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A weekly chat show :)
In this episode of the Shelley Tasker Show, we welcome back the adventurous Paul Rollason, who shares his exciting plans for a month-long trip to Russia. Inspired by a book about two young adventurers driving across Russia, Paul discusses his fascination with the country and its people, known for their friendliness and hospitality. He talks about his plans to drive a vintage Morris 1000 from Britain to Vladivostok and the challenges of moving to Russia, including recent changes in immigration policies.
Paul also shares his experiences with setting personal challenges, such as learning to swim at 52 and completing a mile-long swim across the River Fal. He recounts his attempt to complete 30 triathlons in 30 days, which was cut short by a serious accident, and how the community rallied to support him.
The conversation delves into topics of addiction, with Paul discussing his journey to give up alcohol and coffee, and the challenges of reducing sugar intake. He shares his thoughts on the importance of self-sufficiency and skills over material possessions, especially in a survival situation.
Paul's passion for challenges extends to learning new skills, such as solving a Rubik's Cube in 3days, and his recent venture into motorcycling. He discusses his plans to participate in the Martin Jennings run and his interest in sustainable living, including fishing, foraging, and exploring hydroponics.
The episode wraps up with a discussion on the misconceptions about Russia and the encouragement to seek information from diverse sources. Join us for an inspiring conversation about adventure, resilience, and the pursuit of knowledge.
[00:00:01]
Unknown:
Go. Thanks. One sec. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Shelley Tasker Show coming live out of radiosoakbox.com. It's good to have your company. I'm also streaming live via Rumble. Look up Shelley Tasker if you want to join in the chat. Leave any comments. It'd be good to have your company. So today's date, Wednesday, 20th November. Happy hump day, everybody. Got lovely guests this evening, the awesome Paul Rollison. He's been on the show a couple of times. Paul, I don't know how to describe Paul, really, because he's one of those men that sets himself challenges, overcome things, and he's it has always got something to interesting to talk about. And I heard through the grapevine that he's planning a trip to, I think it's Russia. I might got that wrong or Ukraine.
Anyway, good evening, mister Rollison. How are you doing?
[00:01:55] Unknown:
Fantastic. I am on top of the world.
[00:01:58] Unknown:
How lovely to hear. You don't hear many people say that, do they? I'm fantastic. Good. I'm on quite high at the moment as well. But, yes. So have I got that right? Have I got that wrong? Is it Russia you're going to or Ukraine? It's somewhere absurd.
[00:02:14] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, hopefully next year, I'm gonna go to Russia for a month. A month? Right?
[00:02:21] Unknown:
So start at the beginning. How how on earth do you decide, right, I'm going to Russia?
[00:02:26] Unknown:
Well, I've just started I read a book by these 2 young lads who, they they like to do an adventure. And, they were working in a meat packing factory in at the night shift. And, one of them heard on the radio, I think, that, they just opened up a, highway from Saint Petersburg to Vladivostok. So that's from, basically, the Baltic Sea right across to the Pacific, through 7 time zones. And they decided to pack in their job, jump in their Ford Sierra, and drive to Vladivostok from Britain.
[00:03:03] Unknown:
Wow.
[00:03:04] Unknown:
The book was fantastic, but the the the thing that I came away from it with is that every encounter they had with Russian people, they were like the friendliest people they have ever come across. And I've read lots of books on adventures of people cycling around the world and that sort of stuff, and they always say the people in Russia are the friendliest and most helpful people. If you break down by the side of the road, they will do everything to help you, and they'll even take you home, feed you, get you drunk, that sort of stuff. Not like the car. Started thinking no.
[00:03:36] Unknown:
They're just driving fast. Yeah. Yeah. Splash you on their way. So
[00:03:41] Unknown:
yes. So I started looking into traveling to Russia. I thought, wow, that would be a great trip. So I was going to buy a Morris 1,000 because it's my favorite car. I've never owned 1. I've owned lots of cars, but I've never owned a Morris 1,000. So I thought I'm gonna buy a 1966 Morris 1,000. That was the year I was born. And I'm gonna drive it to Vladivostok.
[00:04:06] Unknown:
Like you do. Yeah. So, yeah. So,
[00:04:10] Unknown:
I just started looking into Russia and started, researching traveling to Russia. And I found loads of Westerners on YouTube that had moved to Russia. And I thought, wow, that's mental, ain't it? People are moving actually moving to Russia. But I found loads of them now, and I talked to them regularly on, you know, via YouTube and stuff. And, that's mental. Hey, Apple. Moving not moving to Russia. But I found loads of it now, and I thought it was them regularly. Sorry. Bear with me. I've got a rumble playing in the background. Let me just close it. Right. There. Carry on. Sorry. Yeah. So, I started contacting these people living in Russia, Westerners living in Russia. There's Americans, Australians, and UK. I'm one Mexican guy as well. But there's 100 of them moving to Russia.
And, they all love it, and they're all basically saying get yourself over it. It's fantastic. So, this was this was ages ago. This was about a year ago, I thought. And so when I mentioned it to people, they were like, really, even my friends who are, awake, were like gobsmacked. Yes. You're on a good roof. Yeah. But, actually, lots of them are now contacting me and trying to get more information. It's quite difficult to move to Russia. There's lots of hoops to jump through. Although, in September this year, Vlad, Putin actually, released a decree on the 1st September making it much much easier for Westerners to move to to Russia.
It's still difficult, but it's not as difficult as it was. So he he is encouraging people to move to Russia. One of the main reasons for that is that there are very few people live in Russia. It is the largest country in the world. It covers a third of the circumference of the world. I don't know how much it covers if you believe that the earth the earth is flat. But if you live on a globe, it covers a third of the globe. And but there's only twice as many people live there that live in the UK. So can you imagine it's actually empty? Most of it is empty.
Wow. Most of most of those 140 4,000,000 people that live there live in Moscow or Saint Petersburg or other big cities. So the countryside is very sparsely, populated. Land prices are very cheap. It's easy for you to build your own house and live off grid and live a self sufficient life. You haven't got the because most people in the in the country started doing that. So the biggest problem in this country, apart from land prices for living an off grid self sufficient life is neighbors, you know, telling the council about you. In Russia, everybody's doing that anyway. So nobody's gonna tell on you because they're all doing that. They all have you know. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very hard life. It's a it is I'm not saying it's gonna be easy living in Russia. It is a very hard existence.
But hard a hard life breeds, you know, tough people, you know. And, I think we can all agree we need more we need more stronger, tougher people in the world than we have at the moment. You know, we seem to, celebrate weakness at the moment and not strength. So yeah. As as for Ukraine, when I put into Google, the the the area that I wanna explore next year is the Black Sea coast of Russia. I don't know if you remember. A few years ago, the Olympics was held in a city called Sochi.
[00:08:04] Unknown:
Mhmm.
[00:08:06] Unknown:
Yeah. So it's around that area, Black Sea Coast. It's above Georgia, and then you got Crimea, Ukraine. When I put it into Google, how do I drive to to to this area? How do I drive to Sochi? It takes you straight through the center of Ukraine. And I thought, well, that's probably not a good idea with what's going on at the moment. So I was trying to find other routes, go down through Turkey, up through Georgia, all that sort of thing. But I thought, well, I'll have a look into Ukraine, and I contacted the u visit Ukraine organization.
And basically, they said, that's not a problem. You can drive through Ukraine at the moment. There's a curfew, so you can't drive after a certain time at night. And they advised that you download this app, which warns you of any air strikes and tells you where your nearest shelter is. Wow. But apart from that, they said it should be fine. So I have an old motor home, a vintage kind of motor home, which I'm in the process of completely modifying into, like, an Expedition truck. So I'm gonna I'm gonna hopefully gonna drive my motor homes, my vintage motor home sort of 5,000 miles to Russia
[00:09:26] Unknown:
next year. You are crazy. We are. But you like I know we've spoken before, and you like setting yourself challenges, don't you?
[00:09:37] Unknown:
I do. Yeah. Yes. I set myself many silly challenge. Well, the problem is is people think that I'm motivated because I do lots of things. People think that I'm motivated, but it's the opposite, really. That's what I'm motivated. Myself. Well, I what I have what I do is I set myself a silly challenge. I tell everybody about it, and then I can't back out. You know, I set I set a date. And I say, on this day, I am gonna do such and such. And, and so, it's just blind fear then of, failure, not motivation that keeps me going really, darling. So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm not I'm the least motivated person I know. I I could procrastinate for my country, to be honest.
But, so I find that so in in the in the in the past, I've set myself challenges like, it when I was I'm 58 now. But when I was 52, I couldn't swim. Alright. I've never been to
[00:10:39] Unknown:
I was a yachting instructor for many, many years, but I couldn't swim. And you didn't eat oh, right. What? Did you you had to learn to swim to be a yachting instructor. Yes? No. You didn't. You just don't tell him.
[00:10:50] Unknown:
Love it. I plan to stay I plan to stay on the boat, basically. That was all I planned, really. So I lost a lot of weight because I I had a little bit of a health scare in when I was 52 in 2018. And, I had a little health scare, and I decided I need to get lose some weight. I need to get fit. And so I lost some weight. I lost £60. And, the and I thought,
[00:11:14] Unknown:
oh, I could learn to swim, couldn't I? That's a lot of weight there, isn't it, Paul? That's a lot of weight. I'm trying to work that out in stones.
[00:11:24] Unknown:
It's quite a few stones. We've got a few stones. Yeah. Down here in Falmouth in Cornwall, where I'm kinda based, is there's a a yearly swim from Pendennis Castle across to St. Moores Castle. It's a mile across the edge tree of Fell the River Fell. And I've always wanted to do it, but I could never swim. So I've I I I entered that race. I I actually signed up for it and paid my money and signed up for it, before I even took a swimming lesson.
[00:12:00] Unknown:
Oh my gosh.
[00:12:02] Unknown:
So that means then I and then I told everybody I was gonna do it. So then I I couldn't back out, really. So, I mean, so, basically, I did that and learned to swim. And how long did that take you?
[00:12:13] Unknown:
What? To swim across the To learn to swim.
[00:12:16] Unknown:
Alright. Okay. This was interesting because I have one lesson on on swampled beach in the sea. I think I did a swimming pool. I went to the sea. Had a had a swimming lesson in the sea. This guy, Len Hatcher, he's a very he's very famous locally as a a swimming instructor. He's and anybody who's got kids would probably know him because he's taught. Look, pretty much all the kids in Falmouth have to swim. So I I got him, and he taught me in an hour, he sort of taught me the rudiments of front crawl. And, basically, just say, come down to the beach every day and just do this over and over and over again. So I did that.
