(music) Whisper Saturday | LMBYTS #1402 | Jason Newland | 2nd August 2025

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com, my name is Jason Newland, please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. This is whisper Saturday, for some reason I've done, was it Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Saturday, for whisper, Let Me Bore You To Sleep in a row, first thing in the morning when I wake up, and I don't know why, I don't know why, hopefully the microphone is picking up, my not so loud voice, I hope, it's a bit of an early start, but I did go to bed particularly early last night, so I went to bed about 7 o'clock in the evening, it's about 2.30 now in the morning,

so technically I've had 7 hours, was it 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, Due to grandkids, there were some changes in her day routine, so I said don't worry I'll go up and see him, so I did, went up yesterday, got there about half 3 in the afternoon,

got a taxi there, it was raining, proper raining, like really raining, you know what, I don't think I brought my prolly home, no, no, so I took my prolly with me, tried to open it from the front door of the building where I live, to the taxi, now I got wetter trying to open the prolly, and in trying to close it, as I opened the taxi door, I'd have got lits wet if I'd just walked straight over, it was what, 4 footsteps probably, I mean it's not something that I'm going to regret forever,

it wasn't quite that deep baby, but thinking about it, it probably would have been easier just to still take the prolly in case I needed to stand outside and wait for a taxi on the way back, however, it's quite weird because I get in and I hear a voice in the, well it's the driver, and he says, hi Jason, I said oh, no I've not looked at him yet, cos I'm backing into the taxi, I just think it's nice that he's being pleasant considering what's heading towards him, my big fat bum,

and I settle in, and he said, just checking you're going to see Uncle Sausages in a nursing home, and I said yeah, and I turn round and it's, what's his name, he was my regular taxi driver, when I first started going up to the hospital, when I was up there every single day, getting taxis there and back, it cost me about £500, and not a day, cos that'd be expensive, but he was one of the regular drivers, so I kind of got to know him a bit,

and then a few weeks ago I started mainly travelling by bus, so I didn't see any more drivers, and yesterday was the first time that I travelled by taxi for, I don't remember how long it's been, it's not a long time, but it might be a couple of weeks, because I wasn't able to go out for a week due to Covid, and then I visited Uncle Sausages on Thursday, so I swam in the hospital the previous Wednesday, and then I was ill on the Wednesday and Thursday, did the Covid test on the Friday,

and then I was clear, did another Covid test this Thursday, just gone, was clear, and I went up to visit Uncle Sausages, then I went up again yesterday, that's it, yeah, so I'm sitting there, I don't really know what to do when I'm there, it didn't seem the right time to show off my new juggling skills, you know, it's really, I don't know, I was talking to him, updating him on the locals, there's not a lot going on, it's just the same people making the same noise really, and I keep hearing the same sentence, you know, not from him, but the hearing's the last thing to go, and I'm like, okay, but I wonder if he could communicate, what would he say to me?

And I wonder if, you know, I've had a few little scenarios, one would possibly be him saying, will you please shut up, leave me alone, I don't know, another would be, will you please stop sitting on my leg, will you please stop farting, there could be lots of things that he might be trying to say to me, where's my bloody drinks, that's the last thing he said to me, Wednesday evening, because I went and visited him, he was asleep in hospital, so I didn't, he looked like a little baby,

just needed a teddy bear, he looked so comfortable, all curled up asleep, and I didn't disturb him, because firstly, a couple of days earlier he told me that all he wanted was to go to sleep, because he said he hadn't slept properly for the last five weeks, so I didn't want to disturb him, he looked so peaceful, just having a good sleep, plus I didn't feel very well, I just, he kind of came on, on the way to the hospital, and I was like, wow, so I just,

I took that opportunity to leave, I left a package that his friend had delivered, or had sent to me, his friend lives in another country, so I delivered that, I stuck it on the table, it was just a newspaper and a packet of sweets, so Uncle Sausages phoned me up in the evening, where were you, he didn't shout, but he was like, what do you mean, why didn't you come today, I said I did come today, but you were asleep, why didn't you wake me up, I just thought you wanted to sleep,

he said where's my drinks, I think that's what I've been to him, I come and visit and then I go and get stuff, I'm like a little Uber Eats I suppose for him, and that's kind of been my role for the last month and a half, so I get there, have a chat, have a catch up, you know that's how it's been, in hospital, and then he starts talking about, well what should we get then, he went through a little phase where he liked eating their sausage roll pasty things in Costa,

