(10 hours) #26 Shoes - SLEEPY Boring Objects (Jason Newland) (9th May 2022)

Hello and welcome to Boring Objects. My name is Jason Newland. My website is jasonnewland.com. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

Now, basically with these recordings, I just like focus on a particular subject or object and talk about that thing for, I don't know, maybe half an hour, maybe longer. So, you know, I've done a few of these and this is another one. Now, I thought I'd mention shoes.

I'm not sure if I've talked about shoes before, but I'm going to talk about shoes. So if I have talked about shoes before, this is just another recording about shoes. So I think the main objective to this is, so kind of, it gives you an opportunity to relax, to switch your mind off, to focus on something completely different and almost, I guess, irrelevant.

Yet, in that process, you allow yourself the opportunity to calm your mind and to feel more relaxed, both physically and mentally. So both in your body and in your mind, calming down and letting go of the tensions of the day. So at the very least, it can be a break, a rest, a short break from the day where you can just relax a little bit.

By me talking to you about a boring object or subject. So the object today is shoes. Now, I've been wearing shoes for quite a while.

They're not the same pair, but, you know, various different types of shoes. Right now, I'm wearing Crocs. I never really understood why they're called Crocs.

I mean, they don't have teeth. They look nothing like crocodiles. And they've got holes in them.

You know, they're plastic and they've got holes in them. I mean, I'm trying to think of something else that they look like, but no, I can't think of anything. I'll give it some thought while I make this recording, see if I can think of something that my Crocs resemble.

Well, right now they resemble really old worn out Crocs, which they are, but they're relatively comfortable. I don't normally wear them when I'm sitting down and relaxing. I just forgot to take them off.

Or I forgot to leave them on the floor because, you know, it's quite easy to take them off. But they're on my feet, so I'll just leave them there for now. It's not really a... I don't know why I didn't take them off.

I mean, normally I do. I keep them on when I sit down on the chair at the desk, but then sometimes I don't. Sometimes I don't bother putting them on at all when I go to the desk.

But quite often I do. And then when I'm at the desk and I'm perhaps making a recording or something like that, or working online, I take the Crocs off and they end up like moving around. Not on their own, but I guess I play with them with my feet.

Yeah, I suppose I guess when I make a recording, I just play with myself. So sometimes the shoes or the Crocs are back to front, so I go to put them on and my feet still goes in because luckily my feet are bendy. No, they're not, but they're, you know, they do go in, but they're on the wrong feet.

And this kind of doesn't feel right, you know. So I take them off and I put them onto the correct feet. I do, I don't have to bend over or anything because there's no, there's no laces or nothing to tie up.

They just slip on, which is useful. You know, but when I go out of the room, because I'm in the living room now, when I go into, I don't know, for example, the kitchen, I do wear my Crocs. And when I go into the bathroom, I do wear the Crocs.

And when I go into the bedroom, I'll wear my Crocs. Or if I go into the storage room, I'll wear my Crocs. Or if I'm, you know, going and answering the front door or just going for a walk around the flat, which is not necessarily something that I would do, just randomly walking around.

But I might go into the hallway because there's a mirror there. Just to check, see if I've got any, make sure I've got no weird hairs sprouting out of my face or ears. And I wear my Crocs for that as well.

But sometimes if I've got my shoes on, I'll wear my shoes. So, for example, if I've been out and I've come back in and I'm doing something on the laptop and then I need to go into the kitchen, I don't take my shoes off to put my Crocs on to go into the kitchen. I'll just leave my Crocs on, my shoes on rather.

Or if I need to go into the bathroom, I won't take my shoes off and put my Crocs on to go into the bathroom. I'll just wear my shoes. Or if I need to go into the bedroom, I won't take my shoes off and put my Crocs on to go into the bedroom.

I will generally just wear my shoes that I'm wearing. Or if someone knocks on the door and I need to answer the door, then I would just keep my shoes on as opposed to changing into my Crocs. Or, you know, if I'm just wandering around.

I mean, quite often I like to just, if I've got my shoes on, I don't leave them on. Sometimes I will take them off. It's because I've forgotten to take them off.

So I might come home from being out. So I come in from being out. So I was outside of the flat.

So when I get inside the flat, I'll lock the door. And usually my normal kind of routine is I take my, I put the keys on the hanger, the key thing. I take my jacket off or my coat off and I hang that up.

And then, now it depends what I do next. If I've got a bag of shopping, then I will either take it into the living room, put it down on a chair, and it depends, it depends what kind of shopping it is. See, if it's just bottles of water, then I leave them in the living room.

