Triforce! - Triforce! #302: The Triforce Family Dynamic

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

Triforce! Episode 302! We discuss our dinner time family dynamics, talk about our relationships with our parents and we look at the depressing malls of the world in the modern age! Support your favourite podcast on Patreon: https://bit.ly/2SMnzk6 Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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for a very special price thanks to our friends at Fanatical. Head to fanatical.com forward slash pickaxe for more. See you in the kitchen. All right. Three, two, one, 1, MARK! Perion did a mark, this is weird. Well you can do it if you want. Nope. You wanna do one just to balance things out a little? You wanna do a little mark of your own, Lulu? Okay sure.

3, 2, 1, MARK! Okay. You gotta leave all that in. Leave all that gold in. Ready? Well my mark was a lot quicker than yours. 3, 2, 1, MARK! See that? I think that's better.

You're too slow. Pflac. My mother said that I was a steady growth towards a mark three. To exactly. It's like launching a space. Three is like Thunderbirds. Thunderbirds. Yeah, people decide.

The people decide which mark they like. Thunderbirds are go. Good. Yeah. That's the strict dancing. Don't cut any of that. It's gold. I 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 banana by I'm peeling the whole thing and eating it like that. Oh, 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. Yeah, I don't have. I don't think I have any any weird things like that. I just eat as far as I know normally. But who knows? You know, right. But that's the point. Could be normal is 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 of focus one thing at a time. So let's say I've got, obviously, you guys can imagine some kind of not low for whatever, but it's basically the same thing. Potatoes, Yorkshire, put green beans and roast chicken and gravy. Let's imagine that I'm not going to go in a potato bit of meat, bit of green bean, bit of Yorkshire all on one fork.

Oh, I do. The Yorkshire I'll have a bit of chicken. I have a bit of this and, bit of Yorkshire all on one fork. Oh, I do that. I'll have a bit of Yorkshire, I'll have a bit of chicken, I'll have a bit of this. And I like mixing. I mix. I'm a big mixer. Yeah. I'll get a little bit of everything. Like if I eat it, I like a full English breakfast, obviously without the meat.

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 mash and gravy. Of course, there are certain combos that are very good. Like, yes, the mash and gravy. There are some things are mixed. But I like to get like a bit of my vegetarian sausage on there. Bit of egg, some yolk, bit of mushroom, maybe a one or two beans. And a bit of bean sauce. Do you combine in the mouth the Pflac?

No, I like the flavors of things. I think it's worse 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 mouthful 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 right on the plate. So if there was a vegetable, I wasn't a big fan. That's pretty I'll eat pretty much everything.

But if there's a vegetable, I'm like, oh, that's not one of my favorite vegetables. Yeah. But a cold vegetable, you're that's kind of'll eat pretty much everything. But if there's a vegetable, I'm like, that's not one of my favorite vegetables. But a cold vegetable, you're cut, 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 to last I'll try to work my way through it But I'll generally speak if 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

Coming back to the 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 are you just eating all your potatoes first? You got the green beans, you got a Yorkshire pudding and you got some potatoes, right? Yeah. So are you are you just eating all your potatoes first, for example? No. So moving on and doing all the green beans? No, no, no, no, no. I don't do it.

That is madness if people do it section. I think if you're a kid, you do it. That's fair enough. But but now I still don't out of habit. I don't mix. I think you want to do the mix. So too much. I don't mix of habit. I don't mix. I think you want to do the things so much. I don't mix too much. I don't like on a master chef 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, you're meant to just assault yourself with every on every front every sense. Let's say I have fish fingers, peas and chips. I'm not putting 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, I like it would be one Well, you wouldn't have chips and fish fingers.

No, I like it would be one or the other for me. I don't think that's relatable. Really? I don't know. I think they're both groups. They are, but they're both kind of stodgy, you know, like I feel. 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, I ship some fish fingers. I mean, that's they fucking. It's like having it's like inviting both your girlfriends over at the same space. You know what I mean? Chips and fish fingers. I mean, that's, they fucking go hand in hand. It's like inviting both your girlfriends over at the same time. All right, so let me ask, if you have fish, or you've battered fish. It's the most kiddie meal, by the way.

