Triforce! #302: The Triforce Family Dynamic

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All right, three, two, one.

Mark!

Period did a mark.

This is weird.

Well, you can do it if you want.

Nope.

You want to do one just to balance things out a little?

You want to do a little mark of your own, Lulu?

Okay, sure.

Three, two, one,

mark.

Okay.

You've got to link all that in.

Link all that gold in.

Three, two, one, mark.

Mark.

See, I think that's better.

Yours was too slow, P.

Flex.

It's a steady growth towards a mark.

Three,

Two.

Exactly.

It's like launching a spaceship.

Three.

It's like Thunderbirds.

Thunderbirds.

Yeah.

Let the people decide.

Launch that in and let the people decide which mark they liked better.

Thunderbirds are go.

Good.

Yeah, that's the strictly condensing.

Ludo was eating a banana, and I was reminded of the fact that a guy I work with, I'm not going to say who, eats a a banana by unpeeling the whole thing and eating it like that.

And I want to know if anybody else eats things in a weird way.

I'm not saying eating weird stuff.

Do you have a weird way of eating things?

Because I know some people eat things in a way that you think, who the hell eats it like that?

And like eating an apple, core, and all.

That kind of shit.

I don't have, I don't think I have any weird things like that.

I just eat, as far as I know, normally.

But who knows?

Right, but that's the the point

normal is a variable, isn't it?

I mean, so when I'm eating, let's say I'm having a roast, right?

I'm not someone who gets a bit of everything on the fork, I'll kind of focus one thing at a time.

So, let's say I've got, obviously, you guys can imagine some kind of nutloaf or whatever, but it's basically the same thing: potatoes, Yorkshire pud, green beans, and roast chicken, and gravy.

Let's imagine that.

I'm not going to go bit of potato, bit of meat, bit of green bean, bit of Yorkshire, all on one fork.

Oh, I do that.

I'll have Yorkshire.

I'll have a bit of chicken.

I'll have a bit of this.

Oh, I like mixing.

I mix.

I'm a big mixer.

Yeah.

I'll get a little bit of everything.

Like, if I eat

a full English breakfast, obviously without the meat.

Right.

So it's like not really a full English.

It's like a half English breakfast.

But there's certain combos that are very good.

Like the mash and grains.

Something I'll mix.

But I like to get a bit of my vegetarian sausage on there, a bit of egg, some yolk, yolk bit of mushroom maybe a one or two beans and you could be sauce

in the mouth though p flags no instead of on the i like the favors

combining in the mouth because that that implies that you've already got food in your mouth and you're opening your mouth with a mouth full of food to add more food to your mouth which is weird I think it stems from when I was a kid, I would always start eating the thing that I liked the least

on the plate.

So if there was a vegetable, I wasn't a big fan of this.

I'll eat pretty much everything.

But if there's a vegetable, I'm like, oh, that's not one of my favorite vegetables.

But a cold vegetable that's kind of mid is terrible.

So I'll eat the vegetables before they go cold.

I'll get them in there.

And then I think, you know, good, eating the veg.

And then I'll save, like, I will save the very best bit till last.

So if I'm having a pork roast, I won't eat the crackling first, even though that's my favorite bit.

I'll save that till last.

I'll try to work my way through it.

But generally speaking, I don't mix it up too much.

There are some things where you want a bit of this and a bit of that.

So if you

coming back to

the meal, the meal at hand, the roast chicken, you got the green beans, you got a Yorkshire pudding,

and you got some potatoes, right?

Yeah.

So

are you just eating all your potatoes first, for example?

No, so then moving on and doing all the green beans?

No, no, no, no, no.

I don't do it sexually.

That is madness if people do it sexually.

I think if you're a kid, you do it.

That's fair enough.

But now

I still don't out of habit, I don't mix.

I think you want to do the mixing.

I don't mix too much.

I don't like

mixers as well.

They're always mixing.

Yeah.

But they're under time pressure.

No, but I think it's like, I think some dishes are meant to be mixed.

You know, absolutely.

You're meant to just assault yourself with every on every finger.

I'll give you an example.

Let's say I have fish fingers, peas, and chips.

I'm not putting chips and fish fingers together,

but I'll put some peas with a piece of fish finger.

I wouldn't have, I don't know if I'd have chips and fish fingers.

Like, I would probably have like fish fingers, peas, and like maybe beans or something.

You wouldn't have chips and fish fingers?

No, like it would be one or the other for me.

I don't think

they're relatable, really.

I don't know.

I think they're both food groups.

They are, but they're both kind of stodgy, you know?

Like, I feel like they're both sort of like,

I don't want to, I don't want them to share the same space.

you know what I mean chips and fish fingers I mean that's they fucking it's like having it's it's like inviting both your girlfriends over at the same time

all right so let me ask if you have fish

kiddie meal by the way

of course I know it wouldn't be chips it would be smiley potato smileys okay sure yeah um but I mean if you have fish and chips I don't think fish fingers and battered fish are that different they're basically the same they're not but I think fish fingers are just a bit crispier you know like like, like, battered fish is like, uh, it's, it's soft, you know, like, and the batter's nice.

You get that.

You get a new fish and chip shop, my bad.

You get the, well, it's, I mean, it's been a while.

But last time I had some fish, it was like

it was like, it was softer, you know?

It should not be.

It was.

It's meant to be.

I mean, it should not be soft.

It should be crispy as fuck.

Really?

Yeah.

Oh, by the way, I watched this vid the other day about, I think they call it red chips or orange chips.

Right.

Might be a Midlands thing.

It's battered chips.

Yeah.

Have you ever heard of that?

I think so, yeah.

I'm not surprised by it.

Chips that have batter on them and then they're deep-fried in batter.

Chips in batter.

Can you imagine?

I'd eat that.

Sounds nice.

I've never heard of it.

What won't northerners batter?

That's what I want to know.

What won't they batter?

Oh, man.

Yeah, I don't know about fish fingers and chips seems like too much for me.

Like, I would have one thing.

What is your go-to meal these days as a family?

Do you cook with the kids and

every

at the dinner table no we don't eat the dinner table there there is there are two problems um first of all we we have a breakfast bar but it's not big enough for us to all fit around essentially and the the dining room table as it happens is kind of given over to a bit of a dumping ground which is unfortunate but all the cat's stuff has to be up there it needs to be somewhere that she can get to because otherwise the dog will eat it.

So she has like, we give her wet food twice a day, but she has dry food out because cats like to snack but they don't overeat the way dogs do like if we left okay dry food out for the dog all day the dog's just going to eat until her stomach bursts because she's an idiot but the cat will just go yeah i'll have

a couple of couple of bits of that and then i'll leave it and i'll go off and eat a few bugs and i'll come back and maybe have another bit of dry food so we have to keep that at a place she can get to that the dog can't and that happens to be the dining room table as a result of that the cat goes up on the dining room table quite often and we've put we've decided to store her food up there, and there's other things.

So it's just annoyingly, it's become a place where we kind of put things that we need quite often

for people.

We just don't have the fucking storage space.

We've got a bunch of stuff, we've just got nowhere to bloody put it.

So the dining room table is not clear that often.

When we have a big like Christmas or something like that, we clear it all off and it's like, oh, where are we going to put all this stuff?

All right.

Um,

is similar minus the uh cat stuff, right?

It is a dumping ground, everybody just puts stuff on there.

Yeah.

But we use it every night to eat.

So

we have to clear it every night to eat.

Yeah, we can't be doing that.

There's stuff everywhere.

It's so annoying.

And then with all the construction work and stuff as well,

it's an added building around the table.

Oh, man.

It's crazy.

So do you eat with all family members?

Sips.

I think Sips does.

Yeah, I'd say most nights we do.

On nights where we have like swimming, you know, like

my daughters both have a a shared swimming lesson but it's in the evening so they get back a little bit later so nights like that we just grab like cereal or pizza or you know we'll make something but we don't sit around the table people just eat when when and where they can and want to and that and that's fine but yeah for the most part yeah we have meals we sit down have meals um

it's all right it's pretty good so i went to a family um get together the weekend your family or some other family it was some other family Just some other random family.

