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Episode: Merry Christmas you pinpricked Vincent's

Author: Blindboyboatclub
Duration: 00:40:14

Episode Shownotes

A festive tale about a bicycle and a threesome in the Dublin airport Maldron hotel  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_01
Merry Christmas, you pinpricked Vincents. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. Thank you for all the wonderfully kind messages I've received this week. People asking me to take the day off because it's Christmas, but it's a Wednesday.

00:00:13 Speaker_01
And at this point, it would just feel strange if I missed a week. After seven years, it would feel very strange missing a week. So I wanted to tog out. I can't say tog out without laughing. I wanted to tog out. I want the tog out for Christmas.

00:00:35 Speaker_01
I don't know why that's so funny. Why is tog out so funny? Tog out and tog off. I once worked with a fella who was a notorious liar. And we had to go work on a gig in fucking New York. And he was very late at the airport.

00:00:52 Speaker_01
Very late, like almost missed a flight late. But when he came to the airport and we were all waiting with our bags. Now as far as I'm concerned, at this point, we're missing the flight. He's that late. We're missing the flight now.

00:01:05 Speaker_01
But suddenly he arrives with a big red face out of breath and he says, sorry lads, I've just come from a threesome. Very good excuse. So we run to get to US fucking immigration and as we're running he's describing the threesome.

00:01:22 Speaker_01
But while describing the threesome he said, The two women togged off beside the bed. They togged off beside the bed. And that's how I knew he was lying about the threesome. I knew I was being told a lie.

00:01:37 Speaker_01
Because he was underselling the threesome, he was underselling it. I almost missed my flight to New York because last night I was in a hotel and I found myself in a threesome with strangers. That's a good fucking excuse. That's a good excuse.

00:01:52 Speaker_01
But it's also a boast. Why undersell it? Why do you need to tell me that the women togged off? Why desexualize the situation? Rugby players tog off. Harlers tog off. People in threesomes, they disrobe, they take their clothes off, they strip.

00:02:11 Speaker_01
They don't tog off. So what you're doing is you're trying to make this lie more believable by underselling it. Yeah, man, I met these two women down at the bar, right? And then before you know it, we were up in my room, right? And then they togged off.

00:02:28 Speaker_01
No, no, no, you're lying. You might have had a wank about a threesome, and that's why you're late. You're not late because you had a threesome with two women you met at the bar of the Dublin Airport, Maldrin.

00:02:42 Speaker_01
You ever stayed in the Dublin Airport, Maldrin? It smells like jet fuel and everybody there is unbelievably stressed. I don't think anybody has ever had a threesome in the Dublin Airport Maldron.

00:02:53 Speaker_01
It's this weird square building, all the rooms are at ground level. It's a very disorienting hotel, if you step out a side door you can find yourself getting Getting lost in a business park.

00:03:06 Speaker_01
Like you know a business park, a formalised area where offices are with planned shrubbery. That happened to me one morning in the fucking Dublin Airport Maldron. It was about five in the morning, I was getting ready for a flight.

00:03:20 Speaker_01
I stepped outside a door to have a cigarette, went for a little wander and I was lost. Pitch dark, early morning, lost in a business park. Jets flying overhead, very close. And then do you know what I fucking saw? Like a hare, like a rabbit.

00:03:37 Speaker_01
There's wild hares that live in the grounds of the Dublin Airport, Maldrin. And they're not cute little bunnies, fucking watership down cunts who give you a decent stare. And when you get your breakfast in that hotel, the rashers are boiled.

00:03:54 Speaker_01
They've curly boiled rashers. No one's having threesomes in that hotel. It's as sexual as an NCT centre. They just want you to get in, sleep, fuck off, get on your plane. It's not even a hotel. It's a three minute walk to the doors of Dublin Airport.

00:04:14 Speaker_01
That's the only reason you stay there. If you have an early flight, that's it, sorted. And you're put up with anything. Dirty carpets, the smell of jet fuel, wild hares in the lawn.

00:04:25 Speaker_01
The ceilings in all the rooms in this hotel are like a foot and a half shorter than regular ceilings. So when you're in the hotel, it feels like being in like a fallout shelter or a bunker. A profoundly hostile environment for a spontaneous threesome.