If it's something, maybe I bought something from the garage or the petrol station, that I'm going to eat like now or, you know, very, very, very soon. I'll also leave those in the living room. But if there's something that I need to refrigerate or, you know, some shopping that I need to put in the freezer, then generally I just go straight into the kitchen.

And then I put the carrier bag on the counter, because the layout of my kitchen, there's a counter on the left. So if you walk in, let's say if you walked into the kitchen and then you didn't do anything else, you just stayed in that direction, you're looking at the counter. Directly to my right is a freezer.

And then further up, it's a quite small kitchen, there's a, there's a counter. And on the counter, there is a fridge. Underneath the counter, there's a freezer.

Then there's a microwave next to the fridge. And then there's a little bit of space, a very minimal counter space left. Then there's the cooker.

Then there's some more counter space, where my, what's it called? The kettle, or the toaster first and then the kettle. And then if I turn right, there's, then that's the sink and the draining board. And there's a little bit more counter space, but that's where the boiler is.

So the, the gas boiler is above there. So I don't normally really use that counter space for anything. I pretty much just leave it empty.

So if I have stuff in the carrier bag that needs to be put into the kitchen, I'll maybe come into the front door, lock the door. Usually I will take my coat off first and I'll walk straight into the kitchen. And then I will put the bag onto the counter, where the kettle and the toaster are, that area, because there's some space there.

And then I'll take the objects out of the carrier bag, or bags, if there might be more than one, one bag. And if there's more than one bag, sometimes I'll put one of the bags on top of the cooker. So I'll take the stuff out of the bags.

If they're kind of a bit muddled up, I'll organize them into two piles, one for the freezer and one for the fridge. And then I'll scrunch the bags up. I'll probably put one bag inside the other bag.

And then I'll put them inside another collection of bags that's inside a big bag in the kitchen. So I've got two of those big bags with lots of carrier bags in. One's currently on top of the fridge.

It used to be on top of the clothes basket that was next to the other freezer, which was so close to the washing machine. But now I've moved it to above, you know, on top of the fridge. And there's another bag, a carrier bag bag, inside the bathroom.

There's a big cupboard in the bathroom. And I just have some carrier bags inside a big bag in there. So when I say a big bag, what I mean is, do you know the ones that you pay for, that are maybe a pound or I don't know, maybe a dollar or two dollars, whatever.

And they're quite sturdy. They're made of quite firm plastic. And they should last, you know, they just, well, they do last.

I've had bags, I've got bags I've had for years. And years. And this, that they're quite good for holding all of the other bags.

Now bags these days, carrier bags are like gold dust. So I try and hold on to them because they're very important now. As there's some shops won't give them out anymore.

And I've always been, I've always reused them over and over and over again. So, which is sort of, I think quite useful. Yeah, even when I go to the petrol station to purchase something from the petrol station.

I try to remember, try to remember to take a carrier bag with me. So that I don't have to buy one. Not that I'm worried about the 10 pence to buy one, but the ones they give us are so flimsy.

So flimsy, you know, it's you, it's just, yeah, they're very, very, um, I wouldn't even trust a packet of bisques, biscuits. With bisques, I wouldn't trust a packet of biscuits to get 100 pence. So, yeah, I take my own bag generally, which means then, and I've used the same bag over and over and over and over and over again, many, many times.

Which is pretty cool, I think. I mean, not that particularly exciting maybe to you, but to me, it's, it's everything. Nah, not really.

Now, sometimes, if I've got my shoes on, and I'm sitting at the computer desk, I get up to go to the bathroom or the kitchen, and I realize I got my shoes on. I've forgotten to take them off. So I will actually go into the bedroom and take my shoes off and put my Crocs on.

Before going into the kitchen or the bathroom. Because once I'm indoors, once I'm home, and I don't need to particularly do anything. I will then try and relax myself and I find that taking my shoes off is quite a nice way to relax my feet.

Because my feet enjoy feeling relaxed. They get very grateful. They don't actually thank me.

You know, not, you know, not verbally anyway. But they do, I get a sense of, oh, you know, that feeling just, that's nice. So that's, that's my Crocs.

The shoes I wear at the moment, I've been wearing, what are these, stretchers? Stretcher, sleeper, stretcher, something like that. And I quite like them because they're shoeless, shoeless, they're laceless. So there's no laces, so I can just slip them on.

Is it stretcher? I can't remember the name. But they're nice, I quite like them. This is my second pair, I think that I've had, maybe my third pair, maybe my second.

