The Blindboy Podcast - An Essay about the inside of a Tennis Ball

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

An Essay about the Inside of a Tennis Ball  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Let the wind of the gorse fire course through your oxters, you sun-stroked Hanrahan's. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. The weather is beautiful. The weather is mild. There's great air for sniffing in the evenings. The mornings are delightfully crisp. I'm trying my best to get up at like 6am. Because dawn, dawn in the middle of May is fucking heavenly, like literally, if I

was to imagine what heaven would be like, it's that cool, crisp, drinkable air, in the dawn of a May, and all the birds are pure enthusiastic, and bees are mad busy, birds and the bees, birds and the bees. It's the time of fucking. I want to penetrate the morning with my mind. No prophylaxis. I want to get the morning pregnant with my thoughts about how beautiful it is. Imagine that came true. Imagine that came true.

And I got the morning pregnant with my thoughts. And then it just gave me this weird baby. Half me, half morning. This wriggling mass, made out of skin and mist. I have to take it up into an airplane so it could breastfeed off a cloud. Wouldn't be able to buy it any clothes. I have to try and buy a jumper. A jumper that fits an entity whose father is a human and whose mother is a unit of time welcome to the blind boy podcast but yeah if you're a new listener go back to some earlier episodes to familiarize yourself

with the lore of this podcast. We're still getting new listeners because of that New York Times article. Yeah, but it's an odd time of year. It's the most beautiful time of year, without question. The start of summer is the most beautiful time of year. But it's also gorse season. And gorse is... I love gorse.

It's got the worst name for something so beautiful. It's a native Irish jeez I don't know is it a bush or it's vibrant yellow so at this time of year gorse grows up on mountains and it's vibrant yellow the flowers that come off it are the most beautiful

shocking yellow you've ever seen but the gorse bush itself it's real thick and full of thorns beautiful, shocking yellow you've ever seen. But the gorse bush itself, it's real thick and full of thorns. You'd never walk through it. But the smell of gorse, oh, it smells like coconuts or something.

It's this real floral, patchouli, coconutty smell. And even though I live in the city, the smell of gorse, che Jesus that can carry down through the wind and it's present in Irish folklore and Irish mythology in folklore at this time of year. People used to get gorse flowers, these beautiful bright yellow flowers and they'd make a tea, this yellow tea out of gorse flowers. And they'd get their horses to drink it to deworm the horses. And then in Irish mythology, to show how tough gorse is.

You know, like I said, it's full of thorns, you never want to land in a gorse bush. In the Ulster cycle of mythology, Cú Cholainn, the hero, fought the the goddess Morrigan and Morrigan could take the shape of a giant crow but Cú Chulainn fought the Morrigan inside in a gorse bush which would be like trying to fight someone surrounded by barbed wire and also because gorse is so thick and so thorny and so beautiful it was seen as the home of where the fairies live you know don't go near that gorse bush because the fairies live in there and all those thorns are their protection and it's so protective that you can't even look in to see the fairies

because you'll get your face scratched open but the beautiful yellow flowers and the smell that's what let us know that the fairies live in there. But in the 21st century, you know about garse because farmers set it on fire. So in the evenings at this time of year, if you look up towards hills in the distance, as night time comes in, the whole fucking hill could be on fire. Big bright flames and it's farmers setting the garse on fire. Now I don't know why they do it. I think they're trying to clear land for grazing. I think there is a way to do it responsibly but still there's a part of me going ah fuck you're setting fire to an entire mountain

is it? You're setting fire to an entire mountain to kill all the garse flower and for me it's just another example of i've been speaking a lot recently the past six months about you know i i feel i feel that mythology and folklore exists to keep humans in line with natural systems of biodiversity we're animals but we're animals who can use language and who can think and I reckon like thinking that gorse this beautiful yellow bush that smells like

coconuts having the belief that that bush is where fairies live that meant that people didn't fuck with gorse don't fuck with the fairies don't fuck with the gorse. There's a reason for this natural plant to exist. But the farmers don't give a shit about fairies,

they're just setting fire to the gorse. Maybe there is a good reason to burn gorse flowers, I don't know. It's just, it is a native wildflower, it's native. So because it's native, that seems pretty natural to me. If gorse is up on a mountain doing its thing then it's supposed to be doing its thing and then i'm thinking about what lives in the gorse what calls the gorse its home what's being burnt to death and it's quite an ugly name it's quite an ugly

name for something so beautiful it smells amazing and it looks amazing but apparently the name garce it's like an old a real old english word that's has germanic origins or maybe old norse origins and it comes from an earlier word garzo which means like prickly or stabbing or thorny. So maybe it needs that name. Maybe it's, yeah, fuck it. You're talking about a word that's maybe over a thousand years old. And garse is pretty prickly. Like if you fell into a bush of garse, you could give yourself some pretty decent cuts like if you

really ran into a gorse bush you could you could end up needing stitches on your face or you could hurt your eyes badly and i suppose a thousand years ago if that happened to you you could die you could die they didn't have antiseptic So if you fucked your arms and your chest up with gorse and caught yourself loads, you could literally die. So maybe they needed this ugly guttural word for something that looks and smells so beautiful. And the smell, if I could wear the smell of gorse as an aftershave, I would. It's coconut and vanilla. It's amazing. And gorse was used in Ireland to create the colour yellow. Going back years and years and years when people wanted to dye fabrics yellow, they'd get loads of bright, beautiful gorse flowers at this time of year

and they'd steep them in hot water to extract the yellow colour from the gorse, and then they'd mix that with hot piss, they'd mix it with hot piss, with urine, because the urine, because the ammonia in urine, acts as a mordant, it's called,

which is like a fixative, so the urine, and the yellow from the gorseze would mix together and then they would stay, they'd fix on whatever fabric you wanted to dye the dye at the colour yellow but this this got me thinking about tennis balls

this and something else got me thinking about tennis balls so the first thing that got me thinking about tennis balls was looking up first thing that got me thinking about tennis balls was looking up at the gorse and the colour yellow and thinking about using gorse to dye something yellow and that got me thinking about tennis balls.