00:04:42 Speaker_01
Terrible sleep because it's so noisy, but you just, you put up with it. You're three minutes from the door of Dublin Airport.

00:04:49 Speaker_01
My idea of purgatory would be having a threesome in the Dublin Airport Maldron Hotel with the stench of jet fuel and hares fighting in the lawn outside, suffocating from the short ceilings, unable to perform sexually because I'm thinking about curly, boiled rashers.

00:05:08 Speaker_01
What the fuck am I talking about? This is supposed to be a Christmas episode. What the fuck am I talking about this shit for? Togging out. Yeah, togging out. Togging off. All right. And oh yeah, the fella, it did turn out to be a lie.

00:05:23 Speaker_01
It was a lie because the next time, like a year later, that this fella had gone on tour with us, he'd forgotten the time last year when he almost missed his flight because he had a threesome in the Dublin Airport Maldron Hotel.

00:05:39 Speaker_01
Like if you, if you almost miss a flight or if you miss a flight, you fucking remember, you remember the reason why. So yes, I am tagging out for this week's episode. I'm tagging out. to do some type of Christmas shit, alright?

00:05:56 Speaker_01
Actually, that's not the first time that I almost missed a flight because of someone else's sexual activity. I had someone who was doing tour managing once, and they were flying with me abroad for a gig.

00:06:11 Speaker_01
But anyway, we'd gone through security, and then after we'd gone through security, Everything was fine, but then he got held back. Not only held back, but security took him away to a private room.

00:06:25 Speaker_01
And he was there for about 40 minutes, and I'm like, fuck, am I gonna have to go on tour without a tour manager? Eventually he came out, and I'm like, what the fuck happened? Why did security hold you back for that long? What happened?

00:06:39 Speaker_01
So anyway they swapped his bag and he got flagged for bomb making materials and then they took him into a private room and like strip searched him and swapped his body.

00:06:50 Speaker_01
So whatever happened there were chemicals on his body that were associated with making bombs and they were asking him all these questions about Have you been in contact with like fertilizer? Do you work in the agricultural industry?

00:07:04 Speaker_01
Have you had any reason to be near dynamite or explosives? He's like, no, I'm a fucking tour manager. I'm not near any of this stuff.

00:07:12 Speaker_01
And then they keep asking him questions about has he been in contact with chemicals and why is his body showing up with these chemicals? And then finally he goes, Ah, you know what? I've been having sex with a woman who's a chemist.

00:07:27 Speaker_01
And then airport security had a big ol' laugh and said, OK, that makes sense. And they let him go. Now, that's a good fucking lie. Now, that wasn't a lie. It was true. But that's a good fucking lie. Why are you late for this flight?

00:07:41 Speaker_01
I've been riding a chemist recently. I've been riding a chemist so much that airport security detected bomb making chemicals on my body and that's why I'm late for the flight. Like if that was a lie, I'd have taken that hook, line and sinker.

00:07:57 Speaker_01
I'd have wanted that to be true. I'd have proudly missed my flight for that just for the story. So I'm togging out this week. I'm togging out this Christmas day. I'm half togging out. I'm half togging out. I'm wearing shorts and maybe one shoe.

00:08:16 Speaker_01
This is an unplanned podcast. This is a phone call. I did want to take some time off. I didn't want to spend the days before Christmas prepping and writing and researching. My favourite part about Christmas is I've no emails.

00:08:32 Speaker_01
No one fucking emails me over the Christmas period. And I love that. I adore the quietness of it. So I want to use that time to relax, to do fuck all.

00:08:42 Speaker_01
But also I'm conscious of, I'm conscious of all the listeners who, not everybody's with family at Christmas. Not everybody enjoys Christmas. Some people are working today. Other people are by themselves today.

00:08:55 Speaker_01
Some people are very content and happy to do that. They prefer to be by themselves on Christmas Day. But society tends to shame that a bit. They put this huge pressure on people to be with friends and family in particular on Christmas Day.

00:09:12 Speaker_01
And for some people, they're better off just staying by themselves. I know there's a lot of listeners and today is just Wednesday. It's just another Wednesday and I want to honour my Wednesday commitment of delivering a podcast.