And they do the job, they do the job. To be fair, I probably have had other pairs, I've just forgotten about them. Why I didn't pay any attention to what they were.

I mean, I knew they were shoes, but, you know, I wasn't looking and thinking. I wonder if I can cook with these, you know, I knew they were shoes. They were shoes, so, because I wore them on my feet.

So I've had quite a few pairs of shoes and I can't remember the first pair of shoes I had. But there is a picture of me, well, I do have a picture of me with these little boots on. And I'll be honest, they didn't, they don't look very good for outdoor walking.

Not very good for the weather, you know, for windy and wet weather. But I was a baby, so I'm not sure, I guess it didn't matter. It's almost like, why did I even have boots on to start with, if I'm not going to be in the mud or jumping into puddles, why give me boots? But I suppose they weren't really boots, they were just little baby feet covers.

So I had them. I don't remember the first pair of shoes or even any shoes that I had. Through childhood.

The first pair of shoes, I don't know, the first pair of shoes I remember, that I have a memory of really was the boots I had when I was in the Sea Cadets. So I was about 12, 11 or 12. And these were big old boots.

And I had to keep them like, not just clean, but shiny, where you could see your face in. So it was a lot of melted, melted wax on the end of the boots, and a lot of spit and polish, and it's a technique that takes a while to learn, but there was a satisfaction of doing it. I'll be honest, it does take hours and hours and hours.

But it kind of felt quite nice to accomplish what I was, you know, aiming to do. Now, I think my oldest brother taught me how to do it because he was in the Air Cadets. So I think he taught me how to do the boots and how to make them all shiny and stuff.

And we used to sit outside doing it together. So that was, that was quite nice. I mean, it was, I vaguely remember it.

But I guess it was quite nice to do something with my brother, that we were both sort of doing the same thing. So that was nice. The next pair of shoes I remember was, these ones, they were quite, quite thick inner soles.

And I think they made me a bit taller than I was. So I like them. But they're kind of like boots.

I mean, I chose them. My mum took me to the, to the shoe shop, but I, you know, I chose the ones that I liked and she bought them, had them, you know, tried them on. So it's not like she took me and said, you're having them.

I did sort of choose the ones. I think it was a choice between a few ones like that, that or that one. And, but I said, okay, that one then.

And she said, well, I'll need you to actually point because just saying that one's not helpful. I said, well, you said that, that or that one. And I said that one.

The last one, obviously. We didn't talk for a few hours after that. I think she got a bit annoyed with me.

But anyway, I took, I went to school. I was all like, oh, because I felt taller. I've always been kind of short.

I mean, I'm not, I'm not the shortest person in the world, but I'm well below average when it comes to men in the UK anyway, at least. And being, I think I was probably about 14, 13, 14, when I had these shoes. And I went to school thinking, yeah, I didn't expect anyone to even notice my shoes.

But I felt quite a bit confident because I was, I had an extra half an inch on my height. And as we all know, when you men are listening, half an inch is always welcome, isn't it? An extra half an inch. And people started laughing at me and telling me that I was wearing beetle crushers.

Beetle crushers? Apparently they were big, too big, too big and clumsy. Someone said I looked like Boris Karloff. Okay.

I mean, in the 80s, you could get away with saying Boris Karloff because most people probably knew who he was even then. Now, you're probably going to have to Google it. Boris Karloff.

It's Boris Karloff. I'm not telling you. Sorry.

So yeah, beetle crushers. At the start, I didn't mind because some of the people saying it were my friends. But then it got to like, okay, all these years I got through school without a nickname.

Now beetle crusher. I didn't like the nickname. But you know, they got bored after a while and moved on to the next thing.

So the next pair of shoes. Oh, I remember. I was doing karate.

And my dad took me to London to a martial arts shop where they sold all kinds of stuff like, you know, kung fu things, weapons and magazines and, I guess, punch bags. So he bought me some shoes, some kung fu black shoes, kind of the ones that Bruce Lee wore in End of the Dragon. And some trousers, kung fu trousers.

Again, same kind of style. I was so happy. And the trousers were really baggy and I used to wear them every day to training.

So, so good. It was absolutely brilliant. I think I also got some throwing styles as well.

Yeah, maybe some nunchucks, but I think I bought them myself. Separately. But I definitely had those shoes or they're more like slippers, really.

Slippers that you could walk around in. Well, I suppose all slippers are slippers that you can walk around in, aren't they? You know, buy slippers that, well no, I can't walk in these. I can only stand in them.