And then the second thing was at this time of year, May in secondary school this is known as silly season. And silly season when I was a kid, when I was 14, 15. It meant like it's the last month before summer holidays. And it's the weather is lovely outside. You don't want to be in the classroom.

And everyone's anticipating the summer holidays so you misbehave a bit more it's harder for the teachers to control the classroom sometimes the teachers are a bit relaxed and they go your summer exams are coming up now so I'm not going to teach you anything just chill out and read your books or do some study and it's silly season right now in school and in Limerick how I know it's city season is when I walk around the city centre on a Saturday I see all the lads in school uniforms and it's like what why are lads wearing school uniforms in May or June on a Saturday it's because they have detention I'd really misbehave in school in like May or June I just couldn't control myself I'd be messing I'd be talking I'd be

getting cheeky with teachers so I'd always I always associate this time of year with having to wear my school uniform on Saturdays because I'd have been given detention. And quite a few of my podcasts the past year have started off with me reflecting on my teenage years or beginning a podcast by speaking about stories from school. And the reason that is, is you know that around this time last year, I received an autism diagnosis. Now, as an adult, it doesn't make much difference to me. I'm living the life I want to live. I get really, really, really carried away with ideas and curiosity and creative lateral thinking.

Really, really, really carried away to the point that I just want to be on my own loads so I can think and when I do that I'm unbelievably happy and luckily I've found a career a career where being that way is perfectly suited to the career that I have so I'm a very happy, mentally healthy, emotionally

regulated person who just happens to have an autism diagnosis. But what it has done for me is it's, I'm revisiting a lot of my school years. When I see the young lads walking around in their school uniforms on a Saturday and I say to myself, oh that used to be me. Every Saturday in summer I'd have to wear my school uniform because I was given detention on Saturdays. I don't think, yeah you deserved that because you were misbehaving. I don't think that way anymore. I think you had a brain and a way of thinking that was very different to what was accepted in school and as a result you got into trouble a lot and that feels a bit unfair. Just taking it back to the colour yellow, speaking about the garst there,

I read a short story there recently that I related to massively as a neurodivergent person, by which I mean autism, dyslexia, ADHD, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, all that neurodivergence, different types of brains that aren't neurotypical. I read this wonderful short story that was written in 1892 called The Yellow Wallpaper. It was written by a woman called Charlotte Perkins Gilman. And it's seen as, it's an astounding short story. You'll get it for free online. But it's seen as a very important text in early feminist literature.

It's written in 1892. And it's basically about how simply being a woman in 1892 was labelled as an illness. The story's about a recently married young woman, quite wealthy, and she's married to a doctor. And she's just had a baby. Now I think she's suffered like what you'd call postpartum depression now. Her mental health isn't great.

And her and her husband move into this like a big empty mansion. A temporary mansion where their own house has been set up. And the husband, who's a doctor, makes her live upstairs in the attic, which is a nursery.

Because she's, quote unquote, hysterical. Okay? She's hysterical. Now hysteria. Up until I'd say the mid 20th century. Was like a diagnosable illness. That they would project on women. When women just wanted to be humans.

That if a woman wasn't happy. Being married. Completely servile and obedient to her husband. that if a woman wasn't happy being married, completely servile and obedient to her husband, if a woman had any type of independence whatsoever around her own identity or desires or wishes, she was labelled as medically hysterical. Like even the word hysteria, you know, it comes from the Greek hysteria, which refers to the uterus. Like you'll hear the phrase hysterectomy. So hysteria was seen as like

this imbalance in the uterus, which caused mental health issues. So in this story, the yellow wallpaper, this woman is forced to live up in the attic. Her husband is real nice to her in his words. And he's like, you've got to stay in bed all day now. Stay upstairs in bed. Don't do anything that might excite you because you'll get hysterical. You can't have any visitors because you know how you are when you meet people. You know, you'll get excited meet people you know you'll get

excited then you'll get hysterical and she's also just had a baby but she's not allowed to see the baby the baby is being minded by a nanny and she's not allowed near the baby because the baby might get her excited and then she'll get hysterical and then she's looking out the window looking at the lovely garden or thinking about going into town. But it's like, you can't go outside and meet people or walk around like that. You'll get hysterical. You'll get hysterical. And you know, you're my wife and I'm a doctor and you need to lie in bed now and you need to rest so you don't get any more hysterical. And then the story, she writes the story and it's written in the

first person but she has to write secretly so it's written from this woman who's writing secretly because if her husband catches her writing geez you can't be fucking writing and filling your head with all these thoughts and getting excited you'll get hysterical i'm a doctor and i'm your husband and i love you but you need to stay up here and you need to have no stimulation just stay inside this room and don't do anything that'll excite you because you'll get hysterical you're a woman and this character in the story as she writes it like she kind of believes it she's conditioned in this highly misogynistic and patriarchal society to believe all this shit because it's like my husband's a doctor he's a physician he's an expert he's a really educated man and he loves me so much so if he's telling me that I'm hysterical

