(music) #1292 Q&A Susan-Sue Special - Let me bore you to sleep (24th February 2025)

Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello. This is me. So hello, welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name's jasonnewland.com and this is a recording for Suzanne.

Susan? Suzanne? There's no Z or there's no Z. Susan.com. And this is going to be a Q&A.com recording. And I will stop saying dot com. For some reason, I thought it would be hilarious and it didn't quite work out, did it? Read the room, baby.

Okay. So this, please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. This is a special Q&A episode.

A special Q&A hip replacement episode. I know. Q&A hip replacement episode sounds a little bit strange.

But let me explain. For those listening that aren't Susan. I won't explain it to you, Susan, because you probably already know.

You'll be aware of that situation. So I received a message 23 hours ago. So it's now the 24th of February 2025.

As I record this, the message was on my Jason Newland's Boring Group on Facebook. 207 members. I surely am a superstar.

I'm hoping by the end of the year to reach 209 if possible. So here's the message. Hi, Jason.

Listen to you every night to get to sleep. Looking for something to listen to while having hip replacement this Thursday. That is happening this Thursday, 26th of February 2025.

Any suggestions? As I will be awake during op. Thanks. So after screaming at the idea, at the thought of it, I thought, oh, OK, there's been a few messages.

Jackie writes awake. I'm not I'm not going to do the actual. The actual volume of that text, but I think it was awake.

Why is that? And Susan replies, what's he got to do with you? The message was for Jason. Stop asking me questions. No, she didn't.

She didn't imply that. She says just injection in back. So no feeling weighs down.

Better recovery after surgery. Why don't all women. Let me finish a sentence before you start saying, what do you mean all women? All men.

No, no, let me finish. Let me finish. It's just a question.

Just a question. Why don't all women know? No, no, no, no, no, no. That's just what about men? Forget that.

Not already said this. Why don't I? Why don't people who give birth to babies? not all have that. Isn't it called an epidural? No? Maybe I'm wrong.

But there is not, if men could have babies, I mean, okay, let's not go down that rabbit hole. But you know what I mean, if that beehive of confusion, let's not let's not go there. But okay, I'll speak for myself.

And every other man that I've ever met in my life, I've met a few. And I'm pretty sure if I did a survey of all the Yeah, pretty much every man on the planet. If suddenly they were able to have a baby, every single one, if they were offered, do you want to go through natural childbirth? Or would you, you know, and experience the whole thing? Yeah.

Or the joy? Or would you like to be numb from the waist down? It's not even a question that would need to be asked. No man. And again, you know, that's why I said man, right? Oh, see, given birth, but now just realized that all could be confusing.

So anyway, what I'm saying is, I don't think there's a man alive that would say no to that. Like no. Inject me now.

So good on the people that do give birth and decide to do it, for whatever reason, without being numbed. Because, you know, it's like going to a dentist and say, oh, you're going to take too far. Do you want anesthetic? Do you want us to put anesthetic into your gums first to make it numb? Or you just want us just to take it out as is? Like, let me think about that.

And I'll tell you what, do you want to see the next person? And I'll just wait in the waiting room. Just give it a little ponder, should I? To be fair, the dentist would go out and the person would be gone, wouldn't they? Like, yeah, unfortunately, we've run out of anesthetic. And should we just do it without? Or do you want to wait until we get the anesthetic back?

It'll be probably this afternoon.

But if you don't want to wait, we can just take it out. We'll just nip it out now, shall we? No, you're right, I'll wait. Blimey.

So yeah. But yeah, Jackie says, so anyway, just injection. And Jackie replied.

Oh, I see. Wishing you a speedy recovery. So that was nice.

Just remember, sometimes I do make stuff up when I'm talking. So not everything that I read out is going to be true. And then Susan says, Jackie says wishing you a speedy recovery.

Susan says, what's it got to do with you? She didn't say that. She didn't. I'm causing strife.

And then I said, I asked, this is 16 hours ago. Susan, how long will it up last? Because I'm thinking, well, if I'm going to do recording, at this point, I didn't know. I didn't know what I was going to do.

You know, didn't really. And it's one of those situations where because there's a kind of a deadline of 26th of February, which is only two days away, or three days yesterday. And so I can have seen it, I can't pretend to not have seen it.

So I was thinking, oh, I suppose I could wait until the 27th and say, sorry, Susan, I've just seen your, just seen your post. I'm so sorry. But because I've seen it, I kind of, oh, I suppose I better do something.

I mean, I don't even make these recordings anymore. I've got a, I've got like a cloned voice that normally does this. Can you imagine how good that would be if I could get AI just to do everything? Well, it would be rubbish, actually, because it'd be, I wouldn't feel of any use at all.

But you know, even when I transcribe my recording, and put it into AI, and ask for it to just generally give me an idea of what I've talked about, it struggles. It struggles, really. And sometimes the AI will actually, if I've posted like so, I'll transcribe the audio, and I put it on there, and I'll have talked about whatever, you know, I can't remember what I talk about.

And so can you just tell me what, you know, maybe do a like a chapter of a book, like if it was a journal, today was my journal, and just write that journal for me, but use all the information I put in there. It does not come up with the same stuff that I've talked about. You know, it starts talking about ponies, and penguins, and smurfs, and arse flannels, and stuff, things that I would never talk about.

So it's very strange. And Susan's okay, about two hours. So I replied, saying two hours, about about two hours or less.

I was thinking if you're able to listen with headphones, I could do a special q&a recording with just your questions answered, and make it two hours long, I would make it available for all to listen, but would make it clear is recorded for you, which I have, I do believe I've done that Susan, Susan, Susan, Susan, this might be a nice or boring distraction for you. If so, please ask me as many questions as you want.

And I will try and answer them.

I will record it tomorrow, Monday, which is now XPS. It's not a good idea to have it okaying. Okaying for the surgeons to hear in case they fall asleep during the op.

I think I meant to put playing, to have it playing for okaying. How can playing become okaying? So I've missed out the P and L and put O and K instead. Is the P anywhere near an O? Yeah, it is, isn't it? And is the L anywhere near K? Yes, it is.

So on a keyboard, I basically just press the wrong, the wrong numbers. So Susan answered. That's great.

Yes. We'll have the headphones on. Appreciate that.

What is your favourite meal? Okay, these are the questions I'm going to say. It's a lot of questions, Susan. I've just, I didn't expect so many questions.

I think you're asking a bit too much. You're being rude. Too needy.

Stop it. I don't want to answer anymore. This means I've got to do more questions on Friday as well.

Anyway, we'll still be doing a Q&A Friday on Friday. But this is a special one off episode. Okay, so yeah, he did post some questions.

What's your favourite meal? Are you still doing a lot of walking with your best buddy? When I look after my granddaughter's dog, everyone seems to talk to you. Quick walks turn into a marathon. Okay, I can understand that.

I'm not very speedy, but after my op should be a lot better. I live by the sea. But do you live in a country in the country or town? What was your best occupation before you did the website? You must be a very kind man.

As a lot of people seem to look to you for help. Well, I hope to recover. Okay.

Have you had I have had my other hip done 15 years ago. And that's still fine. Thank you for your help.

Sue. Oh, Sue. I keep calling you Susan.

Sorry, Sue. Thanks, Sue. If you had any have any other questions, just let me know.

I will look at it. I will look I will look at doing this recording tomorrow afternoon ish. Thanks for your kind words.

And Sue answers. Thank you, Jason. You bore me to sleep most nights as a senior.

Let it play all night. If I wake up your voice. I wake up your voice sends me off to sleep.

Have lived in London was born in Kent. And live in Blackheath, South East London. Been in sunny Galston on the sea for 50 years.

Moved here with my husband. Like you had lots of jobs to work around having a like you had lots of jobs to work around having a family. So I reply sorry for it.

I know then then Susan Sue replies. Susan Sue replies. Sorry for rambling bit nervous only in hospital one night home next day.

And Maria says wishing you a speedy and complete recovery. And Susan says, will you stop? Oh, no, she didn't. She hasn't said anything.

So she but she did say she liked the Yes, she liked that. So I should get on a recording. Get on the recording.

Only 20 minutes wasted talking about the recording. Oh, no, I've deleted. So basically, that's all I'm doing is that's what this is.