And Swanful Beach is a 100 meters long approximately, and so I set myself a task of swimming a 100 meters without stopping. And that took me a month of swimming every day to go and, swim a 100 meters. And eventually, after a month, I managed to swim a 100 meters without stopping. And I phoned my friend up and I said, oh, I did it. I I swam a 100 meters without stopping. And he said, that's great. He said, tomorrow, there's a kilometer race, so that's 10 times what I can swim. There's a kilometer race on Guillenbeys beach, and I want you to enter it.
[00:13:32] Unknown:
Wow.
[00:13:34] Unknown:
So so he said I said, I I can't I can only swim a 100 meters. He said, it's alright. They've got lifeguards. You'll be alright. You'll be fine. Yeah. Yeah. So I entered the race and, and I did it. I swam a 100 I swam a 1000 meters without stopping. So a lot of these things that you can't do are just in your head. You can do easily do 10 times a 100 times what you think you can do, but your brain is constantly telling you, no. You can't do that because it's trying to protect you from hurting yourself. You know? Mhmm. Yeah. So, so another thing that I've always wanted to do ever since I was a teenager was triathlons, but I couldn't do triathlons because, I couldn't swim.
So then I thought, wow, I can swim now. I can do triathlons. So I set myself a task and I set a date, 1st April 2022, to do 30 triathlons in 30 days.
[00:14:31] Unknown:
Freaking heck.
[00:14:35] Unknown:
And, everything was going fine until day 14 when I got knocked off my bike and shattered myself. Shattered my elbow, broke all my ribs, dislocated my other shoulder, and dislocated my hip.
[00:14:51] Unknown:
Oh, you don't do things by halves then. Yeah. Must have been some thought fool.
[00:14:56] Unknown:
Yes. So that was fun. But the people of Falmouth heard about this, because that day I was on Radio Cornwall with, Julie Scantlebury. And the people everybody heard about the accident. And the people of Falmouth came together, and they completed the 30 triathlons for me. Oh, wow. How lovely is that? If I know if I'd known they were gonna do that, I would have fallen off on day 2.
[00:15:22] Unknown:
Oh, gosh. So how long were you out of action for then?
[00:15:28] Unknown:
Well, I run my own business, and I care for my mother-in-law who's got Alzheimer's. So basically, 0 days apart from 2 days that I spent in Trillisk having an operation. You have to you have to go to work, and you have to go and care for your loved ones, don't you? So, basically, I didn't really have any days off with that. I went to minor injuries. They put a temporary cast on my broken elbow, popped me dislocations back in place, and they don't do anything about broken ribs. So I just wonder around with broken ribs for and then I had to go into hospital in the middle of COVID to have an operation, which was fun because I refused any testing. I refused any masks, and I refused any jabs.
So, basically, they got me in for the operation. They they isolated me in a room on my own because I wouldn't be tested for COVID, and they sat me down at 8 o'clock in the morning. And at 5 o'clock in the evening, they said, oh, we can't fit you in today, mister Olson. You'll love to go home and come back tomorrow. And they did that for 4
[00:16:41] Unknown:
days. That's because of the whole testing situation.
[00:16:44] Unknown:
They were trying to break me and trying to make me say I allowed the test. But at the end of each day, they would come in and say we can't fit you in today. And I go, no problem. See you tomorrow. I still feel fantastic.
[00:16:55] Unknown:
I know because I had to have a small operation in COVID times, and my operation was planned for the Friday. And I had a phone call in the morning because you're not gonna do a COVID test. It's been moved till Monday. And like you, I was isolated. But horrifically, actually, I when I woke up from my operation, I had a mask on.
[00:17:14] Unknown:
Oh my god. I know. I know. Well, the the people that came down to collect me because I was in a room on my own waiting for, like, 8 hours each day. And then when they finally decided that I would have the operation, the 2 nurses that came down to collect me had respirators with air fed masks and the packs on their butt.
[00:17:33] Unknown:
It's just crazy when you think about it now, isn't it?
[00:17:36] Unknown:
It is. But they, the surgeons were fantastic. They were they didn't give a shit. I had the operation under it was weird. It was kind of like it was like an epidural. They they they plunged this massive needle into my shoulder, and I watched it on the screen. They had a ultrasound ultrasound screen. And they were saying, like, well, those bits going up and down, they're your lungs, and that they're going in and out, that's your heart. And this is a big needle coming in towards those things. Then they squirted this like it was a bit like Novocaine, I suppose. You know, my whole arm went numb. And they did the operation, under local anesthetic, which was amazing.
Had loads of screws and plates and things put in my arm. And, but for 24 hours afterwards, my arm was paralyzed. And I thought, oh my god, they fucked someone up here, and I'm absolutely paralyzed me. And I spent 24 hours looking at my thumb, willing it to move. But eventually, this, nerve cany type stuff, wore off and, back to 100% mobility again now. So well done, those guys. They were very good. Interestingly, the pharmacist came in to see me to talk about pain relief. And he said, what are you using for pain relief? And I said, DMSO. You have you heard of DMSO?
[00:19:11] Unknown:
No.
[00:19:12] Unknown:
Alright. It's a it's, it's a fantastic stuff. It's, it's it's a byproduct for wood pulping. And it's like dimethylsulfide or something. That's the name of it. And, it's very good for pain relief. I mean, you just rub it on. But the thing is that it it penetrates your skin so rapidly that because the the sulfur side of it is what gives garlic its garlic taste. So garlic's high in sulfur and that's why it tastes of garlic. And this has got high sulfur content. And so as soon as you rub it on your elbow, you taste garlic in your mouth because it goes straight into blood. But it's brilliant for pain relief. And I'd said to this pharmacist, I'm gonna use, DMSO.
Anyway, okay. That's no problem. And he told me he gave me some websites that give me more information about DMSO. So that was I didn't expect that from Oh, no. They didn't use you for advice like that. No. So that was great. He also gave me a big bottle of morphine, which I thought might come in handy. Definitely. Fan of the situation. So still got it squirreled away somewhere.
[00:20:22] Unknown:
You gotta save these things, haven't you? I mean, I get a monthly prescription for diazepam, which I used to take occasionally just for, like, restless legs when it was really bad. But I don't cancel that repeat prescription because I'm like you stashing it all up. And I think, you know, if the shit hits the fan one day and we get into, like, COVID times and we're, like, in the middle of nowhere, Whatever dire situation, I could sedate someone to perform an operation.
[00:20:51] Unknown:
Not not only that, you've got that's a marvelous barter I item as well. Yes. You know? Now this this comes on to what we were talking about in the preamble, about addictions, you know? I decided a long time ago to try to reduce all of my addictions, Because the problem is, in a shit at the fan situation, addictions make you go to stupid places and do stupid things with stupid people, you know. You will put yourself in danger, and you'll put your family in danger to get hold of whatever you're addicted to. So, and also, I just don't like I don't like being out of control.
I don't like my you know, not having control over my thoughts and my body. When I drank alcohol, I didn't I didn't really drink an awful lot. I I never very very rarely got drunk. I would drink 2 or 3 bottles of, real ale every day. But I had to drink it every day. I could not go a day without drinking it. And this used to wind me up. I go to the supermarket and I'd say to myself, right, today, Paul, we're gonna have a day with no alcohol. And I'd go, okay. And then I'd get 3 bottles off the shelf and get them in the jar. I could not do it. It was so bizarre. And I just thought, how the hell?
Why? Why can I not do this? You know? And then it was it was when I lost all the weight. I I I looked at different ways of losing weight. And a few years ago, 10 years ago or so, there was a thing called the paleo diet. And, I met I remember doing that for about a month till I did lose like a stone, and I thought, oh, that worked. I'll look into the paleo diet. And when I looked into the paleo diet in 2018, it kinda morphed into the key the ketogenic diet. So, so I thought, right, that's it. I'm gonna do the ketogenic diet. I'm gonna do it for 30 days and see if I can keep it up. And, like, on page 1, no alcohol. So I thought so I thought, okay. So I thought, well, I'm not giving up alcohol. I'm on a diet.
And that one thought made it very, very easy for me. I didn't buy any alcohol for for a month. You know? And, I well, I did buy some alcohol, actually. I bought 3 of my favorite beers, and I put them on the shelf. And I thought on the end of the month, I'm gonna drink them. And when I got to the end of the month, I didn't want them.
[00:23:26] Unknown:
Wow. I'm listening to this because I desperately wanna give up drinking wine. I say this every week.
[00:23:32] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, you know, it was and and then I thought to myself, well, I I don't wanna be the guy who doesn't drink. Do you know what I mean? So I thought, you know, I've done a month without alcohol. I'm sure I can have a healthy relationship with alcohol and just maybe not drink at home. And then, you know, if a friend comes around, I've seen for ages, we can go down the pub and have a couple of pints and put the water right. But whilst I have that option on the table, I craved it like crazy. I would drive home every night and drive past the shop that sold alcohol, and I had to, like, physically turn the wheel of the car away from turning into that shop because I I it was horrible. And I didn't really drink any alcohol, but it was on my mind all the time. Yeah. Even more than even more than when I drank alcohol.
So I did a favor for a friend and she said, oh, thanks for that. I'll take you down the pub and buy you a pint. So I went down and I had a pint of cider. And honestly, it was like I had 10 pints. She had to help me out at the pub. And I had the worst that I could have in the morning after 1 pint of cider. And I just said, you know what? That's it. I'm not drinking ever again. And as soon as I made that decision, all cravings went away and I just I haven't drunk since. So I've done the same with coffee now. I've got rid of coffee because I was drinking far too much coffee in a day and, that was quite difficult.
[00:25:01] Unknown:
More difficult than alcohol?
[00:25:03] Unknown:
Physically it was. I had the worst headache I can imagine for 9 days. Wow. And then and and then I thought, do you know what? I can't get because I did it as a 30 day challenge again. I thought, I'll just give up the 30 days to reset my body a bit, you know. But then I thought, fucking hell. If it does that to your body that can give you a headache for 9 days, what the hell is it doing to me when I'm drinking it? You know? Yeah. So, I have gone back to drinking coffee, but very, very rarely. Maybe once every 2 weeks or something, me and my wife might go out into town and we'll have a proper coffee somewhere, not instant coffee. I was drinking like 15 cups of instant coffee a day. You know, when you sit at a desk all day, the coffee's just there and you just drink loads of it. So, yeah, I've got out of that habit. The biggest one I struggle with still, the biggest addiction that I've always struggled with and I still struggle with to this day is sugar.
[00:26:05] Unknown:
That is the most addictive substance on the planet, I think. I was interested you say that actually because my 11 year old, he is just, oh, he's a chocoholic. No no doubt. And he's hunting around. What can I have to eat? Have you not bought any chocolate? And I'm like, oh, there's Kit Kats. No. No. And he's not been very well the last couple of days. So he wanted a pancake because I he knows I'll put chocolate in it. But it's like my other half just said, you would have been better off just giving him a tablespoon of Nutella to eat because he's just after that chocolate fix.