It is a kiddie meal, yeah. Of course, I mean, it wouldn't be chips, it would be potato smileys. No case, sure, yeah. 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 thing. They're not, if you have fish and chips, I don't think fish fingers and battered fish are that different. They're basically the same thing.

They're not, but I think fish fingers are just a bit crispier, you know, like, like, like battered fish is like, it's, it's soft, you know, like and the batter, the batter is nice. You get a new fish and chip shop. 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. 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 video the other day about I think they call it red chips or orange chips. 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. Wow. Can you imagine? I'd eat that. Sounds good. Never heard of it.

What won't Northern as batter? That's what I want to know. What won't be batter? Oh man. Yeah, I don't know about fish. Fish fingers and chips seems like too much for me. Like I would have one. What is your go to meal these days as a family?

Do you cook with the kids and wife? Every night at the dinner table? No, we don't need the dinner table. There is there are two problems. First of all, we have a breakfast bar, but it's not big enough for a store to fit around, essentially. And 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 and 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 dry food out because cats like to snack, but they don't overeat the way dogs do. Like if we let 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 I'll 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're just going 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. I'm going to be able to do that is similar minus the cat stuff. Right. It is a dumping ground. Everybody just put stuff on there. Yeah. But we use it every night to eat. So that's not we have to clear it every night. Yeah. But we use it every night to eat. So that's nice. We have to clear it every night. Yeah. We can't be doing that stuff everywhere.

It's so annoying. And then with all the construction work and stuff as well, it's, it's, it's an added build around the table. Oh man. It's crazy. Yeah. With all family members. I think Sims does. I'd say most nights we do. On nights where we have like swimming, you know, like my daughters both have 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 wants to feel again. Family get together. By my partner's family. Ah! Right. Slightly different. I've met a few of them before. But they've got like the old grandma, they've got the aunts and uncles and their kids, a whole mix of people,

right? And kind of, kind of nice, very English. Was it like Eddie Murphy, nutty 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 disguises. There was a little bit of that, which was a bit unnerving actually. Right.

I was like, oh, you got the same nose, like a Joe Eaton or something like that. It was a little bit, I didn't, for some reason it was unexpected, but it didn't really, it didn't throw me that bad, but it did throw me a little. They had all this really cool food, like, and it was like in the kitchen and it was sort of a help yourself, you got plates and you got the food and you went and sat down, but they don't, they don't, they've not really got enough chairs. They'd not, someone hadn't thought about enough chairs. So there were lots of people sat around a dinner table and then a bunch of people standing kind of by the dinner table.

That is awkward. But of course, like some, some, some more elderly relatives would come in and stand. And so a younger relative would be like, oh, you sit down here, you see. And they'd like squeeze them in. And then another elderly relative would come in. So then it was like middle-aged relatives thinking, oh, well, 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 musical chairs. Of people fighting over, and there's someone pulling a piano stool and everyone tried to squeeze around to fit that piano stool in. And so, you know, but then someone else came in and then we had to try and rotate because the piano stool was really big and so I said, oh, we can fit a, fit another stool in here. You know, it was just, and so the 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 there's a bunch of people were kind of sat in the lounge doing the TV dinner style, right? And so it was like, 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, 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 make a concerted effort to talk about things that have happened during the day or like have family meetings? Do you have like family related things? We naturally do talk about just day to day stuff. But, um, the, the problem is with, with younger kids is when we eat, it's probably around like six 30, seven o'clock at night. We, we tend to eat and, uh, for not, 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 know. I don't, can you drink your milk properly? I don't want to like, they just get tired. You know, 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 cause 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 what me and Mrs F do. We make the kids eat at the table because they can't be trusted and we'll sit and watch something on TV and 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, especially like as I was like, 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, uh, 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. Quite often, Mrs. F is late. If she has to go to the office, she'll be late. So we'll eat together. Yeah. But if there's something I'd like, I'll generally between like like my day is that I get up and funny around in the morning. If we're doing a recording or something something I'll be a bit later.

