(music) #10 “CHEESE” SLEEPY Boring objects (Jason Newland) (25th September 2021)

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

Now the purpose of this podcast is to to kind of be boring, which allows your mind to be, I guess, focusing on me, my voice, what I'm saying, and in the process your mind calms down, your body starts to relax. And if required, maybe you could even fall asleep if that's a necessary thing for you to be doing. Because naturally when we get bored, there's less activity occurring, which is why people yawn sometimes when they're listening to someone else or they try to hold in a yawn.

I see that quite a lot. You know, people pushing their tongue at the top of their mouth, inside their mouth, trying to stop a yawn. You can see their eyes watering and the jaw wobbling as they try to hold it in, which is fine.

I've been used to that for years. Apparently, I disagree, but apparently I don't have the most exciting voice. But I think I really do.

I personally think that I'm very interesting and the things I say are just phenomenally stimulating. So today, what I thought I'd do is, I don't know, I've got the giggles, so excuse me. I'm always like that when I've had a cup of tea, had too much sugar, having a sugar rush.

Yes, so I thought today I would talk about cheese. A very popular subject, I'm sure you agree. Something that probably when you saw the title of this podcast before deciding to listen to it, you probably thought to yourself, well, how can this be a boring subject? How can you be talking about cheese? How on earth would he be able to make it boring? Because it's clearly a very exciting topic.

Well, I can't guarantee that I can make the subject of cheese boring because I kind of agree with you, it is a very exciting subject to be talking about. In fact, I can feel my toes are tingling a little bit with excitement. So I'll try my best to, you know, lower and reduce the excitement and the vigour of, you know, my adrenaline going with huge rushes of all cheese.

But hopefully, I can keep it as boring as possible. So I'm trying to think, I've eaten cheese quite a few times over the years. I can't remember the first time I had cheese.

But I do recall having cheese sandwiches when I went to school. I didn't eat them whilst I was walking to school. But they were in a pack lunch made up by my step mama before going to school, so that I could eat them at lunchtime.

At the same time as watching all of my friends eating a cooked dinner. So that was good. I felt like the lucky one because I had cheese and all they were eating was chicken and, you know, all those kind of things roast dinners and curries and things like that.

I knew that I was, well, I didn't actually, I didn't hear anyone say it, but I knew that everyone in that canteen eating their warm cooked dinner on that cold winter's day was looking at me sitting there on the table on my own eating my cheese sandwich, my cold, cold cheese sandwich. And they were thinking, they were jealous. I guarantee that they were jealous.

They were wishing that they were eating my cold, dry cheese sandwich instead of their moist, succulent cooked dinner. So I think that jealousy came out in the way that people used to ignore me at school. I know that I believe, I mean, I didn't have any evidence of it, but I believe that secretly down in, you know, in people's minds, all the other kids around me, they wished nothing more than to be able to sit with me in the canteen, sitting at my table, the ostracized table, they used to call it, or Jason's table.

And they wished to be there with me eating cheese sandwiches, dry, tasteless cheese sandwiches. They really felt the odd one out. Now I discovered as an adult, that you can actually add something to the cheese sandwich to make it taste nice.

And this happened when I visited my grandmama. And she wasn't there. She wasn't there.

And my grandpapa opened the front door. And he said, What do you want? I said, It's me grandpapa. It's your grandfather, your granddaughter, grandson, that's it.

Grandson, Jason. He said, Yeah, I know. What do you want? I said, I've come to visit.

He said, Your nan isn't here. She's at church. I said, Oh, grandpapa.

Grandmama isn't here. And he said, That's that's what I said. Why do you call a grandmama? You call a nan? Why are you calling a grandmama now? Why are you holding that recorder? What that microphone? What? What were you doing? I said, Don't worry about it, grandpapa.

I'm just making a podcast. He said, What's a podcast? I said, Oh, don't worry about that. It's not been invented yet.

He said, Oh, okay. And we just stood there. I was outside on the, you know, on the front porch and he was inside of the house.

Not getting wet because it was raining. And he just stared at me. And it was kind of like the, what they say, a Mexican standoff, except I was the only one without a gun.

