(10 hours) #28 Glasses - SLEEPY Boring Objects (Jason Newland) (4th June 2022)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland. This is Boring Objects. Boring Objects.

Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. So what is this podcast about? Now I've made a few of these and I think about 25, 26 maybe less maybe three I don't know but a few and basically what it is it's I talk about an object or a subject for I don't know half an hour maybe longer maybe less and that's it. So it's kind of like a more focused version of the Let Me Bore You To Sleep because I just kind of focus on one thing.

In fact Let Me Bore You To Sleep is probably the least focused thing that I do. I don't know why I'm doing it with my hand. I don't know.

So I just pick an object or a subject and I talk about it. So for example the last one I did was a few days ago and I talked about what did I talk about? I can't remember. No I'm not sure.

I talked about something and it's boring. It's so boring I've forgotten what it was. Now the object or the object of this boring object or the object of this boring object it gives you an opportunity to just allow your brain to kind of switch off a bit.

Sometimes a little bit of focused tediousness is useful to just relax and maybe you decide to allow yourself to fall asleep. Possibly. I don't know.

That's up to you. I've got an itchy eyeball. So it's really just whatever you want it to be.

So sometimes because I'm not looking at the list in fact maybe I should look at the list so I can get an idea of what I've done before. Wow okay. So if I go to this podcast boring objects.

Right so I've done oh okay. Blimey I've done 27. 27 different podcasts.

27 different subjects. So let me tell you the subjects I've done. Because that in itself is probably quite boring.

So okay. Rain. That was the first one I did.

Then I did hair. Bricks. Big pink pig piggy bank.

Okay that was the fourth one. Number five was printers. Six was cameras.

Seven was plugs. Plugs as in electric plugs. Not you know not the enjoyable ones.

Eight was number was pizza. Nine was swimming pools. Ten was cheese.

Wow this is boring. It's boring just reading out the titles. Eleven was hitchhiking.

And number 12 was ovens. What? Books was 12. 13.

14 was goldfish. 15 was microphones. 16 was mops.

I really I'm stretching here aren't I? To try and find things to talk about. Number 17 was wallpaper. Well they always say there's nothing more boring than wallpaper.

Well listening to someone talk about wallpaper is more boring than wallpaper. 18 is trainspotters. 19 is games.

20 is beds. 21 is hats. 22 is jobs.

I was looking at the titles and I just can't believe I talked about this stuff. Because I don't remember talking about any of it. Number 24 wooden benches.

Wow I talked about wooden benches. This was back in October so that's why I don't remember it because it's now June the next year. Wooden benches blimey.

Anyway number 23 is baths as in washing bath you know thingy. I was gonna say the thing you get into when you have a bath. The thing that I can't fit into yeah.

Uh 22 jobs. 23. I've already done 20.

That's weird 22. Okay I've already done that. Wooden benches.

Okay 23 baths. 24. Oh 24 wooden benches.

Okay 25 Belgium. Belgian. Belgium as in the country.

I've been to Belgium I think three times. And 26 shoes. Oh blimey.

27 punch bags. And 28. Oh no 27 was the last one I did.

Punch bags. And that was on the 30th of May. The very first one I did was in September the 18th last year.

So it was nine months ago. Rain. And that lasted for 31 minutes.

Boring objects lasted for 28 minutes. And um hair rather. Bricks as number three lasted for 25 minutes.

Big pink pig piggy bank lasted for 33 minutes. Printers lasted for 38 minutes. Cameras.

I managed to make that last for 44 minutes. I'm seeing if there's any really long ones. Wow yeah ovens.

50 minutes or 51 minutes nearly. That's the longest one out of a lot of them I think. I've got 41 minutes for beds.

42 minutes for wooden benches. Wow. 48 minutes for cameras.

Right blimey. Anyway so that's that's what I've done in the past. And 54 minutes for Belgium.

Did I mention that? I don't know. I can't remember everything. Hopefully this won't last that long.

