Rural Concerns - Chris and Producer James: Dad Time

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

Chris and Producer James catch-up in the festive gap between proper episodes to discuss being dads. Normal service resumes next week!

on we're recording we're recording and this is not an episode absolutely not it is very important that everybody listens and knows that we're taking a break yes this is more is this an apology this is the time this this is official corrections and apologies it's oh wait a minute i'm on the bed again. Oh, hello. It's gossip time. Should we tell people that... Should we let people know there's no Sunil or let them work it out for themselves?

Yeah. One hour in. Yeah, it's just me and James. It's just a bit of a dad catch-up, right? Yeah, we're buying ourselves. We're having a little sort of week off just in the bit between. Wow.

It's unavailable. Why is that? We don't know. We're getting a voice message. He's sending us a voice message. We'll play it at the end, or whenever James feels he would like to play it. Or not, because either he's not done it or I've forgotten.

Yeah, so brace yourself. Or it's just a tirade it could feasibly be a four letter tirade you know what's in it was like yeah it's the stuff that we have to cut out um so so are you we're in the middle we're sort of in the middle of the Christmas bit. Are you, how are you feeling? I feel pretty unhealthy. Yes. And I can sort of see the, I can see the me that's like,

I'm going to abstain from drink and just eating chocolate all the time. But right now I'm still going to be that guy. Just, I'm going to wallow in it. Yeah. I went out and bought one of them tubs of heroes yesterday. Yesterday? Yeah. This is, so was that a cheap tub of heroes?

No, I think they've realised that's one of the things that is evergreen. Could have got a half-priced pan of Tony, sure. It feels bonkers to be buying a full tub of christmas chocolates after christmas is done that feels like why do you want to you want to do it because you're happy with it i guess i don't know yeah i'm enjoying the lifestyle and i'm gonna keep it running probably until 12th night and then boom new me I'm at that bit where I can't, I haven't stopped being merry, but I've had enough of it, you know, but I'm still, I'm still having little bits of chocolate and eating a bit too much

and not drinking loads, but just drinking more than I probably normally would, but definitely than I normally would do. So I think the cumulative effect of that is I'm now feeling a bit sort of bloated and depressed. Like I noticed that when I drink booze, like not to excess, although I did drink a little bit to excess before, but sustained alcohol,

I just tend to get a bit sad uh eventually yeah rolling anxiousness that's exactly it and when i when i stopped drinking for a bit probably a couple of years ago i did like three four months off of it um yeah it was very crystal clear that uh alcohol fueled anxiety and then you're like well well, why do I do this? But it's hard at Christmas, isn't it, not to get carried away? And the little cocktails taste so nice. It was little cocktails that done me in. What did you do?

Come on then, let's have a lesson. What was your little cocktail of choice? Well, we went round our friends over the road and basically the the vibe was everybody was going to do a cocktail for everybody. Oh, yeah. So mine was an old-fashioned, very simple, whiskey, bitters, and a sugar, water, syrup type thing. Oh, you did a simple syrup? Well, we actually had, it turns out that Nick had some raffle or something,

had got some really fancy Italian sugar syrup stuff. So I was just squirting that out of his fancy bottle. Very nice. So I was doing that. I was mixing it up. But Dave, whose house we were in yeah it's basically like he's a very clever man and was like we can't go mad on these cocktails um let's have a beer in between to spread it out so the night the night not quite zebra ring the night went thus arrived snowball nice beer to be sensible old-fashioned second old-fashioned oh

a beer to be sensible so back-to-back old fashions and then a beer to be sensible yeah and then free we had freeid, dark and stormy. That's rum and ginger beer, isn't it? Rum, ginger beer and lime. Very nice. And he had really nice rum. We should probably just explain to listeners what the Snowball is for people who weren't alive in the 70s or 80s. It's Advocar, which is custard.

Eggnog to America. Yeah, it's basically eggs. Basically like sugary eggs, egg whites and brandy mixed together. And a snowball is that liqueur mixed with lemonade and lime juice. But James splits the difference, don't you, by just coming up. I've not experimented with it yet. I've figured, right,

if I'm squirting lime into my lemonade and then mixing it with my boozy custard, why don't I just go for Sprite or 7-Up? I've got a 7-Up cooling in the fridge. I think tonight will be the night that I'll finally see if that does actually work if it don't it don't feel right does it don't feel good i'm the only snowball aficionado though no one else seems to want to buy into my claims that eggy lemonade is quite nice actually it's very got a medicinal taste and uh i had i had what it wasn't terrible but now i

am sitting on but someone gave me um a snowball but in preparation for christmas i also bought my own bottle of advocates i'm sitting on an unopened bottle of advocate and i don't think about i don't think i'm ever going to open it. There's another one called Summit Duck, like a fuzzy duck, which is basically like avocado and cream, which I think is more like a sort of an eggnog type vibe. Yeah, that sounds intense. You scrape a bit of nutmeg on it. Right, so we've done two old fashions.