This recording is about is just me answering those questions for Susan Sue. And then it will be Yes, if anyone else wants to listen, it's the answers are going to be answered that the questions have been asked by one person, but anyone else can listen to it. You don't have to be having a hip replacement to listen to this.

But it helps. No, it doesn't. It doesn't.

That was a silly thing. So it's it doesn't matter. You don't have to it's just really it can also be boring for those people who are not in hospital, or if you're in hospital.

But I sometimes think these would be quite good recordings for people in hospital. Just, you know, sitting in a hole laying down in a hospital bed. It's blooming boring.

I mean, even I remember that, you know, it's a long time ago, it can be very boring. And also they can be noisy. So have some headphones, listening to listen to something super interesting, like me, could really be useful.

Because you know, I think the nurses on purpose just wake people up. That's why I think, you know, as soon as you start get asleep, like, Hello, we need to give you a medication need to need to give you a bath, like, like, like, why, why disturb me now? Oh, we just need to check your blood pressure. Why are you disturbing me now? Oh, we just need to need to check your pulse rate.

In the end, like, if they disturb me one more time, and then they come, what now? We need to give you operation. It's like, Oh, God, really? That is why you're here, isn't it? Okay, I just can we just do it then? We can't do it now. We have to take you in there, don't we? Okay.

So then there's all that stuff. And then afterwards, like, oh, they hassle you a lot. Oh, just need to check.

Have you had a bowel movement? Like what's it got to do with you? If I've had a bowel movement? I mean, I have my appendix out, right? This is back in when I was 12. So we're talking a little while ago, a few a few years ago. And it's like, if you, if you, if you passed, if you had a movement, the nurse came up to I know it was a doctor, the doctor and the nurse.

Have you had a movement? I said, don't move all the time. What are you talking about? Have I had a movement? You know, I move, I come a little bit, a little bit stuck, you know, not able to do any press ups at the moment or sit ups, definitely not sit ups. And I haven't played hockey for the last few days, but no gymnastics.

But I've had some movement. No, not that kind of movement. Have you had a bowel movement? I don't know what even what is a bowel movement? What? I didn't know what that meant.

I mean, I know what a bowel, you know, is inside your stomach. I didn't, I didn't class the bowel as being my bum hole. I, you know, I mean, that's your bum, bottom.

If they said if you had a bottom movement, and then again, I suppose I just would have said, well, yeah, sometimes get a little bit uncomfortable, you know, get a, have to move my bum around a little bit, get a bit of a numb cheek. But like, have you, have you passed a stall? Once I realised what they're talking about, like, oh, you're talking about, you know, going to toilet.

And I said, no, I have not had a bowel movement.

And then the next doctor came the next day. Have you passed a stall? A stall? If I shat out a stall, you'd hear it, mate. You'd have heard it.

You'd hear it when you was at home. Blimey. A wooden stall? You'd have heard that.

But yeah, they didn't. But it was all right. It was good.

Other than that, my favourite thing about being in hospital, I didn't realise at the time, apart from not being at home, it was just nice. It's like a holiday, really. Because when I was a kid, we didn't really, this is no, not to be horrible to my dad or anything, whatever.

But a holiday, all it was, was just moving all the chaos to a different part of the country. That's all it was. You know, four brothers.

It was never going to be fun going anywhere. Because we just arguing the whole time. And it was, yeah, it was just annoying.

So moving that, the only difference is, we didn't have our bedrooms. Because we were lucky enough to have our own bedrooms. So that was quite good.

But we didn't have that in a tent. You can't just go off in a huff and slam the door. Because you've had an argument with one of your brothers.

I mean, it's literally like this, you have an argument, and all you hear is, you can't slam the door, all you can do is this. You know, because you're in a tent. It's a zip, isn't it? It's all you can do.

It doesn't really have the same effect. But yeah, that was, I think the other thing I liked, well, there's a couple of things I liked. Nurse Nichols.

Oh, my goodness. Nurse Nichols. Now, I was, I liked the older woman when I was a kid.

Like, wasn't particularly interested in women my own age, or girls my own age. When I was 12, I didn't find them, I found them interesting as people, but I wasn't attracted to them. I was attracted to older, fully blossomed adult women.

That's, which is perhaps that's weird, but it's just how it was. And Nurse Nichols. The fact that I remember her name, 700 years later, just shows you what an effect she had on me.

And she was perfect. She was my dream. Yeah, I had just, it's so sad, though.

Because, well not sad, but on my last day, when I was leaving, and I, because my parents bought me fruit. We don't give a 12 year old fruit, that's not a treat. Fruit, I would have chucked it on the floor if I could reach.

Fruit. But anyway, they, I like bananas actually, I do like bananas. But apples, I mean, come on.

Like, what's wrong with you? But, you know, it's like, so I just had my stomach emptied, or whatever they did, the appendix. It's like, oh, you can't eat chocolate. Like, why not? Surely that'll help with the movement that they keep being so interested about.

Give me lots of chocolate. Oh, it always helps me poo. They didn't find that funny.

But anyway, I, Nurse Nichols, said that on the last day, I wanted to give Nurse Nichols a goodbye present. I mean, I kind of knew that she was a little bit too old for me. Just a simple fact that she wasn't at school, and she was working.

And the reality of it is, she probably wasn't that much older. She may well have been 17, 18. To me, she, you know, at 12, I probably thought that she was in her 30s or something, but she probably wasn't.

Probably, or in her 20s, she might be like 21, 22. But that's like, that was really old to me at that time. Not an old in a way of like, oh, she's old.

Because I loved her. And I still love Nurse Nichols. She never left my heart.

I love her. Nurse Nichols, if you're out there, just, if you've got any pictures of you when you was a nurse in 1982, please send them to me. So, funny, you know what, if we'd have had phones back then, like smartphones, I could have done a selfie with her, or took a picture, you know, just like, and kept, that's something I could have kept.

So, in 80 years time, like now, 80, I could look, so, oh, Nurse Nichols. And look at her and think, wow, she really was old. No, she, she probably wasn't much older than me.

I mean, if I was 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, probably five or six years older, which is nothing now. But back then it is. Anyway, the last day, I know this isn't answering your questions.

But hey, if you don't know what the recorders are like by now, I will get to the questions, I will. These are the most focused podcast I do really. The most focused episodes of the Let Me Bore You To Sleep, because I do have the questions to come back to.

So I definitely do. But sometimes I, it takes me a little bit about, it takes me a little while to come back, to get back to the questions, which is weird, because I've actually lost the questions. Where are they? All comments.

One reply. Oh, I got it. I got it.

I found it. I found it. Right, let's keep that page open.

I'll get rid of all the other pages. You know, YouTube's going really slow. I don't understand it.

Right. Okay. Yeah, I'm moaning.

Sometimes I moan. That's what I do. If I make a video of me, on the screen, people watch it.

Even if it's a Q&A Friday, or if it's a Let Me Bore You To Sleep, not many people, but some people watch it. If I do a deep sleep whisper, people watch it. Yesterday, I did a 10 minute relaxation session.

But it was a podcast episode, but I just uploaded it. It's a video, they can still stream it, but it's just a static picture. But with the audio.

I mean, literally, I posted it 12 hours ago. Four views. Four views.

Yeah, I did a cover of She's Out of My Life. And I got 63 views. Again, not a lot, but anyway, the last day of me being in hospital and knowing that I was going to be released.

And I didn't want to be I wanted to stay there because I loved it. I really did. I'm genuinely having my appendix out was the best experience of my childhood.

Pretty much one of them. I mean, maybe not the actual having the appendix out, but I was you know, I wasn't I wasn't awake. And I was just you know, that I don't remember that bit.

But before well before perhaps not so much. Maybe I don't know, but definitely afterwards is brilliant. Brilliant.

It was just so nice. Because I was in a children's ward. So that made it nice.

Because previously, I had my adenoids out. And I was in this like a basement. And there was literally only one other person in there.

And I don't think it was even a children's ward. No one to play with, no one to talk to nothing. But this this time I had these other kids to play with.

Some of them were older. But you know, I was used to being around older kids because of my brothers. So that was cool.

And then other ones. And there wasn't a lot of age difference. I think there's a couple a bit younger.

I was used to getting used to my little brother who was younger. So it was in my element. It was nice.