I'm hoping. I'm hoping. Maybe I should call this podcasts that I've already done.

And then that'll be it. We'll be able to say well it's 10 minutes done. But that's a bit of a cop-out isn't it? Okay right.

I mean there's a chance if you if you watch these podcasts or listen to these podcasts there's a chance that I will repeat myself. You know if you if you listen to these podcasts there's a chance I might repeat myself. And there's a chance I might even repeat the subject without realizing it because I don't generally look back upon previous recordings.

I like to think of them like going to the toilet. You know do it. Flush it.

Move on with my life. That's what these podcast episodes are to me. It's you know once it's done I don't want to really or give him birth.

You know just I don't want to I don't want to see it again. You know it's done. It's gone.

Move on. So these are all my little babies. But you know I kind of forget as soon as I forgot that sentence before I even finished it.

Yeah something like that. So I kind of forget pretty much as soon as I finished. So sometimes like with the Let Me Bore You To Sleep podcasts I get people commenting or sending me a message referring to um my glasses are a bit wow just bang the microphone my glasses need cleaning.

That's terrible isn't it? Not really. I'm wearing them all day. They're going to get a bit dirty aren't they? Or a little bit.

I don't think they get dirty so much as a little bit smeary. Not like a smear test but like a little bit you know. Sometimes I don't know if it's my eyes or the glasses.

I think it's the glasses. Have I talked about glasses? Have I? I can't remember. I need to get a list of what I've talked about.

I'm It don't matter. It's going to be just another boring version of the same subject then I guess isn't it? I mean you can tell the difference. It's got a different date and it's a different length.

I mean length isn't important anyway. I'm sticking to that. Itchy collarbone.

You hear that? That's more than one dog isn't it? Why do people have dogs like that? They just bark. They do nothing but bark. I could never dog the bark like that.

I know dogs bark but I would just have to just know. If I had a dog right from the start. Nope.

Don't put up with it. I mean I had my little Andre he was a ferret and very early on I taught him not to bite me. Like he could bite but he had to.

If I said gentle he stopped. Yeah and I taught him that right from birth. I mean I didn't technically give birth to him.

We had a little ceremony and we you know pretended but you know I but he was tiny when I had him and I had to teach him to not bite hard and if he'd have barked I know because he wasn't a dog so that would have been quite weird. I would have taught him not to bark. You can't teach a dog not to bark.

You make his dogs bark. That's what they do. It's like trying to teach a cow not to produce milk or go moo.

I don't know what cows have got to do anything. Why would you bring a cow up? Weird. So maybe I should talk about dogs.

I can't but that's a big I'll be talking for ages and I don't want to talk for a long time because I can't be bothered. Glasses that should make. I don't know though because I've had quite a few glasses.

Have I talked about glasses before? I mean I might have mentioned it. I might have actually read the title. I'm spitting everywhere.

I might have read the title glasses and not even realized not registered because I wasn't even listening to my own voice as I was saying it. Anyway so glasses. I think the first time I realized about glasses was my my biological mother used to wear glasses and I'm pretty sure she wore dark glasses.

You mean sunglasses? Well see I don't know because we're talking the 70s early 70s middle 70s early yeah early 70s. Did they have dark glasses back then that weren't shades that weren't sunglasses? Because you know why would you wear sunglasses in the house? Wouldn't would you unless you're a rock star? So I'm thinking that maybe I got it wrong but she wore glasses anyway which explains probably why I wear glasses.

My dad's eyesight's really good.

I mean he wears glasses for reading but he's never worn glasses like all the time and he's only worn glasses for reading the last you know few years or whatever. So his his eyesight has been I don't take after him with the general eyesight but I did inherit the piles which was lovely. That's nice.

Hemorrhoids yum! So I and the only other person really family wise that wore glasses was my grandmother. She wore glasses so I never really saw her without glasses apart from when she wasn't wearing them. So then I went to school and I saw people at school that wore glasses.