00:09:24 Speaker_01
I want to tell you a story about a bicycle. I had a very stressful situation with my bicycle yesterday on Christmas Eve. I haven't been looking after my u-lock. I've been leaving my u-lock out in the rain.

00:09:40 Speaker_01
So yesterday evening, I locked my bicycle in town and when I tried to unlock it, I couldn't. The fucking, the key was jamming in the lock. So I was like, fuck.

00:09:53 Speaker_01
I'm going to have to leave my bicycle locked to a railing in the middle of Limerick city centre over Christmas. Now I don't know what it's like where you live, but in most cities, in Limerick anyway, definitely Dublin.

00:10:09 Speaker_01
If you leave your bike locked overnight, just forget about it. Forget about it. There's gangs of children and teenagers who steal bicycles. And if they can't break the lock, they'll just smash the bike up. They'll twist it into bits.

00:10:28 Speaker_01
So if you leave your bike in town overnight, it's gone. Just as a given. Maybe a 10% chance. But if you have to leave, your bike is gone. Someone's gonna fuck it up. And I've always known this to be the case. For years and years.

00:10:45 Speaker_01
If I was getting a new bicycle, I'd never buy a new bicycle. I'd get a second hand one for 90 quid. I'd buy a second hand bike for 90 quid because I knew if I leave this thing tied up, it's going to get robbed eventually. So don't get a good bike.

00:10:59 Speaker_01
So I was in this cycle for years and years of bicycles getting robbed or vandalized. And then finally, about five years ago, when I started earning a living from this from this podcast, I said, you know what, I'm actually going to buy a bike.

00:11:15 Speaker_01
I'm going to buy a bicycle. One that I like. One that meets my needs. A road bike. That takes me in and out of work every single day. Nice and quick. Nice and easy. So I did. I bought a bicycle. Bought a bicycle five years ago.

00:11:30 Speaker_00
Wasn't that expensive.

00:11:31 Speaker_01
about five or six hundred quid. That is expensive, but some people have bikes that are three or four grand. This is five or six hundred quid. So yesterday, Christmas Eve. The fucking lock is broken. I can't open it.

00:11:46 Speaker_01
The key is jamming, the key is getting stuck. I knew if I if I force it, I'm going to break the key. My bicycle is locked to a fence in the middle of town. It's Christmas Eve, so I can't ring a company to come and break the lock.

00:12:00 Speaker_01
Not on fucking Christmas Eve. And on Christmas Day, town is just going to be empty and all the gangs of young fellas are going to come out looking for bikes to break. So that's it. It's fucked. It's gone. I couldn't think of a solution. I'd given up.

00:12:15 Speaker_01
And I immediately start to catastrophize. I start to think about just how absolutely awful and painful and terrible it will be when my bike gets robbed.

00:12:29 Speaker_01
I started to fantasize about not being able to eat food, not being able to feed myself over the Christmas period because I don't have a bicycle to go and do my groceries. Then this anger comes up in me.

00:12:43 Speaker_01
I want to grab that U-lock and I want to try and pull the bike off the railing. I want to vandalise my own bike. And then this much sadder, darker emotion bubbles up. This deep, sad feeling of unfairness.

00:13:02 Speaker_01
This theme or narrative starts to emerge in my mind where I haven't just broken my U-lock because I allowed it to get rusty. But rather, the universe is conspiring against me at Christmas time in particular. This is so unfair.

00:13:19 Speaker_01
Unfairness and unhappiness is befalling upon me specifically at Christmas time. Of course it is. Of course it is. I'm so unlucky. Everything is so unfair. Everything is against me. This is all so unfair.

00:13:36 Speaker_01
Now at the end of the day, lads, we're talking about a fucking bicycle. It's a fucking bicycle. Now maybe three or four minutes have passed, but within these three or four minutes, the extremity of emotions that I'm feeling.

00:13:49 Speaker_01
Now it's a genuine, that's a stressful situation. That's a genuinely stressful and annoying situation. My bike is about to be locked to a fence in the middle of town over fucking Christmas. It's Christmas Eve, I can't ring a locksmith.