Anyway, the last day, I asked my parents, can you please bring me some pears? Or instead of just an apple? Can you bring can you at least include one pear in there? And a banana? And they said, But why are you going to be leaving? I said, but I want to give a gift to to one of the nurses. And my dad said, Is it nurse Nichols?

And I said, I said, I don't know. He said, I think it is.

I understand why wink wink. No, he didn't say that. And so they did.

Like, why do you want some grapes that I don't care just make sure that you bring a banana and just like a mixture. A mixture. That's all.

You know, grapefruits. It doesn't not fully grapefruit. That's a bit of a weird thing to add.

I mean, it's, it's a nice it's a fruit. I know it's a fruit, but a grapefruit. It's out of proportion, isn't it? With the rest of the fruit.

If you put an apple and a banana and a pear, and an orange, and then have a grapefruit, it's bigger than, I mean, it's as big as a head, depending on how big the head is. And he said, Well, if you don't want a grapefruit, that's fine, but you haven't got to go on about it. I said, I'm not going on about it.

I'm just saying, why would I want a grapefruit? He said, Well, you asked for fruit. And I said, Yeah, but I didn't expect you to list every single fruit on the planet. And then he comes back as it is, we've named five fruit.

There's more than five fruit on the planet. We haven't named them all, have we? Stop being exaggerative. And I said, Is that a real word? He said, I'm not sure, to be honest.

Exaggerated. It sounds real, doesn't it? But it sounds wrong at the same time. He said, I know.

It's weird, though. But if I say stop being exaggerative, you knew what I meant, though, didn't you? I said, Yeah, I did. Perhaps I need to ask my English teacher.

When I get back to school, and my dad said, No, you know, you're not allowed to talk to your English teacher anymore. After what happened, I said, Okay, fair enough. About I got in trouble, got in trouble for being rude.

I apparently my teacher got uncomfortable just because I went up to him and said, Do you like me? I don't think there's anything weird about that. I just didn't understand why he wasn't friendlier. You know, and I had him for the first year and he gave me a terrible mark on an essay.

Yes, right. Tell me if you think this is this is right or not. Grin, is it Grendlin Grin? There's a monster horror monster show.

Okay, what is it? And oh, I forget the name of it. Ray Winston was in it. So let's have a look.

Ray Winston. Ray Winston was in this movie. I've been saying it's a monster.

Six. Okay. Oh, wow.

That's weird. 2000 2000 Beowulf, Beowulf or Beowulf Beowulf. 2007 is in it.

So the book was Beowulf. And we read a bit of it in class. I think we had to take turns.

And apart from me, apparently, this is gonna this is gonna blow your mind like apparently, I talk too slowly, according to the teacher. Too slowly. I mean, it's ridiculous.

You've heard me read out the the things on Facebook just now, you know, the questions and the posts. How can anyone say that that's slow? Ridiculous. So, anyway, I, the teacher gave us homework.

So go home. So we're done. You don't need to be told to go home.

Of course, I'm going to go home. And he said, No, let me finish a sentence. Apparently, I was a bit of an interrupter.

He said, Go home and just write what you think is going to happen next. Okay, so that that was it. So let's have a look Beowulf.

If I get the Oh, what's in the newspaper? Okay. I don't want to read that. So what was it called? Beowulf.

What is going on? Stop it. I keep having these things come up like these things pop up. Please give brief first chapter of Beowulf.

B-A-U-W-L. Beowulf? Did I spell it? Oh, I did. No.

B-E-W-B-E-O-U-L-F nearly. Okay. Make it shorter.

It's a long description. Make it shorter. Right.

So I'm going to give a brief description of the chapter. The first chapter of Beowulf introduces King Skidmark, no, Skilled Scheffing, a mighty ruler who rises from obscurity to power and is honoured with a grand sea burial. His descendants, including King Hrothgar, continue his legacy.

Hrothgar builds the great Mead Hall, Hroth, but its joy is soon threatened by the monstrous Grendel. Yeah, I thought I got the name Grendel. And then it's like, so that's kind of the first chapter.

They introduced the monster. And then my teacher says, what do you think's gonna happen next? Go home and write what you think's gonna happen next. There's no wrong answers.

So that's what he thought. So this is based, in my memory, it's based on Viking land, Viking, the Viking world, just based on King Hrothgar and Mead Hall. That sounds very much like Viking terminology.

I would class myself as a semi expert on Vikings. Haven't watched all episodes of the Vikings. Yeah, I did.

I watched. I watched every episode. And this is a 2022 I think it was.

Was it 2022? I think it was. Or was it 2021? I think it was 2022. And so I feel that I do know, I do know my way around the old Viking world a little bit.

So I go home, all excited because I'm going to do my, basically I'm going to write. I was, not always, but I kind of, kind of quite fancied the idea back then of being a writer, because I love to read. I was a very passionate reader.

And that's why I'm pretty much my hobby back then. And the idea of being a writer seemed very, very romantic and very, I don't know, it just seemed quite cool, a cool thing to do. And to maybe, yeah, just, I thought it'd be good.

So, but anyway, so I figured, because I hold my hands up, I wasn't a particularly studious student in other subjects. But I did think English would be something that I could do, because being an avid reader, I'm not saying I understood everything I read. I still don't probably, but you know, I gave it a go.

I kind of worked out from the context of the sentence and the paragraph and the book I was reading, roughly what was happening, you know. So I thought, you know, maybe I can excel in this subject. So I go and I go home.

And I remember in the bedroom I was in, because my little brother, he was only little, like little, he was always little, but he was little, little. And he was born in 1978. So I'm talking about 2011 at school, September time, probably October, maybe 2000, 2011, 1981, blimey, 1981.

I was 11, not the year. And so we went and did the, yeah, I had this like white unit with a wardrobe and a, I think all me and my brothers all had this same unit in our bedrooms. And it pulled down and it was a desk.

So you could lean on it and it was very sturdy. It was white, very sturdy and would do homework on it and stuff. I said, you know, I did homework on it once.

This is my one time of doing homework. As I said, it didn't work out quite so well. And I spent the next five years really just avoiding homework or pretending to have done it.

Yeah, I really, I was, I think my teachers got to the point where they just, they thought it was like a truce. We won't bother him, he won't bother us. We don't talk to him, he won't talk to us.

It was that kind of situation. So yeah, I think that's kind of how it ended up at school with the teachers. I had one teacher, no, two teachers, no, three teachers.

Three teachers that I got on with. The first was my maths teacher in first year of high school, Mr. Johnson. But unfortunately he got, it became unwell when he left.

So that was the first teacher I got on with. And I only had him for like one term, I think. The second teacher was the religious education teacher.

And the third teacher was the religious education teacher that replaced the first religious education teacher. And that was it. Those were the three teachers that I liked, or that I got on with, that actually showed me any kindness.

Which was kind of weird, considering my auntie worked there as well. Hey, I didn't actually, I don't think I ever had her in my class, thankfully. She was, I don't know what she did, to be honest with you.

I'm not sure. I think she was like a substitute teacher, because she also worked at my brother's school, because me and my older brothers went to different high schools. And I remember my older brother being a bit annoyed, because he shouted, hello, auntie.

And she told him off. She said, don't call me auntie when I'm at school. See my replies, my reply would have said, oh, sorry, uncle, and run off and hide.

But yeah, maybe I wouldn't have done, she was a bit scary. So I, on the day of the, when I had to leave hospital, my parents brought me this, like, it wasn't a big bouquet of fruit, a big basket. It was, which I was hoping for, to be honest, like, I thought it'd be like a bowl, not like it doesn't have to be in a glass bowl.

But you know, there's those plastic or cardboardy kind of bowls. Okay, not so much plastic, but plaster of Paris. Does that make sense? So like, they're not sturdy enough to hold the fruit.

But not something that you, you're going to feel, you're not going to feel upset putting it in the bin. You're not going to cry when it's, when it's, when it's been chucked away. And not that I've shed too many tears over putting stuff in a rubbish bin, to be honest.

Yeah, probably never. Perhaps we should move on. That was a, yeah, that's a weird thing to say.

But anyway, they brought me some fruit. And I remember, like, talking to each other, why are we getting fruit? He's leaving. And my dad said something about Nurse Nicholls.