I suppose what I'm saying is I never wore glasses not ever I mean at school. I didn't wear glasses. So sometimes I used to wear sun shades you know sunglasses in the summer but I didn't wear glasses and I was always a little bit worried about wearing glasses because I thought they made your eyes shrink.

That's what I used to think. I thought that if you wear glasses they make your eyes shrink into your head because the amount of people that I knew that wore glasses and they'd take the glasses off and their eyes would just be tiny compared to what they were when they were wearing the glasses and their eyes would be almost invisible inside there like can't see your eyes now.

So I was worried that my eyes because I just figured that if you didn't wear glasses or when if you wore glasses your eyes didn't have to do much so they just went back inside your head but if you don't wear glasses you've got your eyes have got kind of be very active and they've got kind of almost stretch out to see stuff your eyeballs and that but I might have that wrong.

I didn't take much notice at school about anything really. I'm very uneducated. So I didn't wear glasses for anything.

None of my brothers wore glasses. My dad didn't wear glasses. My stepmother, my dad's wife, didn't wear glasses.

I think her mum did and my nan did. My other nan did. My granddad didn't wear glasses.

My new people at school that wore glasses and it seemed a lot of the ones that wore glasses were quite seemed quite clever and because I used to spend time with some of the clever kids. I think it made them feel good being around someone as dumb as me. Made them feel cleverer probably but I spent I don't remember really anyone any of the rough kids or any of the troublemakers wearing glasses generally didn't for some reason.

I don't know why. Supposed to keep getting the glasses broken wouldn't they? But then people did wear contact lenses even then I think in the 80s because I was at school from 80 high school from 81 to 86. 1986 as opposed to what 1886.

I'm not quite that old. I might look that old but I ain't. Thank you very much.

Yeah so how it happened with my because obviously I wear glasses now so at one point I had a first set of glasses. I think that's kind of an obvious statement. That's fair enough isn't it? It was 1986 I think.

Yeah it was. It was kind of March time maybe February time. I'm kind of being very loose with that because I don't remember.

I don't actually remember the exact time because I didn't write in my diary. I didn't have a diary back then. I don't have a diary now.

This is my diary. This is it. I don't write anything down anymore.

Everything's verbal now. Everything I just because I do the boring Let Me Bore You To Sleep and that's kind of like a verbal journal really I guess. Anyway I was getting headaches and I went to the doctors.

I was just getting these headaches not migraines but just headaches like oh and I used to read a lot when I was a kid all the way through being a kid. That was probably the one love that I've carried on throughout life is I love books. I love books.

I still do. I would live you know if I had the if I had unlimited finances I would basically live in a mansion full of books like every room would be it'd be basically the biggest library in the world if I had you know the unlimited resources to do that. I'd have every book on every subject that I'm interested in.

So whenever if I suddenly so I've said not suddenly but I've recently become more interested in neuroscience. That's Horace the pigeon in the background in case you're wondering. He actually comes and he stands on my windowsill outside and if the windows open because there's two windows three windows but two windows that open to the windowsill he goes always goes to the one with the window open he looks inside he's like like that except he sounds like a pigeon.

I don't know what what the heck my sound was I don't know what that was I really don't know. So I went to the doctor. I was having headaches and you know I say about eyestrain because I was reading a lot so I you know I didn't really attribute it to that and the doctor said what are you now wrong with him? I think it might be his eyes.

The doctor was Scandinavian and so he said you need to go to to the vet not the vet. What's an optometrist? I know what an optician is but optometrist optometrist optometron optometrist optometron I don't know. Anyway go to the optician so I went to the optician.

Optician said I needed glasses. He also said I had a lazy eye. Huh? Yeah lazy eye.

Now I don't think I've got a lazy eye. Not one not once in my life has anyone said are you talking to me? I've never been talking to someone no one else around only one in the room me and them and they said are you talking to me?