But pretty much as soon as I can I'll start streaming. So I'll start like 9, 9.30 and I'll go till about three or four. And then I'll stop and I'll do some other shit in the afternoon that I gotta do or I'll have a fucking nap or whatever. And then from six till eight 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 streaming.

Because generally speaking, Mrs. F goes to bed at like nine thirty ten, 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 do, 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. No, of course not. So I'm like, why would I expect that?

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 like, Sips's kids. They're older kids. So they want to go and do shit. It's weird.

I'm going to be like, yeah, go for it. We don't feel overly like the, like, you know, sitting down and eating dinner together is, is required because neither myself or my wife are, we don't work away from the home. We're 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 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. 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 in contact with them. So it's, I think that makes a huge difference. Like you said in the past. Yeah. I mean, I would, 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. I was like, 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'll be finishing off watching them up a show. Yeah.

And then I 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 out. Yeah. Have something to eat and go to work all night. So like when I never saw him, like 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, holidays. You kids are living in! That's the final straw! You have sent 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 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, a lot of people have a few days working from home if they have like a officey kind of job, especially post COVID. 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 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 five days a week in the office, they genuinely hardly saw her.

This is great. Great info. I'm going to update my tracking profile for your wife. So now I know exactly where when she's coming and going and stuff. All you're going to do is find her in a city of eight million. Next 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 houses on it make a note of that.

The word people still ask me about the Russian spy house. Oh, God, just some nice family living in that house now. It's like they moved away. That's what you think. Yeah, the nice words. We are some nice family living in that house now. Oh, they moved away. That's what you think. Yeah, nice. Yes, we are a nice family. Please continue talking with window open. Oh man. Yeah, my mom went back to work.

I think I must have been about eight. My brother is younger, so she stayed home for a bit 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, cause 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 driveways. He's like, Hey, what are you doing? 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're like 10 years old. We were scared to be home alone. It was funny. Yeah, I remember. But I used to spend quite a bit of time home alone because my mum, obviously, she didn't have this is when my parents got divorced. So 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 the for a few years after that, she would go into the office. She 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 with a 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 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 around. Like I was, I was genuinely very trustworthy kid.

Looking back on it now, I honestly, I'm quite proud of young flax, but not doing anything stupid. I did do two stupid things that I can remember distinct distinctly. 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 I and then go back into work and I was like, fuck, you know, I really pissed my mum off. The other one was this is when my mum 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. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 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. It almost put me off. Yeah, it did that first. The first time you ever smoke is awful. Like you feel like shit.

Yeah, it's like it's horrible. It's weird that it becomes a habit that people stick with. I guess that little bit of nicotine gets in your system. I guess so. Yeah. This was worth it. I think I need some more of that. 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, uh, 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. Uh,

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, the books 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's 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 won't be outside. So we had everybody, we'd go there, we'd play Mario Party and smoke. That's all we would do. Like all, all, all evening, evening long. It was great though. It was good times. A good life. Yeah.

I'm surprised I'm still alive. Honestly. Yeah. So when did you, you, you, you quit smoking Sips? Did you ever? I quit smoking probably when I was like, I, I smoked as a, as a teenager and, uh, I think I quit probably before I came over here for the first time. I was working nights at a grocery store and, uh, 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 did. I just quit. But I smoked for a couple of years, quite a lot as well. But I was able to quit so it was good. Did your wife know that you smoked? Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. Had she smoked before as well? No.

I mean, she tried it, but she wasn't a smoker. 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 think you also became vegetarian for, it'd be fine, but you know, I don't think she was all really... 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 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, but not, 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 being a vegetarian. Good on them. Good on them. Seeing 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 quite how it works. Hey, Lewis, what was your situation growing up? Who was working? How much did you spend much time alone? Well, your parents are a little bungalow. My dad worked in London. I grew up in Essex, 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 parents. I certainly, you know, my dad did take us to scouts sort of in the evenings sometimes, or go to a scout camp or do, do stuff. It's like, I felt like I was, you know, spend a decent amount of time with my parents when I was younger and my mom certainly helped me, um, with early sort of tutoring towards getting into school and my brother needed a lot of help as well. And so my mom, 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 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 recently, um, you know, I actually, you know, it was my birthday, just, um, 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, so 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 as part of 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 fun time. We went, you know, just went and had a meal, had a walk around. This is like a church, just chat, nice chat. I think in small doses, my parents are great. Yeah, I think it's, 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 easy going, like my, my wife's parents are really easy going and