Can't take steps. Or ones that you can only look at. I keep them in a glass cabinet.

I can only look at them. Can't wear them. Aren't they nice? The next pair of shoes I recall would be... Oh, oh, I had these trainers and I worked in a chip shop and they were falling apart.

And I would be in water for hours in this. It was the part of the chip shop where in the back in the kitchen and it was sort of separated by a higher level and there was water there. I was basically standing in water all morning preparing the fish, preparing the potatoes and my feet and socks would just be soaking wet.

And pretty much, and I was stinky. They were my stinkiest trainers. Trainers as in sports footwear, maybe sneakers.

Some people call them. In the UK we call them trainers. And they were stinky and falling apart.

Really, really not good. The next pair of boots I bought, I think this was about... No, that was in 1986. I had these boots that were really nice.

And they're like, I don't know, maybe cowboy boots. But they were really nice and they were really cool boots. And I clicked every time I walked.

It was very strange and they were quite high. So it didn't make me taller by a few inches, probably. Basically they were high heels, but they were for men.

They were, they were, I think. But, oh, I love, I love my boots. I used to wear them a lot.

Out, going out, not at work or anything. But I used to wear them for special, you know, special occasions like going to the pub or out on a date or something like that. And the next pair of boots or shoes I had.

Um, I'm trying to think. Yeah, I can't really remember. And I've had a few pairs, quite a few pairs over the years.

Nothing that's standing out in my memory. No particular special pair of shoes. I've got to try and think back.

When I was a security guard, I think I might have been given boots. I still toe cap boots to wear. Uh, no, I can't remember any shoes.

I was trying to think even through my twenties, thirties. Now in my late thirties, I remember the shoes I got because I started buying hush puppies. And again, they were slip-ons.

I really liked them. I really. And I bought the same pair of shoes every single time.

I think for my five years, maybe longer. And it was exactly identical pair of shoes. So when the other one was starting to wear out, I'd get a new pair of identical.

And I did that, I think three or four times. And then the shoes weren't available. And then the shop that I bought them from closed.

So that was a bit, uh, a bit annoying since then I bought some shoes, a couple of pairs from a shoe shop. And it was quite good shoes, quite decent ones. But again, they were just sort of slip-on shoes.

And I had like two different versions of the same shoe. One was black and another one, I think it was white with black stripes or something. And they were comfortable.

And then that was it. I sort of, I suppose I got through them. And then the stretchers or whatever they're called, I can't remember the ones that I wear now.

I've got two pairs. So the other one, the other ones I've kept, they're worn out a little bit, but I kept them for when I go into the, into the fields when it's muddy. So I didn't want to get the new ones dirty, but the new ones have got dirty now.

They're, they're fairly comfortable, fairly comfortable. And I do also have a pair of really good boots now, not the cowboy boots I had when I was 16. Actually, I was 15 at that time.

But these are, they're more, I guess, hiking boots. They're really good, they're really nice. But I don't really wear them because it involves doing the shoelaces up.

And I haven't, I haven't really broken them in, which would be useful. If you know what I mean. Because if I broke them in, then I'd be able to wear them without, well, I'm a little bit concerned that I might get blisters if I walk for too, too long or too far.

And I do like to walk for long, long periods sometimes, you know, long distance, so a good few miles. And I don't know if the, if the boots can take that. Without leaving me with a, you know, sort of blisters on my feet, which I don't really want.

Yeah, I thought I'd remember more, more of the shoes I've worn. I genuinely can't. I can't think of any others.

I've had a few pairs of trainers along the way. You know, Snickers or whatever they're called in America, Snickers. I've had a few trainers, wore a few of those.

Nothing, you know, particularly amazing. But I've had a few pairs of nice shoes. I wore a, usually I'd seem to wear them out and then buy a new pair.

Oh, yeah, there was a pair I had, and I bought them for a family occasion, occasion, specifically. And they were really nice shoes, handmade. They weren't cheap.

But they weren't comfortable. And I wore them. And at this occasion, and it completely destroyed my feet.

I was, I mean, I could hardly walk because blisters and everything. And so it wasn't a good idea. But I didn't have any shoes to wear.

Now, and the, I think the other shoe shop had closed at that point. So I couldn't go there. Now, the strange thing about it is, I didn't go anywhere near those shoes for months.

And then I did start wearing them, like locally. You know, if I went to the shop or a petrol station or just had to do something and they became my normal shoes that I wore all the time. You know, I broke them in.

And they ended up being really comfortable. That's the story of my shoes. Take care.

Lots of love. Bye.