Never ever had anyone say that so I'm figuring my eyes face in the same kind of general direction but I had a lazy eye I mean to the point where the optician gave me exercises to do he gave me a patch to wear to train my lazy eye to be honest I'm not sure if I put the patch on the right eye but that's another story and he had me doing exercises so I think he got me to put a patch on my good eye I don't remember which eye it

was and I had to do exercise where I would follow my finger with my eye without turning my head and it's something or a pen something like that or a pencil I can't remember it was a had to be a straight thing and it had to be near my face I had to kind of follow it and I had to do that for I don't know about six weeks eight weeks or something and he gave me glasses I'm pretty sure though the glasses were for everything unless he gave me two

no I think he did he gave me glasses and they were for reading and also for general life so that's where my eyesight was it was at a point where I wore one pair of glasses for everything including reading I didn't really need glasses at the time to see my eyesight was pretty good I think the optician gave me glasses because I was straining my eyes so to in order to stop me straining my eyes he gave me a little bit of help you know so I wore them to school

the first day and people even people that I didn't even know were making fun of me were laughing at me because no one had seen me with glasses before because I'd never you know there were there were girls that I didn't even know they knew that I existed didn't even know that they knew who I was so they went from me being invisible to them to them just laughing at me wasn't quite the the vibe I was going for you know really I was I felt like I'd rather be invisible

to a woman than for her to just think of me as being silly I don't know not there's nothing wrong with being silly I'm it's part of my life now but you know I just didn't want them like I was 15 years old I wasn't I was a bit sensitive to that you know I was covered in spots acne I was going through puberty I don't I don't think my voice had even broken or maybe it just about broke by then you know I was still the smallest in my year

I was a boy I was a child among men you know really it was it was weird but yeah but people made fun of me I didn't like it I didn't like it at all to the point where I took my glasses off when I was at school they helped me for reading though I did find it was helpful they helped me to read without straining my eyes and then I left school very shortly afterwards and I remember walking I can't remember I think I just went for a walk I

don't think I actually ran away from home but I went for a walk and I walked all the way to the next town which was I don't know 16 miles 20 miles something like that so I was just walking all the way down the motorway lucky there was a grass verge you know I wasn't actually on the motorway and I remember I just walked walked and walked and walked and walked I just had to just keep walking I followed the bus route in case I needed to get the bus so

I probably went the long way around and eventually I hitched back I think so that was my first I mean even my little brother who's eight years younger than me so I don't know how old he would have been when I was 15 what three or something and seven seven years old he would go like this I'll move back so I don't hit the microphones he'd go like this with his eyes like that and sticking right in my face and it I like really make fun of me for wearing glasses

when a seven-year-old makes fun of you there's something wrong I was being bullied by a seven-year-old so that was that and eventually I stopped wearing them not even for reading I just didn't wear them didn't touch them and I didn't wear glasses again at all until 1980 no 1990 so we're going 86 for four years I didn't wear glasses and 1990 it was around again February time probably went to the opticians needed glasses just for reading not for not for anything else just reading I was happy with that I was

fine because I love to read I didn't want to wear glasses all the time although I used to find they were good for because I had a job and I quite uh where it was very bright and I found and I kept having to look at labels and stuff so I wore them during the day and that did actually help a little bit um at times so I had those I think I sat on them I thought I got them home and I sat on them they were on my bed

and I sat on them for the first day like I was brilliant so I had these frames and they were like all like that for about a year so that was that was good and then so my eyesight was all right it corrected itself though I didn't I mean I might have a lazy eye I just can't see it I mean everyone's gonna like trying to like look at my eyes now they're hidden and so I ever since that time I've been wearing glasses for reading and I've had loads of

glasses loads of sets of glasses that I wore for reading there was a period when I wore glasses during the day because I used to have to read stuff when I was working but generally just for reading and then I mean I've had lots of different sets of glasses honestly I mean I just can't even keep track of how many there's been every two or three years I've gone and got another eye test and I don't know have have opticians ever has anyone ever once gone to the opticians had an