they just sort of slot into our life perfectly. So we see them a lot as a result. You know what I mean? There's this idea that, 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 accommodating 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, 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. Because they're like, well, who is this person? They live on the other side of the country. They're only down for here. I can tell them anything. There is this kind of strange phenomenon of that. But I do feel like it's a little bit like that

with my parents. If I spend a day to day with them and we keep the topics on sensible things, it's a good time. But, you know, if we start, it ended up, you know, arguing about, you know, I don't know, do you know what 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. Yeah. 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, um, I was talking about this with my, my youngest, actually she's quite insightful. Uh, last weekend, um, we went down, I went down and did the walk, the charity walk that, um, I've been doing a fundraising. It was a, 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 mid-range. 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.

They're like 18 of us did the walk and I had a chat with everyone because we were out for like seven hours or something. We were walking around for we started the day right. We started on time, walked straight into town as a few miles to walk into town. And at 930 we had a pint in the Wetherspoons in the town center. And I was like, are we sure we want to pipe? It was like, got to get a pint. And 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 these friends doing this. It's quite emotional for them, obviously. And they laid 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 we, as the walk started 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 ever done. Not a lot of people do. Yeah. Yeah. So my body was just like, this is, this is a lot and things started to break, but it was, it was fine. Um, it was, it was fine enough that we went clubbing that evening.

Because we were like, we 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 someone might might stayed out till 3am, 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, just to do walks together because it was so much fun. It really was a great day. You're at that age now where you're assembling a walking group. I know you just need to find a shopping center that you guys walk around.

I mean, we were planning a walking holiday. We are, we were, 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. Think of all of that wonderful German beer you can stop and drink. Oh man, 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 we walking is something I'm going to do more of because running I just it just fucks. Twenty kilometers a day over multiple days, I think would be pretty bad, though. It's not 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 you've been walking every weekend, you quickly get to a point where it's really more than doable. What about all the blisters and stuff though?

Right, but your feet toughen up. They get all leathery. They get a little leathery, little hobbit feet. But I mean, generally, if you're getting blisters that bad, it's because you literally aren't walking often enough. That's it. So, 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. And it's a 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 anything like that is is we're very, very happy. That is great. Yeah. But that was that was what we did. Oh, yeah. So that's it. So I brought my daughter with me, my youngest. She stayed with my mom. Because she was like, What's Gaggy going to be doing this week? 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. And 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 mom. 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 it 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. Yeah, I think that's questions. I think that's an age thing. I wonder if it's because essentially to older people, everyone's a child. I don't care about your stories. You're gonna tell me what you did at Playgroup today? Who cares? Let me tell you about the time I dove off an iceberg

into the Arctic or something. Older people don't seem as intrigued by other people. I don't know if you guys have noticed that. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. I think I feel like the... I don't know what to call it. And for a 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'm not saying that they're lazy people. I don't, I'm not serious. 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've 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 older 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 like let them just talk to you about all their crap and talk back and say, oh, and like agree with them. I sound awful for the way I'm saying it, but like people love to talk about themselves.

People love 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, is keen to share these things that she has, and it enjoys doing. I think it's fun, right? And I think it's very unconscious what, 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 to you, it usually means they're interested in you and they like you, you know? So you shouldn't feel like it's a bad thing to want to tell people about your stories and what to engage with them and be passionate. Yeah, true. I think it's, yeah, it's weird.

People, you know, they say like, oh, people, um, you know, don't change much of it, but I, 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, um, it's hard to explain, but like, I, I, it is something I've noticed. I think flax probably is saying the same thing, but it's. I think the world contracts. 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. So the retention of new information. Yeah, doesn't seem to be as frequent. As people get older, they tend to rely more on their long-term memory, I feel. Yeah, and they probably don't feel like they're really part of...