Another family.

Just silently.

Just wants to feel again.

Family get together.

By my partner's family.

Slightly different.

I've met a few of them before,

but they've got like the old

grandma.

They've got, you know, the aunts and uncles and their kids, you know, a whole mix of people, right?

And it's kind of, kind of nice.

Very English.

Was it like Eddie Murphy, Natty Professor of the family was it like that was the meal like that where everybody just looked exactly like your partner but in in various there was a little bit of

which was a bit unnerving actually right i was like oh um

you got the same nose like joein or something like that it was a little bit

i didn't for some reason it was unexpected but anyway it didn't really it didn't throw me that bad but it did throw me a little was they they had all this really cool food like and it was like in in the kitchen and it was like sort of a help yourself yeah you got plates and you got the food and you went and sat down but they only they'd only they'd not really got enough chairs they'd not someone hadn't hadn't thought about enough chairs so there were sorts of people sat around a dinner table and then a bunch of people standing kind of by the dinner table um that is awkward but of course like

some some some more elderly relative would come in and stand and so a younger relative will be like oh you sit down here you see and they'd like squeeze them in and then another elderly relative will come in.

So then it was like middle-aged relatives thinking, oh, well, am I, am I old enough to give up my chair?

Do you know what I mean?

For this person?

And so it was kind of like, like musical chairs of

people like fighting over.

And then someone pulled in a piano stool and everyone tried to squeeze around to fit that piano stool in.

So, you know, but then someone else came in and then we had to try and rotate because the piano stool is really big.

And so I said, oh, we can

fit another stool in here.

You know, it was just, and it's whole thing was kind of not ruined but made very awkward by this kind of sort of seating arrangement because I think at Christmas dinner or big family get together for a dinner you do tend to have sometimes there's two tables right like the kids table or the adults table right and I can see why because a bunch of people were kind of sat in the lounge doing the TV dinner style, right?

And so it's like, it's,

I don't, I just thought it was like something that I think I would have thought about if I'd organized it, you know, and I think it's just easy to forget.

Do you, do you like, do you like in the evening, sips, do you make a concerted effort to talk about things that have happened during the day or like have family meetings?

Do you ever have like no, no, nothing?

Do we discuss family-related things?

We naturally do talk about just day-to-day stuff, but um,

the problem is with younger kids is when we eat, it's probably around like 6.30, 7 o'clock at night.

We tend to eat.

And

not so much for my eldest, but for the other two, they're tired.

So

the whole thing quickly just spirals into, I don't want this, I don't want this.

I don't, I don't, can you drink your milk properly?

I don't want to.

Like, they just get tired.

They're done sort of thing.

So we got so fed up with eating with the kids and them fighting or complaining or just pushing their food around because they're not particularly hungry.

Yeah.

That we just don't eat with them anymore.

I mean, we kind of, we, we,

we, we kind of still have to because they're small, but

I don't know if we, I don't know if we necessarily would.

I think we would be like a lap tray kind of, you know, in front of the TV sort of family.

That's why we're just a bit older.

We make the kids eat at the table.

Yeah.

Because they can't be trusted and we'll sit and watch something on TV and we'll we'll eat on our laps.

But I mean, I know that's not ideal, But it's like eating with the kids just drove us fucking crazy.

When I grew up, I was forced to eat around the dining table every day.

Not forced.

But like, and then a lot of the time we, my mum did have this little red book of like family meeting notes.

Do you know what I mean?

And she'd keep track of the things that were going on.

And I dreaded it.

I remember dreading it because it was like.

just awful.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's, that's not great.

I remember being a kid sitting around the table, especially like as I was like be, you know, getting into my teens and stuff, and like, it was just silence.

Like nobody had anything to say.

It was just awkward as hell.

Like, I was just, I was always in a rush.

I just wanted to like go out or I had something else to do or whatever.

So it was just, it changes, I guess.

But

if it's just me and the girls, I'll eat with them.

Like quite often, Mrs.

F is late.

If she has to go into the office, she'll be late.

So we'll eat together.

Yeah.

But if there's something I'm like, I'll generally between like

my day is that I get up and fanny around in the morning.

If we're doing a recording or something, I'll be a bit later.

But pretty much as soon as I can, I'll start streaming.

So I'll start at like 9, 9.30 and I'll go till about 3 or 4.

And then I'll stop and I'll do some other shit in the afternoon that I've got to do or I'll have a fucking nap or whatever.

And then from 6 till 8, I'm downstairs and hanging out with the kids and chatting to them.

hanging out with Mrs.

F.

We'll watch something we want to watch on TV, like a series we're into.

And then at eight o'clock, I come back upstairs and I'll carry on a streamer.

Yeah.

Because generally speaking, Mrs.

F goes to bed at like 9.30, 10, because she's like an early to bed, early to rise kind of person, the opposite of me.

The kids go to their rooms and they've got shit to be getting on with and chatting to their mates.

So in terms of family time during the week, it's pretty limited.

And I think that's pretty standard.

Most people don't spend a huge amount of time with their kids when they're older.

Because they've got school.

They go to their mates after school.

When I was a kid, I didn't want to fucking hang out with my parents when I was 15.

It's true, no, of course not.

So, I'm like, why would I expect, oh, the family time is like, I'm not going to be that parent that's like, you have to spend time with me.

I think that's selfish.

They're having their own shit going on, and they're not five.

They're big, they're like Sips's kids, they're older kids, so they want to go and do shit.

It's weird.

So, I'm going to be like, Yeah, go for it.

We don't feel overly like that, like, you know, sitting down and eating dinner together is required because

neither myself nor my wife are, we don't work away from the home.

We're home home all day.

I mean, I'm out here doing stuff, but I'm, I'm inside all the time.

Like, I see them a lot throughout the day.

So it's not like some big, like, whoa, dad's home.

You know, like, right.

I've been here all day.

Like, I picked you up from school.

I took you to school.

Like, I've done all these things.

Yes, there's lots of times.

So it's not like a, oh, hey, stranger, I haven't seen you like all day sort of thing.

Like, I'm, I'm,

I'm bumping into them all the time, like getting in contact with them.

So it's,

I think that makes a huge difference.

Yeah,

like you said, in the past,

I mean, I would see my dad for maybe an hour or two in the evening tops.

Oh my God, I don't think I ever saw mine.

Yeah, he would leave for work before I got up.

Yeah.

And then he would come home and I would be nearly at bed.

I'd be in my pajamas.

I'd be finishing off watching the Muppet Show.

Yeah.

And then I'm straight up to bed.

Like, I don't even remember us having dinner together very often.

Yeah.

Well, my dad did shift work when we were really, really young.

So he would sleep all day and then he'd get up,

have something to eat and go to work all night so like

i never saw him like yeah it sucks the only time i saw him is when he was angry and would yell at us for kissing off my mom or whatever but yeah otherwise like just you know holiday kids of new kids are living in this final straw you upset your mother for the 50th time yeah it was like yeah very much like that yeah I don't know.

Maybe it's like, maybe it's just of my family thing or it was like an 80s thing.

No, I think that was an 80s thing.

I would hope, although I'm sure it's still the case i mean that a lot of people have a few days working from home if they have like a officey kind of job especially post-covered there's a lot more working from home yeah mrs f goes in about twice a week and on those days she leaves before or around the same time that the the girls do actually she leaves quite a bit before them so they don't see they might see her for 10 minutes in the morning and then she will get home about 7 38

sometimes later so they might just they literally might not see her so when she was working uh five days a week in the office they genuinely hardly saw her this is great great info i'm gonna update my uh tracking profile for your wife so just because now i know exactly where when she's coming and going and stuff all you're gonna do is find her in a city of eight million connects up the dots big time you know like it's good we've narrowed it down to she goes to work sometimes

too much detail yeah the russian spy house is on it make a note of that she goes to work people still ask me about the russian spy house oh god it's just some nice family living in that house now it's like oh they moved away that's what you think yeah it's weird we are a nice family

please continue talking with window open oh man yeah my um my my mom went back to work i think i must have been about eight um my brother is younger so she stayed home for a bit with my with my brother and then went back to work i remember being fairly young and letting myself in and you know like after school being home alone for a couple of hours i must have been probably my son's age maybe a bit younger the first couple of times i did that i was petrified like every little sound in the house i thought there was like somebody hiding in the house trying to kill me and stuff and i remember running outside onto my driveway one time because i i heard something in the house i ran outside onto the driveway but i tried to like you know make it seem like I was just out there puttering around anyway.