I have to listen to him and I know I shouldn't be writing this and I know this is bad for me to write but there's something in me and I need to express it but as she's lying up in the bed a prisoner effectively but she'd never called it a prison because this is for her own benefit and her husband is so lovely all around the the walls of this nursery where she's staying there's this yellow wallpaper and the yellow wallpaper has intricate designs and she becomes obsessed with this wallpaper she's at first she's disgusted by it she hates this fucking wallpaper and she hates the designs because it's the only thing she has in her world and she says to her husband this fucking wallpaper is can we just take down the wallpaper i hate it and then immediately he goes ah that's just you being hysterical come on it's

only wallpaper look you if i agree and we take down the wallpaper then tomorrow it's going to be the bed and then it's going to be the windows and then it's going to be something else all right it's fuck the wallpaper we're not taking down the wallpaper and she becomes more and more obsessed with this yellow wallpaper until eventually she kind of starts to lose track of reality a bit and she focuses on the patterns in this wallpaper and detaches from reality this yellow wallpaper and follows the designs until eventually she sees in the wallpaper a woman who's trapped and she sees a woman who's stuck in the wallpaper who wants to escape from the room and go out and wander around the town and live her life until eventually she ends up like attacking the wallpaper and tearing it down to try and rescue this woman

who's trapped inside and she becomes psychotic and then at the end her husband comes in and sees it and then he faints he gets hysterical but it's a beautiful short story and as a man I'm not saying now in fucking I'm not saying misogyny is over and that we don't have a patriarchal and misogynistic society because we do

but I related to that story I related to it as a neurodivergent person this woman in the story, there was nothing wrong with her. She just wanted to be a human being. She just wanted to meet her needs. She wanted to spend time with her baby.

She wanted to go and meet friends. She wanted to explore the garden unchaperoned. She wanted to have a sense of autonomy. She wanted to be a human being. She wanted to write. She wanted to have a sense of autonomy she wanted to be a human being she wanted to write she wanted to express herself but society the rules of which are completely designed by men society said no that's not how a woman is supposed to be a woman is supposed to obey her husband shut the fuck up and just get on with what she's told to do. And if you deviate from that, we're actually going to medicalise that

and give it a name called hysteria. And then the stress of that medicalisation puts this healthy human being in a position whereby she actually does develop serious mental health issues. The stress of the social construct of patriarchy turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. And then, like, the doctors go, told you so. Hysteria. Look at her tearing down the wallpaper. I related to it on a neurodivergent level.

I appreciate that I'm a man and all the privileges that go with it and that have been afforded to me throughout my life. But I related that story as a neurodivergent person. There's nothing wrong with me. But I do live in a society where if I'm to follow all the structures that are set up by neurotypical people for other neurotypical people if I'm to follow all of those structures I will be consistently placed in situations of extreme stress and this will have the cumulative result of severe mental health issues for me and my neurodivergent brain didn't cause that fitting in caused that having to fit in and trying to succeed in a set of rules that aren't built for me and this is what has me thinking about detention like when I left

school I fucked up so badly in school I didn't get a leave insert so I fucked up so badly in school that I left with society saying you're a failure you're fucked you are and I had no identity I had no self-esteem I had no goals I didn't know where I was going to go I was saying to myself well Jesus if fucking school was like that then society's going to be worse and you're an adult then so at the age of 19 I had a breakdown I had severe severe depression, anxiety, agoraphobia. Couldn't leave my house. I had a fucking breakdown. I look back on it now and I say I was just too curious for school.

I'm autodidactic. I teach myself. I'm better off on my own learning and teaching myself. Being in a room full of people every day having to follow rules of how to behave and how to... Sitting still for fucking ages. Sitting still. I learn while pacing. If I'm really engaging with an idea and engaging with my creativity, I pace up and down and often listen to headphones or listen to music.

I need music and movement in order to use my brain really effectively I can't sit down still for hours and think so the classroom isn't suited to me like here in my office I've got a closed door no one can see in and when I'm writing or when I'm writing this podcast I look at my fucking Fitbit I might walk 20,000 steps a day

just in my office just from thinking, pacing back and forth, pacing back and forth. On the outside, that looks mental. That looks absolutely insane. But for me, it's like, no, I'm really happy. And my thoughts are racing. And movement is how I focus. And music is how I focus.

This shit would get me detention. I'd throw my headphones on and I'd listen to music in class. Or I'd have a great desire to leave my fucking desk. I need to get up and walk around. But I couldn't. I couldn't do it so I had to sit still. But I didn't understand the stress of that. I didn't understand what that was doing for me.

So I'd just act out. I'd divert that energy into creative thinking and I'd make a joke that would make the whole class laugh. And then the teacher would say, get out of the class. And I'd be like, brilliant. I can go out into the corridor now and I can walk. I can pace. And the outset that just looks like a really disruptive, uninterested student who's mad difficult to teach and it was in one sense but in the other sense the fuck else do you want me to do?

So they'd give me detention me and a few other lads and I'd get detention every fucking week and detention meant you have to come to school on Saturday and you have to wear your uniform and that becomes a badge of honour as well

when you're really when school doesn't work for you and you misbehave that becomes the thing that you get your self esteem and your identity from so I used to take great pride in being unbelievably bold

I used to take great pride in being a messer and being a mad bastard I used to love it when like students from other schools would hear about how mad I was and how I'd break any rule because that's what I was good at

even though it was negative attention I was still technically a fucking child so even the negative attention of getting getting detention all the time or being known as the student who's always in trouble at least I was good at something I was good at that I was top of the class at getting in trouble

so you had to go to detention you couldn't miss detention if you didn't turn up for detention, that meant automatic suspension, and three suspensions meant expulsion. But the thing is too, I fucking loved detention. I actually really enjoyed it. I enjoyed being at detention.