00:14:05 Speaker_01
There's not much I can do and it's probably gonna get robbed. Shit situation. Stressful and deeply inconvenient. But certainly doesn't merit the scale of catastrophizing. Because I started off with catastrophizing, this is awful, this is terrible.

00:14:23 Speaker_01
Then I start to fantasize about not being able to feed myself, which is mad. And then the deep dark theme of this is so unfair. It felt like a script.

00:14:36 Speaker_01
Like the universe has a script written around Christmas time in particular where bad things happen to me. Now here's the thing about emotions. All I want for Christmas. All I want for the new year. All I want from life.

00:14:52 Speaker_01
And I say this as a middle-aged man who's been around the block. I want to have the ability to respond to my emotions, not to react to them. It's that simple. That's what I want out of life.

00:15:04 Speaker_01
If I can work towards that, all the other shit falls into place. I want to notice my emotions and have the choice to respond to those emotions.

00:15:15 Speaker_01
And that choice comes from, it comes from a calmness, it comes from having high self-esteem, feeling that I'm a good person, liking who I am.

00:15:25 Speaker_01
Being that way allows me to observe and critique my emotions as they pop up, so that I can decide how to respond to those emotions. And the big one that popped up So feeling angry with my u-lock and wanted to rip it. That's fair enough.

00:15:45 Speaker_01
This is a frustrating situation. I can see why I'd want to get so angry that I vandalize my own bike. Then the catastrophizing. Oh no, I won't have a bike. What an inconvenience. This bike is how I get to the shop to do my groceries.

00:16:02 Speaker_01
Oh no, if I've no groceries I'll starve. That's catastrophizing. That's anxiety taking the front seat. and thinking of worst case scenarios. So I have a choice to go. That's probably not going to happen. That's bullshit. I could get a taxi. I could walk.

00:16:20 Speaker_01
It'll be grand. But the one emotion that I couldn't really understand was that deep, dark feeling of unfairness. My bike is going to get stolen at Christmas because unfair and bad things happen to me at Christmas.

00:16:36 Speaker_01
Christmas is an unfair time for me specifically. That was the one where I stepped back from it and was like, what the, what's that about? That's a bit of a strange one. Would I feel this way two weeks ago?

00:16:52 Speaker_01
If my bike lock broke two weeks ago, would I be focusing on how unfair this is for me specifically? I don't think I would. What's going on here? And then, of course, it dawns on me, sure, My dad, my dad died at Christmas time, 16, 17 years ago.

00:17:10 Speaker_01
My dad was on Christmas day, my dad was in hospital with terminal brain cancer with maybe a week left to live when I was quite young. And that fucking ruined Christmas.

00:17:23 Speaker_01
Like if you're listening to this and a loved one has died, someone in your family has died around Christmas, that fucks up Christmas. That really makes a bollocks out of Christmas for you.

00:17:36 Speaker_01
This time which is all about family and connection and ritual and tradition. If one of your family dies at Christmas time, it flips it all onto its head. It becomes a time of misery and mourning.

00:17:53 Speaker_01
When society is specifically telling you to be happy, it's really difficult. And my dad's dead 17 years, and 17 years is... It's enough time to pass where... I don't think about him every single day.

00:18:10 Speaker_01
It's enough time to pass where... I don't consciously associate Christmas with my dad dying anymore. The first 10 years, definitely. I did, but now I don't anymore. But now here I am. And my bicycle, my U-lock is broken.

00:18:31 Speaker_01
And I can't get my bike away from this railing. And now I'm experiencing a very dark feeling of this is so unfair to me specifically. I felt isolated. I felt lonely. I felt angry. I felt jealous of other people's happiness. About a fucking bicycle?

00:18:51 Speaker_01
It had nothing to do with a bicycle. That was grief. That was grief. It's the difficult, complicated, painful, raw feelings that I felt when my dad died.

00:19:04 Speaker_01
It's the feelings I felt when I was a fucking kid and I'm spending Christmas Day in a hospice watching my dad die and Christmas isn't something we can enjoy anymore as a family. It's the difficulty of the Christmas the year after. It's the question of

00:19:21 Speaker_01
Should we enjoy Christmas? Because dad died this time last year. And it's that, it's the big existential unfairness that you experience when your fucking parent dies, or when someone close to you dies. That big, big unfairness. This is so unfair. Why me?