And I look across the road and my friend was on his driveway as well.

And I was like, hey, what do you do?

And he's like,

you know, I heard a noise.

We both ran out onto our driveways like at the same time because we were both scared.

We were like 10 years old.

We were scared to be home alone.

It was funny.

I remember, but I used to spend quite a bit of time home alone because my mom, obviously, she didn't have,

this is when my parents got divorced.

When we moved to the UK or back to the UK, I would have been, I think she got a job working in an office in the sort of evening shift, not overnight, but up until 11 or 12,

like multiple days a week.

And it would be me looking after my sister, my sister.

I think we would have been about the age that my kids are now, maybe very slightly younger.

So I would have been like 13, 14, and my sister would have been 10 or 11.

And then for a few years after that, she would go into the office.

She'd like, we'd have dinner, she'd go into the office and I would collect her at midnight

because she kind of wanted some kind of, you know, someone to help walk with her because it was like within walking distance.

But for years, it was just me in the house by myself, looking after my sister.

And she would go to her room and I wouldn't see her.

And I would be in the living room watching telly or watching movies.

But it was a lot of time, just me.

I never fucked around.

Like my sister, as soon as I moved out, she had like some ridiculous party and a bunch of people trashed the house.

My mom was like, you were a much easier child and all this kind of shit.

But I never, I never fucked her out.

Like, I was, I was a genuinely very trustworthy kid.

Looking back on it now,

I honestly,

I'm quite proud of young Flax for not doing anything stupid.

I did do two stupid things that I can remember distinctly.

Um, one of them was I pissed off my sister.

She wanted to watch something, some video, and I wouldn't let her.

And in the end, she called my mom up at the office like five times, telling her that I was being a terrible brother.

And my mom like had to come home from the office to bollock us both.

What the heck?

And then go back into work.

And I was like, fuck, you know, I really pissed mom off.

The other one was this is when my mom was still smoking.

She,

I took some of her cigarettes and I smoked one.

And I'd never smoked a cigarette before.

I got such a bad head rush.

What do they call it?

A whitey?

Like when you white out, you know,

normally from smoking weed, but I literally couldn't walk.

I was like on my hands and knees.

I was like horribly sick in the garden.

and I thought I was like going to be a smoker and it almost put me off.

Yeah, that first the first time you ever smoke is awful.

Like really

shit.

Yeah.

What have I done?

It becomes a habit that people

stick with.

I guess that little bit of nicotine gets in your system.

It's like this was worth it.

It was all worth it.

I think I need some more of that.

But I can remember crawling around in my house and he's going, what have I done?

Like a 14-year-old kid, thinking I'd killed myself somehow

yeah it's funny we used to smoke in my in my friend's basement he had a room in the basement he it started off an unfinished basement and then became a finished basement and all throughout we could smoke in his basement because his dad smoked like a chimney just this massive chain smoker smoked in the house everything so his whole house was always filled with smoke anyway So if we went down to the basement, we could smoke and nobody would ever know the difference, right?

But he had, he had like a,

you know, like those round containers that you get shortbreads in for Christmas?

He had a tin like that that he put all of his butts in

and it was full of butts at one point.

He opened his drawer and he's like, oh, here, just put the button here like when you're done.

I opened it up and this thing was just like, like the butts were like,

they were like pressed flat like against the bottom of the lid because it was so full.

God.

Yeah, it was pretty gross.

It was just the whole basement just fucking stunk as well.

But it was one of those places where everybody hung out because you could smoke.

And it was, you know, during the winter in Canada and want to be outside.

So

everybody would go there.

We'd play Mario Party and smoke.

That's all we would do.

Like all, all, all evening long.

It was great, though.

It's good times.

A good life.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm surprised I'm still alive.

Honestly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So when did you, you, you, you quit smoking, Sips?

Did you quit smoking probably when I was like...

I smoked as a, teenager and I think I quit probably before I came over here for the first time.

I was working nights at a grocery store and I was just getting ready to go.

I knew I was coming here for a year and I didn't want to smoke over here because I, you know, I didn't know like the brands.

I didn't know if it was going to be more expensive or not or whatever.

And I just thought, you know what?

I just got to quit.

cold turkey and never look back.

And I and I did.

I just quit.

But I smoked for a couple of years quite like quite a lot as well but um yeah i was able to quit so it was good did your feeling better quite young know that you smoked yeah yeah oh okay

had she smoked before as well no i mean she'd like she tried it but she wasn't like did she disapprove well i don't think she was like i think if i really wanted to it'd be fine but you know i don't well i think you also became vegetarian for her kind of thing though right well yeah eventually i did not at first oh right Eventually, eventually it just was easier for me to be vegetarian.

I wasn't really eating that much meat at the time, anyway, because I was living with a vegetarian.

So it was just, it was really easy to transition into.

So you weren't a vegetarian?

No.

Well, I don't think anyone starts as one.

Well, not back then, anyway.

Nowadays, it's probably more likely that somebody will be raised as a vegetarian, but I don't know anyone who's a vegetarian.

My family worked hard to

stop me being a vegetarian.

Good on'em.

Good on them.

I've seen those people having vegetarian pets.

They try to make their pets vegetarian.

Yeah.

That's fucking stupid.

It's not really fair.

No, that's not, that's not quite how it works.

Yeah.

Hey, Lewis, what was your situation growing up?

Who was working?

Did you spend much time alone?

Well, your parents were in a little bungalow.

My dad worked in London.

I grew up in Essex, Meadowboard, and so we had a long commute.

And yeah,

he would come home late

usually.

But

I guess also in my teens, I didn't really have any shared hobbies with my my parents.

I certainly, uh, you know, my dad did take us to scouts, uh, sort of in the evening sometimes, or, um,

go to a scout camp or do stuff like this.

Like, I felt like I was, you know, spent a decent amount of time with my parents when I was younger.

And my mum certainly helped me

with early sort of tutoring towards getting into school.

And my brother needed a lot of help as well.

And so, my mum, she's a very smart lady um science degree and you know and also quite spiritual you know she's a

yoga teacher as well and stuff and so I don't know like a good influence really on on my formative years but yeah like as a teenage boy I was just into video games and anything that did not involve my parents and yeah like but recently um you know i actually

you know it was my birthday just um well in fact it's of time of recording, it's next week, but my parents, but I'm going away next week, so I wrote my parents and I was like, oh, how are you doing?

And they were like, oh, do you want to come over for your birthday?

I was like, oh, yeah, sure.

So I just sort of came over there, spent the day with them, and I quite enjoyed it.

And I didn't, I sort of, afterwards, I was almost like, that's weird, because I don't normally enjoy hanging out with my parents, you know, and I don't normally make an effort to do so.

But I found myself having a, having a fun time.

We went, you know, just went and had a, had a meal, had a walk around, visited like a church, just chat, nice chat.

I think in small doses, my parents are great.

Yeah, I think it's a weird one with parents, right?

I think your parents either slot into your life or they don't.

It's like if they, if they cause like any friction whatsoever, you're more likely to say, I don't really want to deal with you at all, sort of thing.

But if they're easygoing, like my my wife's parents are really easygoing and they just sort of slot into our life perfectly.

So we see them a lot as a result, you know.

There's this idea that, like, the first, you know, when you meet someone, they're perfect, right?

Because you, you seem to get along, you're both making an effort to be accommodated towards each other.

But then as you get to know each other, you start to get comfortable.

And suddenly, someone might say something that's completely out there, and you're like, Okay,

you know, and suddenly you're like, Who is this person?