We're back to our second beer. What hit us next? Then it was the Darkest Army, but then basically it's like three of those. Oh. Oh. But intermittently beers to not to go mad. But I'm sensing that rather than going Dark and Stormy beer, Dark and Stormy beer in a zebra or barcode type format.

I'm sensing double fisting situation. You've got dark and stormy, sipping dark and stormy, sipping beer. Sort of a simulcast. Yes. Basically, mistakes were made. We had to drive to Yorkshire the following morning and Nicola quite cannily stopped drinking at a very reasonable hour. And basically we were, she saw where this was heading.

Yeah. And we'd packed away to go home. We packed it because we bought all of our own cocktail stuff. And then basically, which included the potato peeler, which would, but then basically me and Dave were like, let's just keep, we were like begging and pleading. Can we have one more little cocktail? We deserve it.

We've been really good. We had all them beers, remember? I was powerful. I would say I've not been that drunk in a very long time. I was powerfully shit-faced. What day was this in the Christmas period? It was the 21st of December. Right.

Was that the Saturday? Yeah, that was the Saturday before. Just the right place in the calendar to not completely ruin Christmas, but definitely take my desire to drink alcohol completely out of the mix. Nice. Past that point. Although I have had a little bit since. But, yeah, that's me.

But then I was throwing up a lot in the morning. Oh, dear. Yeah, I didn't know how it happened. I came down, I did this thing that I always do, funny thing to Nicola where I'm like, I think I need to talk to Dave because I think his cocktails have gone off. Yeah, his eggs.

Probably the eggs. Yeah, he's gone off. He's using an old bottle of Advocat. I wanted to know and now I'm paying the price. You're the innocent in this story, really, aren't you? I'm a victim of a crime. So that was that. So I've done that, and now I'm just, yeah,

I'm ready to get to January to get to a bit of a clean start, and I think I'm definitely going to not drink for a bit. Isn't it your birthday though? Yeah. But ever since I've gone, since I'm older, my birthdays are very different to what they used to be, but much more attuned to the birthday of like a seven year old basically.

You know what I'm saying? Like, what do you want to do for your birthday? I want to watch a weird horror film that I've found and I want to have enchiladas. That's my tea. That's my, you know what I mean? That's my birthday.

That's how my birthday is normally roll. I can't be bothered to, I hate the attention of a birthday party type thing. I don't mind going to birthday parties, but I don't want to be the one there where everyone's there to celebrate, you so i keep it low-key i'm just like uh have a chat with my dad and my mum and then just eat me and then just have like a special tea that nicola makes me which really could be my basically my birthdays could be along the vibes of you know hot dogs and bowling

nice with three of my friends or someone from school. Yeah, and they get to take over a little bag. Exactly. Cool stuff. I'm back there. Nice. That's good then. What about New Year's though?

That is the day of the listening for the listener. I mean, that's a weird way of saying that this episode's coming out on New Year's Eve. Yeah, that's a weird way to talk. It is, isn't it? What are you doing? Are you going old school? Are you going up that pub? Yes, I believe that we are.

I'm going out. There's some people from the village just having some pints in the pub. I'm going to have some pints in the pub. Our kids are coming out. I'm not going to be very stressed about making it to midnight right very much don't care about that and will happily bow out at 10 11 o'clock we've got to keep our son has to have like a semi-normalish bedtime this poor kid enabled by mum and dad having a laugh. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. He's seeing 11 o'clock.

This is crazy. Ouch. Festive time piss-ups. But these are days when he gets to just smash his Nintendo Switch, you know what I mean? So he's having a good time. Are you going to get the whole pub in on it and do like a fake countdown at half ten? I didn't think about that,

but I think that's a good idea. One of my signature moves, which is probably why my wife does not want to go to the pub this Christmas, this New Year's Eve, is I get a bit drunk and then from 11.10 till 11.45, I just will randomly shout, 10!

And see who joins in. That's great. And you'll get a couple. It's funny the first seven times. Yeah. The thing is as well is this- Where's 10? Yeah, I bet.

