Spectators Gone Wild!

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Welcome to that's a Free Bee, the guaranteed only podcast where you can hear me complain about runners. Sit back, relax, unless you're driving, it's time for that's a Freebie. Welcome everybody.

Yes, it is that time of year again where I get to complain about the runners in Manchester. To be fair, it's not really the runners, it's actually the runners families. This weekend just gone was the Manchester. I think it was a half marathon.

I'm not 100% sure actually. I wasn't really paying much attention to it this time. It seemed to come around at a different time to usual. Sure, it's usually earlier in the year.

In fact, I'm pretty sure it's already happened once this year. I thought it was a 10k and a half or maybe it was a 10k and a marathon earlier in the year and it is now the half marathon.

I'm sure it's the half marathon. Anyway, does it really matter? It's not the runners necessarily that are complaining about. I don't care about the runners.

They could run all they want. It's the runners families. Right, so they obviously need to get the tram to go and spectate. But they don't think to themselves, I know what we'll do.

We'll set off early because the trams are going to be busy. No, they all seem to converge at the exact same time. It's absolutely bonkers. So I was waiting for the tram.

I purposely set off early because I knew what was going to happen. And there's a whole bunch of runners on the platform. No, actually again, sorry, not true runners families on the tram platform.

The race had already started and a lot of them were complaining that they were missing it. So why you've set off at that point, I don't care. But this is how ridiculous it gets.

At least I'd say out of Everybody there, about 70% of them had a pram. There's only room for one pram on the tram. Maybe, maybe if you squeeze.

If you can squeeze several on and there's not a load of other people there, which there obviously was, you can get more up, but there's only officially a space for one pram and that needs to be given up. If a disabled person gets on because the spaces are technically for a wheelchair, it's not for a pram, which is what happened.

Somebody got on with a pram and there was a person with a wheelchair who was there waiting before them. They literally pushed in in front of them. So a whole hoo ha happened because they were trying to tell that person needed to move.

The driver ended up having to get off the tram and say, you need to move that pram. You can fold the pram up. He can't fold the wheelchair up. The kid in this pram must have been about five or six years old.

And that's the problem I have with them. I understand prams are necessary. I've had two children. I've had to push them around in prams. It's not easy to carry everything that you need.

And the kid. It's just not. Even if even just the kid on the road would be difficult. But these were kids that didn't need to be in prams. There was no.

There was nothing else on the prams. Like, all they were doing was using it to carry their bags, which. It's one bag, like, just not necessary. So big queue of prams.

So people couldn't get on the tram because of this big queue of prams. Right.

And then there was a guy who brought four deck chairs with him, got onto the tram, unfolded them, asking people to move out of his way so we could unfold them, sat down on one of them and then got his and let his family sit down on the other floor. So they were taking up an entire middle section of the tram. Deck chairs. Who brings deck chairs onto a tram?

God, it was frustrating, you know, as usual, I got to have fun watching them all queue up at the wrong end of the platform. The platforms are long. The trams only cover a quarter of the platform at the very. At the most.

So they all queue at the end at the steps where they've walked up, and then the tram goes all the way to the other side of the platform. And watching them all run down to the tram is hilarious. Which obviously gives me time to get on.

Problem is then getting off because you get blocked by everybody. Crazy. They all stand around the ticket machines. They stand at the top of the stairs so you can't get on. It's just. It's unbelievable.

And then as we're going along, you don't normally see this, but as the tram's moving along, I noticed that there seemed to be a lot of people driving there this time. But they were all trying to drive on the route that's closed for the.

For the runners watching everybody get out of the cars and stand at the side of the cars, wondering why they couldn't get anywhere. Was. Was a lot of fun, actually. Yeah, it was pretty good. You can see the old. They all had the cardboard things in the back of the car.

You know that they're going to hold up all the signs and things like that. Yeah.

It was fun watching everybody not plan for something that happens every year that they probably all participate in every year and know exactly what it's going to be like. Yeah. Anyway, that's it until next March, I think. Yep, I think it's next March.

I don't know if I mentioned this already, I probably should know because, you know, I'm calling people here, but I'm going to be joining them next year. I have signed up for the 10k next year, which I do absolutely 100% regret right now.

I haven't done nearly enough training for it, but I do plan on starting soon, so we'll have to just hope that it's enough. I've never run in my life.

Last time I ran I did it for about three week and injured my knee and I've had a bad knee ever since, so we'll see how that goes. I've got to get myself a support strap for my knee before I start doing it, I think.