In the same way that when you're younger, 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, Oh fuck, why do you need that? Like what was wrong with the old way? You know, and it's like, it is kind of like a, like a, you know, uh, a, a common thing, you know, like the grumpy old manual and 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 they just get more pissed

off about it. Or, you know, they don't want to accept it. So my grandma, obviously 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 kids and settling down and largely doing bits and bobs, but mostly being a housewife. Um, you know, and then sort of, I don't know, just sort of settling down. And, and she was, when she was, um, 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, right? You know, I'm keen to hear her stories. I actually spoke to I'm keen to hear her stories. I actually spoke to an older lady at the event who'd had very interesting life. She was like an old grandma lady at 90 or something. She was born in Poland and evacuated out of the war zone pretty young, I think at like four years old or something.

And when ended up as a sort of, I think she was in one of these places that the Russian occupied territories. 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 woodsmen and villagers were not really, they didn't really have a place in Soviet society. So they were shipped off to the far-flung reaches of the empire. I think she ended up in Archangel or something on the North Coast and freezing cold. And then as the war carried on, they realized that actually they needed all of these people to fight. 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. And then eventually ended up in a community, Polish community in Kidderminster in the UK and, you know, who had it, there was a big Polish community and they had a Polish school and all this and so she, even though 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. It's amazing that people have such different lives and there's such different diversity. She's clearly this British grandma, but really still embraces this Polish heritage. But I said to her, oh, have you ever been back? And she said, well, the place, the village I came from doesn't exist. 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 and their own stories to tell. And yeah, she was sort of talking about, you know, I've talked to her about her work in carpet factories.

That was sort of a big kidaminster thing. They shipped carpets all over the world and she was a sort of expert weaver in her time. Carpet factories. Carpet factories in kidaminster, apparently. That was the thing. Fuck kidaminster. Yeah. Well, it's not a great place these thing. Fuck Kitterminster. Yeah. Well, it's not a great place these days.

I don't think you should live there now. No offense any kiddies in Kitterminster. Now you've done it. The mailbags are 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. Just boring. 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 the... No, it's really... 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. So parts of it are. 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. And walking around it, you realize, I think when, 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, not even amazing, not even nice, just decent. They literally look like the lowest effort. Yeah.

How can we promise building time? Not give a fuck. Yeah. A lot of stuff that was built in like the fifties and the sixties. Uh, it Looks 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. Like Victoria's stuff. You breaks and shit. Yeah. 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. Even if it costs one p more, they're not interested. It's bullshit. How come other people can manage it and we can't? Who's managing it? Nobody knocked down all of these beautiful buildings. You go to Bournemouth. They used to be and Bournemouth's not an old town. A lot more really beautiful, older buildings, not that old,

like Victorian and and Georgian around that era. And the council would all be listed, surely. 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 there were genuinely beautiful old houses gone, gone, gone, gone. Yeah. I'm surprised. Because honestly, these councils, I feel like our councils in this country,

correct me if I'm wrong, council workers literally were hands off. We don't give a fuck, knock down whatever you want. Because progress, progress, progress. And we butchered our landscape. It's terrible. Three seasons of Clarkson's Farm, and that council is not like that, Jesus Christ. About the farmland, yeah.

You can't even fart on the road without them needing to get involved, it feels like it's crazy. We talked about this before, I got some angry emails about it, so I want to steer involved. It feels like it's crazy. We talked about this before. I got some angry emails about it, so I want to steer clear. Yeah, oh well, exactly. 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 television?

Is it possible? No, it's not possible. Jeremy Clarkson's 100% right all the time. Ego, the local council are wicked. And it's a case closed. Case closed on that one, lads. I'm going to go and visit some beautiful English countryside next week. I'm going to country side. I'm going to Cornwall. I'm going to drive down and stay in a few places. Just, just, 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 guys, you're 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. 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. A stinky, stinky city. The new world, obviously we, 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, they're not the same at all. The grand old Duke does not have any power in the big apple.

That's he's, he has to stay in original York. York 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 any. Cool. 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 metre tall dump site within the city filled with paper mills, 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 and is then used as a ski hill.

Yes. Wonderful. Lovely. Come to Cornwall, everybody. It's no thanks. Infants have two, uh, infants have four times the expected hospital admission rate for asthma. Oh, this is from a while ago though.

