And I said, You need to help me. I need this bloke. You need to stop me from.

I just lost it a little bit. I got a little bit angry for some reason. So he had all this stuff was in crates, and I was emptying the crates on the floor.

And basically just chucking the crates back in. Not chucking but just, you know, not not doing it nicely, not horribly, but I sound like a little baby, don't I, having a tantrum. But he was so rude, so rude to me.

And yeah, I was literally pouring the crates on the floor. So I didn't think it did my eggs very much good, to be honest. But most of the stuff was just bread and milk.

And you know, there wasn't much spillage. And I just, I said, There you go. And I closed the door.

Let's go. But most of the deliveries are really nice people, really friendly. And, you know, I don't ask for help, generally, once it's up here, because I have to bend down and put everything into carrier bags.

So I'm doing lots of stuff anyway. You know, two years ago, everything would come in carrier bags. So all I'd have to do is just carry them into my flat.

Now I've got to go into the hallway, take carrier bags out with me, and empty everything, bending down. And it's not great for my lower back, to be honest. And then, I think it's about five or six years ago, I had a bloke from Argos turn up, and he was delivering bookcases.

And I think I'd ordered, there was a special offer on, and I think I ordered six bookcases, because they did like buy four, get two free or something. I thought, okay. He had a stinking attitude on him, about having to deliver them.

Now, there is stairs, but it's about 12 steps. It's not a big staircase. You know, it's not like a really steep staircase.

And if you'd have just been nice and said, I can't, you know, it's only me, I'll leave them downstairs for you. Like when I got my shed delivered, they left it downstairs. And I was like, yeah, fair.

That's fine. You know, there's a lot of pieces, it's heavy. And they just wanted to, you know, deliver the next shed.

So I thought, okay, we'll do that. That's fine. And, you know, that was cool.

But they were friendly about it. So we can't actually, you know, we have to put it downstairs. Is that okay? And I'm like, okay.

But come in moaning, the bloke walked in, and he had one, this is the one with the bookcases. He had one bookcase on each shoulder, and he walked up the stairs, and he was just moaning. Like he was carrying them easily, very strong man, very, very strong man.

So it wasn't actually a physical effort for him. Because I couldn't do that. I couldn't walk up with one on each shoulder.

I couldn't physically do that, I don't think. So like, well, they weren't heavy, heavy, but they were awkward heavy. They were quite, you think, over six foot high, but had to be self-assembled.

So I, yeah, it was only two times, really, that I've had difficult, well, three times, including the Amazon delivery. Only three times I've had difficult delivery people. Usually, and I've had hundreds of deliveries, usually they're quite friendly.

And all I really want to do is just move on to the next person and go home eventually. It's weird, all these new changes, you know, oh, no carrier bags now, we can deliver without any carrier bags. What about elderly people who can't bend over, who are on their own, they can't lift stuff? You know, or it was easier when they had carrier bags, and they could just lift the stuff out of the crates.

Now, or the delivery drivers used to lift the stuff out of crates and put it onto the doorstep. Now the old elderly person has to probably take a chair out with them. And it takes a lot longer.

You know, so the delivery would take a lot longer to do for the driver. It's, I don't know, I remember something, I remember years ago, when my Nan, there used to be this thing where she'd get her pension every week. She'd go to the post office, and she'd draw her pension out.

And it was, I don't know, like a Wednesday morning, every week. At 10 o'clock, or I don't know, just as an example. And the post office was at the end of the road from where she lived.

So it was just up the end of the road, turn right. And she'd see the same people every week, year in, year out for, blimey, you know, 20 years or whatever, I don't know however long she was doing it. So she got to know people, people that even people she didn't live with or live near, she'd get to know people, and it'd be quite a social event.

And it'd be like maybe 30 people all queuing up, and they'd be like, how are you Doreen? I'm alright, thanks Arthur, and whatever. And they might, I don't think all of them were called Arthur or Doreen, but at least 70% were. And then the government decided that they're going to get rid of that.

They're going to get rid of the whole system, and just put the money into people's bank accounts. And probably thinking maybe they were saving money, they wouldn't do it unless they were saving money. So that meant that that social, the social aspect, which for some people was the only human contact they might have in a week, was gone.

And it just seemed a shame that, I understand why things change, and you know, things have to change, I know, but the consequences aren't looked at. You know, saving a few pounds is about the health, the health benefits that people are getting from being there every week, seeing their friends. You know, maybe that would, I don't know.

But it's weird seeing life through her eyes, or from her perspective, was interesting, because I never would have even thought of that. Wouldn't have even thought of it. You know, it wouldn't even enter my mind.

Like, for me, it would be like, oh, well, that's good. You haven't got to queue up. You haven't got to wait around in the cold, or with the rain, or whatever.

And you just, it goes straight into your account once a month. That's easier, isn't it? But like, once she explained it to me, like, okay, wow. It's a similar thing as people that speed in their cars.