And once I come back from holiday, which I'll talk about later, once I come back from that, the plan that is to start properly training for the run. So I'll keep you up to date on how that goes.

I thought because we're at the end of the first half term, I would give a little school update on how things are going. So the boy, absolutely fine. He seems to be really enjoying his new class. Not really surprised there. He's in the same school.

He's got teachers that he knows. We actually know his teacher personally. She's a family friend, so he already knows his teacher.

He has two teachers actually in the other one he knew anyway because his sister had her for the previous two years. So not really a surprise there. He's doing absolutely fine. The girl is doing great as well.

You'll probably recall the trauma of getting her into a school that we found suitable for her. If you don't know all that, I'm not going to rehash it right now.

Go back the last blimey, 10 episodes where I've probably talked about some form of schooling for my daughter. She has ADHD and dyslexia. I always forget about the dyslexia. Actually. It's really come to light more this, this term though, than it previously has.

She. She has been getting an unbelievable amount of homework now. I knew she was going to get homework. She knew she was going to get homework.

We were blessed that she never really Got much homework in the previous school that she was in, but I, I think it's too much. And I'm not just talking about. For her, it's so much homework. So before I started recording today, I went and counted it up.

She's had this term, this half term, 26 pieces of homework, and all of them, apart from the maths homework that she could do online, and she really enjoys doing that online because she could be. She could do it independently. It's, it's, it's good. She watches a video, she answers questions. It's. It's good for her.

She likes it because, like I said, she can do it independently. The others require an ungodly amount of reading. And one of, one of her homework is reading.

She has to read for at least 20 minutes three times a week, which for her. So for. For most kids, that's probably four or five pages at the least. For her, it's about half a page.

And it's really disheartening for her because she knows she hasn't gone through much. And once she's done that, she has to then answer questions about what she's read.

But she's not really read enough to, like, quantify the questions because the, the questions are like, who are the main characters in the pages that you've just read? Can you write a headline for the part of the story that you're on? Can you write three comprehension questions?

I'm trying to think of the things that are in the book now. So she's, you know, that she's really enjoying and her reading is coming on so well. Uh, I'm actually very. I, I do the reading with her.

It tends to be mine and her thing because we're reading a book together called Orion Lost. And I can see the difference in her reading every time she picks the book up. What I have found is. For the first. So what.

What we've been doing is we've not been doing 20 minutes. We've been trying to do a chapter a night. And the way we do it is she reads two pages, I read two pages, she reads two pages, I read 2 pages.

And that usually covers a chapter. There might be a little bit left at the end. Uh, it's a book that's designed for preteens. Uh, so it's a decent level for her.

It's probably lower than what she should be on, but it's actually really good for her. And I can see the difference. But what I have found is for the first, like, half an hour of reading we probably spend about an hour reading.

Uh, for the first half an hour she's massively unfocused and she really struggles to not make jokes about what she's reading or say she wants to change some of the words and you can tell it's just her ADHD like kicking in and doing what it does really. But then after that first half hour she starts getting a little bit more tired and she's not got as much energy.

She, she suddenly becomes really focused on the reading and she just goes for it. So for the first half hour she might read two pages and then I'll read my two pages and then she'll get to hers.

And before now she's, she's plowed on and done like four pages in 10 minutes, which is amazing for her. So she, she is doing really well with it. I do wish she didn't have so much homework.

We spend so much time trying to manage her homework and making sure she's got, got it with her and making sure she, she's well done it. For a start.

We're trying basically say that she needs to spend about an hour, well, an hour and a half each night doing homework because we find if we were given her like say, oh, you've got these pieces of homework that you need to get completed by this date, she'd just leave them all till the very last day, which we all did. I did that growing up as well. I don't blame her for doing that. But she hasn't got the ability to do it as quickly as everybody else.

So the teachers are saying each piece of homework should take 20 minutes. It takes her about two and a half to three hours per piece of homework.

So she's, she needs to just do a little bit each night and she has to take a break and come away and do it again. What we're having to do is we're having to do it in 20 minute stints just to give her time for her brain to unfoco. Well, to unfocus is the word.

But she becomes, she becomes unfocused if she's doing it for longer than that. So it's quite, it's quite a difficult challenge. That's the thing. The only thing I wish would be different I suppose is, is the homework.

Now she's getting the same homework as everybody else. So that, which is fine. I don't have a problem with that.