Like, why, why am I, and there is an element of being able to feel comfortable, more comfortable around a stranger and tell them things that you wouldn't tell someone closer to you, right?

Yeah.

Um, because they're like, well, who is this person?

You know, they, they live on the other side of the country.

They're only down, you know, for here.

I can tell them anything.

Um, there is this, this kind of strange phenomenon of that.

But I do feel like it's a little bit like with that with my parents.

Like, it's a, if I spend a day of the day with them and we, we keep the topics on sensible things, it's a good time.

But, you know, if we start

ending up, you know, arguing about, oh, you know, I don't know.

I mean, there'll be something that happens and

it's like,

I don't want to tell you how I really feel about this because it will upset you.

Yeah.

I think, especially with older relatives, I'm sure everybody's like, especially nowadays, I think it feels like politics is so divisive that having conversation with older relatives, or if you're older with younger relatives, can sometimes feel like, I don't even know you.

Like, what world do you live in with any of this makes sense?

Like, that's how it feels to people these days because everything seems so much more polarized and extreme.

Feels that way.

I don't know if it feels that way.

It feels that way.

It might be that way to some people.

Yeah, but I mean, certainly, I will say this.

My mom, I was talking about this with, I think, I was talking about this with my youngest, actually.

She's quite insightful.

Last weekend,

we went down.

I went down and did the walk, the charity walk that

I'd been doing a fundraising.

It was 18 miles it went brilliantly we all finished i still have some of the blisters are on their way down it was it was genuinely hard on the midway well done thank you um it was a beautiful walk uh not not in terms of scenery at times it was but at times it was just beautiful because we all talked like i spoke to everyone there were like 18 of us did the walk and i had a chat with everyone because we were out for like it was like seven hours or something we were walking around for um we started the day right we started on time walked straight straight into town.

It was a few miles to walk into town.

And at 9:30, we had a pint in the Wetherspoons in the town center.

Okay.

And I was like, Are we sure we want a pint?

Everyone's like, gotta get a pint in.

I was like, fine.

So we had a pint.

And then we walked

to my friend's parents' house because his parents are still alive,

obviously mourning their son.

They're too old to do the walk with us, but they were really happy to have all his friends doing this.

It was quite emotional for them, obviously.

And they laid on on lunch for us, which was really nice, and gave us all some beer.

They laid on a lunch.

They laid on some lunch for us, yeah.

Nice.

And then from there, we walked all the way to the finishing point,

which was a pub.

And we had a good few pints there.

Now, my knees really ached after the first few hours.

And then I took some ibuprofen.

They stopped aching.

As the walk kept going on, my hips were aching.

It was my hips.

And I started to get some quite bad blisters on my feet.

Even though I had good socks and I had walking shoes, I just never walk 18 miles.

It's not something I've never.

Not a lot of people do, yeah.

Yeah.

So my body was just like, this is a lot.

And things started to break, but it was fine.

It was fine enough that we went clubbing that evening.

Right.

Because we were like, we've got to have a large one

in his honor.

So we went into town and we were out till, I was out till about midnight because I had to drive home the next day and I was exhausted.

But some of my mates stayed out till 3 a.m., which is pretty hardcore for blokes that are nearly 50 and just did this.

So honestly, we're now like, shit, we could do this again.

And now we're thinking of other places, not as a fundraiser, but just to do walks together because it was so much fun.

It really was a great day.

You are at that age now where you're assembling a walking group.

I know.

You just need to find a shopping center that you guys can walk around.

You are, I mean, we were planning a walking holiday.

We are.

We were thinking of doing the cycle continues, doesn't it?

Oh, my gosh.

Salzburg to Munich is a beautiful walk.

It's not over the Alps, but it's Austria to Germany.

Salzburg to Munich, stunning.

Look at the ball.

Look at all of that wonderful German beer you can stop and we're going to be hitting those buttons.

Oh man, that would, I would actually do that.

That sounds great.

But I mean, if we did it over like four or five days, it'd be something like 20 kilometers a day, which is perfectly doable.

But

walking is something I'm going to do more of because running,

it just fucks.

20 kilometers a day over

multiple days i think would be pretty bad though it's not that bad your first day you'd be like oh god i'm glad that's done and then to wake up and just do 20 more i think would be rough right but if if you've been walking every weekend yeah you quickly get to a point where it's really

what about all the blisters and stuff though right but your feet toughen up um

generally they get all leathery they get a little leather a little hobbit feet but i mean generally if you're getting blisters that bad it's because you you literally aren't walking often enough.

That's it.

Um, so, uh, yeah, toughen up your feet a little bit with some walking.

And, you know, you break in your walking shoes even more.

And I think I didn't have them tight enough.

I think really tight shoes is kind of the key to stopping blisters because it's just friction.

It's just very slight friction for hours and hours, and it wears the skin off.

But yes, it was great.

It was a really, really great day.

And I want to say thank you to everyone that donated to the page.

I think we got over 7K in the end, which for a thing like that is, we're very, very happy.

That is great.

Yeah, but that was that was what we did.

I probably would have, oh, yeah, so that's it.

So I brought my daughter with me, my youngest, she stayed with my mum

because she was like,

what's Gaggy going to be doing this weekend?

I was like, she's just hanging out.

I'm not staying with her.

She was like, oh, I'll come and stay with her because she loves her.

She's really, she's a good granddaughter.

She was like, oh, let's just help her out and cheer her up.

I was like, great.

So she hung out with her.

And on the drive back, we were talking about my mum.

And she has this tendency.

I don't know if this is an old person thing.

I also, I noticed myself doing this, and I try, because I got it from her, I try so hard not to do it.

If you're having a conversation with older people, they're more interested in telling you their story than listening to your story.

Yeah.

Like, I feel like that is a thing that older people do where they are waiting to tell you about their fascinating life and everything rather than ask questions.

I think that's, I think, I think that's an age thing.

I wonder if it's because essentially to older people, everyone's a child.

What, I don't care about your stories you're going to tell me what you did at playgroup today who cares let me tell you about the time i you know dove off an iceberg into the arctic or something like older people don't seem as intrigued by old other people i don't know if you guys have noticed that yeah a little bit yeah i think i i i i feel like the

i don't know what to call it and for lack of having a term to call it i think It's a sort of complacency in older people.

And the older people get, they almost get lazier.

I don't, I'm not saying,

I'm not saying that they're that they're lazy people.

I'm just saying that, like,

something happens the older you get where you just don't really,

you sort of lose like little niceties along the way, you know, things that might have made you like a bit more charming, like, uh, socially or something like that.

You, it's, it's some weird sort of like complacency or whatever, but I have noticed it not in everybody, but I've certainly noticed it more so in a couple of the other people I know.

I don't necessarily think it's the old people.

I think this is everyone.

I think if you find some,

I can't remember what it was, but it was like a way to fall in love, to make someone fall in love with you is to let them just talk to you about all their crap and talk back and say, and say, oh, and like agree with them.

That sounds awful, but I have said it.

But

people love to talk about themselves.

People love to.

to share what to to often just to like try and get some sense into that like therapy you know, just talking and getting it out in the open lets them feel comfortable and frame their things in a different light and bounce it off another person.

It's very calming to just talk to people.

And I often say this podcast is a little bit like that.

For me, you know, I get to just vent and

tell, spout these stories off into the unknown like some weird confessional.

And it is nice, right?

Just wait till I tell you guys the story about the time I jumped off an iceberg.

In a sense, your mother probably feels very comfortable around your granddaughter and

loves her and feels like she is loved back.

And as a result, is keen to share these things that she has and enjoys doing.

I think it's fun, right?

And I think it's very unconscious.

You'll find yourself doing it, I suppose, if you're looking out for it.

But it's not necessarily bad.

It means that you're enjoying the time with someone you want to.

If someone doesn't like spending time with you, they won't talk to you.

They won't tell you things.

They won't just fill the air with stories.

No, they're probably just like too busy being pissed off.

Yeah.

Like, I think that

they won't feel like you're worth the breath, you know?

Whereas if someone

does just talk at you, it usually means they're...

they're interested in you and they're they're they like you, you know?