And we tried to give up the sugar fix all about 3 years ago, and he was hanging off the cupboards literally. And we succeeded for a while, but, unfortunately, his dad wasn't so compliant when he went to his dad, and it all kind of fizzled out. But because not just well, the whole sugar thing, I think if you can give up that, well, you get rid of that taste and you might explore in eating other things. You know?
[00:26:58] Unknown:
That's where where we at. Well, the funny thing was when I gave up when I gave up the alcohol because I was drinking beer. I wasn't drinking spirits, and I've never really been a wine drinker. I was just drinking real ale. And when I when I tried it again, when I after I'd given up for 30 days, it tasted so sickly and sweet to me because I hadn't really, because on the ketogenic diet, you're on virtually zero sugar diet. And and it it kind of occurred to me because beer's only got like 3%, maybe 5% at most alcohol it. So I think I was more addicted to the sugar in the beer than I was to the alcohol in the beer.
[00:27:39] Unknown:
Right. That's interesting.
[00:27:40] Unknown:
And when I when I broke that sugar addiction, I didn't want the I didn't want the beer anymore. It's only since my accident when I couldn't exercise, and I and I also I wouldn't say I I went into a depression. I kinda went into an apathy, you know. I just couldn't I just couldn't be arsed. You know? I was hurting, and I was I was just so disappointed that I didn't do the 30 days. And, I mean, I suppose, exercise is an addiction as well, and I was obviously, doing a lot of training for the 30 triathlons.
[00:28:20] Unknown:
People say that, and I would sorry. I was talking I would like to have that addiction to exercise. I don't get that. Join the gym. Go go a couple of times. That's it.
[00:28:30] Unknown:
Yeah. No. You have to find a an exercise. I mean, I got addicted to swimming. I was swimming every day right throughout the year. I hate running. I do a lot of running challenges just because it is a challenge. Just running down the road is a such a challenge. Do you know what I mean? I've done lots of marathons and ultra marathons and that sort of stuff, and I've never ever found this running high that people talk about. It's just a having done a run feels quite good. You know, you get back, you've had a shower, and you think, oh, great. You know, I've done that. I don't have to do that again today. But running, is awful.
It's very good for you. Despite what people say, the research shows that people who run have got, better knees. They don't wear out through running. You know, you do actually have strong the problem with, with knees and, joints like that is that, you know, you need muscular you need muscles around your skeleton to support them. Our lifestyle that we live these days, we never build that muscle around to support your needs. So by building up muscle, you actually make your bones stronger by building up muscle because the muscles cling to the bone.
And if you if you and if you're a bodybuilder and you and your body didn't build your bone as well, you would rip your muscles straight off the bone. Do you know what I mean? So Right. But by doing any sort of exercise, you don't only build muscle, but you build bone and you make build much stronger bones. And your joints get better because they're better supported by more muscle. So running, actually, although I hate it, is very good for you, I believe. Swimming is very good. Swimming is very good, mentally.
You know, it's an incredibly you can't think of anything else when you're swimming. When you're running, you think of anything else than other than running. I mean, you don't wanna think about the bike. You try and think about anything else. With swimming, you can't think of anything. It's like it's like being in a, you know, one of these tanks where they deprive you of all senses. You know, you you're weightless. You can't really hear anything, you know, apart from gurgling past your ears. You can't talk to anybody. You can't smoke. That's good. So, yeah. I think swimming is one of the best exercises for, for your mental health.
Definitely.
[00:31:16] Unknown:
I found it boring personally, but maybe that's because it's in a swimming pool. But then if I'm if I'm in the sea, I'm worried that I'm gonna drown or I'm gonna get bitten by something or eaten by a shark.
[00:31:28] Unknown:
Well, funny funny you should say that. When I was training for the 30 triathlons, I did a challenge. I I I did a 30 day challenge in January of 2022 where I ran to a beach, swam, and ran home every day of of January. And I was working in Truro one day, and I thought, oh, bloody. I haven't swam today. I've gotta swim. How am I gonna do that? So I thought, well, I'll run from Truro to Malpas, and then I could swim off the pontoon at Malpass. You're not allowed to, but, you know, most of the things I do in life, I'm not allowed to. So, I I dove in off this, pontoon, and I swam out to the center of the river.
And I felt something bite my foot. And I thought, what the hell is that? I can't I can't have been. I must have kicked something, kicked a twig in the water or something like that. But then it bit me again and I thought, fucking out. So I spun around and it was a little Jack Russell dog. Oh, wow.
[00:32:27] Unknown:
Better than a shark. That's it.
[00:32:29] Unknown:
That had seen me dive in off the pontoon and had run down the pontoon and dived off after me and swam after me and then discovered he wasn't actually very good at swimming. So he was basically saying help, I'm drowning. So I had I had to get this little dog and swim to the shore and give him back to his owner and then run back to Truro kind of chuckling to myself. Yeah. Now the other thing is yeah. You do as you do, you do come across a lot of, a lot of, jellyfish when you're swimming in the sea. And when I first started swimming, I used to avoid them, you know. But then one day I thought, you know, I wonder how bad it is to be stumped by jellyfish.
And so we get a lot of these, compass jellyfish. And so I just swam into 1, you know, and it was no worse than stinging nettles, really. Do you know what I mean? So, so now I don't avoid them anymore. I just swim into them.
[00:33:30] Unknown:
Oh my god. You are crazy. There's no doubt about it.
[00:33:36] Unknown:
Well, you know, they are, well, it's it's not yeah. But really, I mean, you need to swim in the sea. Swimming in the swimming pool is is is is, you know, I don't know. It's, swimming in the sea is just spectacular. Every day I go in, it doesn't matter what the weather is. And I don't I'm not going in at the moment because I've got a new job, and it takes up a lot of my time. And I still, still running my business as well. So when I finish my job, I have to go into Falmouth, do my business as well. So at the moment, I'm not really doing any exercise. So I'm feeling a bit, lost at the moment, but I will get back into something.
[00:34:17] Unknown:
You don't fancy yoga then? Because that's my sort of exercise. Just I don't do it. Alright. But just general changes. Experience.
[00:34:26] Unknown:
I had a weird experience with yoga. I was I was doing a 30 day challenge for a a charity, a local charity, a few years ago, and where I ran a 5 k. I ran 5 k every day for 30 days for a little charity. And, I was a member of the gym at the time, and they do lots of well, if you're a member of the gym, you get all the classes for free. You know, that's all in the price. So, I noticed that they did yoga, and I thought, perhaps I could do with some stretching. Do you know what I mean? I'm running every day. I'm not really doing any stretching, so perhaps I'll do a bit of yoga. So I did one lesson of yoga, and that was great. It was fantastic. And then at the end of it, we all had to lie on our backs and just close our eyes and kind of go off into a trance sort of thing while she had some mystical music playing.
And, I was just lying there kind of zoning out, and suddenly, she started massaging me head and face. I thought, what what the hell is going on?
[00:35:26] Unknown:
Had you fallen asleep?
[00:35:29] Unknown:
Yeah. I will. You know, it's like it's it's it's kind of like, it's nice. You know? But, yeah, I I I prefer things I can get hurt.
[00:35:40] Unknown:
It sounds like it. Yeah. So what about all these other challenges? Because I I had to laugh because when I saw you I don't I think it was last summer. And, I had my lad with me in the car, and we're talking about the Rubik's cube, how he's trying to solve that. And you just got the Rubik's cube, and you're like, this is how you do it.
[00:35:57] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:35:58] Unknown:
How long did that take you to solve?
[00:36:01] Unknown:
33 days, it took me. And that well, I kinda limited myself a little. It's, because that's addictive My plan messing around with that. It is. Yeah. I still do the Rubik's cube regularly because it's it is addictive. And it's kind of like a because you don't in fact, if you think about it when you do it, I can't do it. So if I try to explain to somebody what I'm doing, I get I can't remember how to do it. I kind of have to do it subconsciously. It's a it's a muscle memory thing more than a memory thing. And so it's almost like a it's almost like a mantra.
When you're doing it, you kind of don't think of anything else. It's like it's almost like a yogic mantra doing this Rubik's cube. This came about because I wanted to learn how to do, TIG welding. I'm a welder. I do welding. And I'd I'd never done TIG welding. It's a different discipline of welding. It's very, very difficult. And I'd always told myself, oh, it's not too difficult. And then I thought one day, well, you know, I know people who do TIG welding and they're not the most intelligent people in the world. I'm sure I could do TIG welding too. And I just read this book by this guy who, he had, like this book, it had, like, a 100 different challenges in it to just, get yourself out of a rut sort of thing. You just challenge yourself to something each day. And one of them was learn the Rubik's cube. So I thought, if I can learn the Rubik's cube, I can learn double tick weld.
So, I just took it a layer at a time to a Rubik's cube, a normal Rubik's cube, because I've got lots of them now, some bigger ones, some smaller ones. It's 3 layers. You got you know, so I just thought I'm gonna learn how to do the top layer, and I'm not gonna bother with the second layer and the third layer. I'm just gonna do the top layer until I can do it without thinking. So I did nothing but solving the first layer for a whole day. And then on 2nd day, I learned how to do the 2nd layer. So then I was doing the 1st layer and the 2nd layer
[00:38:01] Unknown:
all day for Was you watching, like, YouTube clips how to do this as well? Was it just like, right. I've gotta figure it figure this out by myself?
[00:38:10] Unknown:
No. I watched, I just watched 1 guy on YouTube. I can't remember his name now, but he just took it's basically algorithms. So if you've got 1 if you've got a square here and you wanna get it to there, you do this algorithm over and over again, and then it will eventually get there. And so, basically, you just learn these algorithms for each layer. And, yeah. And within 3 days, I was able to do the Rubik's cube. And then, pretty regularly, you know, I'd cock it up now and again, but pretty regularly. Nine times out of 10, I could solve the Rubik's cube for that. You know?
[00:38:42] Unknown:
And when people do that, it is one of those things when they just stand there with a Rubik's cube and they go done. And you're like, crikey. You are clever.
[00:38:52] Unknown:
Because Yeah. No. We've got enough
[00:38:54] Unknown:
Well, we got this Rubik's cube for him for Christmas. And kids being kids, before I'd known it, he'd got an app on my phone that you basically put in the position of your Rubik's cube, and it tells you what to do next to solve it. And it's like you've defeated the whole object. Yeah. And then he didn't wanna learn to progress then. It was like, no. I can do it just with the app. And I was like, oh, come on. You're having so much fun. And I was wasting time with it, and I found a couple of YouTube videos. And, I mean, they must have had so many people in stitches at the end of it because it was all lies.