eye test and the optician says you're fine your eyesight's brilliant well done you can go now we don't want any of your money has it ever happened ever it must have done so I you know quite a few glasses and then in I was working in a call center I knew my eyesight my normal eyesight was really starting to go downhill a bit because I couldn't when a bus was coming you know the numbers you got a number on a bus like the front to see so you can see which

one you put your hand out and stop the bus because that's the number of the bus you want I couldn't see the bus that's how bad my eyesight was like you know people say oh excuse me mate I'm not sure you can tell me what number that bus is that's coming I said what bus they said it's it's it's just in front of the um that massive lorry the crane that's carrying what lorry in the crane it's the one just behind that someone's banging the microphone there it's the one behind

that big tower what tower no I'm just going silly now so I wore glasses for the first time like properly during the day since I was a kid like having to and yeah so that was weird I was working in a call center and I got these you know so yeah you have to wear glasses all the time now so because I used to wear glasses when I was a counsellor hard to believe I know when I was kind and therapeutic in my previous life I used to wear my reading

glasses when I was with clients I quite liked that it's not that I used it as a barrier but I could focus a bit better on them because without them I couldn't it's almost like I could not I couldn't see their face I could see their face but it was a bit things were fuzzier without my glasses if I if I take my glasses off things become fuzzier not for other people maybe for other people maybe I've got a fuzzy face fuzzy and I remember this is about 2012 I think

for 2012 I started wearing glasses all the time so I needed glasses at that time I needed three sets of glasses but I got these active lens things that these like all three in one lens glasses for distance glasses for reading and glasses for using the computer and they worked all right I was I got used to how to use them and then a few years later I got glasses again and I decided to have separate glasses for distance and separate glasses for reading it's just easier to try and read

on one little bit it's easier just to have the whole of your glasses that you can read with so that's what I did so I changed that and then I've had a few sets of glasses but recently I say recently how long ago was it I don't know I'm not sure um probably this year yeah it's gotta be this year I'm pretty sure it's this year um I had my glasses and was it last year no it's definitely this year I had another eye test got some new glasses these ones

are again mixed so at the bottom there's reading and at the middle is like distance but the bottom and it's it's just not enough space for reading I need at least half for reading but the problem it gives me and I end up just using my old glasses for reading because the reading hasn't really changed that much but distance has or well just seeing things really I wasn't so oh yeah the the bit at the bottom because it's for reading it's magnified which distorts it distorts the ground this is a

different lens so that I don't see stuff that's on the floor and recently I went I went away for a couple of weeks on holiday just to get away I had to get away um and I was tripping over things constantly because I couldn't see it because my glasses wasn't picking it up because there's that little bit there which covers kind of where my feet are just a bit ahead of my feet is a bit fuzzy because it's not the right lens for that so I'm gonna need to go back

to the opticians and ask them to change the lenses put these just normal lens the whole of it and to have um the other lens for reading in a separate pair so I'm going to do that hopefully in the next week or so it wasn't quite as exciting as I thought it would be talking about glasses I really thought it would be an immensely satisfying conversation but not really it was a little bit pointless wasn't that a little bit pointless didn't have any as many exciting stories I thought I'd have

I mean you think with a subject like glasses there'd be many many many many wonderful stories but nothing nothing oh well that's it that's the end of this recording I could have just done this in like one sentence I've worn glasses for quite a few years bye you know that would have been it really but hey I managed to flesh it out for 40 minutes I don't know don't ask me I don't know I don't even know what I've talked about really glasses I mean blimey well I do know what

I've talked about I've talked about glasses obviously but I'm just saying I don't I don't know you know it's like I mean I know it's boring objects but I'd like to talk about something that's mildly interesting just for me yeah anyway I'm gonna go thank you for listening remember to be kind to yourself because you deserve to be happy be gentle with yourself lots of love bye