So you shouldn't you shouldn't feel like it's a bad thing to want to tell people about your stories and be and want to engage with them and be passionate.

Yeah, true.

I think it's um, yeah, it's it's weird.

I, I, I, people,

you know, they say, like, oh, people, um, you know, don't change much, but I, I've, I've noticed that, like, as people get older, certainly, like, past the age of like 70, they, they, people change a little bit, not lots, they, but a little bit, little things slip, you know, like

it's hard to explain but uh like i i it is something i've noticed i i think flax probably is saying the same thing but it's um i think their world contracts and that's that's understandable you don't get out as much yeah i would say as well they don't have the same level of physical energy they had yeah of course but also the retention of new information yeah doesn't seem to be uh as sort of frequent like you know as people get older they they they

rely more on their long-term memory, I feel.

Yeah, and they probably don't feel like they're really like part of

like, you know,

in the same way that, like, when you're younger, you got like new technology comes out, you embrace it, you adopt it into your life very quickly, and and you know, it's exciting and stuff like that.

But for older people, they just see it as like, no, fuck, why do you need that?

Like, what was wrong with the old way?

You know, and it is a lot of that.

It is kind of like a, like a, you know,

a common thing, you know, like the grumpy old man yelling at at clouds or whatever but like for them it's a lot right like the world has changed a lot and there probably was a much simpler way of doing things that they got very used to and now you know because they're older and uh

they're just they just get more pissed off about it or this is one of those they don't want to accept it i um so my grandma obviously she was um she lived she lived through the war but was young when the war was on you know teenager And, you know, quite quickly after that, had the pretty familiar setup of getting a job in the post-war,

meeting a man at the job, marrying him, having, you know, kids and settling down and largely doing bits and bobs, but mostly being a housewife,

you know, and then sort of, I don't know, just sort of settling down.

And she was when she was...

getting a bit old and and losing her mind a little bit.

She um it was it was easier to talk to her about things that had happened a long time ago and about her memories.

And I think those were some nice conversations to have because I think old folks do remember well things that happened to them earlier in their lives, as we all do.

Yeah.

And I think those are comforting things to talk about.

They're familiar things to talk about and they're interesting.

I'm keen to hear her stories.

I actually spoke to an older lady at the event who'd had very interesting

life.

And she was like,

you know, old, old grandma lady, about 90 or something.

And she was, you know, born in Poland

and evacuated out of the war zone pretty young, I think at like four years old or something.

And

went ended up as a sort of, I think she was in one of these places that the Russian occupied territory, so the east of Poland, where the Russians came in and they took the territories and they were not giving it back.

And those people, those Polish sort of woods, woodsmen and villagers, were not really,

they weren't really, didn't really have a place in Soviet society.

So they were shipped off to the far-flung reaches of the empire.

And I think she ended up in like Archangel or something on the

north coast and freezing cold.

And then sort of as the war carried on, they realized that actually they needed all of these

people to fight for, you know.

So they made a deal with the British to train all these Polish troops and forces in UK.

And so she ended up being shipped to a sort of army base in Lebanon and then an army base somewhere else, you know, and then eventually ended up in a community, Polish community in Kidderminster in the UK, who and, you know, who had, it was a big Polish community and they had a Polish school and all this.

And so she, she.

even though she she's lived in the UK for effectively 85 years or something, she still speaks Polish as her main language.

She married a Polish man, spoke Polish primarily throughout her life.

And so I was sort of talking to her, you know, as this sort of British grandma.

And

I was sort of struggling to sort of, and I realized later that, you know, she actually spoke a lot better Polish than she did English.

And so all of her relatives would speak to her in Polish as well.

But I just, I just, it's amazing that people have such different lives and there's such different diversity.

She's clearly, you know, this, this, this British grandma, but really still embraces this Polish heritage.

I, you know, but I said to her, oh, well, have you ever been back?

And she said, well, my, the place, the village I

came from doesn't exist.

You know, it's part of, it got integrated into Ukraine and then it got switched around and then it got dissolved, you know, and all the people were scattered.

You know, it was, it was, it was never, um, never a thing.

So, but her husband's family in Poland, obviously who were from West Poland, she's visited them and knows them quite a lot.

But yeah, fascinating, people have fascinating lives and um their own stories to tell and yeah she was she was sort of talking about you know i've talked to her about her working in carpet factories that was that was sort of a big kidderminster thing they shipped carpets all over the world and she was a sort of expert weaver in her time um carpet factories carpet factories in kidderminster apparently that was a that was the thing kidderminster yeah well it's not not a great place these days i don't think she lives there now no offense any kiddies in Kidd and Minster.

Now you've done it.

The mailbag's going to be filled.

This is the new

Wisconsin.

This is the new Pennsylvania.

You guys have done it.

You've opened the gates, the floodgates.

Like a lot of places in the UK, it's just boring.

That was what got me walking around Bournemouth.

You were so bored.

It's an awful place now.

Like so much of it.

Oh, it's just

dreadful.

No, it's really.

Well, a lot of the UK is just shit.

We went in the summer.

We'd never been before, so we have no context, but we thought it was nice because we'd never been there before, and we were surprised that it was as nice as it was.

But it's a large town, it's like genuinely a very large town.

Yeah, and walking around it, you realize I think when I've been to other countries and walked around small towns and villages and even larger towns, what we have made in this country so little effort to make buildings look not even

amazing, not even nice, just decent.

They literally look like the lowest effort.

Yeah.

How can we

not give up?

A lot of stuff that was built in like the 50s and the 60s looks like.

It's just awful.

There's no effort to future-proof it because even now, and it's led to the new builds we have now are so fucking horrendously ugly.

And you look at an old building and you think, why don't we make things like that?

It's not that big an effort to have some nice-looking bricks and shit.

Like, it's just not a little bit of detail around a window.

Now it's like, how can we just make it a square and boring, boring square?

It's money.

It's cost, it's cost-cutting.

It cannot cost much more.

And if the government just said, look, it doesn't matter if it's not even if it costs one fucking more, they're not interested.

It's bullshit.

How come other people can manage it and we can't?

Who's managing it?

Nobody.

We knocked down all of these beautiful old buildings.

You go to Bournemouth, there used to be, and Bournemouth's not an old old town, a lot more really beautiful older buildings.

Not that old, like Victorian and Georgian around that era.

And the councils.

These could all be listed, surely.

No, but no, no, no.

You want to knock them down and put a boring block of old people flats in?

Done.

Like, they just signed off.

So all of this architecture that was once, all these big old roads in Bournemouth, you'd walk down, they were genuinely beautiful old houses, gone.

Gone, gone, gone.

Yeah.

Because honestly, these councils, I feel like our councils in this country, correct me if I'm wrong, council workers, literally we're hands-off.

We don't give a fuck.

Knock down whatever you want.

Oh, my God.

Because progress, progress, progress.

Well, I watched it.

And we butchered our landscape.

Three seasons of Clarkson's Farm, and that council is not like that.

Jesus about the farmland.

You can't even fart on the road without them needing to get involved.

It feels crazy.

We talked about this before.

I got some angry emails about it, so I want to steer clear.

God forbid we criticize Jeremy Clarkson and the editing of that show.

That could could it is it possible that the show created a villain in the council because that makes better telling?

Is it possible?

No, it's not possible.

Jeremy Clarkson's 100% right all the time.

Ergo, the local council are wicked.

I'm just case closed.

Case closed on that one, lads.

I'm going to go and visit some beautiful English countryside next week.

I'm going countryside.

It's beautiful.

I'm going to Cornwall.

I'm going to.

What are you doing there?

Staying a few places.

Just

try and chill out before.

You're just going on a big, big chill-out retreat.

Yeah, just, it's not far.

It's a couple of hours' drive.

Yeah, you go

in the west country already.

Have a few walks around the place.

You know, I've never really been to Cornwall, except when I was a kid.

Really?

And then it was like holiday camp-style places.

Cornwall's fantastic.

Really, really pretty.

But look, anyone out there that lives in the UK,

that lives in a small town, especially seaside towns, write in and tell me how great your seaside town is or how shit it is.