And you sit there, like, turn right 3 times down twice and keep repeating this. And after 20 minutes, you're like, I think they've had me here. Nothing. Yeah. I'm still unresolved, and I always say I'm gonna learn that one day.
[00:39:42] Unknown:
Yeah. No. It's not it's not it's it's got nothing to do with intelligence. It's got nothing it's basically a handful of algorithms that you learn just by repeating them over and over and over again for a day, which is what I did. And then till it becomes second nature. And then, and then it's it's it kind of like it's not the solving of it now that's the thing. It's that sort of meditative mantra type thing while you're doing that. You're not really thinking of anything else. So it's quite a nice stress reliever, really, just to get
[00:40:17] Unknown:
you out of your head a little bit. You know? I'm gonna pop mine in my bag, actually. The amount of times I'm sat in the car for 5 minutes, I think, yeah, I could do that. Perhaps perhaps we could have an, yeah, an interactive interview 1 night, Paul, and you can guide people through it. Get your Rubik's cube to join in.
[00:40:36] Unknown:
Just just just do the top layer. Just do the top layer. Don't worry about anything else. Just do the top layer until you can do that every time without fail, and then it's not such a big there's loads of things that I've tried and failed at. You know, I have tried repeatedly to learn how to unicycle. And I cannot I just cannot do it. It's it's impossible.
[00:41:00] Unknown:
I've I've I've I've I've got I got here in the room. I don't know. But why would you want to unicycle is just to say I can do it? Because you wouldn't go out on a unicycle. Well, you might. You being you. I'm just gonna nip into town on a unicycle.
[00:41:16] Unknown:
Have a look on YouTube. There is a young lad who was only, like, 19 when he set off, and he's unicycled around the world.
[00:41:25] Unknown:
Oh my days. Nothing surprises me.
[00:41:28] Unknown:
You know what I mean? So you can do my latest ridiculous thing is at the age of 58, having never ridden a motorcycle in my life, I've now bought myself a motorcycle.
[00:41:40] Unknown:
Do you think I'm having a midlife crisis? Well, I think you have been for a few years, to be fair.
[00:41:45] Unknown:
Oh, wow. In the midlife crisis since I was a teen.
[00:41:49] Unknown:
So wow. So will you take lessons for that,
[00:41:55] Unknown:
Or are you just gonna jump on yourself and teach yourself? No. No. No. You have to well, I am gonna kinda teach myself in my field. I'm just gonna drive it around the field and see if I can pick it up. But you have to do something called a CBT Mhmm. With a compulsory training something or other. So you have to do a CBT before you can go out on the road. So I'm I've booked in to do that. You don't do it on your we can do it on your motorcycle, cycle, but it's difficult getting it there if you're not allowed to ride it. Mhmm. You know what I mean? So you have to trailer it there or something. But I'm gonna do it on the on the so I'm gonna do my CVT. And then and the reason why I did that, I've wanted a motorcycle for a long time, but I didn't really have a good reason. The work that I do, I used to start work at 8 o'clock in the morning.
And getting to work into Truro, at 8 o'clock in the morning is not too bad. I could get there in 15 minutes, normally. But now they've changed my hours to starting at 9 o'clock, and now it takes me 50 minutes to get to work. So I could be at work I could be at work for an hour, but I know I'm not. I'm stuck in my car for an hour. So so I thought, I know. I see this motor place going past me. I think, you asked as long as I'm gonna have a go. So I bought myself a motorbike. Yes. So I'm now going to be Like a motorcyclist.
Yes. Unfortunately, you see, most men, they have a, a mechanism for stopping them doing stupid things, like buying a motorbike, which is called a wife. They normally say, yeah. That's fantastic. You're not you're not having a motorbike. Do you know what I mean? Mhmm. Unfortunately, I've got a wife who's as mental as I am. And and I show her things online. I go, wow. Look at this motorbike. It's built in 1983, and it's tax exempt and MOT exempt, and it hasn't got an electric start or any electrics really. It's got no indicators and no speedo. And, it's kick start, and, it looks like the sort of thing that Steve McQueen would jump over a fence in The Great Escape. And, she says and it's rusty. It's rusty as hell. And, it looks like it's just been pulled out of the harbor.
And she says, wow, that's fantastic. Let's get it.
[00:44:15] Unknown:
So she wants to go out riding on it with you then?
[00:44:19] Unknown:
Probably not. She's we've got dogs, and, we've got 3 well, we've got 3 dogs now because we're looking after mother in law's dog while she's in hospital. So unless we got motorbike and sidecars. But this is just for me to get into and when I when I go to Russia, I'm gonna because I'm a welder, I'm gonna build a framework on the back of my motorhome and I'm gonna put my motorbike on the back. So if I break down, at least I'm not stuck. I can jump on the motorbike and get to the nearest town or something. Tell me.
[00:44:48] Unknown:
So So perhaps your aim should be for next year then to do the Martin Jennings run.
[00:44:53] Unknown:
Yep. Well, that's another thing, you see. The the impetus to look swim was to do this, swim across the river Fowl. And I'd wanted to do it for 30 years, and I couldn't because I couldn't swim. And, and I've always wanted to do the Martin Jennings run because I see it go right past my house. Well, I haven't got a house. I haven't had a house for 20 years. Right past my field. And, I saw it this year, and I thought I wanna do that. So, that was another kind of reason to buy the bike because I'm gonna do the Martin Jennings run next year.
[00:45:28] Unknown:
Wow. I'll see you past my house then because it goes right past my house, and it's it's massive, isn't it? And just the whole he's not buried far from he's probably, what, about 200 yards up the road in the cemetery, Martin Jennings. And Oh, right. Yeah. It's like a family affair, and it's lovely to see. They all meet in Beacon Square, and they all stop, and they do a minute silence. And then they're all, like, queuing up the road, so we literally sit out there for an hour that day, deck chairs in the drive. It's it's lovely. I think I saw a video you put up with it. Yeah. Yeah. They just go on and on, and it's like, when are they ever gonna stop? So many of them. I know. It's fantastic.
Yeah. So I might be a part of that. Yeah? Well, well, you can stop by my house, Paul, and, I'll give you a quick drink.
[00:46:13] Unknown:
Yeah. I only drink water these days. Well, that's good. Cheap and cheerful. And I I make my own water. Not I don't drink urine, obviously. I drink, I I have I built a water filter, and I only drink filtered water because god knows what the hell they put in the water.
[00:46:30] Unknown:
You built your own. Well, that must have saved you a bit because I've just recently spent about £150 on one of these water go to water or something. I don't know. Plumbed in under my sink anyway. The Bear Grylls 1. Yeah.
[00:46:44] Unknown:
Yeah. So, well, I base I don't know if you've heard of a Berkey water filter. Yep. They're gravity fed. They so they don't need any electricity because I'm off grid, so I haven't really got that much electricity to throw about. So, I had to build something that was off grid. And so I I looked at the Berkey's, and I wanted a big Berkey, which is 25 liters. And they're, like, nearly £600,
[00:47:07] Unknown:
you know? Yeah. Not cheap.
[00:47:09] Unknown:
So so I thought I could build one of those. So I built 1, and I also, went, to the stand in the park in Truro. And we had a workshop there. And I we had, like, 10 of us build them. And I built them you know, got 10 people building their own water filters. And, we can build a big Berkey, basically, for about £60, so a 10th of the price. Yeah. Just a slight difference. Yeah. So I use that every day. All of our water goes through that. Bogs for us, for everything. And it is I mean, the water that I put in the top is, compared to the water that comes out, the color change is unreal.
It's like, you know, it's so clear the water that comes out. And it also takes fluoride out. I don't think we've got fluoride. We might have trace amounts of fluoride It's coming soon, isn't it? Really, really. Yeah. Not to me, it ain't. So, the art the recurring cost of this of this water filter is that, they advise you to change the filter elements once a year. I could probably get away with 2 or 3 years because I we use such little water. You know, I prob we probably use less water in a day than somebody uses flushing the toilet twice. Right. So, we use very little water through it.
So but I I replace them every year because it costs like 42 quid. So 42 quid a year ain't too bad for perfectly clean water. On the food front, we're looking to we've we've just had our 1st Cornwall prepper meeting for 1st face to face. So we've we've had this, yeah, Facebook group going for a little while, and we've got over 200 members. But we had a meeting over at Tricky's in Red Roof, and, 20 people turned up. So that was good. And we've got a plan for the future for things. So I'm organizing a, a fishing a guided fishing day. So I'm gonna get, some local fishermen to take us out fishing, angling, you know, not on a fishing boat, fishing off the shore, and coastal foraging for crabs and lobsters and scallops and that sort of stuff.
Because, we're lucky here in Cornwall. We're surrounded by by coastline, and and, there's an abundance of food out there if you know how to get it. Luckily, most people don't know how to get it anymore. So, you know, despite what they say, you know, they say all the the the oceans are empty. They're not. So, yeah. I think, we're gonna supplement our diet with, fresh fish. And also, I found somebody who's got some land, who's got a rabbit problem. So, hopefully, we're gonna be going and doing a bit of shooting and get some rabbits as well.
[00:50:16] Unknown:
Wow. I couldn't do the whole deferring it, just skinny bit, whatever you call it.
[00:50:22] Unknown:
Well, we did a we, yeah, we organized a, a survival course last year over at Red Roof over at Scarier. There's a fantastic company called Survive and Revive, and they do these, survival courses. And we went and did a a rabbit course. So it taught you how to how to process a rabbit, and then we cooked it up in the forest and had a rabbit stew. Mhmm.
[00:50:45] Unknown:
Tasty. But when you're starving, anything is, isn't it? If you had to, you know, if we got to those times.
[00:50:53] Unknown:
Well, it's not only that. I just think even if because I eat mainly meat. I'm a mainly meat eater. I don't eat an awful lot of vegetables, to be honest. And even though I try to find the best quality meat I can find, you still don't know what the hell they're popping into this meat. Do you know what I mean? And it's not that they want to. I mean, a lot of these growers would rather not, but, you know, what with all these fake scares going around, like, we got a bird flu scare at the moment. You know, they're gonna vaccinate them against things, and you god knows what you're getting in this meat. So I just want to try and source my meat locally and from the wild as much as possible. So that is a kind of a goal for next year as well to start adding a lot more wild food into my diet.
And you don't even have to I mean, you can just walk along on a low tide and and pick up things, you know. We used to eat loads of stuff when we were kids, limpets and mussels and wrinkles and stuff, you know. Yeah. You can even get sconps in quite shallow water. You can just walk along and pick up scallops.
[00:52:04] Unknown:
Well, because Scallops are lovely. I know when we spoke more. I'm I'm not a big fish eater myself, but if it's desperate times, I suppose I'll eat anything. But, I know you've got a field. So do you grow your own vegetables as well?