And then, then my mum was like, oh, you're still going on about her, are you? I thought she was talking to me, but she was talking to him, like, blindly. Wow, Nurse Nicholls. She was causing friction in the relationship.

No, she wasn't. I made that up. She's definitely causing some stirring in me, though.

I'm not talking about my pants. I'm talking about in my, my heart. She was just, I fell in love with her and my pants.

So I, so get me fruit. And I decided that I shouldn't really give a treat or like a present to just one of the nurses, because there were at least three nurses there. And they were all lovely.

And one, unfortunately, had to endure watching me try and do a wee-wee when I didn't need to. So, yeah, I kind of, she definitely deserved a bit of fruit. And they were giving us, they were giving us bath, bed baths.

That's someone that deserves more than fruit, isn't it? When you're having to give someone a smelly kid a bath in their bed. I mean, they deserve some kind of award for that, because I don't think I'd washed for about six months. Those were the times, I did, I'm sure I had.

But those were the times when, I don't know, I kind of regret it now a little bit, just a little bit. But I would wet my toothbrush, you know, put it under the tap and then put it back in the rack. So that if anyone came to check to see if I'd brushed my teeth, the toothbrush would be wet.

Now, I was still doing that when I was living on my own at 17. And I remember thinking, why am I wetting the toothbrush and then just putting it back and going to bed? There's like no point doing that anymore. Especially, I've only got one tooth left.

But yeah, I kind of wish I'd been a bit more, because I didn't realize, you know, as a kid, because I think as a kid, having teeth, because I had teeth fall out like all kids do, you know, the first teeth, my teeth fell out. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the experience of my teeth getting wobbly and, but I never had a, never had a toothache.

It just used to be a bit, I just enjoy it, you know, wobbly, wobbly, wobbly. And then it came out and put it under my pillow and wait for, not the foot pigeon. What was it called? The tooth fairy.

Yeah, the tooth fairy to put money under my pillow. And I remember waiting and waiting and waiting. After about four or five weeks, it gets very crusty under there, you know, a bit moldy a bit.

See, I don't know. I don't know if it was the tooth fairy didn't know where I lived. It might just be because I moved around a lot.

You know, I'm surprised I got any, any Christmas presents at all. But Father Christmas is really on the ball. I think the tooth fairy is a bit flimsy, a bit flaky, not doesn't have the work ethic.

However, I think it's quite, it'd be easier to have the work ethic if you only worked for one night a year. The tooth fairy is every day, isn't it? So they're much more worked. I mean, I'm, the tooth fairy never has to visit everybody on one night.

So, so that's a lot to do. But still, you'd think the fact that the tooth fairy gets it spread out throughout the year, he could at least turn up and pay the money that's owed to the child. But no, didn't.

So, I think it was one time, I remember my, my brother pretended to be the tooth fairy. He did, I woke up and he was standing over me like, I said, what are you doing? He said, oh, I've just, I'm the tooth fairy. He thought I was, he thought I was still asleep.

I'm awake. He said, oh no, I'm just, I'm standing in for the tooth fairy. Tooth fairy asked me to put some money under your pillow and for me to take the tooth.

I said, okay. But why are you holding the pillow over my face? And why are you holding a hammer? It's like, yeah, that was very strange. That's my brother for you.

Always up for a laugh. So, Nurse Nichols, this is strange. I gave the, I liked all the nurses.

I liked all the nurses, right. But I didn't, I didn't love them all. I loved Nurse Nichols.

And she was blonde. I've never, I've never really that bothered about hair colour. I was never, I mean, I, I used to love Samantha Fox.

This is the period when Samantha Fox is very famous in the UK of England. But, yeah, she, she was, it was, yeah, she was lovely. Anyway, I, so I gave an apple and I don't know the names of any of the other nurses.

And I can't even remember the names of some of the nurses that I dated when I was an adult. But I'll always remember Nurse Nichols. See, it's weird, isn't it? I mean, that was her surname.

I don't, I don't know what her first name was. Very informal, isn't it, really, for me to remember her surname. So, Nurse Nichols, I gave, I think, I didn't give a banana because I ate the banana for myself because I like bananas.

I gave an apple to one of the other nurses and I gave an orange to another one of the nurses. And I had a plan. I didn't get to do this, right? Because I thought I'm gonna, I'm gonna be cheeky.

But it might, it might make her laugh. But then I can give her a gift, right? So, but I had to get rid of the parents because I could do it in front of them. So, my plan was this.

Somehow get the parents to go away. Maybe go and get a cup of coffee or something like that. And then I'll call Nurse Nichols over.

And I got the piece of fruit on the bed. I'm gonna give her and I'll just say to her, can I just say something to you? And she's gonna say, like, what? I say, first of all, I just want to say thank you for looking after me. And I'm never gonna forget your kindness and the bed baths.

This is what we're gonna say. And something else, she said, what? I said, that is, that is one amazing pear. And if she said, what? I said, it's an, that's a juicy pear.

And if she's like, got upset with me, like, what are you saying? And I'd point to the bed. And she'd see a pear on the bed. And she'd laugh.

And I hand it to her, there you go, nice juicy pear. And she'd laugh and, and I'd say, I love you, Nurse Nichols. And she said, well, I can't really tell you I love you because of the age difference, but I will wait until you're 18.

And we can meet up and we can get married and spend our lives together. That's how I envisioned it. Okay.

Didn't quite work out that way. Now, the part when it came unstuck was, first of all, my parents were there. So that wasn't good.

So I thought, I'll walk the other side of the bed, at least give a little bit of distance. And the nurse came around. I said, Nurse Nichols.

Yes, Jason. And nurse, she didn't, she didn't talk like that. Said, so she came around to the other side of the bed.

I thought if I whispered, or spoke really quietly, that no one else could hear, and it would be okay. So I said, so I just want to, I've got a gift. I was going to say something.

He said, what is it? And my dad shouted, he's got a gift for you. Now, I wasn't watching what they were doing. And so I said, oh, that's a lovely pear.

And she said, what? I said, that's a juicy pear. And I pointed to the bed, an apple and an orange. Like, where's the pear gone? There's my daddy in the pear.

So it didn't work very well. She looked a bit confused. He didn't declare her love to me, which was, I'll be honest, I wasn't that surprised at that part.

But, you know, I did hope. And I think it's because my parents were there. I think she was a bit embarrassed.

And never saw her again. But she left a memory with me. Her name, the fact I remember her name, I don't know the names of people I went to school with.

A few, a few I do, but I've had girlfriends, I don't remember their names. But I remember Nurse Nicholls. It's just, she's left an imprint.

Yeah, because I loved her. So I'm at home writing Beowulf, writing my, you know, just the teacher did say, what do you think is going to happen next? How can there be a right or wrong answer to that? And I spent hours writing the next part of the story. And I do mean hours, hours and hours.

I was dedicated, absolutely dedicated to really, to make it absorbing, to flesh it out, to make it exciting and extraordinary. And when I handed it in, I thought, you know what, my English teacher is going to like me now. He's going to be so impressed with my dedication and my storytelling techniques that he'll probably ask me to fill in for him as a teacher.

If he ever can't make it, he probably will, I'll be like his assistant teacher. It didn't quite work out that way. So I handed it in, I think the next day come in, because he was my form teacher as well.

The next day, or maybe it was in the afternoon, came back, hands the essays out. I say essays, but I suppose they were kind of like little essays, hands them out to everyone, calls me. He didn't hand mine out.

It wasn't okay. It's more like pass them on, just give them to one person. And I was left without one.

I said, you know, where's mine? He called me up to the class, the front. And he said, yours is here. I said, okay.

I said, what do you think? He said, what is it? What do you mean, what is it? What is this? And there was like 300 pages and he just like chucked it on the desk. What am I supposed to do with that? I said, read it. You're not making an omelette with it.

Oh, yeah. I thought was a funny thing to say, but he didn't seem to find it quite as amusing as I did at the time. Afterwards, I thought maybe it wasn't quite as funny, but looking back at it, I think it was quite amusing.

Maybe it wasn't like, ho, ho, ho, ho, funny, but maybe funny. Maybe. I'm not sure.

And I said, what do you mean? What do you like? He said, what is it? I said, it's what you asked for us to do. He said, I asked you to write, we read the first chapter of Beowulf. I asked you to write, well, you and everyone, not you specifically, to write what you think is going to happen next.