And here's why. So detention was punishment. You have to turn up on a Saturday, have to wear your uniform. But the big thing about detention was you are not allowed to do homework here. Because you see, if you turn up to punishment, to detention, and you're effectively there for five hours, and then you do all the homework that you're supposed to do that week, then detention isn't that bad really because you're getting worthwhile work done but

the point of detention was no you're being punished we're gonna make you sit down in your uniform on a Saturday and we're gonna waste your time that's what detention was but in my school the punishment in detention was you have to write a punishment essay while you're detention was, you have to write a punishment essay. While you're here in detention, you have to write a punishment essay. And the punishment essay always, it depended on the teacher who was supervising you, but we always had the same supervisor. So every year, for about five weeks at the end of the summer, I'd go to detention every Saturday, and I would have to write an essay about the inside of a tennis ball,

and I fucking loved it. That was the most interesting thing I was ever asked to do in school. Sit down and write about the inside of a tennis ball. And now I look back and this to me exposes how fucking dumb the school system was for me the idea that this is a punishment because if you think of the standard school essay that I was expected to produce at the time was basically an exercise in rote learning. There wasn't really room for opinion, creative thought, divergent thinking. A standard school essay as we were expected to write it was, memorize a bunch of these facts and then hit all those points in the essay,

hit all the facts that you've memorized. And then we can mark you on that. That was boring as fuck to me. I didn't see the point in learning facts. Learn these facts. List them out. We'll mark you off. There you go.

There's your result. That was not stimulating to me whatsoever. What was unbelievably stimulating to my mind was right about the inside of a tennis ball. To the teacher this was punishment. To the teacher and this neurotypical education system this is hell. Oh my god the inside of a tennis ball is nothing. What a terrible, punishing task to give somebody. There's no rote learning you can do. There's no facts you can list out. We have to present somebody with the abyss of nothingness and ask them to write about it.

But for me and my creative brain, which got excited by any type of lateral thinking, if you told me to write about nothing I see that as the possibility to write about everything and anything. So I used to sit in detention and I would write 2,000 word essays about the inside of a tennis ball and I would adore it and I'd love it and the thing was when I would write those essays I didn't need to be getting up out of my seat I didn't need to be pacing around I didn't want to get in trouble I didn't want to disrupt anything I felt happy I felt that I had purpose I felt that this thing I'm writing here about the inside of a tennis ball fuck it i love doing this this is amazing this

feels great these would have been my earliest short stories to tell you the truth the feelings that i got when i was writing about the inside of a tennis ball and in detention are the feelings that i get now as a professional adult when i write my fucking short stories or when i make this podcast and when i used to get out of detention. Having spent the morning. Writing about the inside of a tennis ball. I didn't want to go smoking fags. I didn't want to go smoking hash.

I didn't want to do anything bold. I would go into the library. In town. And read about tennis balls. And then bring some of this new information. To next week when I'm going to be in detention and I'm going to write about the inside of a tennis ball again because here's the sickness

and I'm real angry about it now. At the time I suppose I didn't give a shit. I thought it was okay. We weren't allowed to keep our essays. I don't know what other people wrote when they were writing their inside of a tennis ball essay but I would write pages and pages of shit that I really fucking loved

and the teacher used to collect them and make a point of putting them in the bin he'd make a point of showing us I'm not reading these I'm not reading these essays this was punishment they're going in the bin so I never got to keep any of my fucking tennis ball essays

but I'm close to that teacher's age now that man had such a lack of imagination and creativity and passion for ideas he had such a lack of these things that he thought that asking someone to write about the inside of a tennis ball was grueling and difficult. So I want to do this week's podcast about the inside of a tennis ball. That's what I want to do this week's podcast about. Because I've built a

career out of writing about the inside of tennis balls. That's what I do. First let's do an ocarina pause before I get into tennis balls em I'm gonna play my Puerto Rican guiro and you're gonna hear an advert for some shit I don't know what the adverts are for here we go on April 5th you must be very careful Margaret it's a girl witness the birth bad things will

start to happen evil things of evil it's all you know don't the first omen i believe the girl is mother of what is the most terrifying 666 is the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. Who said that? The first O-Men, only in theaters April 5th. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none.

Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th, when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. That's my Puerto Rican guiro that was made by a man in the Bronx. It's made from a gourd, which is like a dried little pumpkin.

It's fantastic. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash theblindboypodcast. If you like listening to this podcast if it brings you joy solace entertainment distraction whatever just please consider paying me for the work that i put into this podcast because this is my full-time job this is what i do for a living my patrons allow me to have the time and space to write this podcast each week, to research it,

to fail. Like I spent a full day the other day recording a podcast and I didn't like it. I didn't like it so it's not going out. But having patrons allows me the time to fail like that. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month that's it but if you can't afford that you can listen for free you can listen for free because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free so everybody gets a podcast and i get to earn a living and it's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness what else have i got my new new book, Topographia Hibernica, my book of short stories, which I'm unbelievably happy with and cannot wait to share with you. It's coming out in November, but pre-sales are available right now

if you want signed copies of Topographia Hibernica. Also, why I'd like you to get pre-sales is if you pre-buy the book now and enough of you do it it means that when it gets released in November all those pre-sales count and it can actually have a chance of entering the charts now my first two books were best sellers in Ireland but this book Topography Hibernica this is my first international deal so if a load of ye in the uk will say pre pre-bought this book then i might have a chance of getting the uk book charts when it comes out which would be amazing crack so i'm working on a custom url at the moment where i can send you to pre-buy the

book but go to my instagram blind bybookclub and follow me on Instagram because like I don't know what's happening with Twitter I don't trust Twitter anymore I don't know if Twitter's going to be around Elon Musk is turning it into a new app called X but follow me on Instagram blindbybookclub

and I have a pinned story at the top of the page and if you click on that that's all the links to pre-buy the book, Topography of Hibernica, my new book of short stories. And I think if you're outside of Ireland or the UK, there's loads of different links. I think Forbidden Planet is the one

that ships internationally. Upcoming gigs, Saturday the 26th of August. Cork Opera House for Cork Podcast Week. That's going to be great crack. And Cork Podcast Week is always wonderful fun. And it's the 26th of August too. So it'll be lovely.