00:19:40 Speaker_01
Why now? Why Christmas? This is so unfair. And other people's Christmas joy of being with family, It becomes something that it's painful. It's painful to hear about it. It's painful to watch.

00:19:55 Speaker_01
And it's painful to participate in conversations about it because you don't want to burst their bubble. No, I don't really like Christmas because my dad died at Christmas. So I don't really like Christmas anymore.

00:20:06 Speaker_01
I'm not saying that to a person who's having a wonderful time with their family at Christmas. That's not happening. But that business with the bike lock yesterday. The sadness did the big big script, that theme of unfairness. This is so unfair to me.

00:20:23 Speaker_01
Of course my bike is going to get stolen at Christmas. Of course. Christmas hates you specifically. That was all grief. That was grief about my dad that I'd found, that I'd projected into the lock on a bike. The thing is,

00:20:40 Speaker_01
I had the calmness, I had the calmness to observe that feeling of unfairness. When it popped up, it was so strange that I went, hold on a second, what's that about? And I felt this little catharsis because I went,

00:20:56 Speaker_01
Oh yeah, my dad died at Christmas like 17 years ago. Oh yeah, remember that? Remember how unfair that felt? Okay, that explains why I'm getting these feelings here. And using emotional literacy to navigate those feelings, that instantly, that

00:21:15 Speaker_01
calms me immediately because you see I've just responded to my emotions. I catastrophized, I felt anger and I felt that unfairness. I responded to all of those emotions. I didn't react. If I was reactive, what would I have done?

00:21:35 Speaker_01
If I was reactive I'd be a man in the middle of Limerick City breaking his own bicycle. That's what reactive is. I'd have given in to that initial feeling of rage and tried to break my own bicycle. I didn't do that.

00:21:51 Speaker_01
Now I'm looking at the entire situation really calmly and rationally. So I'm going, okay, can't open the bike lock. Definitely can't ring someone to fix it because it's fucking Christmas Eve. Fuck it. That's an awful shame. It probably will get nicked.

00:22:07 Speaker_01
That's a terrible fucking shame. But... I'll get over it. I'm healthy. So what? I'll get a new bike. I'll be inconvenienced. Is this unfair? Is it unfair? Is it unfair that I'm healthy? Is it unfair that I have a job that I adore?

00:22:22 Speaker_01
Is it unfair that I'm not worried about paying my bills? Is it unfair that I'm going to go to a lovely, cosy, warm bed tonight? No, it's not unfair that my bicycle lock broke on Christmas Eve. It's just unlucky.

00:22:35 Speaker_01
So because I'd responded in this way to emotional triggers, I'm not feeling emotional anymore now. I'm feeling critical. And because I'm not feeling emotional, now my brain isn't, I'm not narrow-minded.

00:22:52 Speaker_01
You see, when I'm catastrophizing, all I'm thinking about is the catastrophe. I'm going to starve over fucking Christmas because I won't have a bike to cycle to the shop. Utterly ridiculous.

00:23:06 Speaker_01
I'm gonna get so angry with this lock that I'm gonna break my own bike in the middle of town and create a spectacle. I won't arrive at any solutions when my brain is reacting to emotion. But now that I'm calm, I'm thinking, right, what time is it?

00:23:24 Speaker_01
Three o'clock. Definitely not gonna be able to ring a locksmith. Focus. 10 minutes up the road is a hardware shop. Why don't I at least try? I'm going to walk up to that hardware shop and buy a can of lubricant. I'm going to buy a can of lubricant.

00:23:42 Speaker_01
I'm going to spray it into the lock, and I'll give it one last shot. And if it doesn't work, fuck it. At least I tried. I'm inconvenienced.

00:23:51 Speaker_01
So I walked up to the hardware shop, came back with the can of oil, sprayed it into the lock, and then boom, it opens. I've got my bicycle. And I cycled home feeling fucking magnificent. And that's not a story about a bicycle.