Maybe it's better. Yeah. Border of Canada and the U S and has a big green bridge suspension bridge connecting Canada and the, uh, and the U S all along the border. They have these big green suspension bridges and, uh, with a, with a, with a little, not a toll booth, but like a passport control place, a customs place. I drew as a, 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 think it was called the Carousel Mall. Or maybe that was in Watertown. I can't remember. But anyway, we went there and I bought Super Mario Brothers 3 for the NES and it was really cheap compared to buying it in Canada. So there's a Carousel Mall in Syracuse syracuse syracuse sorry.

Destiny us a it's cold now. Destiny us a nice it's a six story automobile oriented super regional shopping dining and entertainment complex on the shore of onondaga lake. 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 Brothers 3 for the NES there and it was, it was all right. You know, the thing with malls is, and I'd say this is true of a lot of malls, is 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 Boscombe. Anyone in Bournemouth will know Boscombe. What a shithole. At one point it was, I think, the heroine capital of England. Nice. It was bad. There was a mallithole. At one point, it was, I think, the heroin capital of England. Nice. It was bad. There was 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 stop, there were 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 Yeah, then you get into the center and it's like vape shops cash converters one or two stores

Yeah, 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 they one of the characters asked the original Dawn of the Dead, the way the zombies come to the mall? And they, 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 in the modern era. You go to them, a lot of them are just residual memories of a shopping center that was thriving and interesting.

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 there's 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 in L.A. 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 mall. Someone lost their luggage or something and they have to re-buy their pants and shirts. 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 is going to be great. You know, like 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, 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.

You know the type? They're just kind of like, this is me, hanging out at the mall all day. Yeah. Just going to walk around the mall, drink a coffee, look in a shop, buy one thing, stand about. 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 Subaru 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 it's it's kind of like orange juice with, I think ice cream mixed into it. It's like never heard of it. They're, they're attached to Dairy Queens. Now I think Dairy Queen, how do these shops exist in America? What do you sell orange juice? Yeah. Well, I mean, we have 3 million locations. 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 you'd, people would have orange Julius, or they have like a big bag of Colonel's popcorn, or you know what I mean? Like, people used all of this stuff. I don't know if they do now, but yeah, the whole experience was just odd. Like, it just felt like- Just FYI, I don't think we do know. Like, when you say, do you know what I mean? Absolutely not. I guess not, yeah. That was not.

We didn't have those. Like you said, 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 the main bus route. There was one in between the suburb and downtown that you go to, which was along like the main bus route. There was 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 shack, those kinds of places. And then you'd have like,

like bookstores like Coles or something like that. But like they were kind of like, they were destinations if you'd like, but they were kind of like used for, you know, like, it's 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 then you could play like Mortal Kombat, all the Capcom versus Marvel games. I think now Westfield, the Westfield Mall in Shepard's Bush, 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. Like, but that's so rare. I remember, like I remember as a teenager though, it was like you would go like on, like on the weekend, even sometimes like in the evening, like in the, uh, 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 the big downtown ones that, you know, had a lot of traffic due to people connecting between trains and buses and stuff. So I know that, I know that malls now, obviously like all high streets are dying and a lot of people point to, um, online shopping as being the biggest, uh, change and certainly most of the stuff that we buy, we buy online. 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 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. Yeah. 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 that. 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 malls 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 he used to be absolutely rammed on a Saturday. So 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 super stores just outside the city most of the time now as well. Right. And 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 super stores. Yeah. And 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, a huge farm field that was rezoned,

turned into commercial area. And they opened one of those, like the massive, massive, you know, super stores with like the huge parking lagoons, like, like right on the side of like a really busy road. Yeah. 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 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 looks like, like an afterthought. It's like in the middle of the parking lot. You know what I mean'll be it's like it looks like 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 and this massive Walmart parking lot and that that seemed I think that's the big change I think that's when people stopped going the mall and people started Heading to these places instead. Yeah, they could just get everything because you can do you get everything there there. You get groceries, you get clothes, you get whatever, you know, like it's French, the French hypermarkets are the same. Like they, they, big car fours and whatever.