And I said exactly what I did. He said, OK. Where? What part of that first part of the chapter did you think that we would start talking about UFOs and Superman and Buck Rogers? And, you know, vacuum cleaners shaped like mushrooms.

I mean, what, what, what, where did you get this stuff from? Why? And I said, well, that's just how it progressed. It didn't start off that way, but that's where it moved to in the story. The story built and became multifaceted.

And it came to life, it had, it took on a life of its own and went in a different direction to what maybe the actual original book did. He said, you reckon, you reckon it's a little bit different from the original book? I said, I don't know what happens next because we only read the first chapter. How can I, how can you compare what I wrote with the contents of the original book if we only read the first chapter and you say what you think is going to happen next?

How can there be a wrong or wrong answer? Right, wrong or wrong? Write a wrong answer.

He said, I think wrong or wrong is the correct way he said it first time. He said, you're getting a, like an F. I said, does F stand for fantastic? He said, you know, it doesn't. I said, yeah, fair enough.

He said, no, it doesn't stand for that either. Which I thought was quite quick of him actually, but like, or quick of me for just saying it as I said it just then. F for fair enough? No.

Phenomenal? No, that's PH. Damn. So yeah, I, I'm not quite sure how I got on to talk about that.

Oh, I've got questions to answer, haven't I? Sorry. So back to your questions. Um, what is my favourite meal? So my favourite meal, I do like sweet corn and pineapple pizza.

But that is that a meal though? Is it? I mean, it is to me, but it's not really, is it? Not really a meal. Chicken tikka. I quite like that.

But I haven't had that for years. A meal. Sweet corn and pineapple pizza.

I do like a roast dinner. A nice roast dinner. But the most important ingredients in a roast dinner for me would be Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes, stuffing, and what they called Brussels sprouts.

I quite like mashed potato as well. A little bit of everything, although I love, I love Yorkshire puddings, which is weird because at Christmas, just before Christmas, last Christmas, I gave you my heart, but the very next day you told me you were gay. That song every year, every year, makes so much money.

Wham's Last Christmas. And for those that aren't in the UK, there's a song called Stay Another Day by East 17. And it gets played a lot.

It's one of the most popular Christmas songs, has been for blimey, what, 30 years? Maybe less, but you know, a long time since, what about 90? Yeah, it might be 30 years now. Yet the singer of the song, according to him, gets paid practically nothing. But the writer of the lyrics gets paid huge money.

Doesn't seem fair, does it? You know, if it's like a one-off song, fine, but imagine like, or if someone else sings it, fair enough, you know, if you wrote it, someone else sings it, you know, like Prince did with everything compares to you, that one. And Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You. You know, I think those, those two songs probably made more money for both those artists than any of the other songs that he did individually.

Because they were massive songs. I think nothing compares to you as bigger than any, any song that Dolly Parton released on her own. Any individual song.

And I'm pretty sure that I Will Always Love You by Whitney was a bigger hit than anything that Prince released as a song. And it was at number one for about five years. Blimey.

And it was worldwide, wasn't it? Worldwide. But anyway, the C-17 song Stay Another Day has Brian Harvey singing, and he don't make no money for it from the song. And every Christmas gets to like in the top 10 charts for probably nearly 30 years.

So look at Stay Another Day, Another Day, yearly earnings. Let's have a look. The 1994 hit so is 31 years written by E-17's founder member Tony has become a Christmas classic, estimated to bring 97,000 pounds in royalties a year.

But the person that sings the song, he doesn't get paid. According to him, nothing. I just think it's just seems unfair.

That's all I'm saying. I mean, I don't, I'm not saying that he should get 50%. Let all the band members.

I mean, even if you give 10%, mind you, that's only 10 grand, isn't it? It's not a huge amount, but give him 20%. Give the singer, you know, give him 20% and then give 10% or give him 30% and give 10% to the other two band members that were in the band originally, but if they did back in vocals or whatever. So even if you still give the majority of the money to the writer, because that's generally seems to be what happens anyway, but not all of it, not all of it.

Come on. So that's 97 grand a year. Imagine 30 years of, so that's like 3 million pounds plus.

Roughly. And, uh, what's his name? Harvey hasn't, hasn't seen any of it. Apart from the first time round when he got paid as, you know, I guess he got paid as a singer, but that might not be valid for what I'm talking about.

My favourite meal. Oh, Christmas. I booked a pub meal for my dad, my step mum and my little brother and me just before Christmas.

And we had, the thing is, you know, when you buy, when you order something there in a restaurant or a pub, you just know what you're getting, don't you? Because you've ordered it. You're ordering in person. You see the menu and that's it.

Order something online and the menu is so complicated. Do you want this? Do you want that? And I got confused between it asking me what I want and what extra stuff I want. So I ended up paying for an extra side order of potatoes and Yorkshire puddings, which nobody wanted because there was plenty on there.

I mean, okay, even I didn't eat all the Yorkshire puddings because there was a lot, a big plate of food. And it's like, so I've just spent £20 or £25 extra for these sides, thinking that I was just asking to have Yorkshire puddings and roast potatoes, maybe pigs in blankets. I'm not sure.

It's a long time ago. But just why am I, you know? So yeah, I'm not, I don't know. Sometimes I wonder if these menus are organised in that way to like fool people to tick something and pay more.

I don't know. I'm sure they're not, but I reckon they are. So my favourite meal, I'd say probably a nice roast dinner, provided I haven't got to cook it or wash up.

If I have to cook it, I'm not going to enjoy it as much. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't probably cook a full roast dinner. I mean, I have, but it's going to be partly processed, to be honest.

And the, if I'm expected to wash up, I'm not going to enjoy the meal because I haven't relaxed. And also, there's something about, I don't use a lot of dishes. I can do a roast dinner, maybe not the roast part, but I can do the dinner, you know, the vegetables, pretty much use two saucepans and an oven.

One plate, one knife and fork, you know, it's very minimal. I realise it's just not one person, but still. So if I'm having a dinner, I don't want to have to be washing up, you know, seven, eight, 10 plates.

And I would just, yeah, I'm moaning now, aren't I? But yeah, if I can relax afterwards, a nice big roast dinner. But I also do like, I do like an omelette. One of my favourite things I used to eat, you know, pre being a bit more careful what I eat times, I'd go into a cafe and have an omelette, a cheese omelette, chips and beans, two slices of bread, and a cup of tea, or a Coke, depending, you know.

And it was lovely. It was really juicy. It was lovely, lovely, lovely.

Very filling. And I'd put the omelette and the chips in the bread, make little sandwiches, or it was nice. But I haven't done that for years, years and years and years.

See, when I used to live in the Buddhist community, before I moved to this town, to go to college in 2007, I used to take turns to cook. And my friend, who is one of the people there, one person used to cook finger food and get upset if we didn't all use our fingers, which I found a bit ridiculous. I mean, firstly, it's unhygienic to start dipping your fingers into a shared meal, you know, use a fork or a big spoon or something like that to get what you're going to have.

And if I choose to use a fork to pick stuff up, then that's what I'll do. I don't necessarily, because it's finger food, you must eat with your fingers. No, there are no rules in my world that means I have to use my fingers.

I know where my fingers have been. Sometimes when I'm about to eat, I don't want to wash my hands first. I do actually, I always wash my hands before I eat.

Not after I've been to the toilet, but before I eat. So what's the other thing? Yeah, my friend, he would, this is the other one, he'd cook a roast dinner and he would use every single pot, pan, fork, knife, spoon, dish, tin foil, everything in the entire kitchen. He'd even use stuff from neighbours.

There'd be bowls like, where's this bowl come from? Oh, that's Pete in the next town. So why, why have you got that? Well, I needed to do, I thought I'd do some gravy, but he would use stuff like, it would take about two hours to wash up. And he wouldn't put any water in them to sort of like, you know, to soften the scum inside the bowls.

In the end, I just like, I tried to avoid his, he had nice dinners, but the idea of like, whoever, whoever ate would wash up. If you, if you, if you cooked, rather, if you did, if you cooked, you didn't wash up. If you didn't cook, you did wash up.