[00:52:19] Unknown:
We don't because we don't own the field, and, we're just renting the field and at any time, and we've had this because we've lived off grid for 20 years, but we've never had our own piece of land. I just can't afford it in this country. And plus, it's such a gamble because you could save up and save up and buy a piece of land and then never get planning permission to do anything on it, and they kick you off your own piece of land, you know. So now you've got a useless piece of land. So we're just renting the piece of land, and I don't really want to invest too much in the land and then be kicked off it again. You know, it's happened, like, several times in our lifetime.
So that will happen when we go to Russia. Land is a lot more available in Russia, and, and they're more open to you being off grid over there. So, yeah. But what we're looking into is a thing called Kratky. Kratky is, k r a t k y, Kratky, hydroponics. Anybody who's looked into hydroponics, it's kind of like a, a science experiment. We've looked. It's my Okay. It's like a science experiment. But with this crack key hydroponics, it's, a lot less complicated. There's no pumps. There's no electricity and that sort of stuff. So it can be done off grid very easily. So we're looking into that because, basically then if we had to move we could take all our vegetables with us. They're not in the ground.
[00:53:52] Unknown:
But you don't if you don't eat much, I suppose there's well, there's not much need for it, is there?
[00:53:57] Unknown:
But if you don't get to make it more when you need them. Well, we do eat. So it's it's it's it's I'll tell you what it is. With this is something that's always annoyed me about the prepper movement and the survivalist movement is 90% of the people that are into the into prepping are into stuff. They're into kit. They're into, you know, stockpiling stuff. Physical stuff. The problem is with that is in with most of it, unless you know how to use that stuff, it's pretty useless. And, unless that stuff is actually with you at the time when the shit hits the fan, that stuff, you ain't got it. You ain't there. You ain't so all this stuff. Now I I'm I'm I think if there's ever a proper shit hit the fan situation like, you know, where lots of people, lots of the population die out, which I hope never happens, there's gonna be plenty of stuff just hanging around. You know? Mhmm.
Uh-uh. There's gonna be a lot more stuff and a lot less people. So I I I think that you're much better off stockpiling knowledge and skill because there's no point in having all this stuff hanging around if you don't know how to use it. So That would be a good logo for something, wouldn't it?
[00:55:18] Unknown:
Stockpile your knowledge and skills.
[00:55:20] Unknown:
Sorry. Carrie. Well, I what I always say what I always say is that knowledge trumps, stuff Mhmm. And skills skills trumps knowledge. Mhmm. So knowledge could could be reading about how to skin a rabbit. And you could read all the books and watch all the YouTube videos about how to skin a rabbit. But unless you skin a rabbit regularly, you ain't got the skills to do it, you know. And it's the same with anything. So even though we we don't eat an awful lot of vegetables, we're gonna grow some with this cracking method and then give it a go. Because when we do have to use that method, you know, in a shit in the pan situation, at least we'll know how to do it. All we have to do is upscale it. You know, if you can grow 10 carrots, you can grow a 1,000 carrots. You know?
So yeah. So we're gonna try the cracky method, have a little go at that over the next, in the spring. Don't it doesn't it's it's quite fascinating if you look it up. Basically, you you you choose a, a a vessel like a, big bucket or, it could be as small as a jar, like a big, like a gherkin jar or something like that. And you, fill it up with this, formula, which is made up of certain minerals. It sounds like it's made up of lots of chemicals. When you look at it, it's like lots of chemicals. You're not putting anything organic in there at all. It's all chemicals. And that worried me to start off with. But when I started talking to people, they said, well, it's not really chemicals.
It's more minerals. And that's what that's what a plant takes out of the soil is minerals, you know? So you're basically giving the plant the minerals that it needs. So what you do is you size the vessel to the type of plant you're growing. So if you're just growing a to a lettuce, you could have like a big jam jar. You fill it up with this stuff. You put your plant in the top when it's a little seedling, and it uses up the the the solution at the same speed as the, roots grow. So basically, as the solution goes down, the roots grow longer, they reach the solution. You end up with this oxygen rich area above the solution, which gives you the oxygen for the plant. And, by the time it runs out of the solution, you harvest the plant. So you never have to water it again. You only have to water it once.
You set it up and you leave it and then you harvest it. Oh, that does really, really interesting. Yeah. It sounds interesting. It it's very, very, low input and maximum yield, gardening. The problem with gardening is it's quite easy to put in more calories than you get out.
[00:58:01] Unknown:
Yeah. I can imagine.
[00:58:03] Unknown:
So, yeah. So we're looking into this cracking method. It's gonna be an experimental thing. So that along with, a bit of fishing and foraging and hunting. So that's what we're trying to do next year to try and just, give us a little bit more resilience in our food
[00:58:23] Unknown:
on the food front. Well, it sounds awesome, and we've got to wrap it up, Paul. That hour has flown by. Always does when I talk to you. You're just a wealth of knowledge. You should have a YouTube channel and, I don't know, create things because, it's wonderful to hear somebody that can set themselves challenges like that. You've inspired me anyway. But, any last words quickly, my friend?
[00:58:45] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, when it comes to things like Russia and and things like that, really don't listen to what they say on the BBC or write about in the, Daily Mail. It's go on. Find some channels on, on YouTube that where the Westerners are living in Russia and just listen to what they have to say. It's a fantastic place to go and live, and
[00:59:08] Unknown:
more and more people are moving there. It sounds fascinating, and you must come back and tell us all about it. Well, thank you so much, Paul. It's always it's always a wonderful conversation with you, and I wish you luck. And I'd like to follow your progress. Yeah. Definitely. So we will speak soon, my friend. And I'll see you on Saturday. Yes. See you at the rally on Saturday. Thank you, my darling, and I'll speak to you soon. You take care of yourself, Paul. Thank you. Bye. Take care. Bye. Well, that's that for this week. So I will be back the same time next week, and I hope you have an awesome week. Farmers rally this Saturday in Truro. Go to the Facebook page and have a look at times and stuff. See you soon.
Go. Thanks. One sec. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Shelley Tasker Show coming live out of radiosoakbox.com. It's good to have your company. I'm also streaming live via Rumble. Look up Shelley Tasker if you want to join in the chat. Leave any comments. It'd be good to have your company. So today's date, Wednesday, 20th November. Happy hump day, everybody. Got lovely guests this evening, the awesome Paul Rollison. He's been on the show a couple of times. Paul, I don't know how to describe Paul, really, because he's one of those men that sets himself challenges, overcome things, and he's it has always got something to interesting to talk about. And I heard through the grapevine that he's planning a trip to, I think it's Russia. I might got that wrong or Ukraine.
Anyway, good evening, mister Rollison. How are you doing?
[00:01:55] Unknown:
Fantastic. I am on top of the world.
[00:01:58] Unknown:
How lovely to hear. You don't hear many people say that, do they? I'm fantastic. Good. I'm on quite high at the moment as well. But, yes. So have I got that right? Have I got that wrong? Is it Russia you're going to or Ukraine? It's somewhere absurd.
[00:02:14] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, hopefully next year, I'm gonna go to Russia for a month. A month? Right?
[00:02:21] Unknown:
So start at the beginning. How how on earth do you decide, right, I'm going to Russia?
[00:02:26] Unknown:
Well, I've just started I read a book by these 2 young lads who, they they like to do an adventure. And, they were working in a meat packing factory in at the night shift. And, one of them heard on the radio, I think, that, they just opened up a, highway from Saint Petersburg to Vladivostok. So that's from, basically, the Baltic Sea right across to the Pacific, through 7 time zones. And they decided to pack in their job, jump in their Ford Sierra, and drive to Vladivostok from Britain.
[00:03:03] Unknown:
Wow.
[00:03:04] Unknown:
The book was fantastic, but the the the thing that I came away from it with is that every encounter they had with Russian people, they were like the friendliest people they have ever come across. And I've read lots of books on adventures of people cycling around the world and that sort of stuff, and they always say the people in Russia are the friendliest and most helpful people. If you break down by the side of the road, they will do everything to help you, and they'll even take you home, feed you, get you drunk, that sort of stuff. Not like the car. Started thinking no.
[00:03:36] Unknown:
They're just driving fast. Yeah. Yeah. Splash you on their way. So
[00:03:41] Unknown:
yes. So I started looking into traveling to Russia. I thought, wow, that would be a great trip. So I was going to buy a Morris 1,000 because it's my favorite car. I've never owned 1. I've owned lots of cars, but I've never owned a Morris 1,000. So I thought I'm gonna buy a 1966 Morris 1,000. That was the year I was born. And I'm gonna drive it to Vladivostok.
[00:04:06] Unknown:
Like you do. Yeah. So, yeah. So,
[00:04:10] Unknown:
I just started looking into Russia and started, researching traveling to Russia. And I found loads of Westerners on YouTube that had moved to Russia. And I thought, wow, that's mental, ain't it? People are moving actually moving to Russia. But I found loads of them now, and I talked to them regularly on, you know, via YouTube and stuff. And, that's mental. Hey, Apple. Moving not moving to Russia. But I found loads of it now, and I thought it was them regularly. Sorry. Bear with me. I've got a rumble playing in the background. Let me just close it. Right. There. Carry on. Sorry. Yeah. So, I started contacting these people living in Russia, Westerners living in Russia. There's Americans, Australians, and UK. I'm one Mexican guy as well. But there's 100 of them moving to Russia.
And, they all love it, and they're all basically saying get yourself over it. It's fantastic. So, this was this was ages ago. This was about a year ago, I thought. And so when I mentioned it to people, they were like, really, even my friends who are, awake, were like gobsmacked. Yes. You're on a good roof. Yeah. But, actually, lots of them are now contacting me and trying to get more information. It's quite difficult to move to Russia. There's lots of hoops to jump through. Although, in September this year, Vlad, Putin actually, released a decree on the 1st September making it much much easier for Westerners to move to to Russia.
It's still difficult, but it's not as difficult as it was. So he he is encouraging people to move to Russia. One of the main reasons for that is that there are very few people live in Russia. It is the largest country in the world. It covers a third of the circumference of the world. I don't know how much it covers if you believe that the earth the earth is flat. But if you live on a globe, it covers a third of the globe. And but there's only twice as many people live there that live in the UK. So can you imagine it's actually empty? Most of it is empty.
Wow. Most of most of those 140 4,000,000 people that live there live in Moscow or Saint Petersburg or other big cities. So the countryside is very sparsely, populated. Land prices are very cheap. It's easy for you to build your own house and live off grid and live a self sufficient life. You haven't got the because most people in the in the country started doing that. So the biggest problem in this country, apart from land prices for living an off grid self sufficient life is neighbors, you know, telling the council about you. In Russia, everybody's doing that anyway. So nobody's gonna tell on you because they're all doing that. They all have you know. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very hard life. It's a it is I'm not saying it's gonna be easy living in Russia. It is a very hard existence.