00:24:08 Speaker_01
I wasn't feeling magnificent because I got my bicycle back. I felt really happy and confident. I really, really liked who I was yesterday. I was very happy with me as a person yesterday because I was presented with a genuinely stressful situation.

00:24:30 Speaker_01
And I responded to all of my emotions. I didn't react to them. I responded to my emotions. And every time I do that, I just feel like a very capable, calm, functional human being. And none of this is autism stuff.

00:24:49 Speaker_01
This isn't anything to do with being neurodivergent. This is the human condition and emotions. That's what this is. Any one of us could get into that exact situation.

00:24:59 Speaker_01
The next time you lose your wallet or lose your phone or lose your car keys or get locked out of your gaff. When the simple little accidents of life threaten your feeling of safety or security in any way.

00:25:13 Speaker_01
And I work, I work to be that way as much as possible. I work very hard to be a person who responds to emotions rather than reacts to emotions. And that's all I want. That's all I want from life. If I have that, everything else falls into place.

00:25:33 Speaker_01
If I have that, I can enjoy the present moment. Calm, cool, critical, mindful, happy, pleasant. That's how I experience life when I'm emotionally responsive. When I'm emotionally reactive, when I'm reacting to my emotions, then

00:25:50 Speaker_01
I'm anxious, jittery, fearful, and living in my head, living in my thoughts, not noticing the world around me because I'm living in my thoughts.

00:26:00 Speaker_01
And the thing is with becoming someone who responds to emotions, like that for me is the cornerstone of my mental health, right? It's not something you arrive at. And this is something I've realized over the years.

00:26:15 Speaker_01
No amount of work is going to get me to one singular point where I'm emotionally responsive and then I don't have to do the work anymore. It's like having sound mental health is a bit like like eating food.

00:26:29 Speaker_01
Let's just say today I eat really well and because I eat well, I'm not hungry, but I will be hungry tomorrow. I'm not going to eat a big nutritious meal now and then say, that's it, I'm never going to need food again for the rest of my life.

00:26:45 Speaker_01
No, I'm going to eat good food today and then tomorrow I'm going to be hungry. I'm going to have to eat good food again. Yesterday on Christmas Eve, I thought my bike was gone and I'm really happy with how I handled that stressful situation.

00:26:59 Speaker_01
I'm really fucking happy. Very pleased with myself. that I responded to that stressful situation in a calm and critical way. Tomorrow some stressful shit could happen and I'll react to it. I'll be emotionally reactive and make poor choices.

00:27:15 Speaker_01
So every single day, every single day for the rest of my life, I have to wake up in the morning and work on being calm enough that when emotions arise, I can step back, observe the emotions and choose how to respond.

00:27:32 Speaker_01
and that daily work in the same way that it's daily work to make my breakfast. It's daily work to make my lunch. I'm going to be hungry tomorrow and I'm going to have to eat food.

00:27:43 Speaker_01
OK, let's have a little ocarina pause now for this little Christmas phone call. Instead of an ocarina this week, I think I have a sleigh bell. So let's let's do a sleigh bell.

00:27:54 Speaker_01
The only festive thing about this fucking podcast, this podcast has been about A threesome in a depressing hotel. And a bicycle. Right, not very festive. Here's a sleigh bell for some festive bullshit and you're gonna hear an advert.

00:28:14 Speaker_00
There you go now. For all you Rudolph cunts.

00:28:22 Speaker_01
That was the sleigh bell pause. You'd have heard an advert. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page. Patreon.com forward slash the Blind Boy podcast.

00:28:35 Speaker_01
If this podcast brings you mirth, merriment, enjoyment, whatever the fuck. Please consider paying me for the work that I do because this podcast is my full-time job. It's how I earn a living It's how I pay all my bills.

00:28:48 Speaker_01
It's how I have the time and space to deliver a podcast each week It's how I have the time to to fucking research this podcast And to rent out my office, to rent out everything. This podcast is how I live and survive. I adore this job.

00:29:03 Speaker_01
I absolutely adore it. I'm so unbelievably grateful to get to deliver this podcast each week. And that's why I don't miss, I don't fucking miss, I deliver a podcast each Wednesday without fail for the past seven years and long may it continue.