I can't trust Cornwall.

It's not that bad.

Because Cornwall, Ontario is not a nice place.

I've been there many times, and now anytime I hear the name Cornwall, I can't help but smell Cornwall, Ontario.

Fucking hell, what a stench.

What a stinky, stinky city.

The New World, obviously, we chucked a lot of names over there that are there's no relation whatsoever.

I mean, look at York and New York.

They're not

the same at all.

Yeah, the grand old Duke does not have any power in the Big Apple.

He has to stay in original York.

Yeah.

I mean, also, which hill is he going to march up and which is he going to march back down?

Because I don't think there's really any hills in New York.

I can't think of it.

Okay, listen to this.

Cornwall does not enjoy a positive environmental reputation as a result of decades of industrial pollution, the legacy of which is a riverfront contaminated by mercury, zinc, lead, and copper, soil contaminated by coal tar, and most evidently, Big Ben, a 44-acre, 80-meter-tall dump site within the city filled with paper mill sludge, demolition waste, wood bark, and asbestos.

Ooh, sounds great.

Let's go on a trip there.

Although the area is touted as recreational, it is off limits until winter when the waste is covered and the odors are subdued.

It is then used as a ski hill.

Yes, wonderful.

Oh, lovely.

Come to Cornwall, everybody.

Yeah.

No thanks.

So

infants have four times the expected hospital admission rate for asthma.

Oh, this is from a while ago, though.

Maybe.

It is on the border of Canada and the US and has a big green bridge, suspension bridge connecting Canada and the US.

All along the border, they have these big green suspension bridges.

And

with a little, not a toll booth, but like a passport control place, a customs

place.

As a child we drove down to uh the us and a many many times wasn't far from where we lived and uh i remember um fondly going to upper state new york we went to a place called messina i had a big shopping center there i i think it was called the carousel mall um or maybe that was in watertown i can't remember But anyway, we went there and I bought Super Mario Bros.

3 for the NES, and it was really cheap compared to buying it in Canada.

So there's a carousel mall in Syracuse.

Oh, Syracuse.

It was Syracuse.

Sorry.

Destiny, USA, it's called now.

Destiny

USA.

Nice.

It's a six-story automobile-oriented super-regional shopping, dining, and entertainment complex on the shore of Onondaga Lake

in Syracuse.

It is the largest shopping mall in the state of New York and the ninth largest in the country.

Yeah.

Well, I bought Super Mario Bros.

3 for the nes there and uh it was i it was all right

it was

you know what the the thing with moles is um and i'd say that this is true of a lot of moles is if if they start to thin out even a little bit it's like a cascade effect where it just gets shitter and shitter and shitter yeah like there is one when we were doing the walk in bournemouth we walked through boscom anyone in bournemouth will know boscom what a shithole At one point, it was, I think, the heroin capital of England.

Nice.

It was bad.

There is a mall in there.

I think it's the Dalkeith Arcade or the Sovereign Center.

I can't remember, either way.

You walk through it, and when you come in, the double doors from the bus departure, obviously people are meant to be getting the bus to this destination mall.

You come through the double doors and you don't see a shop.

for the first like hundred meters in the mall.

It's all just shut down and empty units.

Then you get into the center and it's like vape shops, cash converters, one or two stores that are clinging on.

Yeah, all that kind of shit.

And there's people sat in there.

And do you remember in Dawn of the Dead, the original Dawn of the Dead, the way the zombies come to the mall?

Yeah.

And one of the characters asked the other one, why are they coming here?

And he's like, wow, it's just some residual memory they've got that they come here.

That is malls now.

Yeah.

In the modern era, you go to them, and a lot of them are just residual memories of a shopping center that was thriving and interesting.

Yeah.

Because the problem with the mall is because it's enclosed, and I think the rents are probably reasonably high in a mall because it's like, you know, a good destination.

Um, the guys who own this huge piece of land that the mall lives on can only charge so little.

And so the shops you end up getting there either none or shit.

And then why would a good shop stay?

Well, you don't want to be the best house on the shit road.

You want to be the worst house on the best road.

So, you know, that's true for shops as well.

So it's just so desperately sad walking around an old mall.

I think it's a, it's there.

It's a dying thing.

We went to a mall in LA when we were out at BlizzCon one year.

And

we got there a couple of days before BlizzCon started.

And one day, I think we needed, somebody needed us to get some shirts or something.

So we tracked down this moment.

They had to sell their luggage or something.

And they have to rebuy their pants and shit.

So we tracked down this mall.

We got an Uber there and it was like 11 a.m.

on a Tuesday or something.

We go into this mall and everybody's like, oh, this, this is going to be great.

You know, like a fucking an actual, you know, North American or U.S.

mall, like, you know,

everything you've ever seen on TV or whatever.

And honestly, it was like so deserted.

And the only people that were there were just, it seemed like people that just had nowhere else to go.

Yeah.

You know, the type.

They're just kind of like, this is me hanging out at the mall all day.

Yeah.

I'm just going to walk around the mall.

I'll drink a coffee, look in a shop, buy one thing.

And I mean, it had all of the cornerstones of like a North American mall.

Like, there was an Orange Julius, and there was the food court had like a Sabaro and Orange Julius?

It just

had like all the typical stuff that you would have remembered.

What is an Orange Julius?

Orange Julius is just like

orange juice with, I think, ice cream mixed into it.

It's like

never heard of it.

Look at that.

They're attached to Dairy Queens now.

I think Dairy Queen bombs.

How do these shops exist in America?

What do you sell?

Orange juice.

Yeah.

We have 3 million locations.

Man, I remember as a kid, though, like, we would go to the mall.

The mall would be fucking heaving.

Like, I'm

so packed.

And

people would have...

orange Julius or they'd have like a big bag of kernels popcorn or you know what I mean like people used all of this stuff.

I don't know if they do now, but um, but yeah, this mall, the, the whole experience was just odd.

Like, it just

FYI, we, I don't think we do know.

Like, when you say, do you know what I mean?

Absolutely not.

Like, that was not.

We didn't have those.

No.

Like you said, we went when I went to the States, going to a mall was like, holy shit.

Yeah, we had,

even in Ottawa, we had malls, multiple malls that you could go to, like dotted around.

Like, there was one in the suburb where I grew up.

There was one in between the suburb and downtown that you could go to, which was along like the main bus route.

There is a big one, like, right downtown, which sort of served as like a bus station as well.

Yeah.

And, um,

they just they always have like had the same food court.

They had this, like, the same shops in it, you know, like you'd have, there'd be a hallway that had all the clothes stores.

So you'd have like Eddie Bauer and the gap and, you know, what else, whatever, northern elements, all of the, all the clothes shops.

And then you'd have like, some of them had a Disney store, not all of them did.

You'd have like HMV, um, you'd have like Electronics Boutique.

Um, back when I don't even think Electronics Boutique exists anymore, Radio Shams,

those kind of places, and then you'd have like uh like bookstores like Kohl's or something like that.

Um, but like they were kind of like they were destinations, if you'd like, but they were kind of like used

for um you know, like as like getting places, you know, like they always, like bus stations were always there, big bus stations, you know, so you'd get there and you'd transfer buses.

And if you didn't want to wait, you could just go in the mall, get something.

But, like, when I was really small in the 80s, they had huge arcades in there, too.

And that you could play like Mortal Kombat, all the Capcom versus Marvel games.

I think now, Westfield, the Westfield Mall in Shepherd's Bush, uh, or White City is like in London.

That's probably the most old school, massive destination mall

that I know.

Like it's absolutely huge.

It's always busy and really good.

Like there's all kinds of good shops there.

But that's so rare.

I remember as a teenager, though, it was like you would go, like

on the weekend, even sometimes like in the evening, like in the

late afternoon, like after school or whatever, you go on the bus, you go to the mall.

Like you'd see people there.

Other people would just be hanging out at the mall outside the mall.

You know, it was just like it was, it was kind of a destination.

And then I don't know what happened.

It just stopped being one.

Like, we just never went.