But I didn't let that put me off because I thought, Oh, he's not going to shoot me, surely. And I didn't know, but I just just assumed. And he didn't, which is good.

And he said, You better come in then. And I said, Okay, grandpapa. He said, You got to stop calling me that.

If you're going to come in, stop calling me grandpapa. You never called it to me. You never called me that before.

It's granddad. I said, Okay, then granddad. He said, Fine.

Come in. Take your shoes off. I said, Why? What are you going to give me a bath? He said, I'm not going to give you a bath.

Just take your shoes off. It's raining outside. I don't want you treading the dirt into the hallway and into the house.

And I said, Well, it kind of does make sense, really. I suppose taking shoes off when it's dirty or rainy outside would definitely prevent spreadage of dirty water and mud, etc. that could be collected on the bottom of one's shoes.

And he said, Why don't you just take your shoes off? I didn't want to want a conversation about it. And I said, Okay, grandpa, I mean, granddad. And he said, Okay, then grandson.

I said, You've never called me grandson before. He said, I know, but I thought I'd give it a go. I mean, I have to accept it's true, don't I? I said, What do you mean? He said, Don't worry about it.

So he said, Well, come in, take your shoes off. So I did. I stood on a set on the second step up because as you went into his house, directly to the left, there was stairs going up to the next floor, where the bathroom and three bedrooms were.

It's a lovely house. I lived there myself for about a year before they moved in and kicked me out. No, didn't kick me out.

I was only eight. So I lived there and it's a lovely house. And I'll be honest with you.

I think if I had the opportunity, I would move back in there. Because it was a it was this kind of house that I would happily live in. And it's a nice size is nice little garden.

It's a shed in the garden. There used to be a little pond, a little goldfish pond in the garden. But my granddad filled it in, because he didn't want it.

Which I guess is his right. But my dad built that little goldfish pond. And my granddad didn't want it.

Now, I don't know if that caused any kind of conflict between my grand dad, and my father, Papa, Papa Newland, I used to call him. And he didn't like that. So just call me dad.

What is it with you all these weird terms? You know, this is in the 18th century. And I said, it's not. He said, No.

And I got confused, because what if I walk through some kind of time loop, that's put taken me 100 years into the future. And he said, No, you're just after you got a bit damaged your head after that fall that you took when you was a kid. I said, Oh, he said, Yeah, you fell off a donkey.

Don't you remember? I said, I don't remember being on a donkey. He said, Yeah, well, he was only six months old. I said, You let me go on a donkey at six months old.

Who's holding me? No one, no one was holding you. Isn't that a bit dangerous? He said, Yeah, it was for you. Not for us.

And I said, Well, what happened? He said, Well, the donkey, donkey was fine. And then you, you did a poo. And donkey didn't like it.

And he, he kicked you off. Who's really kicked me off? Well, you didn't get hurt when you fell off. You just bounced.

But then he kicked from behind and kicked you in the head. That's a bit harsh. So what did the doctor say? Oh, we didn't take you to the doctors.

No, no, we just we figured you'd be all right. You what? I got kicked in the head by a donkey. And you didn't take me to the doctors.

And he said, No, I said, Why not? He said, Well, the ice cream van looked like it was going to head off soon. So he wanted to get an ice cream before it closed. Because it's so busy.

It was a really hot day was on the beach. And on a beach. Oh, the donkey was on the beach.

Yeah, the donkey was on the beach. But I didn't think they had donkeys on our beach. They said they don't.

So well, why? Why? How is there a donkey on the beach then? Because our beach doesn't have donkeys. And he said, Oh, no, we bought it ourselves. We got it from the field.

He got it from the field. Are you talking about Kiki Kevin, the donkey Kiki Kevin? Yeah, Kiki Kevin. The donkey that's well known all around the country for kicking kids.

He said, Yeah, yeah, that's that's the one. So you went to the field and you got a donkey called Kiki Kevin. Brought him to the beach in order for me to be put on him to ride him.

He said, Yeah. I said, Why didn't you just put me on him in the fields? And he said, Well, I thought it'd be a softer landing in the sand. Oh, that's nice.