But hard a hard life breeds, you know, tough people, you know. And, I think we can all agree we need more we need more stronger, tougher people in the world than we have at the moment. You know, we seem to, celebrate weakness at the moment and not strength. So yeah. As as for Ukraine, when I put into Google, the the the area that I wanna explore next year is the Black Sea coast of Russia. I don't know if you remember. A few years ago, the Olympics was held in a city called Sochi.
[00:08:04] Unknown:
Mhmm.
[00:08:06] Unknown:
Yeah. So it's around that area, Black Sea Coast. It's above Georgia, and then you got Crimea, Ukraine. When I put it into Google, how do I drive to to to this area? How do I drive to Sochi? It takes you straight through the center of Ukraine. And I thought, well, that's probably not a good idea with what's going on at the moment. So I was trying to find other routes, go down through Turkey, up through Georgia, all that sort of thing. But I thought, well, I'll have a look into Ukraine, and I contacted the u visit Ukraine organization.
And basically, they said, that's not a problem. You can drive through Ukraine at the moment. There's a curfew, so you can't drive after a certain time at night. And they advised that you download this app, which warns you of any air strikes and tells you where your nearest shelter is. Wow. But apart from that, they said it should be fine. So I have an old motor home, a vintage kind of motor home, which I'm in the process of completely modifying into, like, an Expedition truck. So I'm gonna I'm gonna hopefully gonna drive my motor homes, my vintage motor home sort of 5,000 miles to Russia
[00:09:26] Unknown:
next year. You are crazy. We are. But you like I know we've spoken before, and you like setting yourself challenges, don't you?
[00:09:37] Unknown:
I do. Yeah. Yes. I set myself many silly challenge. Well, the problem is is people think that I'm motivated because I do lots of things. People think that I'm motivated, but it's the opposite, really. That's what I'm motivated. Myself. Well, I what I have what I do is I set myself a silly challenge. I tell everybody about it, and then I can't back out. You know, I set I set a date. And I say, on this day, I am gonna do such and such. And, and so, it's just blind fear then of, failure, not motivation that keeps me going really, darling. So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm not I'm the least motivated person I know. I I could procrastinate for my country, to be honest.
But, so I find that so in in the in the in the past, I've set myself challenges like, it when I was I'm 58 now. But when I was 52, I couldn't swim. Alright. I've never been to
[00:10:39] Unknown:
I was a yachting instructor for many, many years, but I couldn't swim. And you didn't eat oh, right. What? Did you you had to learn to swim to be a yachting instructor. Yes? No. You didn't. You just don't tell him.
[00:10:50] Unknown:
Love it. I plan to stay I plan to stay on the boat, basically. That was all I planned, really. So I lost a lot of weight because I I had a little bit of a health scare in when I was 52 in 2018. And, I had a little health scare, and I decided I need to get lose some weight. I need to get fit. And so I lost some weight. I lost £60. And, the and I thought,
[00:11:14] Unknown:
oh, I could learn to swim, couldn't I? That's a lot of weight there, isn't it, Paul? That's a lot of weight. I'm trying to work that out in stones.
[00:11:24] Unknown:
It's quite a few stones. We've got a few stones. Yeah. Down here in Falmouth in Cornwall, where I'm kinda based, is there's a a yearly swim from Pendennis Castle across to St. Moores Castle. It's a mile across the edge tree of Fell the River Fell. And I've always wanted to do it, but I could never swim. So I've I I I entered that race. I I actually signed up for it and paid my money and signed up for it, before I even took a swimming lesson.
[00:12:00] Unknown:
Oh my gosh.
[00:12:02] Unknown:
So that means then I and then I told everybody I was gonna do it. So then I I couldn't back out, really. So, I mean, so, basically, I did that and learned to swim. And how long did that take you?
[00:12:13] Unknown:
What? To swim across the To learn to swim.
[00:12:16] Unknown:
Alright. Okay. This was interesting because I have one lesson on on swampled beach in the sea. I think I did a swimming pool. I went to the sea. Had a had a swimming lesson in the sea. This guy, Len Hatcher, he's a very he's very famous locally as a a swimming instructor. He's and anybody who's got kids would probably know him because he's taught. Look, pretty much all the kids in Falmouth have to swim. So I I got him, and he taught me in an hour, he sort of taught me the rudiments of front crawl. And, basically, just say, come down to the beach every day and just do this over and over and over again. So I did that.
And Swanful Beach is a 100 meters long approximately, and so I set myself a task of swimming a 100 meters without stopping. And that took me a month of swimming every day to go and, swim a 100 meters. And eventually, after a month, I managed to swim a 100 meters without stopping. And I phoned my friend up and I said, oh, I did it. I I swam a 100 meters without stopping. And he said, that's great. He said, tomorrow, there's a kilometer race, so that's 10 times what I can swim. There's a kilometer race on Guillenbeys beach, and I want you to enter it.
[00:13:32] Unknown:
Wow.
[00:13:34] Unknown:
So so he said I said, I I can't I can only swim a 100 meters. He said, it's alright. They've got lifeguards. You'll be alright. You'll be fine. Yeah. Yeah. So I entered the race and, and I did it. I swam a 100 I swam a 1000 meters without stopping. So a lot of these things that you can't do are just in your head. You can do easily do 10 times a 100 times what you think you can do, but your brain is constantly telling you, no. You can't do that because it's trying to protect you from hurting yourself. You know? Mhmm. Yeah. So, so another thing that I've always wanted to do ever since I was a teenager was triathlons, but I couldn't do triathlons because, I couldn't swim.
So then I thought, wow, I can swim now. I can do triathlons. So I set myself a task and I set a date, 1st April 2022, to do 30 triathlons in 30 days.
[00:14:31] Unknown:
Freaking heck.
[00:14:35] Unknown:
And, everything was going fine until day 14 when I got knocked off my bike and shattered myself. Shattered my elbow, broke all my ribs, dislocated my other shoulder, and dislocated my hip.
[00:14:51] Unknown:
Oh, you don't do things by halves then. Yeah. Must have been some thought fool.
[00:14:56] Unknown:
Yes. So that was fun. But the people of Falmouth heard about this, because that day I was on Radio Cornwall with, Julie Scantlebury. And the people everybody heard about the accident. And the people of Falmouth came together, and they completed the 30 triathlons for me. Oh, wow. How lovely is that? If I know if I'd known they were gonna do that, I would have fallen off on day 2.
[00:15:22] Unknown:
Oh, gosh. So how long were you out of action for then?
[00:15:28] Unknown:
Well, I run my own business, and I care for my mother-in-law who's got Alzheimer's. So basically, 0 days apart from 2 days that I spent in Trillisk having an operation. You have to you have to go to work, and you have to go and care for your loved ones, don't you? So, basically, I didn't really have any days off with that. I went to minor injuries. They put a temporary cast on my broken elbow, popped me dislocations back in place, and they don't do anything about broken ribs. So I just wonder around with broken ribs for and then I had to go into hospital in the middle of COVID to have an operation, which was fun because I refused any testing. I refused any masks, and I refused any jabs.
So, basically, they got me in for the operation. They they isolated me in a room on my own because I wouldn't be tested for COVID, and they sat me down at 8 o'clock in the morning. And at 5 o'clock in the evening, they said, oh, we can't fit you in today, mister Olson. You'll love to go home and come back tomorrow. And they did that for 4
[00:16:41] Unknown:
days. That's because of the whole testing situation.
[00:16:44] Unknown:
They were trying to break me and trying to make me say I allowed the test. But at the end of each day, they would come in and say we can't fit you in today. And I go, no problem. See you tomorrow. I still feel fantastic.
[00:16:55] Unknown:
I know because I had to have a small operation in COVID times, and my operation was planned for the Friday. And I had a phone call in the morning because you're not gonna do a COVID test. It's been moved till Monday. And like you, I was isolated. But horrifically, actually, I when I woke up from my operation, I had a mask on.
[00:17:14] Unknown:
Oh my god. I know. I know. Well, the the people that came down to collect me because I was in a room on my own waiting for, like, 8 hours each day. And then when they finally decided that I would have the operation, the 2 nurses that came down to collect me had respirators with air fed masks and the packs on their butt.
[00:17:33] Unknown:
It's just crazy when you think about it now, isn't it?
[00:17:36] Unknown:
It is. But they, the surgeons were fantastic. They were they didn't give a shit. I had the operation under it was weird. It was kind of like it was like an epidural. They they they plunged this massive needle into my shoulder, and I watched it on the screen. They had a ultrasound ultrasound screen. And they were saying, like, well, those bits going up and down, they're your lungs, and that they're going in and out, that's your heart. And this is a big needle coming in towards those things. Then they squirted this like it was a bit like Novocaine, I suppose. You know, my whole arm went numb. And they did the operation, under local anesthetic, which was amazing.
Had loads of screws and plates and things put in my arm. And, but for 24 hours afterwards, my arm was paralyzed. And I thought, oh my god, they fucked someone up here, and I'm absolutely paralyzed me. And I spent 24 hours looking at my thumb, willing it to move. But eventually, this, nerve cany type stuff, wore off and, back to 100% mobility again now. So well done, those guys. They were very good. Interestingly, the pharmacist came in to see me to talk about pain relief. And he said, what are you using for pain relief? And I said, DMSO. You have you heard of DMSO?
[00:19:11] Unknown:
No.
[00:19:12] Unknown:
Alright. It's a it's, it's a fantastic stuff. It's, it's it's a byproduct for wood pulping. And it's like dimethylsulfide or something. That's the name of it. And, it's very good for pain relief. I mean, you just rub it on. But the thing is that it it penetrates your skin so rapidly that because the the sulfur side of it is what gives garlic its garlic taste. So garlic's high in sulfur and that's why it tastes of garlic. And this has got high sulfur content. And so as soon as you rub it on your elbow, you taste garlic in your mouth because it goes straight into blood. But it's brilliant for pain relief. And I'd said to this pharmacist, I'm gonna use, DMSO.
Anyway, okay. That's no problem. And he told me he gave me some websites that give me more information about DMSO. So that was I didn't expect that from Oh, no. They didn't use you for advice like that. No. So that was great. He also gave me a big bottle of morphine, which I thought might come in handy. Definitely. Fan of the situation. So still got it squirreled away somewhere.
[00:20:22] Unknown:
You gotta save these things, haven't you? I mean, I get a monthly prescription for diazepam, which I used to take occasionally just for, like, restless legs when it was really bad. But I don't cancel that repeat prescription because I'm like you stashing it all up. And I think, you know, if the shit hits the fan one day and we get into, like, COVID times and we're, like, in the middle of nowhere, Whatever dire situation, I could sedate someone to perform an operation.