And then even, I, even I remember being sort of like 18, 19, going to college or whatever, I'd have to go into the mall to get something on the way.

It'd be just fucking deserted.

Like, there was just more and more stuff just closed down, pulled out of these malls and stuff.

And that, and then they just all became.

kind of empty, you know, except for like the big downtown ones that, you know, had a lot of foot traffic due to people connecting between trains and buses and stuff like that.

So

I know that malls now, obviously, like all high streets are dying.

And a lot of people point to

online shopping as being the biggest

change.

And certainly most of the stuff that we buy, we buy online.

We just bought a double bed for one of the kids' rooms.

And the only reason we got it online, like in the old days, we would have gone to a shop, looked at it, ordered delivery.

We just got it online.

So many things.

I'll still go out.

I'll buy clothes online.

I will still go out to buy shoes and stuff.

But once you know your size and it's a replacement for a shoe type I already had, I'll just fucking buy it online.

Yeah.

I buy books and magazines and comics and all that kind of stuff online.

Food, like there's no need to go out.

I don't know how many older people

buy stuff online.

I'm going to assume a decent number, but I know I was talking about the death of mules.

In Bournemouth, there's a place called Castle Point where all the shops are focused on this one area and everybody just goes there.

So the high street, the town center is dead.

And it used to be absolutely rammed on a Saturday.

Yeah.

So are all those people buying stuff online now?

Is it something else?

Do people have less disposable income?

What?

There must be multiple factors.

It can't just be the internet.

It's not just the internet.

You've got superstores just outside the city most of the time now as well, right?

Yeah, that that was the big change wasn't it was supermarkets offering fucking everything yeah big big like for us it was like big walmarts loblaws in canada like the loblaws superstores yeah like where i used to live we had it was like a pretty quiet suburb it was huge but it was it was fairly quiet you know you had like

a movie theater, like you had the mall, so you'd go to the mall, you have everything that you needed at the mall or whatever.

But then slowly stuff started moving away from the mall.

Originally, at the mall, you, there was a huge Walmart attached to the mall.

So, like, you would go to Walmart and then you might just go into the mall and do other stuff.

You know what I mean?

But then they needed a bigger place, so they left the mall and they opened up in what used to just be a huge farm field that was, you know, rezoned, turned into commercial area.

And they opened one of those, like, the massive, massive, you know, superstores with like the huge parking lagoons, like, like, right on the the side of like a really busy road you know

and but there was like three or four of them opened pretty much next to each other along this road and the whole thing has just gone like crazy up there now but uh it's mostly just you know they have like their big store and then you'll have like a little like a boston pizza it'll be it's like it look it looks like a like an afterthought it's like in the middle of the parking lot you know what i mean like it's just there it's like some little beacon in this massive Walmart parking lot.

And that seemed, I think, that's the big change.

I think that's when people stopped going to the mall and people started heading to these places instead.

Yeah.

So they could just get everything.

Because you can do, you get everything there.

You get groceries, you get clothes, you can get whatever.

You know, like it's

French, the French hypermarkets are the same.

Like they, they've been

carfours and whatever.

They're all the same.

Lewis, you got any deluge news for us?

Oh, God, I forgot.

Just a couple of years ago.

He fell asleep.

Let me look it up.

This is the only news I actually get.

He fell asleep listening to Maul talk.

He was busy answering emails, I guarantee it.

We already did Mark Zuckerberg talking about the best Civ player in the world.

That's on Lewis News.

Challenge extended.

He's a self-appointed best Civ player, though.

Sorry, I'm just opening a box here.

Oh, we can hear it.

He has no street cred around it, though.

He's never won a major tournament.

know, he doesn't have like a move like, oh, I'm going to open up with the, with the, with the Zuckerberg.

Nobody opens up with the Zuckerberg.

So, like, what's, what is this guy's claim to fame?

I can just say, yeah, I'm a billionaire.

I'm not actually one, but you know what I mean?

Like, you can say whatever you like, but it doesn't make it true.

I'm sure he said it casually and it's been picked up.

Also, there was a big Civ cheating scandal recently.

I watched a good video.

Really?

Yeah, there's a replay tool that people use, the top-level players like on competitive Civ will use the replay tool, Civ 5, to look at

previous replays.

And it's like the Rythian style 2D tactical view, but there's a way to look at it during the game.

Right.

So you can get hold of that file in an ongoing game and it'll show you where everything is.

And there was this guy who's all his scout moves were perfect.

So he always made contact with the city-states.

He always found the goodie huts.

And the routes he was taking

to settle cities and to find goodie huts were so ridiculously suboptimal the only reason you'd make them is if you knew that where you were moving was worth this move it's there was a whole video about it on youtube you can look it up

yeah

you would love this business i thought you would have seen i should have sent it to you he's looking it up right now he's like oh this guy's not cheating properly

but then the guy responded with this big thesis about oh it's not cheating i just have this optimal system that I've come up with.

I don't know.

It's worth watching.

It's about a 45-minute vid, but it was a good one.

Right, Luz News.

Lose news!

Lose news!

Okay, this is,

you know, Kirby.

Kirby, Jack Kirby, the

Kirby's Adventures in Dreamland, you mean?

Is Kirby the guy that sucks things into his mouth?

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

Interestingly, when they released all the games, like the Kirby games, in Japan, he was all cutesy.

Yeah.

In the West, he has like angry eyes.

Well, he gets pissed off if he eats the wrong thing, I think.

No, No, but he eats the wrong thing.

So, like, basically, if you compare like the Japanese release with the American release, it's the same art, except for Kirby is angry.

Right.

Okay.

It's look it up.

It's funny as fuck.

But every single Japanese game, he's like,

and then every American game, he's like,

I don't know why he's all angry or angry American Kirby, but every single time, I can link here.

Maybe he has indigestion.

There you go.

Okay, Kirby Air Ride.

He does look a lot more angry.

Kirby Airide.

So for anyone who can't see this, imagine if Kirby on the Japanese version has little round eyes, like ovals, and he looks like, ah, and Kirby Airride in the GameCube edition that came out in the West.

Imagine if instead of being round at the top, his eyes are sloping down inwards like he's going, girrrh.

He looks like if you drew an angry eye.

Not angry.

He looks like he's more determined.

Right.

I think he looks quite cross.

He certainly looks unhappy.

If you look at the Kirby Kirby Amazing Mirror, his face is even downturned.

Yeah.

I mean, he looks cross.

Kirby canvas curse.

I mean, compared to the,

is that the Japanese one where he

looks

John genuinely angry?

He's even

quite happy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I know that Japanese car manufacturers, when they make the cars, the front of the car, supposedly, I could, this could be absolute bollocks, has to have a nice face.

Like the shape of the headlights and the grill and everything can't look like angry Kirby.

It has to look like, I'm happy to be your car.

Let's go.

Let's have fun.

That's a thing.

So I'm sure this is true for their games as well.

I think so.

Anyway, Nintendo released some official merchandise and they spelled Kirby as Carby, my accent.

Carby.

This is like Copenhagen all over.

You've got to get on this quickly, Flex.

This is what I know.

You would have your Coppenhagen

sweater and then you could have your Carby

hoodie.

Oh, no, it's a hoodie.

Yeah.

I hoodie want that Kirby hoodie.

It's like real bad.

It's meant to look like Kirby's Kirby's like turned to eat you.

Do you know what I mean?

You've turned into

Kirby version of you.

I'm going to look that up.

Kirby hoodie.

These are not official.

Some of these are unofficial.

Oh, that really is very pink.

I don't mind wearing pink, but that is very pink.

So Ecovax D-Bot X2 robot vacuums.

Yeah.

Okay.

In the US, they're like little rumors or whatever the fuck.

Right.

They

over the weekend were hacked, right?

Oh, yeah.

And they were swearing at people.

They were chasing pets.

It was

out of control.

One man reported that his vacuum started yelling racial slurs at him.

Exactly.

Yes.

Makes a change from it being my wife.

I got the impression it was a kid, maybe a teenager.

He said, maybe they were just jumping from device to device, messing with families.