That was kind of one of the rules that we had. And it got to the point where no one wanted him to cook. It wasn't because he was a, it was a really good cook, but he would, he would just literally, he would use the whole streets, pots and pans.

And I'd look at the top while I was eating and then literally the kitchen would be, it looked like an industrial kitchen in a really busy restaurant that holds maybe 200 people. You know, after a day of not washing anything up, that's what it looked like. And there was only four of us.

It was like, wow, how do you do that? But yeah, that was my favourite meal. Probably, I like a nice roast dinner. The next question, are you still doing a lot of walking with your best buddy? I'm guessing you're talking about little Vin-Vin.

Yeah, me and Vinnie still walking out. I'll tell you what's weird. It is quarter past nine in the morning.

And he's covered, he's basically hiding under the covers of the duvet. Not hiding, but he's just enjoying being under there. Fast asleep.

There's, there's building work going on outside, people bar, you know, sawing and stuff. And he's not responding to anything. And he normally, if I make a recording, he's, he's in there pestering me, nothing.

So that's really strange. I mean, I thought it'd be like, come on dad, we'll go out, but nothing yet. It's been a good 13, over 13 hours since we've last been out.

We went out about eight o'clock last night, went to bed about nine. So yeah, we still go out. He's, I would say he's getting a bit better now.

He still pulls, but he pulls less than he used to. But it's kind of like, if he's going to pull, he's going to, you know, end up choking himself with a lead, but that's his fault. He's pulling.

I don't know why he does it. He's never going to get anywhere. I'm not, not going to walk extra fast for him just so he can, basically he wants to go to the sweet shop, wants to go and get sweets from the pet shop.

Yeah, we still go out. I mean, today it's raining a bit, so I'm not, I'm not madly looking forward to going out in that, but it's all right. If it, when it rains, I try and get it done and then back.

If it's a nice day, I'm usually out for about at least half an hour, sometimes longer each time we go out. And we go out probably three, four times a day. In the evening, the last time of the day, because it's dark outside, I generally just try and take him in the garden to do a wee wee.

And see if he needs to do one as well. So, you know, that's kind of what I do on a day to day. Because I can't let him run around off the lead anymore.

It's, he's a little bit limited to what he can do. But that's, that's because of the way he was acting. I can't, can't trust him, unfortunately.

But he still loves to get out and he's got a lot more affection towards the humans than he has towards the other dogs. You know, even unless he's running around with the dogs, he's not that bothered. He'll say hello to them, but he's not that, not that interested.

But the humans, that's the people he likes. It's crazy, I don't really know why. The next question is, when I look after my granddaughter's dog, everyone seems to talk to you.

And quick walks turn into a marathon. Yeah, I mean, I do get some people that I think I'm one of those people. Well, no, I'm one of those people that talk to people when I'm out.

And generally, I'm not in, I don't really do quick walks, unless it's raining. Or, you know, I've got something, unless I've got a delivery coming and I need to be back within half an hour or something. Generally, I just plod around.

And I do talk to people, but sometimes they do like to say, I've got to go or I can't stop. So I'm wondering whether or not I'm one of those annoying dog walkers that people are starting to avoid. It's possible.

But you know, so I'll say hello to those if someone's busy or they're, they're on their lunch break. Because I've noticed more recently that I know at least three, not that I know them well, but three people I've talked to locally that work from home, four in fact. So this seems to be a more, a newer thing the last few years.

So they'll come out, taking, bringing their dog out in the park and that. But it's their lunch break or they're having a, you know, a coffee break or whatever. And they're just going for a walk.

And because they're at work, they, it's not even a matter of whether they've got time to stand and chat. They might just not want to. I didn't want to.

When I, when I was working in a call centre the last time, I would sit outside or go for a walk because I didn't want to talk. I was talking all day on the phones. So I didn't, I didn't want to have a conversation with anyone during my lunchtime.

I didn't want to be with anyone either. I wanted just to be on my own and to just unwind and, you know, just relax. So maybe that's what some of the people are like.

Because there's, there's one person and I don't know if, if he's really, I'm sure he's on the phone, but he's quite often, he makes out he's having a conversation, I say. He probably is. But I know people that do that.

If they see someone they don't want to talk to, they will pretend to be talking on the phone. I'm sure he is talking on the phone, but I never hear the phone ring. And he just picks up.

Hello? Yeah. I try and listen to the conversation, but I know last time it was like, yeah, it's him again. Yeah, he's still there.

I think he's listening to what I'm saying. That's all I got. And then he walked away.

I'm trying to listen, but like, I think he's trying to listen even more. But I don't think he can hear me now. I turn my back and I'm walking away.

But I could hear, I could hear that. And that's as much as I got. So yeah, I do notice sometimes I can be out for an hour.

And I think, well, where's the time gone? Because I've got those cameras on my door. So I don't keep track of the time necessarily when I go out. It's not like, well, I've left at quarter past 11.

Let me see how long it's been. Because I just look at the camera. What time did I walk? Did I leave the flat? And what time did I get back? And often it's an hour.

And that's just around the block. If I go into the fields, it can be an hour and a half, maybe longer sometimes. So it's just, I just go by how I feel on a day really.

And I think sometimes it's a case of, I want the little one to go to the toilet, a specific type of toilet. And if he doesn't, I stick outside until he does it. Just so that I know he's done it because he needs to do two a day for his normal lifestyle is two to two a day.

Yeah. So I do understand what you're saying. Sometimes they can just, it can really drag and drag on a little bit.

I'm not very speedy. Susan says, but I'm not very speedy, but should be a lot better after the op and I live by the sea. But do you live in the country or town? Well, I used to live by the sea twice, actually, because I lived, I moved around a bit.

I used to live in Southend when I was about, well, I moved out there just before I was seven. So there's a beach in Southend, you can call it a beach, but it's the sea. It's a pebbly beach, but it has got the longest pier, or did used to have the longest pier in Europe.

And then I moved from there to another seaside town. I lived there from the age of seven until I was 19. Then I moved away to London.

Then I came back for a little while, then I moved away again when I was 20. Back to London, I stayed in London till I was 31. But I never moved back to that town again.

I moved back to a different town. I think it's a city now, but a different town. And then I moved to another town, which is a city.

So yeah, I live in a city, but it's kind of weird because they're large towns. It's a large town. I live, but I live in the countryside.

So I don't live in the town part. I live in the countryside part of the town, but it is quite a large town. I mean, in the sense of England, I mean, it's a fairly large bit.

However, it's, apparently it is now a city. But it's, you know, I think I've lived in London. That's a city.

And there's something different, I find, from, this is nothing like London here. Nothing like it. I suppose there's some comparisons, you know, but it's really, London is, I mean, I talk about it like it's been a long time since I lived there.

But I lived there for, you know, a while. I've also been to Manchester, I've been to Liverpool, I've been to Nottingham. And these are cities, but they're not like London.

Very different. And I remember going through Manchester and just, the city centre's small. I don't mean like this tiny bit, it's not, it's, you know, it's better than where I live.

It's, you know, it's definitely a better kind of vibrant place. But if you look at like Oxford Street, and Leicester Square and stuff in London, it's like, huge area. There's a lot of, just so much stuff there.

I'm not comparing, I'm just, I just thought it would be, when I went to Manchester, I thought it would be bigger. I thought it'd be like London. So I've never been before.

Although I did go on the tram, which was quite cool. Because I was on my way to, I had to go through Manchester to get to, it was a hypnosis training that I had. This is 2005.

Or was it 2006? 2005 time. So yeah, it was a long time ago. So I mean, it might be a lot different.

But it's just, it's not, it's not tiny, but it's not big. Not like London, if you think of, if you go, there's parts of London in this sort of the city area, where the roads are big, the buildings are very high, you know, and you've got theatres. And it's big.

It's not, it's not a huge area. It's quite large, but there's a lot of big stuff there. Like the museums, Trafalgar Square, the universities and the houses of parliament, the the royal, the palace, things like that are just massive, huge, huge places, which I don't know, don't really get anywhere else in the country.

I mean, you get massive mentions, but they're usually a long way off from anything, kind of in the countryside, with their own grounds, kind of. And some of the buildings are so high. These multimillion pound like apartments, they're just huge.

I mean, they go down underground as well as above ground. And you know, also tower blocks. And yes, this London's mind you, with the tower blocks, I lived in Newcastle when I was a kid.