Then on the 28th of August. Vicar Street in Dublin. It's a Monday night. It'll be lovely. 1st of September I'm at the Moseley Folk Festival in Birmingham on the Friday night. Then what else have I got? Dun Laoghaire.

Oh beautiful Dun Laoghaire. On the 9th of September I'm in Dun Laoghaire. And then where the fuck is Belfast man? The Waterfront in Belfast on the 18th of November. Come along to that gig.

I know these gigs are ages away, but I'm contractually obligated to promote them or I get sued. So back to the podcast about the inside of a tennis ball. So I'm not particularly interested in tennis. I'm not interested in sports. I don't understand sports. But I love a nice object. Like a tennis ball. Like I spoke about the neurodivergent brain.

Like I know I'm diagnosed autistic. But sometimes I don't know how. I don't know if that label fits me. To be honest. Because there's so much. There's so much about autism and the autistic spectrum. That just doesn't apply to me at all I don't relate to it and I don't really experience it the

thing on the autistic spectrum the strongest for me is I suppose what you call hyper focus if I had to describe my brain or what it's like being inside my brain I don't think I've lost the sense of curiosity that you're born with. I get intensely curious about things, about ideas, about objects. It's all-encompassing, it's all-consuming, it's my entire day all the time. The way that a little child would pick up a tennis ball for the first time and stare at it and touch it and feel it and be amazed by it and not understand it

and want to understand what this tennis ball is. I'm like that as an adult. That never left me. And that's wonderful for the job that I'm in. That's bloody fantastic. If you're an artist or you're creative, for me to have that way of thinking as simply how I operate, then for my job, that's brilliant. To be obsessed with ideas all day long is fantastic,

except when it's like, I'm sorry, sorry, you're in a post office. Then it's not great. The consequence of that type of curiosity all day long is I need to spend huge amounts of time on my own. I'm happiest when I'm on my own, walking around, listening to music, thinking about things all the time. And if I was in a situation where I was forced to be social a lot and not spend time thinking by myself, then that would be very upsetting for me. And also when you are that way, then that would be very upsetting for me and also when you are that way some people think you're mad some people think you're very very eccentric and insane which I don't really care about now as an adult because I don't mind being thought of as eccentric or insane if what I'm doing is hurting nobody you get a lot of um okay buddy, it's just a tennis ball,

it's not that deep. And I'm like, it is that fucking deep. Yes it is. So when I hold a tennis ball in my hand, I'm just like, oh my God, look at this.

It's like I can, it's like I travel through time with it. I look at this strange, yellow, furry ball, and I'm just obsessed with how did it get to be that way and I can look at a tennis ball and I can know I guarantee you there's a thousand years of history to this. I guarantee you there's loads of written interesting tangents that have happened throughout history that have led to me holding in

my hand this strange green furry tennis ball and I want to find out everything about every one of those things and I want to connect all those ideas and bits of history and only think about tennis balls for about three days and if we can do that I'm unbelievably happy. Now a lot of people are actually quite receptive to that and they see that as a good thing and they're like fuck it tell me about tennis balls. Like if you're listening to this podcast, if you're listening to this podcast and you listen to this regularly you're one of these people. It doesn't mean you're Nora the Virgin but it means that you have a sensitivity to ideas and you're curious and you like to you like to travel inside your mind and think about things

and think about ideas and connections and this brings you pleasure and that's probably why you listen to this podcast some people are very different to that some people which i would i would consider to be highly neurotypical and I don't mean that in a negative way at all some people's brains are very very social highly social and they don't really like some people don't like being on their own at all some people really need to be around other people

and they get their energy and they get their happiness and their meaning simply being around other people. And they get their energy. And they get their happiness and their meaning. Simply being around other people and chatting. And they love that. And that to me is highly neurotypical behaviour. And some of these people. They don't want to think about tennis balls at all. They go to a tennis match.

And they love watching how different people are dressing. And they like the competitiveness of the sport. But the ball. It's just a ball. But and they like the competitiveness of the sport. But the ball? It's just a ball. But chances are, if you're one of these people, you're not listening to my podcast. You're listening to a different type of podcast. And the biggest podcasts,

the biggest ones in Ireland, I would consider to be highly neurotypical. There's two types of big podcasts in Ireland. There's two types of podcasts in Ireland that are huge. The first one is, and there's loads of these. The first one is lads talking about what did you put on your chicken fillet roll? I'm serious. There's a lot of podcasts.

What did you put on your chicken fillet roll? Tomatoes. Oh my God, you're sick. You put put on your chicken fillet roll tomatoes oh my god you're sick you put tomatoes on your chicken fillet roll yeah he likes onions wow onions barbecue sauce oh my god what's wrong with you why don't you type why don't you text in and tell us what you put on your chicken fillet roll and then the other type of podcast that I would consider to be quite neurotypical is me and my spouse drink Prosecco on Wednesday nights. And then we try to have anal sex without waking up our one-year-old who's in the same room. There's loads of those podcasts.