00:29:20 Speaker_01
So all I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month, that's it. And if you can't afford that, you can listen for free. Listen to the podcast for free. The person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free.

00:29:34 Speaker_01
So everybody gets a podcast, the exact same podcast, and I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness. So that's patreon.com forward slash. The Blind By Podcast to become a paid subscriber.

00:29:49 Speaker_01
And if you're if you're an iPhone user, please don't subscribe to my Patreon on the Patreon app on the iPhone, because Apple are greedy bastards and they take 30 percent.

00:30:02 Speaker_01
So go to a desktop Patreon.com forward slash The Blind By Podcast if you'd like to become a patron. Also, quite importantly, keeps this podcast. Independent, completely fucking independent.

00:30:15 Speaker_01
No advertiser can tell me what to what to speak about or what the content should be or put me under pressure for the podcast to be popular. I don't give a fuck how many people listen to this podcast.

00:30:26 Speaker_01
I get a four times the listenership with content I don't enjoy. and listeners who couldn't give a shit.

00:30:34 Speaker_01
I could just do podcasts, bring on viral guests, speak about viral topics, have these people who show up and listen to one podcast just inflate the listenership and keep advertisers happy. Fuck that, fuck it.

00:30:48 Speaker_01
I want to make podcasts that I love making. I want to speak about what I'm curious about.

00:30:56 Speaker_01
I want to enjoy coming here each week and exploring curiosity and then knowing that you who's listening, you're genuinely here because you want to be, because you like this podcast. So, that's only possible when it's independently funded.

00:31:11 Speaker_01
When it's listener funded. That's the only way that that's possible. Because advertising fucks everything up. So please become a patron if you can afford it. Some gigs for the new year. Vicar Street on the 27th of January. That's a Monday night gig.

00:31:26 Speaker_01
Very nearly sold out. A lot of people bought tickets for that at Christmas. But my Vicar Street gigs up in Dublin, people travel from abroad to come to those gigs. I do a few of them a year. I just love them. They're really intimate.

00:31:40 Speaker_01
It's a wonderful fucking venue. Monday night, nice and quiet. Come along to that. There's a few tickets left. February on the 9th. I'm in Leisureland in Galway, I've got a great guess for that. A few tickets left for that.

00:31:55 Speaker_01
Then, Drogheda on the 21st in the Crescent Hall. Belfast Waterfront Theatre, 28th of February, up there in Belfast, come along to that. March, INEC down in Killarney on the 7th. Cork Opera House there on the 13th of March.

00:32:12 Speaker_01
April, there I've got fucking Australia and New Zealand that's sold out. Wednesday the 23rd of April, my biggest ever gig in my home city of Limerick, in the University Concert Hall. Never thought I'd be saying that.

00:32:30 Speaker_01
Never thought I'd be playing the fucking University Concert Hall in Limerick. But fuck it, here we are. Then June, next summer, my big, gigantic tour of England and Glasgow. Not Glasgow, Scotland. England and Scotland. This tour is now almost sold out.

00:32:47 Speaker_01
A lot of people buying tickets for this. But June 25th, there are some tickets left. Bristol, Cornwall, Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, York, London, East Sussex and Norwich. All right, so come along to that tour.

00:33:02 Speaker_01
I was going to do something this week, but again, I didn't want to go deep into the research. I was going to do something on the pagan origins. Origins? The pagan origins of Christmas. I'll throw a few potential facts off the top of my head.

00:33:20 Speaker_01
Christmas is supposed to be the birth of Christ, right? There's no mention of Christ's birth in the Bible, none at all. Christ's birthday being in December, that was a decision that was made by the early church 400 years after Christ's birth.

00:33:36 Speaker_01
You see because the 21st of December, that's the shortest day of the year, that's the solstice and in Europe this had huge importance to pre-Christian societies. Winter was dark and cold and terrifying and there was no There was no artificial light.

00:33:56 Speaker_01
So these short fucking winter days were quite depressing and people had to live off food that they had stored. They couldn't grow anything. So people really, really wanted the sun to return. They wanted the days to get longer, like in Ireland.