They're all the same. Lewis, you got any deluge news for us? Oh God, I forgot. He fell asleep. I love Russell. I said the only news I actually get. He fell asleep listening I love Russell. I said the only news I actually get. He fell asleep listening to mall talk. He was busy answering emails.

We already did Mark Zuckerberg talking about the best Civ player in the world. That's a loose news. Challenge extended. He's a self-appointed best Civ player though. Like sorry, I'm just opening a box here. Oh, we can hear it. He has no like street cred around it though. Like, sorry, I'm just opening a box here. Oh, we can hear it. He has no he has no like street cred around it, though. He's never won like a major tournament.

You know, he doesn't have like a move like 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, I mean, Like you can say whatever you like, but it's true. I'm sure he said it casually and it's been picked up. Also, there was a big SIV cheating scandal recently. I watched a good video. Really?

Yeah, there's a replay tool that people use that the top level players like on competitive SIV will use the replay tool SIV5 to look at previous replays. And it's like the Rithian 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 whose all his scout moves were perfect.

So he always made contact with the city states. He always found the goody huts and the routes he was taking to settle cities and to find goody 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 was a whole video about it on YouTube. You can look it up. Oh, yes. You would fucking love this.

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 bit, but it was a good one.

Right. Lose news. Lose news. Okay.! Okay, this is weird. You know, Kirby. Kirby? Jack Kirby, the Marvel comic guy. Kirby's Adventures in Dreamland, you mean? Is Kirby the guy that sucks things into his mouth?

Yeah, he's the big cloud. Yeah, go on. Interestingly, when they released all the games, like the Kirby games, in Japan he was all cutesy, but in the West he has like angry eyes. Well he gets pissed off if he eats the wrong thing I think. No but if he sucks 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. Right. 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, angry American Kirby, but every single time I can think of indigestion. There you go. Okay. Kirby air ride. He does look a lot more angry. See this. Imagine if Kirby on the Japanese version has little round eyes like ovals and he looks like, ah, a Kirby air ride in the GameCube edition that came out in the West. If you imagine if instead of being rounded at the top, his eyes are sloping down inwards like he's going to. He looks more like if you drew an angry eye, not angry.

He looks like he looks like he's more determined. Right. I think he looks quite cross. He certainly looks unhappy. If you look at the Kirby amazing mirror, his face is even downturned. Yeah. And he looks cross. Kirby canvas curse. I mean, compared to the the is that the Japanese one where he looks

John genuinely, he's even he's even his mouth is downturned. He looks quite happy. Yeah. Yeah. I know the 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. But 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 it. You got to get on this quickly, Flax. You could have your Copenhagen sweater and then you could

have your carby hoodie. Oh you can have your Kirby hoodie. Oh no, it's a hoodie. Yeah. I fucking want that Kirby hoodie real bad. It's meant to look like Kirby's like turd eating you. Do you know what I mean? You've turned into a Kirby version of you. Looked better.

Kirby hoodie. Oh, this is, these are, these are not official. Some of these are unofficial. That really is very pink. I don't mind wearing pink, but that is very pink. So, uh, Ecovacs D-Bot X2 Robot Vacuums, okay, in the US, they're like little rumours or whatever the fuck. Right.

They, over the weekend, were hacked. Right? Oh yeah! And, uh, they were swearing at people, they were chasing pets. It was out of control. One man reported that his vacu 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, taken it to his garage where it remains powered down. For now, but at night it comes alive and Hoover's the garage. Yeah. So there you go. Watch out for, um, not the AI taken over. This is kids.

I just imagine this guy tinkering on his robot in his garage like Uncle Owen from Star Wars, you know, like on the Nerf further 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 three PO unit is kind of racist. Sure knows a lot about moisture. Can you pass me the dilithium capacitor over there? Let's see if we can get this three PO unit to be less racist. Yeah. Oh, speaking of which, I saw a TikTok of a 1940s Batman, a film like a Batman film

that was made in the forts during the Second World War. And it's Batman basically going after Japanese people and him and his colleagues given 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 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 of 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. Yeah. recorded several victories where he destroyed another player's conker in one hit. He denies cheating and says he has the steel nut on him for humour value. He says it's impossible to cheat a conker, it's a load of nonsense. It's not impossible. People have been cheating a conker since I was a kid. You did all you could, you varnished them, you hollow out the middle and put metal in there, all kinds of shit. Idiot. So apparently players' conkers are randomly selected from a sack. And he denied any suggestions.