I lived in a tower block there as well. So the tower blocks were all over the country. They weren't just in London.

They were everywhere. Post-war, they were put up in, I think, the 50s. And there was lots, lots and lots and lots of these tower blocks, which was just basically social housing.

A lot of them are now gone, been knocked down. They served their purpose, I guess, I don't know. I'm not sure if, how many are around now.

But I lived in one in London, in Stratford for a while, a little while. And that got knocked down, and they basically replaced it with flats, but they were smaller. I was like, well, that's just going to take more space up, isn't it? It might look nicer, but the thing is, those, I remember there was one tower block on its own, like literally, just up the road from Stratford, I don't know if it's still there, between the Thatched House and Maryland Station, going up, so from Maryland Station, walking up towards Leightonstone, or Leighton.

Yeah, Leighton, I guess, and then to Leightonstone. So, and on the left-hand side, there was this one block of flats on its own, surrounded by nothing other than just shops and, you know, it's really looked out of place. Because a lot of blocks of flats, council estate flats, would be together.

They'd be either connected, or they'd be in the same kind of area, like an estate. This was just on its own, so it's just strange. I don't know, I'm sure it didn't used to be, but it just, maybe they knocked the others down.

And I had a friend that I worked with that lived in there. We went up there, and the thing about those flats, the old council flats that were built in the 50s, they were large. They weren't tiny little spaces, they were big, big places.

I'm not sure about the soundproofing. I was quite lucky when I was in Stratford, because I didn't hear any sound from anyone when I was staying there. But I guess it just all depends upon the neighbours, doesn't it? And I think if you're high enough up, the higher up you are, the less neighbours you're going to have.

Like an accumulation, I mean. But I remember my friend saying that the building, his building, used to sway, that he lived in when he was a kid. So it's, you know, I don't know how many floors he had.

Also used to live in a council block. But this was, I think about six floors up, but across, a long way across. So a lot of, you know, a lot of flats in that building.

I lived there when I was six, no, 15. That was my stepmum's mum's flat. I lived, I slept on the living room floor on a, like a bed, camping bed thing for from about April or May until about March the following year.

Well, that was fun. But that, again, that was pretty quiet. I didn't, the neighbours were fairly quiet there.

So that would have suited me, to live somewhere like that, on the seafront. It'd be literally like five minutes walk to the sea. Maybe, maybe seven, seven minutes, eight minutes, you know, this is, you could see the sea from the building, from the flat.

That would have been a perfect place for me to live on my own. Two bedrooms. So, you know, if I, if I met someone and then maybe had a child, that would be perfect, you know.

But it wasn't my flat, so I didn't. Thinking about it though, I was living there, wasn't I? And I had to get out because she was moving away with my stepmum. And I was 16 years old.

I should have, not should have, but the council might have housed me there. They might let me stay. I don't know, it's possible.

It's a long time ago and it's without a time machine, can't find out. I could have stayed there and had that flat for myself and got married. I don't know, it's possible.

So, yeah, do I live in the country? So, I do live in the countryside now, but it is a, I don't class this as a city, but it is, I think, classed as nearly everywhere as cities in this country now. It's all, everyone wants to be city status for whatever reason, even though this is a, this is, I don't class a town as how big it is, how many houses there are.

For me, it's what's there.

For a city to be a city, there has to be a lot of stuff to do. In my mind, that's just my opinion. Like for a city, this is a city here.

There's nothing here. It's just a town with shops, a town hall, a little museum, you know, I think one night, maybe two nightclubs, some pubs in the town center, and just the standard food places, Nando's, McDonald's, Burger King, Five Guys, or whatever, and Wimpy, Weatherspoons, and there's very little else here in the town center. There's like a theater there as well, and a police station, and that's it.

There's very little here. For me, that's not a city. A city, to me, would be multiple, multiple theaters, a place where you've got a nightlife, which isn't just for young people that want to go to a nightclub, a nightlife where you can go to the ballet, or like I go to the ballet below me, but you know, something where it's, oh, there's a cinema as well, but somewhere where maybe there's more than one cinema, you know, a few theaters, museums to go to, places where you can go ice skating, that was weird, something just fell down my top.

I feel like something just like dropped, like a crumb dropped down my cleavage, which is weird, because I've got, this is like done up, yeah, maybe it's just a flea, and that's what I think of a city, so I don't class where I live as a city, it's just a large town, there's a lot of houses, but I don't think a house and estates, lots of house and estates is what makes a city, it is what makes a city size, like a large area from that perspective, but unless there's actually stuff to do,

then it's not much of a city, and I don't mean just nightlife, just dates, you know, if you, no one's going to come to where I live, I don't mean the little village I live in, in the countryside, but no one's going to come to this town or this city as a tourist, and that's not totally true, there's a few, there are some Roman relics and stuff, but generally there is a castle as well, so that's pretty cool, but you know, other than that, there's not a lot here,

you go to London, I'm not trying to sell London, I'm just saying you go there, you've got Madame Tussauds, you've got the Waxworks, you've got the museums that are just huge, that's a whole day in itself just to visit one of those museums, the art galleries, and all that, so much to go to, and also the markets, the parks, it's so much, there's so many things that you can go to in a big city, that's what I think a city is, somewhere where you can visit as a tourist, and actually have fun,

go and explore and have lots to do, during the day and during the night, and have lots of really nice hotels, not just the Holiday Inn and the local pub that maybe has got a few rooms above it, you know, that's for me, that's what a city is, but that's just because I think that's what I've been raised to know what a city is, that's the only reason I guess, because I know there are other cities that perhaps aren't quite like that, but they're still cities, just, I don't know,

I suppose it's, I guess it makes sense that London would have all that stuff because of the tourists, so there's a reason why that's kept, but I don't know, like with Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham, Newcastle, I'm probably going to run out of cities, but there's a lot of cities out there, and it seems to be that the cities are more known, more for either their universities or their football clubs, or maybe where the industry, what industry they have, like Portsmouth was the Navy, a naval town or naval city, Newcastle,

was that a steel city, like they had steel there, I think Liverpool, didn't they used to make the boats, make the ships in Liverpool, but yeah, I just, I'd love to, I mean, I have been to places like Liverpool, it was Manchester, it's kind of like a travelling through situation, but they're such famous places, I lived in Newcastle, so I've been to Newcastle, lived there for a few years when I was little, and I lived in London, I was born in London, so I lived in London for the first couple of years of my life,

then lived in Newcastle, then Southend, I mean, I don't know if Southend's now classed as a city, I don't know, but there are some cities, I'd like to go to Leeds, I don't think I've ever been to Leeds, I've been to Nottingham lots of times, and I've been to Manchester once, travelled through Liverpool once, maybe twice, I'm pretty sure I went to Liverpool in the past as well to get a ferry, twice to get a ferry, once to the Island Man, and I think I might have gone there to go to Ireland as well,

in fact, I think I might well have done that a few times in the 90s, I just don't remember, so I went to Ireland once, twice, I travelled there twice, came back twice, obviously I guess, but I think it was from Liverpool, I don't know where else we would go to go to Ireland from this country, because I was living in London at the time, unless Harwich, does Harwich go to Ireland?

I might have had to have travelled to Liverpool, unless I went to Wales, and then went from Wales to Ireland, it's hard, I can't remember, it's a long, yeah, 1994, 95 times, it's a while back. What was my best occupation before I did the website? That's the question, what was your best occupation before you did the website?