And you're the sort of person, you're over height, that would attract people trying to hit you in the face sometimes. They will have a go. They will have a go. Like your presence aggravates smaller men. Yes, yes. I'm going to do that though. I'm going to do that in May.

I'll do it once and once. In May? It won't work in May. I'll do it once and once. In May? It won't work in May. No, I'll do it in this. I'll do it when this is coming out. I will do it when the people are listening. I'll do it tonight. Boom.

New Year's Eve. Yeah. Nice. But this, again, cannot stress enough that this is not an episode. Absolutely not. We'll do the full Christmas debrief. Yeah. I've got some tales.

I don't want to... Don't burn them on me. No, we need Sunil here to listen. I just wonder whether his mic's off. I'll tell you one of them, but as a top line level, and then we'll go into it next time. But it's not good. I've been scammed.

I've been scammed online online and I feel so stupid. But we'll come back to that when Sunil's in because I'm going to need some tough love, to be honest. I think Sunil's more the sort of person that can help you with that. If I tell you what the steps that I went through to get fleeced, it's not good for me. It's an embarrassing tale. Okay. Does it turn out there aren't hot milfs in your area i've been looking around i've been trying to give these hot

milfs some money oh that's well i look forward to hearing the full story i hope everything's all right of course and i have a housing it's fine it's it's fine the main thing is humiliation but overall good don't worry about me i'm fine was your christmas good yeah i had a similar the night before your fall from grace um i had a similar fall from grace with um it was on a parent i mean mean, the boozy one, the zebra ring, the piss poor zebra ring. Yes.

Do you know what zebra ring is by the way? I'm going to keep saying it. No, I didn't know when you said it those first few times. You thought I'd stop saying it, didn't you? Yeah, I did.

I thought I'll get through bluffing, not, but I sort of figured it out while you were talking as in, is it just zigzagging between? Yeah. You have like a boozy drink and then a non-boozy drink, a boozy drink, that's zebra ring. Yeah, but crucially, my non-alcoholic drink was a pint of beer.

Yes, yes. So it's more tiger ring than zebra ring, I'd say, on this. Or just puma. It was like, yeah, still a 4-5% beer to calm down in the gaps was, in retrospect, very daft. That is the sort of decision, that's where my mind often goes, and it did on my Friday night out with other parents from the school run. I found a kindred spirit.

I'll explain a bit more about him in a minute. He's possibly my best friend now. A brand new best friend. I've got a new best friend. Okay. We're talking about starting a podcast. No, we're not. Although maybe we did, to be honest.

Maybe we did. I got into the frame of mind where I'd had a bit of booze, and I think what I need to do now is have a little something to sober me up. A shot of tequila. I think because I associate the feeling of tequila, that sort of... with being sober.

But it's like the sharp burst of energy of a vodka Red Bull, isn't it? Like, this is science now. You're feeding your body toxins that would kill a bull. So this has to be a good decision. Yeah, I've never felt more alive. Yeah, so I had a few of them, and then we had to pack everything the next day to do our Christmas stuff.

So I was a bit, I packed poorly. I had 20 pairs of pants and mostly trainer socks. Yes. So I was ready, you know, for, I was going away for five days, but I was ready for basically soiling myself four times a day i always go big on pants you got to you always much prepare for yeah it's yeah i don't like feeling unclean do you know what i mean so i always although yeah largely in the underpants if i've got a pair a clean pair of underpants I've got to spring in my step

you know yeah pop them in your pocket as a pocket square I need to know more about this new friend but I think we'll keep that well I'm a little bit

I don't so it turns out he went to university at the in the same place at the same time as me

but we've apparently never met. But he's definitely got an anecdote from a house party that we were definitely both at. Is it one where, is it about this horrible big lad doing some grotesque, and then you're like, that was me, actually. I've got a fear.

We thought you'd have died i fear that this is he's someone that i've slighted in the past and i'm at like stage one of an elaborate revenge plot yes you'd find in a channel five drama series yeah this feels like a channel five as well it's it's come to Chipping Norton. Don't live in Chipping Norton, so you can say that all you want. Do you not? No. Oh, right.

Where do you live? Is it Birmingham? Yeah, those are the two. Well, that's good. Yeah, so you're getting roused by this guy. But it is nice, isn't it, at this age? Most of the chats, I love talking to people about what they do to the point where I think people will think I'm taking the piss. But I'm generally very interested in.

Do you know, like, I'm really interested in logistics. So when someone does like, oh, I met a guy who's like an engineer that works for some big company. It's on the face of it's quite a dry job, do you know? But I'm really interested in now the back of how stuff works. I met a guy that he works in a factory making Chicago town pizzas. Oh, are you finding out how they get so deep? Yeah.