He said, Yeah, but we're wrong. She landed on the pebbles. Okay.

So you didn't hurt yourself, though. I said, How do you know? He said, What do you mean? I said, Well, you didn't take me to doctors, did you didn't take me to hospital? How do you know I wasn't hurt? He said, Well, I don't just just assumed it. I mean, admittedly, you had a quite a bad limp for about seven months.

But other than that, and you were did have delayed speech. You didn't start talking to you about five. I said, Is that normal? They said, Yeah, for you it was.

But most kids are talking quite early. I said, What? What? What? What? I understand. Why did you not take me to the doctors? He said, Because you're always busy eating.

I said, I was always busy eating. Eating what? He said, cheese sandwiches. All you eat was cheese sandwiches.

You're obsessed with cheese. I said, I can't believe that that I can't believe that you told me this about being kicked in the head by a donkey. The fact that you purposely brought this donkey called kicking Kevin, the donkey all the way to the beach, which is a good six miles.

Now, did you get it there on the roof rack? What? Yeah, we got on a roof rack. We had a new roof rack that was really more for camping equipment. And I used to use it for ladders as well.

But we managed to tie the donkey on there. It was quite good. We gave it a lot of apples.

And it seemed to be quite happy then. I said, Well, how do you manage to go from that and then you talk start talking about cheese sandwiches? And he said to me, Well, isn't that the subject of this podcast? I mean, I said, Yeah, so we should really be talking about cheese and shouldn't you? You've gone off onto a tangent talking about donkeys. And people are going to be sitting there listening, thinking, unless the donkey is made of cheese, why is he talking about donkeys?

I said, Donkey made of cheese? That would be ridiculous.

He said, as ridiculous as you wearing that hat. I said, Firstly, what's wrong with my hat? Secondly, you gave me this hat. He said it was a joke.

Didn't expect to actually wear it. So what did you think I was going to do with it? What was it? What was I going to do with it? So I thought maybe you keep the cheese sandwiches in it. I said, You just said that again to get me back to talking about cheese, didn't you? He said, Yeah, I did.

Guilty as charged. I said, Oh, this is ridiculous. And he said, Shouldn't you go back to talking about your granddad again? Or your grandpapa? I said, Don't mock me.

He said, Why not? I've been doing all your life. Why would I stop now? Good point. Good point.

He said, Can we finish this conversation because I got stuff to do. I said, Oh, fair enough. I said, I'll see you later.

Okay. Bye, Dad. Bye.

Oh, by the way, son. Yes, Dad. You're adopted.

Bye. See ya. Anyway, my granddad, he let me into the house and he sat me down.

We didn't sit me down. He like pick me up and tie me to a chair. But he said, you know, it was implied that by him walking into the kitchen that he wanted me to follow him.

I've not always been correct in that assumption. The amount of times in the past he said, Look, I'm in a toilet. Can you please leave? You're not supposed to just follow me everywhere I go.

So okay, fair enough. But he was in the kitchen. It's a nice size kitchen.

And I was sitting at a table and he made me a cheese sandwich and a cup of tea. And I thought, Okay, but by this time, I was a bit bored with cheese sandwiches. I'll be honest with you.

And it turned from being enjoyable as a child, as you can imagine, brilliant fun. And almost a joy to behold. But then as I got older, and this was when I was probably about 16 that I'm at my granddad's house sitting at a table.

By the time I got 16, I was living on my own. And pretty much all I could afford was cheese sandwiches, because it's cheap. And it lost.

I think it's a little bit like if you eat caviar in a hotel, and it's lovely, and it's something special, and it's expensive. But if you got trapped in a caviar factory over over a weekend period, with nothing else to eat, but caviar, by the Monday morning, when they opened up the factory and opened up the doors, you probably wouldn't want to have any more caviar for at least a week.

So I was kind of in that sort of mode, you know.

And my granddad looked at me, there you go. He chucked the plate on the table. And I said, You've forgotten the sandwich? He said, Oh, yeah.