There's loads of them. So if you're listening to those podcasts, you're probably not listening to this podcast and I think what it is I think people who listen to those type of podcasts they're highly social people and they're like stuck in work going I listen to people talking about what they put on the chicken fitter rolls or having anal sex in front of a one-year-old. I listen to these things because it makes me feel like I'm with friends. It makes me feel like I'm part of a conversation and right now I'm stuck in an office and I want to feel this highly social feeling and I think that's what those podcasts do and I'm not dissing them and I'm not dissing people who listen to those podcasts their social battery is very different they get joy and meaning and fun from the empathy of small talk and it doesn't really matter what's

being spoken about as long as stuff is just being spoken and there's a sense of shared experience but if you're listening to this podcast, chances are you're at work and you're going, I'm here at work now and everyone in the office is either talking about what they put on their chicken fillet roll or trying to have anal sex without waking up a one-year-old. And I'd kind of like to disappear into my head now because my social battery is feeling very drained.

I'd like to be with my own thoughts and listen to this podcast and stimulate the quiet part of myself that's curious about ideas. And the point I'm trying to make is that for neurodivergent people, neurodivergent people are on the extreme end of that spectrum. norah divergent people are on the extreme end of that spectrum norah divergent people don't want to talk to anyone about chicken fillet rolls in fact it's terrifying the thought of it now i've done a full podcast on chicken fillet rolls i went right into the object but it was private and internal and it was about the history of chicken fillet rolls and their private and internal and it was about the history of chicken fillet rolls and their socio-economic relevance and I loved doing that but I really I don't want to bond with another person and the topic of what we're bonding over is what we respectively put into our chicken fillet rolls. To be honest with you I'd actually be quite frightened of that conversation and I

wouldn't know what to say and then I'd have to ruin the conversation by saying, I can't talk about what I want to put into the chicken fillet roll, but I have a theory. If you've got half an hour, I've got a theory that the chicken fillet roll is a culinary expression of post-Celtic tiger austerity. And then the other person goes, it's not that deep, you fucking weirdo. I just want

to find out if you like lettuce or onions. I don't even care. I just want to talk. I want a conversation. I don't want to be learning about things. I want the experience of company. You're thinking about it too much. So I want to speak about the inside of a tennis ball. So firstly, I know nothing about sports and I'm not really that interested in sports. I just don't, I don't have the gift of understanding sports. And while I was researching this I went deep into the history of tennis and how tennis started off as in the 1100s as a game that was played by monks with a ball in their hands. In France.

Now immediately I got excited. Because in Ireland we've got a game called handball. Which is a traditional Irish game. It's one of the four Gaelic games. So part of me was going oh my god. Is there an Irish connection with tennis? There's not. There's no Irish connection with tennis.

Our game of handball. It's just. There's no Irish connection with tennis. Our game of handball, it's just something that's indigenous to our island and we've managed to keep to tradition. But while I was researching, I'd never seen a game of Irish GAA handball on TV. I've seen handball alleys, there's handball courts in Limerick, but I'd never actually seen a game of handball on TV.

So I ended up looking at handball matches. Now, I'm not into sports, like I said, so I don't get into the competitive part of it. But I ended up looking at a lot of Irish handball because... the commentary. Irish handball because the commentary. So if you look at a tennis match and the way that tennis is commented on, the broadcasters that are doing the commentary are quite professional. So with tennis, at times you need to be quiet. When someone is serving the ball, the commentator is up in their box and they're speaking into the microphone. So commentator is up in their box and they're speaking into the microphone so they tend to speak in a professional broadcasty way but just a little

bit more whispery. But when you listen to games of Irish handball the commentators aren't professional broadcasters they're former professional handball players who don't have much broadcasting experience. And they're there at courtside. But when the broadcasters have to be quiet while commenting on an Irish handball game, they don't sound like they're whispering as commentators. They sound like they're at the funeral of someone they don't really give a fuck about. And they're talking in the back pews. And they're m the funeral of someone they don't really give a fuck about and they're talking in the back pews and they're mumbling their words i'll play you this as an example this is real

commentary from an irish handball game listen to how the commentators go from loud to quiet because you had that safety of putting it in front of you and if you know that you over you overcook it, you've obliged. Okay, okay, I can see your logic there. I would say the other way around, when you switch to the other corner, it's a little bit trickier to get your hand around it, especially with the ball that's in it,

you can't get much grip around it. No, maybe that's why it's my favourite shot, because I can't do it. That could have something to do with it. Cardboard. I found myself listening to that for fucking hours. They sound like they're at a funeral. You can't understand a word of what they're saying.

They're there whispering into their collars. Like they can't be talking. It's like lads you've got a job you're supposed to be commentators you're broadcasting about a game so I actually love that I was listening to Irish handball games as a type of ASMR I suppose

that's the closest thing I get to listening to a podcast about people talking about chicken fillet rolls really isn't it because I don't care what they're talking about i don't really have an interest in in handball but i loved actually i like the intimacy of it i'm definitely getting something social from that like i i was yeah this is mental like i was walking around listening to handball games like not looking at him but just

listening to the two lads talking about handball but tennis is seen as a it's quite a posh game and it's still a very posh game you know it's it's an upper class game. And even when you look at tennis like Wimbledon, like fucking the royal family be sitting there, you know, watching this game of tennis. So how tennis ended up being this posh was it ended up being like the sport of kings in medieval Europe. Like monks used to play a type of handball in the 11th century, but then by the time the 12th century came along, in France and in England, in the king's court,

they had a court. And if you were as wealthy as a king or a duke or someone royal, and you had all that free time in your hands in the 13th century they would play what's known as it's literally called real tennis it's called a real tennis today it's I don't know is ancient the right word because we're talking about 900 years ago but it's a medieval type of tennis that was played in a court like a court that you'd have in a fucking castle. And instead of a net, there was a rope and there was a racket. There was a racket. So two people would play this real tennis in like the 1200s, 1300s. And it was similar enough to modern tennis as we know it today. And there's a few of these real tennis courts left.