00:34:12 Speaker_01
We've got structures like Newgrange, which is 5,000 years old. And this structure, the sun on the winter solstice shines through a little slit and illuminates a central chamber on the 21st of December.

00:34:28 Speaker_01
Our ancestors in Ireland 5,000 years ago knew the significance of the 21st of December. It meant the days were getting longer. It meant that you could start planting food again. There was going to be harvest. There was going to be plenty.

00:34:42 Speaker_01
This was really, really fucking important for survival. So all around Europe, in pre-Christian societies, There was mad celebrations around the 21st of December. There was celebrations because it meant the sun is being born again.

00:34:58 Speaker_01
And that's what Christmas is. The Christian church said, right, all of these fucking pagans all over Europe, they have these big festivals around the 21st, around the time of the solstice.

00:35:10 Speaker_01
So let's just say Christ is born on the 21st of December or thereabouts. So that's why Christmas is on the 25th. It's the solstice. The sun is born again. And I love that about Christmas.

00:35:24 Speaker_01
I love that the solstice was a couple of days ago and it's not noticeable, but the days are getting longer. I like that. I want longer days. It's a bit bleak right now. Then Christmas trees. Christmas trees most likely come from Yule.

00:35:40 Speaker_01
Yule is like a Nordic celebration of the solstice. And Yule would have found its way into fucking Ireland and England via the Vikings. But again, Christmas trees probably have pre-Christian origins that go back a long, long time. It's winter.

00:35:57 Speaker_01
You can't grow anything. You're relying upon food that you have stored away from the last harvest. The sun is born again.

00:36:05 Speaker_01
You celebrate the sun being born again by finding an evergreen tree, like a fucking spruce, and then you hang decorations on it, and these decorations represent fruit. So you're willing into existence.

00:36:19 Speaker_01
Longer days, more sun, and the ability to grow food again. Now my favourite, my favourite Christmas theory about pre-Christian origins is Santa Claus. Now again this is just a theory but it's a very interesting one if you look it up.

00:36:36 Speaker_01
Santa Claus and his red hat and the red and white. That it comes from indigenous practices around the North Pole regarding psychedelic mushrooms. Specifically the fly agaric mushroom. It's a bright red mushroom with white spots.

00:36:53 Speaker_01
So in indigenous communities close to the North Pole, right, they would celebrate the winter solstice. They'd celebrate the shortest day of the year, the rebirth of the sun.

00:37:04 Speaker_01
But they would celebrate it with these magic mushrooms, these fly agaric mushrooms, which are bright red with white spots. And the shamans who would administer these mushrooms,

00:37:15 Speaker_01
they used to dress up in red and white to look like the mushrooms, the Santa Claus colors. But the thing is with fly agaric mushrooms, they're not like magic mushrooms in Ireland that you can just eat.

00:37:28 Speaker_01
Fly agaric mushrooms, they're psychedelic, but they're actually quite poisonous. So they used to feed the fly agaric mushrooms to reindeer. The reindeer would eat the mushrooms, and then the shamans, they'd collect the reindeers,

00:37:44 Speaker_01
piss and people would drink reindeer piss and they'd get high off that because the reindeers had eaten all the mushrooms and then the people would they're having their solstice celebration 21st of December and they'd have deep intense hallucinations about being reindeer and flying up into the sky towards the north star in search of knowledge

00:38:07 Speaker_01
And a huge amount of this Santa Claus shit, specifically the stuff to do with red and white, which people previously believed was Coca-Cola invented that, the red and white, the reindeers, the reindeers flying in the sky, Rudolph and his red nose.

00:38:24 Speaker_01
There's a plausible theory that it has its roots in indigenous folklore around magic mushrooms. That's all I've got time for this week you glorious cunts. I hope you enjoyed that chat.

00:38:38 Speaker_01
I hope if you're Nora Divergent there's a couple of nice facts there about Christmas. If you want to avoid small talk with family members. I hope you enjoyed this little chat. I'll catch ye next week, hopefully with a hot take.

00:38:53 Speaker_01
In the meantime, wink at a swan, pick up a worm, rub a cat, drink the piss of a reindeer. Dog bless.