Now, I don't like speeding. It's one of those things, it's one of my little bugbears. But I realised, I got a lift, this is when I had my last job in a call centre, I got a lift with this bloke that I worked with, got a lift home.

And he had this, it wasn't a big car, but I realised that he was in a bubble. Once he was in that car, that was his little safe space. And the whole world outside was separate from him, and the inside of the car.

And he was speeding. But there was no, no malice, no wrongdoing in his mind. He wasn't doing anything to harm anyone, he wasn't trying to break the rules or anything like that.

But he was speeding, like millions of other people do every day, probably. But I realised that, looking at him, like, he just, he wasn't even aware he was doing it. He was almost just second nature.

And it was quite hard to be angry after that. I was like, oh. Because normally I used to get a little bit angry with people that, because I've, you know, as a pedestrian, I've seen a lot of weird things with cars over the years, you know, over my lifetime.

People speeding and just weird stuff. Driving on the wrong side of the road, you name it. But I've never really been able to see from a driver's perspective, because I've never driven.

I had a few driving lessons when I was younger, but I've never been a driver. I don't know what it's like to drive a car on my own. Ever.

I've never done it. I don't know what it's like. And so it's hard for me to get into that perspective, that frame of mind about drivers, you know, how they do it, what's going through their mind, what they're doing.

And it's a part of the reason I didn't really get into driving is because my, my spatial awareness seems to be a little bit problematic. I was either too close to the curb, or too close to the middle of the road. Because I don't know about other countries, but here, here, we've got little roads.

And we've got motorways, but you know, generally the roads in towns, they're not big. And there's enough space, generally for two normal sized cars to drive on either side of the road go in the opposite way. And there's some red lines or yellow lines, I don't know, whatever, in the middle, what white lines rather red lines, white lines in the middle.

As if that line is going to actually stop something from going over it. It's nothing to stop it, it's just a line, a bit of paint. And I struggled a bit to, I didn't want to be in the middle of the road.

But at the same time, I didn't want to be on the curb. And it's not enough room. It was, I don't know, I just, maybe if I'd done it from the age of 17, had driving lessons and gone through like what probably most people do is go through the whole process of learning to drive and it's then it becomes second nature.

I didn't do that. Well, I couldn't do that. I wasn't in a position to do that.

And I still wonder maybe is it possible? I know it's possible. For me, I mean, I'm not, I'm not ancient. I've never really had the, the urge to drive.

Well, I see it'd be nice now, in a sense of being so isolated in a, in the middle of nowhere. And I do need to move away from here as soon as I can. But it'd be, you know, driving would definitely be a plus.

But I wonder if I've become one of those lazy drivers that won't walk anywhere. You know, the amount of people that I see pulling up at the petrol station in the middle of winter, and all they've got on is a t shirt, get out of the car, put the petrol in and pay for it, and then leave. So they get from the front door to the car, and from the car into may, you know, just pay for it in the petrol station or whatever.

And then literally, they're not out long enough to get cold. When I go to a petrol station in the winter, I've completely covered up with a coat and everything, because I'm walking for maybe 15-20 minutes to get there. So I'm wondering if I had a car, would I ever walk anywhere ever again? I thought it was funny.

I lived, when I was at college, I lived opposite a pub. And there was this cottage, I say opposite, literally come out of the cottage, turn right, walk for 30 seconds, and you're in the pub. You know, you see the building there, probably 20 seconds actually.

Apparently, my landlord one night, he was so drunk, he ordered a taxi to take him home. Literally just drove across the road to take him home. That's funny.

Oh, anyway. Now I'm wondering whether or not the delivery person has left my stuff. I didn't knock on the door again.

So I think that's cheeky. I was just cheeky. They should deliver it, put it there, and then maybe knock on the door to let me know it's there.

But it did say, I did put down non attended. So and I don't have to be here for the delivery. I think if it's alcohol, you do because you have to prove that you're an adult.

So I'd have to show ID because I look so young. But yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Sure you do.

Sure. I wonder if I've got any other messages. I don't think I have, you know, I don't think I've got any messages at all.

Missed missed Amazon. All Amazon delivered. You'll make sure you're all they've delivered it, bless them.

But have they left it outside my door if they left it in the communal area? That'd be an interesting one to find out. Okay, got your, your Morrison's order has been delivered. Now rate your experience.

Well, we will see, won't we? We will see. Let's have a look. If it's there, and it's all there, then good.

That's nice. If it's not, hmm, not so nice. So it's a bit weird making a recording after it seems like ages, honestly, really seems like a long time since I last sat here talking into the microphone.

And it's very weird. It's strange, but I I'm back, man, I'm back. So I'm going to go and unpack the delivery and put it away.

And I've got some stuff for my neighbor downstairs. So I'll take that down to him. So thank you for listening.

Remember, be kind to yourself, be gentle with yourself. And if there's something that you want to do, try not to put it off. I'll be thinking about that myself.

Try not to put it off. Or if there's this someone you want to say something nice to, maybe don't put that off either. So take care, lots of love.

Bye.