[00:20:51] Unknown:
Not not only that, you've got that's a marvelous barter I item as well. Yes. You know? Now this this comes on to what we were talking about in the preamble, about addictions, you know? I decided a long time ago to try to reduce all of my addictions, Because the problem is, in a shit at the fan situation, addictions make you go to stupid places and do stupid things with stupid people, you know. You will put yourself in danger, and you'll put your family in danger to get hold of whatever you're addicted to. So, and also, I just don't like I don't like being out of control.
I don't like my you know, not having control over my thoughts and my body. When I drank alcohol, I didn't I didn't really drink an awful lot. I I never very very rarely got drunk. I would drink 2 or 3 bottles of, real ale every day. But I had to drink it every day. I could not go a day without drinking it. And this used to wind me up. I go to the supermarket and I'd say to myself, right, today, Paul, we're gonna have a day with no alcohol. And I'd go, okay. And then I'd get 3 bottles off the shelf and get them in the jar. I could not do it. It was so bizarre. And I just thought, how the hell?
Why? Why can I not do this? You know? And then it was it was when I lost all the weight. I I I looked at different ways of losing weight. And a few years ago, 10 years ago or so, there was a thing called the paleo diet. And, I met I remember doing that for about a month till I did lose like a stone, and I thought, oh, that worked. I'll look into the paleo diet. And when I looked into the paleo diet in 2018, it kinda morphed into the key the ketogenic diet. So, so I thought, right, that's it. I'm gonna do the ketogenic diet. I'm gonna do it for 30 days and see if I can keep it up. And, like, on page 1, no alcohol. So I thought so I thought, okay. So I thought, well, I'm not giving up alcohol. I'm on a diet.
And that one thought made it very, very easy for me. I didn't buy any alcohol for for a month. You know? And, I well, I did buy some alcohol, actually. I bought 3 of my favorite beers, and I put them on the shelf. And I thought on the end of the month, I'm gonna drink them. And when I got to the end of the month, I didn't want them.
[00:23:26] Unknown:
Wow. I'm listening to this because I desperately wanna give up drinking wine. I say this every week.
[00:23:32] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, you know, it was and and then I thought to myself, well, I I don't wanna be the guy who doesn't drink. Do you know what I mean? So I thought, you know, I've done a month without alcohol. I'm sure I can have a healthy relationship with alcohol and just maybe not drink at home. And then, you know, if a friend comes around, I've seen for ages, we can go down the pub and have a couple of pints and put the water right. But whilst I have that option on the table, I craved it like crazy. I would drive home every night and drive past the shop that sold alcohol, and I had to, like, physically turn the wheel of the car away from turning into that shop because I I it was horrible. And I didn't really drink any alcohol, but it was on my mind all the time. Yeah. Even more than even more than when I drank alcohol.
So I did a favor for a friend and she said, oh, thanks for that. I'll take you down the pub and buy you a pint. So I went down and I had a pint of cider. And honestly, it was like I had 10 pints. She had to help me out at the pub. And I had the worst that I could have in the morning after 1 pint of cider. And I just said, you know what? That's it. I'm not drinking ever again. And as soon as I made that decision, all cravings went away and I just I haven't drunk since. So I've done the same with coffee now. I've got rid of coffee because I was drinking far too much coffee in a day and, that was quite difficult.
[00:25:01] Unknown:
More difficult than alcohol?
[00:25:03] Unknown:
Physically it was. I had the worst headache I can imagine for 9 days. Wow. And then and and then I thought, do you know what? I can't get because I did it as a 30 day challenge again. I thought, I'll just give up the 30 days to reset my body a bit, you know. But then I thought, fucking hell. If it does that to your body that can give you a headache for 9 days, what the hell is it doing to me when I'm drinking it? You know? Yeah. So, I have gone back to drinking coffee, but very, very rarely. Maybe once every 2 weeks or something, me and my wife might go out into town and we'll have a proper coffee somewhere, not instant coffee. I was drinking like 15 cups of instant coffee a day. You know, when you sit at a desk all day, the coffee's just there and you just drink loads of it. So, yeah, I've got out of that habit. The biggest one I struggle with still, the biggest addiction that I've always struggled with and I still struggle with to this day is sugar.
[00:26:05] Unknown:
That is the most addictive substance on the planet, I think. I was interested you say that actually because my 11 year old, he is just, oh, he's a chocoholic. No no doubt. And he's hunting around. What can I have to eat? Have you not bought any chocolate? And I'm like, oh, there's Kit Kats. No. No. And he's not been very well the last couple of days. So he wanted a pancake because I he knows I'll put chocolate in it. But it's like my other half just said, you would have been better off just giving him a tablespoon of Nutella to eat because he's just after that chocolate fix.
And we tried to give up the sugar fix all about 3 years ago, and he was hanging off the cupboards literally. And we succeeded for a while, but, unfortunately, his dad wasn't so compliant when he went to his dad, and it all kind of fizzled out. But because not just well, the whole sugar thing, I think if you can give up that, well, you get rid of that taste and you might explore in eating other things. You know?
[00:26:58] Unknown:
That's where where we at. Well, the funny thing was when I gave up when I gave up the alcohol because I was drinking beer. I wasn't drinking spirits, and I've never really been a wine drinker. I was just drinking real ale. And when I when I tried it again, when I after I'd given up for 30 days, it tasted so sickly and sweet to me because I hadn't really, because on the ketogenic diet, you're on virtually zero sugar diet. And and it it kind of occurred to me because beer's only got like 3%, maybe 5% at most alcohol it. So I think I was more addicted to the sugar in the beer than I was to the alcohol in the beer.
[00:27:39] Unknown:
Right. That's interesting.
[00:27:40] Unknown:
And when I when I broke that sugar addiction, I didn't want the I didn't want the beer anymore. It's only since my accident when I couldn't exercise, and I and I also I wouldn't say I I went into a depression. I kinda went into an apathy, you know. I just couldn't I just couldn't be arsed. You know? I was hurting, and I was I was just so disappointed that I didn't do the 30 days. And, I mean, I suppose, exercise is an addiction as well, and I was obviously, doing a lot of training for the 30 triathlons.
[00:28:20] Unknown:
People say that, and I would sorry. I was talking I would like to have that addiction to exercise. I don't get that. Join the gym. Go go a couple of times. That's it.
[00:28:30] Unknown:
Yeah. No. You have to find a an exercise. I mean, I got addicted to swimming. I was swimming every day right throughout the year. I hate running. I do a lot of running challenges just because it is a challenge. Just running down the road is a such a challenge. Do you know what I mean? I've done lots of marathons and ultra marathons and that sort of stuff, and I've never ever found this running high that people talk about. It's just a having done a run feels quite good. You know, you get back, you've had a shower, and you think, oh, great. You know, I've done that. I don't have to do that again today. But running, is awful.
It's very good for you. Despite what people say, the research shows that people who run have got, better knees. They don't wear out through running. You know, you do actually have strong the problem with, with knees and, joints like that is that, you know, you need muscular you need muscles around your skeleton to support them. Our lifestyle that we live these days, we never build that muscle around to support your needs. So by building up muscle, you actually make your bones stronger by building up muscle because the muscles cling to the bone.
And if you if you and if you're a bodybuilder and you and your body didn't build your bone as well, you would rip your muscles straight off the bone. Do you know what I mean? So Right. But by doing any sort of exercise, you don't only build muscle, but you build bone and you make build much stronger bones. And your joints get better because they're better supported by more muscle. So running, actually, although I hate it, is very good for you, I believe. Swimming is very good. Swimming is very good, mentally.
You know, it's an incredibly you can't think of anything else when you're swimming. When you're running, you think of anything else than other than running. I mean, you don't wanna think about the bike. You try and think about anything else. With swimming, you can't think of anything. It's like it's like being in a, you know, one of these tanks where they deprive you of all senses. You know, you you're weightless. You can't really hear anything, you know, apart from gurgling past your ears. You can't talk to anybody. You can't smoke. That's good. So, yeah. I think swimming is one of the best exercises for, for your mental health.
Definitely.
[00:31:16] Unknown:
I found it boring personally, but maybe that's because it's in a swimming pool. But then if I'm if I'm in the sea, I'm worried that I'm gonna drown or I'm gonna get bitten by something or eaten by a shark.
[00:31:28] Unknown:
Well, funny funny you should say that. When I was training for the 30 triathlons, I did a challenge. I I I did a 30 day challenge in January of 2022 where I ran to a beach, swam, and ran home every day of of January. And I was working in Truro one day, and I thought, oh, bloody. I haven't swam today. I've gotta swim. How am I gonna do that? So I thought, well, I'll run from Truro to Malpas, and then I could swim off the pontoon at Malpass. You're not allowed to, but, you know, most of the things I do in life, I'm not allowed to. So, I I dove in off this, pontoon, and I swam out to the center of the river.
And I felt something bite my foot. And I thought, what the hell is that? I can't I can't have been. I must have kicked something, kicked a twig in the water or something like that. But then it bit me again and I thought, fucking out. So I spun around and it was a little Jack Russell dog. Oh, wow.
[00:32:27] Unknown:
Better than a shark. That's it.
[00:32:29] Unknown:
That had seen me dive in off the pontoon and had run down the pontoon and dived off after me and swam after me and then discovered he wasn't actually very good at swimming. So he was basically saying help, I'm drowning. So I had I had to get this little dog and swim to the shore and give him back to his owner and then run back to Truro kind of chuckling to myself. Yeah. Now the other thing is yeah. You do as you do, you do come across a lot of, a lot of, jellyfish when you're swimming in the sea. And when I first started swimming, I used to avoid them, you know. But then one day I thought, you know, I wonder how bad it is to be stumped by jellyfish.
And so we get a lot of these, compass jellyfish. And so I just swam into 1, you know, and it was no worse than stinging nettles, really. Do you know what I mean? So, so now I don't avoid them anymore. I just swim into them.
[00:33:30] Unknown:
Oh my god. You are crazy. There's no doubt about it.
[00:33:36] Unknown:
Well, you know, they are, well, it's it's not yeah. But really, I mean, you need to swim in the sea. Swimming in the swimming pool is is is is, you know, I don't know. It's, swimming in the sea is just spectacular. Every day I go in, it doesn't matter what the weather is. And I don't I'm not going in at the moment because I've got a new job, and it takes up a lot of my time. And I still, still running my business as well. So when I finish my job, I have to go into Falmouth, do my business as well. So at the moment, I'm not really doing any exercise. So I'm feeling a bit, lost at the moment, but I will get back into something.
[00:34:17] Unknown:
You don't fancy yoga then? Because that's my sort of exercise. Just I don't do it. Alright. But just general changes. Experience.