and in the early days, which sounds weird considering it's been six weeks, but in the early days we used to walk down there together, go and sit outside, have a chat, I still remember that first Saturday, so he went in there on a Friday, 10.30 we left here, and I think I came back about 3.30 in the morning, so I'm there the next day on a Saturday, and in the afternoon, and at this point he'd already been diagnosed with what was wrong with him,

they didn't give him a prognosis at that point but they told him what it was, because they'd done a scan and everything, and we were downstairs, I'm not sure if we had drinks, we were just sitting in the sun, yeah, because that was a Saturday, and we were on one of these desk table things, and Uncle Sausages started talking about making arrangements and things like that, I was like, oh shut up mate, what are you talking about, because he started being practical, and then he was saying, oh we can fight this,

and I said yeah, so it was a little bit emotional, the next day we was outside again, this time we were near this bit of water, which is in hospital grounds, and a duck started pecking my willy, now I thought it was Vinnie to start with, just because generally if I'm sitting somewhere, and I feel something starts pulling at my clothing or anything, it's always Vinnie, even though I didn't have Vinnie with me, it's just a natural reaction, like what are you doing, what are you doing mate,

I look down and there's this duck staring at me, pecking away at me pecker, oh dear, I don't know why that made me laugh, pecking at me pecker, anyway, it seems like a really long time, because he used to come out, he went from coming outside with me, to still walking down with me, but sitting in Costa, to just sending me down to get stuff, I remember this one boy, one day it was a couple of weeks in, and he said, he wanted to come home, I said well in that case,

let's not take the lift anymore, let's go down the stairs, because he was on the second floor, no he was on the first floor, I said let's go down the stairs, because if you're going to be travelling home, if you're going to go home, you're going to have to go up and down those stairs, and he said ok, it was fine, he was a little bit unsteady on his feet anyway, but I think a lot to do, that can be when you're wearing your pyjamas, or wearing a hospital gown,

being in public, because even though you're in hospital, it feels like being in a public street really, in fact, if anything it's a lot busier than a normal public street, unless you're in Oxford Street or somewhere really busy, there are thousands of people just continuously trafficking, trafficking, that's not the right word is it, but just travelling through, thousands of people, I mean to me that makes me more invisible and anonymous, I just would generally not think that anyone would notice me anyway really these days, but I think my noticeability levels have dropped somewhat,

I think it's just an age thing, it's natural, I kind of blend in with the wallpaper, I think after seeing him yesterday, it's, two days in a row it's been a shock to me to be honest, it has, because he wasn't like that when I last saw him, a week ago, and yeah, it's night and day, it's like completely different, and what's weird about it is, he didn't believe he was ill, because he felt fine, apart from an upset stomach, which he blamed on having caught a bug or something from the hospital,

which is highly likely, that is a likely situation, but it wasn't true, that was a symptom of his condition, and I started to think, maybe they've got it wrong, because, okay he was still yellow, but he's, you know, I don't know it just seemed, I don't know what I'm trying to say, maybe I was hoping they'd got it wrong, but you know, a really good scenario would be that, they realised they'd made a mistake, and all he needed was a simple ob, which cleared his system out,

so he could be going like normal colour again, because he used to be, he was always very pale, a bit like me, although I'm not pale, I'm pink, the rest of my body's pale, apart from my arms, my forearms are brown, because I'm out in the sun a lot, with Vinnie and stuff, but my face is pink, and my feet, basically my whole body's the same colour as my feet, just white, like pale, but with a pink face, it's very strange, trust me if you see me naked,

you don't want to see me naked, I think that's agreed upon, that's probably not the first thing you'd notice, okay let's move on from that, please, please, please, ew, yeah I prefer not to see him, oh so I was there yesterday, I was just sitting down, and suddenly in the room bursts this man, like what made me jump, and it was the husband of, well it was his Uncle Sausage's friend, like you know, they were married, like the ones that said they weren't coming, and there was a change,

and they decided to come up and pop up and see Uncle Sausage's, and then go and pick up their grandkids, and I was like, well blimey, made me jump, I think I was kind of deep in thought, hard to believe, but I do sometimes think, it's a rare, rare occurrence, but I gave it a go once, and I thought, maybe I'll try this again one day, and I did, yesterday was that day, yeah man, yeah, made me jump, but the good thing about it is I got a lift home,