There's one left in Ireland at a place called Lambay Island, which is this weird little island off the coast of Dublin. And Lambay Island, for some reason, has one of these old tennis courts that's about 600 years old, quite well preserved. And Lambay Island well preserved and Lambay Island has tiny Lambay Island has two things a perfectly preserved

13th century tennis court and then loads of wallabies like kangaroos they had too many fucking wallabies in Dublin Zoo

so they just fucked them all onto Lambay Island so if you were to arrive on Lambay Island there's two things to do look at a load of wallabies in Dublin Zoo so they just fucked them all onto Lambay Island so if you were to arrive on Lambay Island there's two things to do look at a load of wallabies or visit a perfectly preserved medieval tennis court but how did tennis go from this game of kings inside their castle in courts to being what we know today as a game that's played on a lawn on grass with a fence in the middle well this is where it gets fucking interesting in 1755 there was this huge earthquake in lisbon in portugal

and it was devastating it killed about 40 000. And this is 1755, so it really shocked Europe at the time. And this earthquake occurred right in the middle of what we call the Enlightenment, which was the birth of contemporary scientific thinking. I'm being real facetious in how I synopsise this but the enlightenment was like the end of the middle ages it's when science became a thing it's when

western European men said maybe there isn't a god maybe there's this thing called science and we can learn everything about the world and man can control the world and control nature. And the Industrial Revolution came from this. The scientific method, scientific thinking,

the fucking Enlightenment. And when this earthquake happened in Lisbon in 1755, figures of the Enlightenment started to think, Jesus, maybe it's not like God who creates these natural disasters as a punishment for how wicked we are. Maybe that's not what happens when a volcano explodes or an earthquake happens and loads of people die. Maybe there's nothing behind it.

Maybe nature is chaos. Maybe nature doesn't have a plan. It's uncaring. It's chaos. And from that earthquake in 1755, you can trace what we call landscape gardening. There was a fella called Capability Brown, there was a fella called Capability Brown and he he designed fucking gardens and estates you see around this time too around the time of the enlightenment

you have the birth of colonialism you have the quote unquote great nations of Europe expanding all around the world and just taking shit and using enlightenment ideas of science and the idea that man is man can use science to conquer nature this underpinned colonialism too because colonialism drove the industrial revolution we need more coal we need more

copper we need more more silver we need more resources to fuel this industrial revolution. So colonialism had an ideology behind it and this was fueled by Enlightenment ideas. But because of this, you had very, very, very wealthy people all of a sudden. Wealthy industrialists with huge estates. industrialists with huge estates and the wealthy people who owned these estates who were subscribing to enlightenment ideas of science and humans being able to conquer the known world with our knowledge of science they wanted to play god with their gardens they wanted landscaped gardens. They wanted someone like Capability Brown to come in, tear apart their garden, and plant a tree there, plant a lake there.

Make it look like the natural world, but really it's created by a human for human aesthetics. And this came about because of an anxiety about nature. Because of this 1755 earthquake in Lisbon, people said, nature is chaos, nature doesn't care about us. Well, we're humans and we have science, so we're going to control nature by creating beautiful gardens, and in particular, lawns.

Something which evokes the feeling of a meadow, but it's not a meadow because there's no biodiversity. Something which evokes the feeling of a meadow, but it's not a meadow because there's no biodiversity. One type of grass, cut real short, perfectly flat, a lawn. And lawns came about because of Enlightenment ideas about the chaos of nature as a result of the 1755 earthquake. Well, certain games began to be played on these lawns. And one of these was lawn tennis. You see, the earlier game of tennis was performed in courts, indoors, by kings. But by the late 1700s and the 1800s, the people with the wealth were industrialists.

And they now had lawns. And they wanted to play this sport of kings, this king's game. But they're like, let's do it outside on a lawn. And that's where modern tennis was invented. This game that's played outdoors on a really tightly cut lawn. You can trace it to an earthquake in Lisbon and enlightenment ideas about the chaos of nature. But let's talk about the ball, the tennis ball. So when tennis was played in the courts in medieval times, sometimes the ball was made out of wood, other times it was made out of leather, sometimes it was made out of human hair.

But when it got to the 1800s, rubber became a thing. Vulcanised rubber was invented by a fella called John Goodyear vulcanisation was a way you see rubber comes naturally from rubber trees but it was always pliable

and then this John Goodyear fella over in America figured out a way to heat rubber with sulphur so that it would stay hard and this changed the world because now you could make tyres out of rubber. There was loads of household items that were being made out of rubber. This rubber that stayed firm and didn't melt. But of course, because of the industrial revolution, because of canonisation, this meant huge demand for rubber and it created rubber plantations.

And rubber, some of the most vicious and violent colonial acts. I mean, I don't like contrasting and comparing how evil certain aspects of colonialism were. But rubber was pretty fucking bad in particular in the area of the Congo in Africa King Leopold who was the king of Belgium he personally owned the Congo in the late 1800s and the people there were forced to work on rubber plantations. But King Leopold was a profoundly evil individual who tried to push and push the amount of rubber that his plantations could produce. So the people who lived in the Congo had rubber quotas. But literally, if people in the Congo in the late 1800s

didn't collect enough rubber that day they were killed I mean I'm not joking you here soldiers murdered people for not collecting enough rubber but the thing was Leopold was such a bastard he would send soldiers to the Congo and he would give them a certain amount of bullets