He's turned it off and

taken it.

to his garage where it remains powered down

for now, but at night it comes alive and Hoover's the garage

growing stronger.

So there you go.

Watch out for

not the AI taking over.

This is kids.

Just imagine this guy tinkering on his robot in his garage, like Uncle Owen from Star Wars, you know, like on the Nerf Furter Farm or whatever, just working away into the early hours of

the morning on his robot, trying to make it less racist so that he could redeploy it in his house.

This 3PO unit is kind of racist, but sure knows a lot about moisture.

Can you pass me the dilithium capacitor over there?

Let's see if we can get this 3PO unit to be less racist.

Oh, speaking of which,

I saw a TikTok of a 1940s Batman,

a film, like a Batman film that was made in the 40s during the Second World War.

And it's Batman basically going after Japanese people and him and his colleagues giving a whole bunch of racial slurs to Japanese people because they were in the middle of, you know, this was post-Pearl Harbor and there was a lot of racism.

It's pretty remarkable to see.

Hopefully it's not canon.

Hopefully it's not now canon that Batman doesn't like Japanese people.

But in this version of this film, he fucking hates them and he's not afraid to tell them.

It's something else.

Jesus Christ.

You should look it up.

So next up, the World Conquer Championships have been investigating cheating.

Bad, bad cheating.

After the winner was found with a steel nut.

They are looking at video evidence.

So David Jakins, 82, was victorious in the World Conquer Championships.

He's a veteran player known as King Conquer, and he recorded several victories where he destroyed another player's conquer in one hit.

He denies cheating and says he has the steel nut on him for humor value.

He says it's impossible to cheat at conquers, it's a load of nonsense.

It's not impossible.

People haven't cheated conquer since I was a kid.

You did all you varnished them, you'd hollow out the middle and put metal in there, all kinds of shit.

Yeah, idiot.

So apparently, people of players' conquers are randomly selected from a sack.

Um, and he denied any suggestions he marked any strings to highlight hardened nuts or used the brown-painted fake steel conker.

Um,

Jesus Christ, it's uh, Big news.

It's quite, it's very big news.

So he was watched by four judges and it was videoed.

So they are currently looking into

this.

Honestly, I thought online cheating was bad.

People just cheating all the time now.

Why couldn't they be more like chess and just have vibrating anal beads?

There was another chess scandal that came out the other day.

Really?

Did you hear about this?

No?

This player hid a phone in the toilet.

Right.

And when he was uh involved in a big game you'd go he'd go into the toilet he'd look up on the chess engine what would be the optimal move and make that because like at that level you're all very good but you don't need much more help than a couple of moves yeah but so this guy was going to the toilet before every single one of his moves no no no no no no just like really important ones yeah like you you don't need to go because a lot of moves are just you know obvious and there's not really i mean there might be a slightly more optimal move but that there'll be certain points in the game where there will be a like a killer move.

And if you can't find it, the computer will.

And you can, you could do this on chess.com.

You can play and do with full help.

And if the longer you leave it and the deeper you let the engine go, it will find moves for you.

You're like, what the fuck?

But then like four moves later, that's actually incredible.

So you play this amazing move and then you look at the sequence.

So he would go to the tour, look at his phone.

So this is allegedly anyway.

and then come back and make all these great moves.

The dude won fucking all these games.

And they're like looking looking back at the games and some of the moves are a bit sus.

But there was a note on the phone saying, please do not touch this phone.

The owner leaves it in here so he can check it overnight.

That's what the note, there was a note on the phone saying, don't move it.

What?

It was just in the bathroom.

So weird.

What the hell?

Oh my God.

Yeah, really weird.

There's a video, Gotham checks did a video you can watch.

I mean, because there was, there's always this cheating.

These fishermen were caught cheating with putting weights in their fish to make them weigh more.

But it was crazy because the fish would actually be smaller than the winning switches.

This was for

competition fishing.

Yes.

There's the loads of because there's a lot of pricing.

I've seen everywhere.

Like 30 grand prices.

The thing is, it's such an incentive to cheat, though, because also if you get away with it and win 30 grand, you're like, fuck, you know, that's so much money.

Like, and what are you doing?

You're not even getting in trouble often, like, if they even catch you, they just ban you from doing it from that fishing tournament.

You know, it's, it's, it's a, it's the wild west.

You know, they can just go to another side of the country.

It's just awful.

People cheating in video games, people cheating in offline games, people cheating, cheating, cheating.

I'm sure it hasn't always been this way.

We've become a race of cheaters.

I think they may be better at catching it, though, these days.

I think people human race is just cheating.

It's too much.

It is cheating.

How do you think Donald Trump got to the top?

Do you know what I mean?

It wasn't fucking

playing it fair.

You don't have any proof.

That's fake news.

That's fake news, buddy.

So, a graphic opera.

So, there's like a real serious thing it's called sancta it's like a graphic opera right with what does that mean a graphic opera okay so

it's it's happening in germany right and there's like a boundary pushing show okay it includes like naked roller skating nuns right like crucified naking bloody blood bodies with real blood um mutilation like it's it's gruesome okay so i'm just reading this this headline says 18 people needed medical attention during this option.

Yes.

It was a bit.

I think it must have gone a bit weird.

One scene has a small piece of flesh cut from a performer and another where two performers were pierced together and then ropes were attached so they could lift up.

There are certain lighting effects throughout which could also have been responsible.

But apparently

18 people

have needed medical attention as a result of attending.

Oh, this sounds absolutely vile.

Austrian choreographer Holzinger 38 is known for her boundary pushing performances with her all-female casts often performing partly or fully naked and previous shows have featured tattooing masturbating and action paintings with blood and fresh excrement off

guys are the Germans love all that they are pushing some boundaries by using fresh size on

if you cannot deal with it you are part of the capitalist system and a problem how dare you this is art

in an interview with the same outlet earlier this year she said good technique in dance to me is not just someone who can do a perfect tendu but also someone who can urinate on cue can you urinate on cue

perfect um well these guys don't it's not that they're untalented holy crap But uh, yeah, I think it's

a bit nutty.

You can go along to one of them if you want.

When you're doing your job a walk

in

what do people

enjoy watching it like the most about it what is it like is it like an like a like uh like an erotic thing or something or i don't know i think i think people performance art has never really done it for me and maybe i'm the wrong

vivil push the boundaries by watching pyrion flax pop his blisters oh my god don't pop your blisters kids you just leave them leave

nobody knows what it's going to stay you know like if somebody's not into gaming and says, like, oh, you know, what is it that you like about gaming?

I, I, like, it's, it's kind of hard to explain, but like, obviously, there's certain things in gaming that loop you in, you know, like, there's like addictive qualities to it or whatever.

That's, that's gaming.

But, like, for some of these, for some of these, like, art forms, performance arts and stuff,

I don't think I'll ever understand what the appeal is.

Like, it's about shock, right?

Yeah, but it's also that some of it is not shocking.

Like, this clearly is, but this isn't new.

this kind of performance art with like naked people and wanking and shit everywhere it's not it's not pushing any boundaries could do that

this yeah

it's just i feel like i was reading about this stuff happening in the 60s and the 70s and the 80s like it's just i don't feel this is new i feel like this this is it's meant to shock it's provocative but it's not it's not making me think at all it's just making me think christ what a waste of however much this cost like this is just gross yeah i don't i don't i really don't understand it imagine if you're into it it's not if they're painting on stage with fresh excrement it must stink in there really

awful awful like if there's a shit i would be worried they'd throw shit at me like i'm just i'm leaving i'm leaving the moment yeah even one little speck i would be not happy no but it must stink like it's out there you know it's not in the pipe it's on stage

somebody's pooped on a stage and maybe smeared it everywhere too oh yeah that's that's that's an hour and 20.

So we should probably, yeah, we should save our lose news for next time.

I don't want to blow our load.

No, I mean, gosh, this much quality lose news.

Yeah,

I love it.

I love it.

Good stuff.

That was a podcast.

That was a podcast.

That was definitely.

All right.

Thank you, everyone.

See you next time.

Goodbye.

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