She just, she can't read it and she can't do the writing and it is all basically read these 20 paragraphs. Summarize each paragraph and then it asks you questions about each paragraph that you've then got to highlight in the paragraph using a highlighter.

She could do the highlighting bit fine, but she. She needs one of us to read it to her or read it with her. And then when it comes to summarizing it, she just. She can't do it. Like, she. She gets it.

She understands the concept. I just don't think her. Her way of thinking helps for that kind of situation. She's just not a summarizing person.

She summarizes it, but in the same number of words that they've used to write it in the first place. Because she's thorough in what she does. She's always been like that. She's.

When she, when she writes something down, she's very thorough in the way she writes it. She won't use contractions. She will write every sentence to its fullest and use as many words as possible. And sadly, it is. That's just how she is.

So, yeah, that one. That's the only bugbear at the moment with her. Her work. But she is handling it fine. She's.

There's been two instances where there's homework that she's not handed in on time, but one of them. One of them was just that she essentially. She took it out of a bag or she thought she'd taken it out of a bag and she hadn't. It was in.

She actually had it. She just didn't hand it in because she thought she didn't have it.

And another one was because there was a supply teacher that day, it just had to be handed in the week after. So that wasn't a huge issue, really, from a parent point of view.

The complaint I have is just the sheer amount of communication from the school, which sounds like a weird thing to complain about. You would expect you want as much communication as possible, which I do, absolutely.

But it's newsletter after newsletter after newsletter or email about this specific day this week. Again, counted it up before I started. I've had nine emails from the school. Actually, not this week, it's Monday.

As a record note, last week, nine emails between Monday and Friday. Only one of them was relevant to my kid.

Now, I understand it's probably much more difficult to separate them out between classes, but blimey, he's had a lot of emails. You get to the point where you've lost track of what. What's happening on what day and what they need to do.

One day they needed PE kits, but it said on the email. Only year 10 needed the PE kits. She's in year seven, absolutely fine, doesn't need a PE kit, goes to school that day.

She's the only one not wearing a PE kit. She was right. It turns out it was everybody else in the class that had misunderstood, but she got upset because she has adhd.

She thought that she was the one that was being different to everybody else. It didn't make any difference whatsoever. They all just stayed in the PE kits. It didn't make any difference.

But she was upset when she came home because she was the only one that was different, even though she was the one doing it right. And it's just that confusing. I understand why all those other kids came in the PE kits.

They probably thought, well, at least if we've got our PE kit on, we can still do regular lessons. If we've not got our PE kit on, we can't do PE if they ask us to. Makes sense, right? So, yeah, that's been another issue.

She's found ways to keep herself busy while she's there. One thing I was a little bit worried about is she is a bit of a loner. Uh, she reminds me a lot of me when I was at school.

I had, I think, one friend when I was at school, like someone who I could call an actual friend. I had lots of acquaintances, but just. Just one actual real friend who was in the band.

So he was busy a lot because band practice was almost every lunch. So I found myself having to do, well, something I could never. I used to just wander around trying to work out what I wanted to. I mean, I liked it.

Don't get me wrong, I am. I'm actually quite a person who likes being on their own even when I was a kid.

But there was times where I'd get really, really bored and need somewhat to do. And my school didn't have any clubs whatsoever. This school, however, has lots and lots of clubs. You're allowed to join four of them per term.

She's joined six. Somehow, I don't know how she's managed to join more than you're allowed to, but they've led her.

So she said the other week, she said, well, I've managed to get myself in a club during every lunchtime day, so I know exactly where I am and what I've got to do. And I think that's part of it. She just likes the structure. She doesn't like, Right, there you go, do what you want for an hour.

She likes to have to be somewhere, so she's she's joined drama club, Dodgeball club, Once Upon a Review, which is where they watch Disney movies and review them. Newsletter club, Art club, a boxing club. And she loves all of them apparently. So that's quite good. I'm actually happy with that. I'm fine.

She's got something to do and she's. Yeah, she really enjoys them all. The one that she doesn't talk about much is newsletter club.

So I'm not sure how much she actually enjoys that and I'm really surprised she enjoyed that as well. That and drama. I wasn't really expecting her to join drama club because she is not a performer kind of person. She is a hideaway kind of person.

But I'm really glad she has. That's really good.

A newsletter club involves sending out newsletters, so I'm assuming she's done that one to challenge herself a little bit by the side of things. So yeah, they are the clubs. That's the school update. Let's move on. Just to let you know, next week I will be on holiday.