and he'd say to them, if someone doesn't meet the rubber quota today, they're to be shot dead. But Leopold didn't trust his soldiers. Leopold thought, if I send these soldiers out to the Congo with a lot of bullets, then they're going to use these bullets to hunt game instead so the soldiers had to chop the hands off of anybody that they killed with a bullet so that Leopold saw that there was an equal amount of hands for bullets to prove that they actually killed people for not collecting enough rubber because the demand around the world for rubber was absolutely massive. And it was actually Roger Casement, the Irish revolutionary, who was executed in the 1916 Rising. It was actually Roger Casement who, as a humanitarian, brought these crimes to light at the time and even by the standards of the late 1800s where colonialism was rife around the world and the brits were doing horrible shit in india in ireland in pakistan even by those

standards what roger casement unearthed and exposed to the world about what was happening with the rubber plantations in the Congo even that that shocked the world it was so bad what Leopold did and what Belgium did but you can't detach that history from the history of the inside of a tennis ball because the tennis balls were being made from that rubber and they were being painted white and tennis balls were white up until most of the 20th century and they were made of solid rubber the thing is by the 20th century tennis had gone from fun that really rich people had on their lawns to being a professional game a spectator sport and it was still mad posh it was still a very posh game but it'd become a spectator sport and these balls that were made out of entirely out of rubber they were hard and they

were slow so they hollowed the balls out and they pressurized them with nitrogen and that's what's inside of a tennis ball it's nitrogen gas because nitrogen has a more difficult time escaping from rubber than like air does but when I hold a tennis ball in my hand what attracts me to it most is the color you know that what I love about tennis balls is I can't decide whether it's green or whether it's yellow sometimes it's green and whether it's yellow. Sometimes it's green and sometimes it's yellow. And there's actually a reason for that. There's a reason why a tennis ball, like most of you listening now,

I'd say half of you think it's green and the other half thinks it's yellow. There's a fucking reason for that. And this is what takes me to the most interesting fact about tennis balls. Now it's not about the inside of a tennis ball. It's about the outside of a tennis ball. But I think you can't talk about the inside of something without talking about the outside of something. So David Attenborough, the nature documentary David Attenborough, he'd been making nature documentaries on BBC since the 1950s. And these documentaries were in black and white.

Black and white television was standard. And when Attenborough was making nature documentaries, it used to break his heart that he's out there on the field and he's looking at all these beautiful wild animals and he's looking at gorgeous birds from all around the world with different plumage and colours. And it used to break his heart that he couldn't show audiences on TV the wonderful colours of nature on their screens. And colour TV became something David Attenborough was really waiting for. became something David Attenborough was really waiting for. David Attenborough knew, once we get colour TV,

we can make these nature documentaries that we want to make and show people the beautiful plumage of a bird of paradise. In the 1960s, David Attenborough wasn't just a lad who made nature documentaries. He was a pretty high-up executive in the BBC. He made important decisions in the BBC. And in 1967 there was going to be a Wimbledon tennis tournament on TV. And colour televisions had just started becoming available in Britain. But BBC hadn't broadcast anything in colour yet. So David Attenborough as an executive decided.

We're going to debut colour television in Britain with the Wimbledon tennis tournament of 1967. That's anyone who has a colour TV in 67 the first thing they're going to see is a tennis match at Wimbledon and his thinking was because this is so visually simple, it's a green fucking, it's a green lawn, the players are wearing white, the ball is white, there's not a lot of visual information going on,

there's not a lot to confuse people. I reckon, because you have to remember, a lot of people might have never seen a moving color image before they might never have seen it so this is a real shock to the eyes so a tennis match has the visual economy where there's there's so little information going on on screen this is a perfect way to introduce people to color tv what i also find interesting about this as an aside, because I did a podcast before about the history of stereo sound, when they were trying to introduce people to stereo sound, they would release records of tennis matches and ping pong matches. People would listen to a vinyl

record of a ping pong match or a tennis match just to hear the sound of the ball going from the left side of their ear to the right side of their ear. So I find it interesting that tennis in both situations was used to debut stereo sound and also colour television. So when David Attenborough made this decision, right, Wimbledon is going to be in colour, no one's gonna be able to see the ball the tennis ball is white because tennis balls up to this point had been white no one's about gonna be able to see this ball on color TV their

screens are too small color TV is too new a technology no one will be able to see the ball so David Attenborough is the reason that tennis balls are that colour and the colour is specifically known as optic yellow. It's a very specific colour just for tennis balls so they can be seen on TV. And the part of you that's like I don't know is it green, I don't know is it yellow that's deliberate. It's't know, is it green? I don't know, is it yellow? That's deliberate.

It's a colour that confuses our eye so that we can definitely see it on a shitty colour TV from the 1960s. And that's why tennis balls are that colour. Because of David Attenborough. Because he wanted us to see the beauty of a bird of paradise's wings. So that was my essay about the inside of a fucking tennis ball. It's not boring. It's not restrictive. Everything is beautiful and interesting and engaging and fascinating

if you have the curiosity and the time to be able to think about it hard enough and to care about that thing enough and to be passionate about it enough to put in the research to find out and if you're a neurodivergent person chances are that's second nature it's what you want to be doing so the idea that I was punished with this shit as a kid is completely and utterly absurd and. And what I would have had no interest in doing right there was to give you a chronological history of tennis, to hit the beats, to explain

the rules, to name the names of who was involved, to list all the facts to get the right points so that I get marked well. No. How about I barely speak about the actual sport of tennis at all. Just focus on the ball. And if I want to present a hot take, whereby I can relate a volcanic eruption in 1755 to the creation of lawns that led to tennis, then let me do that.

Let me explore it it and that's okay even though that shit isn't going to get you any marks in an exam this was most certainly a rambling hot take this week which i haven't i haven't done one of these in a few weeks but uh i enjoyed that i had fun doing the research for that i'll'll catch you next week. I don't know what with. In the meantime, rub a dog, kiss a seagull, wink at a swan,

dog bless. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats

for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to rockcity at torontorock.com. Thank you.