So he chucked that over at me, caught them. And the cup of tea, thankfully, just put that on the table, which is nice of him. And I was just prepared to eat another dry cheese sandwich.

But I also knew I had the cup of tea, which is a lovely mix because it's moist. I suppose all liquids kind of moist, isn't it? But a nice cup of tea with a cheese sandwich is a nice is I said the word nice maybe too many times. But it's a nice word, isn't it? Is there a limit? Is there any kind of legal limit to how many times you can use any certain particular word really?

So it was a nice, nice, nice, nice.

Yeah, we get a bit tedious if I kept saying that, I suppose. Anyway, I've the tea was too hot. So I was in a bit of a conundrum.

Because I mean, if my granddad hadn't been standing staring at me, I would have dipped the sandwich into the tea. And you might think I'm joking, but I'm not I see something that I've done. Because you can do soup, tomato soup, and a cheese sandwich.

You dip that cheese sandwich in the tomato soup. Glorious. It's it is it's like a it's like a wedding on your tongue.

It's just mmm free food. So that's all I think about when I think of weddings. I think of free food.

And I had to bite the bullet in a sense, not just because he had a gun and you know, he's holding a bullet out and I figure I might as well better bite it. But after that, I thought, what am I going to do because the tea the cup of tea is too hot. I can't dip the dry cheese sandwich into the tea.

Because my granddad's watching. You know, he had a gun. So I'm just gonna have to eat the sandwich.

So I took a mouth, you know, bit into the sandwich. It's the usual way that I eat. And I was very, very surprised.

Very pleasantly surprised. Because what he put on this sandwich was mustard. Now, I've never had mustard before.

I'd heard of Colonel mustard from the, you know, the game, whatever it's called. Monopoly, twister, I don't know, whatever. But Colonel mustard was a character in a board game, wasn't it? Snakes and ladders, maybe.

And even now, I don't like mustard. However, put mustard in a cheese sandwich. It is beautiful.

It changed my life. Actually, it didn't change my life. It made no difference.

I don't know why I said that. But it was nice. It tasted it transformed the boring dry cheese sandwich into I don't know, it was like a it was honestly, I think to try and explain it, if you imagine you've had a baby or your partner's had a baby, and you hold your baby in your arms for the first time, and the baby looks up at you those big, massive alien eyes, that feeling times that by 100.

And you've got the feeling of having your first cheese sandwich with mustard on. It was that good. And it just, oh, so lovely.

I'll never forget it. Although I had I had forgotten it until now. And then I ate the sandwich was yummy.

Drop me tea. My granddad took the plate and the cup, put it in the sink. And he said, I'll let you let your nan know you you visited.

And he, he walked, he just walked to the front door and opened it. And just pointed outside. So I guess I took that as a as a cue to leave.

But subsequent visits, my nan made me cheese sandwiches, because it got out that, you know, I was quite partial. Because one of those secrets that my family kept from my parents kept the secret away from my grandparents. I don't know, they just didn't want them to know about it.

I think they were maybe a little bit embarrassed or, or just very secretive wanted to keep the I don't know what it was. I never asked. So I can't.

I can't really guess. Well, I can guess. I think it may be because the subject never came up.

At no point did my grandparents ever say or ask my parents, or even inquire into what type of fillings I enjoy in a sandwich. I guess it just never came up. Which surprises me, because that's one of the first things I ask anyone.

You know, even I was waiting in a bus stop and someone was there and they said, it's all it's cold in it. The bus is late. And I said, Oh, do you like cheese? They said, What? I said, Do you like cheese in the sandwich? And they said, Sometimes.

I said, Have you got some? I said, No. I said, Why are you teasing me for that? I said, I wasn't teasing you. I didn't mean to tease you.

I was just asking, inquiring. I thought it'd be a really great icebreaker. And then perhaps we could become best friends.

And he said, No. But life doesn't really work that way. And you know, you meet someone and you know, if you get on with them or not, you don't need an icebreaker.

And we're just waiting for a bus. See, it's the only thing we really have in common. We're waiting for a bus.

And do you need to go to the toilet? I said, Yeah. I said, We've got two things in common then. I said, Yeah.