He marked any strings to highlight hard nuts or used the brown painted fake steel conker. Jesus Christ. It's 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, into this. Honestly, I saw online cheating was bad. People just, 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. You hear about this? No. This this player hit a phone in the toilet. Right. And when he was involved in a big game, you'd go and 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 going to the toilet before every single one of his moves? No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no 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 you can play and do with full help. And if the longer you leave it in, the deeper you let the engine go, it will find moves you 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 toilet, look at his phone. 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 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 Chess did a video that you can watch. That's, I mean, cause there was, there's always this cheating. There's these fishermen were caught cheating with put weights in their fish to make them weigh more. But it was crazy because the fish would actually like be smaller than the winning fish. This was for like was for competition fishing. Yeah. There's the loads of...

Because there's a lot of prize money in those. Like 30 grand prize money. People are just cheating. Just stop cheating. The thing is, it's such an incentive to cheat though. Because also if you get away with it, and with 30 grand, you're like, fuck, that's so much money. And what are you doing?

You're not even getting in trouble often, if they even catch you you, they just ban you from doing it from that fishing tournament. You know, it's, it's the wild west. You know, they could 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 we're maybe better at catching it though these days. I think people are always cheating. The human race is just cheating too much. Stop cheating.

It is cheating. How do you think Donald Trump got to the top? Do you know what I mean? It wasn't a fucking planet fair. You can't say that. You don't have any proof. That's fake news buddy. So a graphic opera, so there's like a real serious thing that's called Sancta.

It's like a graphic opera, right? With... What does that mean, a graphic opera? Okay. So, it's happening in Germany. Right. And there's like a boundary pushing show. Okay. It includes like naked roller skating nuns. Like crucified naked blood bodies with real blood, um, mutilation. Like it's gruesome.

Okay. So I'm just reading this. This headline says 18 people needed medical attention during this opera. Yes. It was a bit, I think it must've gone a bit weird. Um, 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 been, have needed medical attention as a result of attending various... Well 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. Fuck off. Hmm.

Guys, so the Germans love all that. They are pushing some boundaries by using fresh shi- If you cannot deal with it, you are part of the capitalist system and a problem. How dare you. This is art. Ass. 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. Well, these guys don't, it's not that they're untalented. Holy crap. But yeah, I think it's a bit nutty. That's you can go along to one of them if you want. When you're doing your German walk, you can pop in.

What do people who enjoy watching it like the most about it? What is it like? Is it like an erotic thing or something? I don't know. I think performance art has never really done it for me. Maybe I'm the wrong audience. Vyvill pushed the boundaries by watching Pyrrhus' flax pop his blisters. Oh my god.

Don't pop your blisters kids. You just leave them, leave them. You know, like if somebody's not into gaming and says like, oh, you know, what is it that you like about gaming? 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 of these art forms, performance arts and stuff, I don't think I'll ever understand

what the appeal is. It's about shock, I think. 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 N people and wanking and shit everywhere. It's not, it's not pushing any boundaries. Could do that in prison. 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 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. I don't I don't I really don't understand it. But imagine if you're into it, it's not. If they're painting on stage with fresh excrement, it must stink in there. Realistically 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 as one little speck, I would be worried they'd throw shit at me. Like, I'm just I'm leaving. I'm leaving the most. Yeah, even as a 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. PMPO. Somebody's pooped on a stage and maybe smeared it everywhere, too. Yeah, that's that's that's an hour and 20.

So we should probably. Yeah, we should save our loose news. Yeah, I don't want to blow our load. No, I probably, yeah, we should save our loose news for next time. I don't want to blow our load. No, I mean, gosh. It's much quality loose news. Yeah. Love it. I love it.

Good stuff. That was a podcast. That was about that was definitely. Thank you everyone. See you next time. Goodbye.