It's not going to affect the show because there won't be an episode next week anyway. It might affect the show the week after. Probably not because I'll be back for the usual recording times.

I'm just not sure where everybody else is, what we're going to be doing. I might have a lot of unpacking to do, that kind of stuff.

If there's no episode in two weeks, it's because I simply just didn't have time to make one. But I have every intention of making one. So don't worry, there should be an episode.

Incidentally, this will be the first time I've been on a plane since I was a teenager and the first time the kids have been on a plane. My wife has a few times in the last few years. So she's the one who's going to be knowing everything about what to do in the airport.

I keep telling her she's going to be the one who's who's guiding us around. I'm sure she's really happy about that.

The so yeah, maybe give me lots to talk about on the next few episodes because I have no idea how the kids are going to react to a play. They seem very excited about it. I guess we'll see. I thought for the end of the show I would read out some more low stakes compir. Compiracies.

Low stakes conspiracies. It helps if you say it correctly. Right? The reason I'm going for more of Those is because I didn't have much to talk about this week.

And also I love them. I'm really obsessed with them at the minute. I can't stop looking at them.

So I've copied down three of my favourites because two of them are quite longish. All right, so low stakes conspiracy theory number one. There's a product called Sopipos where.

Where we are, where we forget about the existence of it but we're all addicted to it. It goes on to say just hear me out man. It's one of the biggest capitalist conspiracies of all times.

There's this product which is sold as a viscous packaged polymade type protein called Sopipos. It's available in all well known supermarket.

It is possible to make it into a drink but most of us compulsively eat it raw like a paste as soon as we get it home. One 500, 500 megagram package or milligram I don't know of soppy posts costs around US$90.

The pernicious aspect of Sopipos is that the only time we are conscious of its existence is when we see it on the shelves of at the supermarkets. It's some crazy newfangled stuff where it compels you to buy it. The inst. You look at it, they've.

They've set it up where it is invisible on bills and impossible to recall anything of its existence. And we're unable to see other people purchasing Soppy Posts. What the hell. It's of almost no treat new.

It's of almost no nutritional value but low calorie. They think it stimulates the economy or whatever but here. But I'm here to blow the lid off this. We can't just keep feeding us this Soppy post crap.

Especially when they. When we have no choice as to whether we buy it or not. I would be afraid to post this, but it's.

But I'm not egotistical enough to think I can make a dent in this technical, technological, economic plague. People are likely to ignore this post and just go on purchasing this infernal damned product. Product.

Well, well, I certainly don't remember ever eating anything called Soppy pos. But then I wouldn't, would I? Oh my God, it's true. Right?

What I'll do next time I'm at the supermarket and I see it on the shelf because I'll know about it at that point I'll write it down on my show notes and I'll report back. If I never report back it means it's not true. I mean, we all know it's not true, right? Low stakes conspiracy number two.

Banksy works for Bristol Council. It just says. Does what it says on the tin. It got out of hand. Can you imagine if that's all it turned out to be?

fted our timeline. The untold: 2016

In: 2016

Then a small weasel found its way inside the Large Hadron Collider and chewed through critical cables, causing a sudden shut. This wasn't a mere accident. It was cosmic intervention. Scientists were meddling with powers far greater than they knew.

Forces that could unravel time itself. The weasel's bite stopped them. And then. And when the collider shut down, the timeline fractured.

Suddenly, Donald Trump, a man no one expected to win, surged to power, like fate itself pushed him forward. We were dropped into a new reality. The Trump timeline. It's not about politics. It's about divine timing through chaos.

because it does feel that in: 2016

That's probably what happened and caused the world to change. But it felt like there was something behind it. There probably was a lot of rich people. Anyway, this show isn't about politics. No, no, no.

Thank you all for listening. Remember, you can go to and1morething.net to see more of my stuff. I'm still working on a few edits of Law and Disorder. I've got lots.

Well, I've got them all recorded now at this point, just working on the edits and they will be released in January as originally promised. Members will get them first. They've already had two. I do believe I can't remember what I'm up to. So do remember to join.

That's a freebie plus, which I still haven't rebranded, but I will be doing soon. Probably in time for the hundredth episode. Actually, maybe that's when I need to start thinking about marketing more. Maybe. Who knows?

Anyway, this week's final joke. I told my wife that she should embrace her mistakes. So she gave me a hug.