He said, Okay, when you're in a hot bath, and before you get into a hot bath and you strap ice cubes all around your body with cellotape or duct tape, and you get into the bath, do the ice cubes melt? I said, Yeah. He said, Well, that's something else we've got in common. I thought this is going quite well.

I said that to him. I said it out loud, perhaps I shouldn't have done. And well, I was sort of speaking my mind.

Well, this is going really well. My bum's itchy. Two things that perhaps you shouldn't say out loud.

I don't know why. On a first encounter with someone and he said, Well, I can't really help you on either of those. I could I do have a question.

I said, What is that? He said, Why? What do you mean? It's going well. I said, Well, you know, we have a lot in common. And I don't see any reason why we can't be best friends forever and ever and ever and ever, a forever friend.

And he said, I think you're coming on a bit strong, mate. And I said, I don't understand. He said, I think you're, I think you kind of just need to sort of chill out a little bit.

You know, you, you meet people and friends and that, but it doesn't, it can't be forced. It's like a bowel movement. You should never force it.

I said, there's nothing like a bowel movement. He said, What do you mean? I said, I'm not sure. What do you mean? What's a bowel movement? He says, when you poo.

I said, Oh, why don't you just say when you poo then? He said, because we live in a civilized society. We don't use words like poo. We use bowel movement.

I said, Oh, I didn't know that. See, I'm learning things from you. You're educating me.

You're almost like a guru, a poo guru. He looked at me and he started eating a sausage roll. And I said, where was that? He said, where was what? I said, where was the sausage roll? He said, what do you mean? I said, well, you got a coat on, a very light coat.

I can see there's nothing in your pockets. You don't have a bag. You don't have any carrier bags, no backpack, anything.

Where were you storing that sausage roll? He said, behind my ear. And I thought, oh, that makes sense. So I just sort of just let him get on with it.

I said, have you ever tried a sausage roll with mustard? And he said, no, but it sounds quite intriguing. It might actually work. And I said, I reckon so.

I said, also, he said, you're going to ask me if I've tried it with cheese. I said, no. He said, you were, weren't you? I said, yeah.

He said, why would I try a sausage roll with cheese? If I wanted that, I'd just get a sausage roll that had cheese in it. Although that wouldn't, you know, you can get sausage and cheese pastries or something, which is kind of like a sausage roll. I said, I do know I have been in bakeries.

I said, why are you telling me this? And he said, well, I wasn't sure. Anyway, I suppose, as we're talking, I'll let you know. My name's Steve.

What's your name? And I said, I'm Jason. And he said, are you the kid that got kicked in the head by the donkey on the beach by kicking Kevin? I said, yeah. He said, oh, that explains everything.

I said, what do you mean? What explains the whole conversation we just had? I still don't know what he meant, even to this day. I do think about writing a poem about the interaction, try and figure out the meaning of some of the things that we talked about and whether or not I can learn from from that encounter in order to enrich my own future life and to maybe not make the same mistakes again.

But in the end, I decided to just dance on the spot.

I was going to do the moon dance, you know, Michael Jackson's moon dance. But I forgot how to do it. And I had these shoes that weren't slippery.

Even though it was raining, the shoes were just stuck to the ground, almost like the the bottoms are made of frogs or something. You know, because frogs stick to things, don't they? I think. And then we got on the bus and that was it.

In fact, I got on a bus and he just stayed. I said, are you going to get on? He said, no, I'll wait for the next one. I don't know why.

So, yeah, that's my story of cheese. There's a tiny little part of me thinks that maybe I haven't said enough about cheese. But, you know, it's a huge subject.

It's hard to fit it all in in one one session. So I guess I might have to revisit the subject of cheese in these boring object podcasts and maybe maybe call it cheese too or something. So that's it.

That's pretty much the end of this recording. Thanks and all that. And I might go and do some washing up because I've got some plates.

I did some washing up earlier, but there's still some breakfast cereal dishes and some other long big plates that I put in to soak which might be ready to to wash. So I might do that. Yeah, that's the end of the recording.

Take care. Bye.