which was handy, cos it cost me £16 to get there, in a taxi, and I was going to get a taxi back, well two reasons, mainly because it was quite late in the day, and it was going to take me quite a while to walk it, plus it was raining, so it wasn't a good idea to be walking out in the rain, I'd just get wet, what's the point, so there'd be unnecessary dampness, we came back and what's her name's husband wanted to have a look at the flat,

because he was going to clear it out himself, cos the council asked us to clear it out, and I said no, I said it's not, it's no one's job to clean it out other than the council, Uncle Sausages has no family, he hasn't got anyone that has to do anything like that, besides I've bagged up so much of his stuff now, at the request of his friend, just to try and help out the council and help out generally, and it's still so much to do, so much to move,

it's going to take them a good couple of days probably to empty that place, that's with all the work I've done, I mean the front garden's full of bags, and now the kitchen's full of bags of stuff that I've filled, and the hallway's full of bags, most of the living room is now pretty much clear, other than the furniture, and a fair bit of the bedroom as well, it's one of those weird things, cos I went in here the other day, a couple of times I've been asked to go in and try and find something,

once it was, where was it, passport, another time it was his bible, another time his radio, another time some money that he had put aside, he said it was £70 but it was £40 in some diary, now I know exactly what that money was for, he used to give that to his other friend for getting shopping for him, see it'd draw that money out of the cash point at the petrol station, he told me this, and he was very organised, so I remember I had to look for that, what else,

oh yeah I had to look for some letters, some ID to send his friend, cos she needed that, I think it was proof of his pension, cos she has to deal with the finances and cancelling stuff, she's dealt with the council, and given a month's notice for the end of the tenancy, but that's because I contacted the council, my tummy's gurgling, I contacted the council, just to let them know the situation, and just tell them that we need some help with some aspects of the flat, need to get fumigators in and stuff like that,

it's weird cos they seem more focused on just getting the flat back, which I was surprised, I know technically that is their job, but for me we're dealing with a human being, and they're dealing with a property, oh well, I imagine, I mean they say a month, I remember my friend downstairs, the council stuck a sign on the door, saying if you need to, whoever's got a key to this flat, you need to finish what you're doing, take what you need to take, before a certain date,

cos then the council are going to take the flat back, but it gave them a month's notice, two weeks later they were breaking in, and changing the locks, and that was it, they didn't wait a month, they did the same with downstairs, there's another flat, and they put a month's notice, couple of weeks they came in, and changed the locks, so I'm not sure if they just struggled to count up to four, I don't know, so I foresee having experienced that twice, that it might happen again with Uncle Sausages,

so I imagine they're going to come up next week, put a sign on the door, notice of, I don't know, not eviction, but notice of the flat being cleared, with a month's notice, and then after two weeks they'll probably turn up, also downstairs where my friend used to live, the new tenant who's been here for a year, she's also moved out, which is weird, mind you it's not the first time that there's been two flats empty since I've lived here, because when Luke left, my friend downstairs, the other flat was also empty,

so yeah, in fact, that week that Luke left, the flat downstairs was being refurbished by the council, they were preparing it for the next tenant, but outside of that, I don't know, so we've got two new tenants moving into this building, fingers crossed that they'll be fairly quiet, I hope, I just, I'm not looking for more door slamming, I mean one of the door slammers has moved out from downstairs, the other one downstairs, another one doesn't seem to be able to control herself, she just has to let the door slam,

multiple times, I don't know why, the other neighbour below me doesn't let the door slam, and Uncle Soph's just never let his door slam, and the other person on my floor doesn't let their door slam, and I don't either, so at the moment we've just got one door slammer, but we might have three in a couple of months, I don't know, please, please no, but the reason the doors slam is because they're so heavy, they're supposed to do that, you know, in the sense of being fire doors,

but they shake the building when they slam, it's not just that they slam, but the two things, apart from the inconsideration, the two things that affect me is Vinnie starts barking if he hears a door slam, and also the times, sometimes late at night, early hours of the morning the doors are slamming, okay, causes Vinnie to start barking, and I'm in bed, not a good time to hear barking in my ear, so it's Saturday the 2nd of August 19, 2025, I'm going to get myself some breakfast, probably about 3 o'clock,

it's an early start, but hey, I had an early night, really early, 7 in the evening, that's a very early night, and I don't know what I'm going to do today, we'll see, so I'm going to go, thank you for listening, remember to be kind to yourself because you do deserve to be happy, be gentle with yourself, you deserve to feel safe, lots of love, bye.