But I was very, I was very like, I asked him so many questions. But we were saying like, it's basically a factory where they do lots of different brands of pizzas. You know, like a food production company that percentages of their time are bought out by big companies. Like that sort of stuff. Okay. So this is how it works. It's not a Chicago town factory. It's like Chicago town have parameters that they basically,

they buy, someone makes something to the specifications of a Chicago town pizza. That sort of thing where honestly the guy's like, yeah, it's not a very interesting job. But I'm like, so do you, so you order this stuff in on their behalf or do they send it, you know, like this sort of, it's very boring chat, but that's the stuff that I really like talking about. And I never want to talk about being, doing comedy stuff.

Never. Because it's always, well, it's very like people just want to wear that you're very successful and happy all the time. You know, you're like, yeah. Tell me about a heckler. Have you ever had a shit gig? Tell me about a heckler and you're like,

well, they're all dreadful people and what they say is bad. Well, it's also, I think people don't understand that heckling isn't just someone shouting out your shit. It's someone trying to join in is actually the worst, is heckling. And it's very often the worst kind of heckling. Yes, you much prefer... An antagonism, because you can go back at that and kind of shut them up and it's clear what's going on.

But if it's someone trying to join in and then you sort of have a bit of a pop at them, you can come across as a bit more of a grumpy Susan. This is stuff that I've struggled with and continue to struggle with is finding that tone of like, and not, I think as I'm getting older and doing it longer, a lot of my aggression with that sort of interaction is lifting because largely I understand where it's coming from.

And when you're talking to someone who's drank a bit too much or something like that and he's just like she's broadly very nice and it's not she's not meaning to and yeah i think it's like your entire personality is it wrapped up in that exchange anymore so basically just trying to be a bit nicer to people and also seeing but i don't think in it, I think seeing very good comedians be able to neutralize that stuff with basically a positive approach and love innately. That is not how I am wired. If anyone's listened to his podcast, I'm a petty vengeful man.

So it's like basically hardwiring my body to be nicer when what I want to do is freshen people and have them out in car park for a fight. But it's good to, we need to go. We need to, this is not an episode, but it's good to have new friends into it. It's good to have. It is. This is what I say, like most of these chats, like it's not like you're going through the motions with dad chats and dad chats. Your dad's chats, it's sort of like you're going through the motions with dad chats.

And dad chats, your dad's just speaking to all kind of different ages. It's not like school, is it? So I'm talking to a guy who's in his 50s, who's got a son at the same school. And we get on on that. But it's just when you find someone who gives you a cheeky wink and you're like, okay, we're going to get into some mischief. Can I pass me the potato peeler? And I left, we're going to get into some mischief. Yes. Can I, pass me the potato peeler.

And I left. To peel, that was to peel orange strips, by the way. Of course it was, of course it was. It's the best way to do it. To put into the old fashioned. Give them a twist. Give them a twist to release the fun. Can I leave you with a little tip that I learned this Christmas period

for my old fashions. Substitute the sugar syrup. Yes. Or whatever it is. Yes. Or maple syrup. Shut up. Why?

Because it's sugar, because it's a sweet syrup. Mix that with your bitters. If you can get your hands on the Angostura orange bitters. Yes, yes. Even better. I've got them. That maple syrup and whiskey, stir it all up with a block of ice.

And do your little orange twist, of course. I'm going to do that. Of course that goes well. The flavours of the maple syrup, the Christmasy, will go very well. What a flavour profile. What a notion to end on. What a flavour profile. What a notion to end on. What a flavour profile.

And also, because of the maple syrup, you've got a wonderful mouthfeel. Oh, yeah, because it's got this coating in your tongue. That's brilliant. This is not an episode, but that is a tip. Now we're going to go. We're going to come back soon with a full episode. And here maybe is a voicemail, could be a voicemail from Sonil.

If not, just put some pigs, some knives and some pigs. Hello, Rural Concerns listeners. I've been asked at very short notice to do a record, but I can't because I'm working on my radio show, which has gone over time and over budget because of a guy called Chris Cantrell, who's been in my producer's ear for the last couple of

months, distracting him with less important work. Welcome to this episode of Rural Concerns. I'm recording this sitting on the edge of my bed quite late at night now. It's been a long day. I'm probably a bit ill actually. Got a Sudafed. I think you can get addicted to those but I'm going to give it a good go. Please enjoy whatever it is that's coming up hope you had a nice christmas you