Well, I mean the website isn't really my occupation, it's what I spend my time doing, but I'm not sort of earning any money or anything, but it's, I don't know, there's only, I've been good at one thing in my life, like job wise, and that would probably be selling, like working in car insurance, I was pretty good at that, but I didn't like it, I like being good at something, because it took, well I was 31 before I started doing that, so it took me a long time before I was any good at anything,

you know, it's the first time I was good at something, selling, I mean I was also good at selling mobile phone contracts as well, which is a job I had previous to working in insurance, and I was good at so selling was something that I was pretty good at, but on the phone, I think we could break it down to really talking on the phone, I was good at talking on the phone, but nowadays I don't even like talking on the phone anymore, I think I used up all my talking,

not talking obviously, because I do that now, but I used up my phone conversations, I think, but I was good at it, but it took a lot out of me, it was, I put everything into it, it's very, I found it hard to do something half-hearted, I could work in a shop half-hearted, I could work in a factory half-hearted, you know, I could do stuff where I just, but you know what, even in a factory, I would work quite hard, because otherwise it would bore me, I'd get bored,

if I'd like to keep active and try and do my best at what I was doing, even if it was just putting stickers on bits of meat, or putting, making boxes up, or put meters into boxes, I actually did work quite hard, and I tried to make sure I did the job properly, yeah, I did actually, to be fair, I'll make out that I didn't, I was very lazy, but I wasn't, I was quite competent at those jobs as well, I worked in a bakery, that was very hard,

but I did the job to the best of my ability, so yeah, but I wouldn't say I was any good at it, but the only thing, what was the question again, what was the best occupation, I was a DJ for a while, it wasn't really like a proper job, but it was just a, more of a hobby really, but I did that for a while, and that was fun, but that was, you know, back in London, many, many, many, many years ago, but probably from a working, getting paid employment position,

and the best job I had, I would probably say it was the first insurance job I had at Churchill, that was the best one I had out of all the jobs I had, as far as insurance goes, because I worked at three different insurance companies, and Churchill was the best, that was me at my best, I was successful, I was doing well, I was one of the top sellers, out of about 200 sales people, so yeah, I had a kind of a little bit of respect I think, people not,

okay they weren't worshipping me, not all of them, but I think I felt quite a bit of self-confidence, and like I was good at something, that was nice, but I can't say I really like, I don't know, I did have a job where it was insurance as well, but it was listening to phone calls, instead of making phone calls, so I was listening and basically marking people to make sure that they were doing their job properly, it was part of the compliance, and I liked that job, because it suited me,

I was able to, because I'm quite good at concentrating, and I could focus on the cause, I knew what I was listening for, because I'd done the job for years, I knew also how to do the job that I was listening to, what I was, you know, what I was marking, I was good at that, so I quite liked that job as well, and it suited me, because nine to five, or nine to six, or whatever it was, left my evenings free, which was the first time for years I'd had that,

because all the insurance jobs were shift, shift patterns, which wasn't great, yeah, so this next question, you must be a very kind man, as a lot of people seem to look to you for help, well thank you, I don't know if, I don't know if I'd class myself as kind, but I like the idea of being helpful, I think if if I'm told that I'm helpful, you know, if it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, you know, if like, if I'm talked about and someone says,

well he was quite helpful, that Jason, he was useful, maybe not useful, that sounds a bit weird, doesn't it, but yeah, just saying I was kind, that's nice as well, I do, I like to hear that, but I like to think that I've made a difference, I realised that, you know, I'm just going to be forgotten at one point, but I know that it'd be nice to think that I have, Vinnie is moaning, do you hear him whining, what is it Vinnie, it's really weird,

I put some dinner out for him last night and then we went to bed, so I leave all the doors open so he can come and help himself to whatever he wants to get, the water's in there, there's dry food, there's food, wet food, I give him like a bone to chew on when he goes to bed, but normally I come back in there, if he hasn't eaten the food before he got to bed, it's still there, came in here this morning, it was gone,

so he'd come in here while I was asleep and eat his dinner and then come back to bed, which you don't normally do, do you, no, we just had the dustman man come around and the one that I had a a weird kind of moment with, because we were, it sounds weird doesn't it, because of the black bags being put out and the rubbish and they were going to start, the council were going to start fining us and he was taking photographs of the contents of the bin and I went out all guns blazing,

but we ended up being friendly actually and I just tried to explain to him about the situation, like it's, you know, it's not really fair to be doing that and there's nowhere for us to put our bins, the black bags only get picked up every two weeks, so what are we supposed to do, and he just knocked on my door a while ago and he said, I spoke to the council and they've, they're going to, they've agreed to what you say, I said really, I said yeah,

they said between now and April I'm just going to continue to collect the bins from whenever, don't put them out the front because that's not what the council want, they want it put out the back, but he's going to come around twice a week and collect the bin bags from out the back in the bin room, that way they won't get, because there's not enough room in there for two weeks worth at all, not even for one week's worth, so he's going to continue to collect for the next couple of months,

well till April and apparently in, apparently, apparently in April they're going to have some, some kind of bin, bin things that they're going to put in the front or in the back somewhere, where it'll be like, I don't know if it's going to be like a weedy bin or whatever it is, so they're going to have them, which will just make things, just give us a bit more room for stuff, or they're going to build something somewhere, so that's pretty good, that's kind of all worked out nice,

as long as we don't put our black bags out the front, that's the main thing, apart from like on the day that they're collected or the night before, so otherwise, you know, he said just put them out the back and he's going to collect them.

We got one neighbour that just chucked stuff in there, she thinks it's a bin, it's a bin room, but it's not, because there used to be bins in there, but some, they were taken out, someone, they used them for bonfires or stuff, so they used to have like metal bins, and people used to put the black bags in there, but they got stolen or something, but one of the neighbours just literally chucked stuff, just chucked loose rubbish on in on the floor, which is a bit weird, so he says he's going to keep clearing up and then go from there, so yeah, that's quite good news really, it's quite good.

Oh blimey, oh I'm tired, so that kind of brings me to the end of this recording, it's about two hours, isn't it? Have I answered all the questions? I think it's always a question, what is your favourite meal?

I answered that one, so that was toad in a hole, wasn't it, I think, and then, oh toad in a hole, I love toad in a hole, toad in a hole, mashed potato, some peas, I don't mind peas with toad in a hole and mashed potato, but nice little peas, not big peas, but nice little juicy little peas, you know, the ones that taste nice, and then a toad in a hole, so if you don't know what toad in a hole is, it's basically, it's basically just Yorkshire pudding,

but with sausages in, and then cooked, and some gravy, but not, not lumpy, but nice and smooth and clear, and probably some tomato ketchup, yeah, got the amount of times when I was younger, and you know, I'd have my dinner, where's the tomato ketchup, why don't you just taste the food first, before you start putting stuff on it, to see if you like it, like, no, I like tomato ketchup, I know that I like tomato ketchup, and I want tomato ketchup on my food, but it's cornflakes, no, but it's like,

it's so good, one of the good things about being an adult, is if I want to have tomato ketchup on everything, I can, honestly, it's so nice, you know, I don't have it on cornflakes, but if I wanted to, I could, if I want to have a roast dinner, and pour a bag of sugar all over it, and eat it, I can, I don't know how many times I'd get away with that, because my blood sugar level needs to be kept down, but you know, just saying generally,

I can do that if I want, I mean, sometimes, because I live on my own, when I get, I'm getting ready to do a wee, and I'm actually preparing, as I'm walking towards the bathroom, I don't wait until I get to the toilet, before I flop it out, that's a nice ending to the, to the record, isn't it, it's like, oh, did we need that visual, probably not, probably not, flop it out, blimey, oh, I'm so romantic, but yeah, what else did you write, I hope, uh, okay,

so I think I've written everything, I've answered everything rather, read everything, answered everything, there wasn't many questions, so, that's why I didn't manage to really record for very long, only two hours, but yeah, so what I'll do is, I'll, I'll also include the, the like five and ten hour versions as well, just, you know, just to keep it going a little bit longer, if you want, I mean, if you're still awake, that is, blimey, I mean, I'd be surprised if you'd be two hours listening to me talking about nothing, well,

that's not really talking about nothing, is it, I think I've, I've shared a lot of insight into the world, and yeah, I think it's been an educational experience, that's what I believe, and that's it, I'm going to take the little vinsta out to do a wee wee, I'm going to have some breakfast, nice cup of tea, watch some television, and then I will edit and upload this recording, so this should be all done by midday, it's now seven minutes past 10 in the morning, so it should be, I'll give myself an hour to relax, and I'll get back on it, and it should all be kind of, I reckon, done by about midday.

So that's it, so thank you for listening, whoever's listened, and I know this has been a special recording for Susan, Susan, Susan Su, but if you, hopefully whoever's listened to it, has found it calming and relaxing and peaceful, so wishing you all well, wishing Susan Su great healing for your hip, and stay relaxed and calm, and remember to take care of yourself, because remember to be kind to yourself, because you do deserve to be happy, be gentle with yourself, lots of love, bye