[00:34:26] Unknown:
I had a weird experience with yoga. I was I was doing a 30 day challenge for a a charity, a local charity, a few years ago, and where I ran a 5 k. I ran 5 k every day for 30 days for a little charity. And, I was a member of the gym at the time, and they do lots of well, if you're a member of the gym, you get all the classes for free. You know, that's all in the price. So, I noticed that they did yoga, and I thought, perhaps I could do with some stretching. Do you know what I mean? I'm running every day. I'm not really doing any stretching, so perhaps I'll do a bit of yoga. So I did one lesson of yoga, and that was great. It was fantastic. And then at the end of it, we all had to lie on our backs and just close our eyes and kind of go off into a trance sort of thing while she had some mystical music playing.
And, I was just lying there kind of zoning out, and suddenly, she started massaging me head and face. I thought, what what the hell is going on?
[00:35:26] Unknown:
Had you fallen asleep?
[00:35:29] Unknown:
Yeah. I will. You know, it's like it's it's it's kind of like, it's nice. You know? But, yeah, I I I prefer things I can get hurt.
[00:35:40] Unknown:
It sounds like it. Yeah. So what about all these other challenges? Because I I had to laugh because when I saw you I don't I think it was last summer. And, I had my lad with me in the car, and we're talking about the Rubik's cube, how he's trying to solve that. And you just got the Rubik's cube, and you're like, this is how you do it.
[00:35:57] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:35:58] Unknown:
How long did that take you to solve?
[00:36:01] Unknown:
33 days, it took me. And that well, I kinda limited myself a little. It's, because that's addictive My plan messing around with that. It is. Yeah. I still do the Rubik's cube regularly because it's it is addictive. And it's kind of like a because you don't in fact, if you think about it when you do it, I can't do it. So if I try to explain to somebody what I'm doing, I get I can't remember how to do it. I kind of have to do it subconsciously. It's a it's a muscle memory thing more than a memory thing. And so it's almost like a it's almost like a mantra.
When you're doing it, you kind of don't think of anything else. It's like it's almost like a yogic mantra doing this Rubik's cube. This came about because I wanted to learn how to do, TIG welding. I'm a welder. I do welding. And I'd I'd never done TIG welding. It's a different discipline of welding. It's very, very difficult. And I'd always told myself, oh, it's not too difficult. And then I thought one day, well, you know, I know people who do TIG welding and they're not the most intelligent people in the world. I'm sure I could do TIG welding too. And I just read this book by this guy who, he had, like this book, it had, like, a 100 different challenges in it to just, get yourself out of a rut sort of thing. You just challenge yourself to something each day. And one of them was learn the Rubik's cube. So I thought, if I can learn the Rubik's cube, I can learn double tick weld.
So, I just took it a layer at a time to a Rubik's cube, a normal Rubik's cube, because I've got lots of them now, some bigger ones, some smaller ones. It's 3 layers. You got you know, so I just thought I'm gonna learn how to do the top layer, and I'm not gonna bother with the second layer and the third layer. I'm just gonna do the top layer until I can do it without thinking. So I did nothing but solving the first layer for a whole day. And then on 2nd day, I learned how to do the 2nd layer. So then I was doing the 1st layer and the 2nd layer
[00:38:01] Unknown:
all day for Was you watching, like, YouTube clips how to do this as well? Was it just like, right. I've gotta figure it figure this out by myself?
[00:38:10] Unknown:
No. I watched, I just watched 1 guy on YouTube. I can't remember his name now, but he just took it's basically algorithms. So if you've got 1 if you've got a square here and you wanna get it to there, you do this algorithm over and over again, and then it will eventually get there. And so, basically, you just learn these algorithms for each layer. And, yeah. And within 3 days, I was able to do the Rubik's cube. And then, pretty regularly, you know, I'd cock it up now and again, but pretty regularly. Nine times out of 10, I could solve the Rubik's cube for that. You know?
[00:38:42] Unknown:
And when people do that, it is one of those things when they just stand there with a Rubik's cube and they go done. And you're like, crikey. You are clever.
[00:38:52] Unknown:
Because Yeah. No. We've got enough
[00:38:54] Unknown:
Well, we got this Rubik's cube for him for Christmas. And kids being kids, before I'd known it, he'd got an app on my phone that you basically put in the position of your Rubik's cube, and it tells you what to do next to solve it. And it's like you've defeated the whole object. Yeah. And then he didn't wanna learn to progress then. It was like, no. I can do it just with the app. And I was like, oh, come on. You're having so much fun. And I was wasting time with it, and I found a couple of YouTube videos. And, I mean, they must have had so many people in stitches at the end of it because it was all lies.
And you sit there, like, turn right 3 times down twice and keep repeating this. And after 20 minutes, you're like, I think they've had me here. Nothing. Yeah. I'm still unresolved, and I always say I'm gonna learn that one day.
[00:39:42] Unknown:
Yeah. No. It's not it's not it's it's got nothing to do with intelligence. It's got nothing it's basically a handful of algorithms that you learn just by repeating them over and over and over again for a day, which is what I did. And then till it becomes second nature. And then, and then it's it's it kind of like it's not the solving of it now that's the thing. It's that sort of meditative mantra type thing while you're doing that. You're not really thinking of anything else. So it's quite a nice stress reliever, really, just to get
[00:40:17] Unknown:
you out of your head a little bit. You know? I'm gonna pop mine in my bag, actually. The amount of times I'm sat in the car for 5 minutes, I think, yeah, I could do that. Perhaps perhaps we could have an, yeah, an interactive interview 1 night, Paul, and you can guide people through it. Get your Rubik's cube to join in.
[00:40:36] Unknown:
Just just just do the top layer. Just do the top layer. Don't worry about anything else. Just do the top layer until you can do that every time without fail, and then it's not such a big there's loads of things that I've tried and failed at. You know, I have tried repeatedly to learn how to unicycle. And I cannot I just cannot do it. It's it's impossible.
[00:41:00] Unknown:
I've I've I've I've I've got I got here in the room. I don't know. But why would you want to unicycle is just to say I can do it? Because you wouldn't go out on a unicycle. Well, you might. You being you. I'm just gonna nip into town on a unicycle.
[00:41:16] Unknown:
Have a look on YouTube. There is a young lad who was only, like, 19 when he set off, and he's unicycled around the world.
[00:41:25] Unknown:
Oh my days. Nothing surprises me.
[00:41:28] Unknown:
You know what I mean? So you can do my latest ridiculous thing is at the age of 58, having never ridden a motorcycle in my life, I've now bought myself a motorcycle.
[00:41:40] Unknown:
Do you think I'm having a midlife crisis? Well, I think you have been for a few years, to be fair.
[00:41:45] Unknown:
Oh, wow. In the midlife crisis since I was a teen.
[00:41:49] Unknown:
So wow. So will you take lessons for that,
[00:41:55] Unknown:
Or are you just gonna jump on yourself and teach yourself? No. No. No. You have to well, I am gonna kinda teach myself in my field. I'm just gonna drive it around the field and see if I can pick it up. But you have to do something called a CBT Mhmm. With a compulsory training something or other. So you have to do a CBT before you can go out on the road. So I'm I've booked in to do that. You don't do it on your we can do it on your motorcycle, cycle, but it's difficult getting it there if you're not allowed to ride it. Mhmm. You know what I mean? So you have to trailer it there or something. But I'm gonna do it on the on the so I'm gonna do my CVT. And then and the reason why I did that, I've wanted a motorcycle for a long time, but I didn't really have a good reason. The work that I do, I used to start work at 8 o'clock in the morning.
And getting to work into Truro, at 8 o'clock in the morning is not too bad. I could get there in 15 minutes, normally. But now they've changed my hours to starting at 9 o'clock, and now it takes me 50 minutes to get to work. So I could be at work I could be at work for an hour, but I know I'm not. I'm stuck in my car for an hour. So so I thought, I know. I see this motor place going past me. I think, you asked as long as I'm gonna have a go. So I bought myself a motorbike. Yes. So I'm now going to be Like a motorcyclist.
Yes. Unfortunately, you see, most men, they have a, a mechanism for stopping them doing stupid things, like buying a motorbike, which is called a wife. They normally say, yeah. That's fantastic. You're not you're not having a motorbike. Do you know what I mean? Mhmm. Unfortunately, I've got a wife who's as mental as I am. And and I show her things online. I go, wow. Look at this motorbike. It's built in 1983, and it's tax exempt and MOT exempt, and it hasn't got an electric start or any electrics really. It's got no indicators and no speedo. And, it's kick start, and, it looks like the sort of thing that Steve McQueen would jump over a fence in The Great Escape. And, she says and it's rusty. It's rusty as hell. And, it looks like it's just been pulled out of the harbor.
And she says, wow, that's fantastic. Let's get it.
[00:44:15] Unknown:
So she wants to go out riding on it with you then?
[00:44:19] Unknown:
Probably not. She's we've got dogs, and, we've got 3 well, we've got 3 dogs now because we're looking after mother in law's dog while she's in hospital. So unless we got motorbike and sidecars. But this is just for me to get into and when I when I go to Russia, I'm gonna because I'm a welder, I'm gonna build a framework on the back of my motorhome and I'm gonna put my motorbike on the back. So if I break down, at least I'm not stuck. I can jump on the motorbike and get to the nearest town or something. Tell me.
[00:44:48] Unknown:
So So perhaps your aim should be for next year then to do the Martin Jennings run.
[00:44:53] Unknown:
Yep. Well, that's another thing, you see. The the impetus to look swim was to do this, swim across the river Fowl. And I'd wanted to do it for 30 years, and I couldn't because I couldn't swim. And, and I've always wanted to do the Martin Jennings run because I see it go right past my house. Well, I haven't got a house. I haven't had a house for 20 years. Right past my field. And, I saw it this year, and I thought I wanna do that. So, that was another kind of reason to buy the bike because I'm gonna do the Martin Jennings run next year.
[00:45:28] Unknown:
Wow. I'll see you past my house then because it goes right past my house, and it's it's massive, isn't it? And just the whole he's not buried far from he's probably, what, about 200 yards up the road in the cemetery, Martin Jennings. And Oh, right. Yeah. It's like a family affair, and it's lovely to see. They all meet in Beacon Square, and they all stop, and they do a minute silence. And then they're all, like, queuing up the road, so we literally sit out there for an hour that day, deck chairs in the drive. It's it's lovely. I think I saw a video you put up with it. Yeah. Yeah. They just go on and on, and it's like, when are they ever gonna stop? So many of them. I know. It's fantastic.
Yeah. So I might be a part of that. Yeah? Well, well, you can stop by my house, Paul, and, I'll give you a quick drink.
[00:46:13] Unknown:
Yeah. I only drink water these days. Well, that's good. Cheap and cheerful. And I I make my own water. Not I don't drink urine, obviously. I drink, I I have I built a water filter, and I only drink filtered water because god knows what the hell they put in the water.
[00:46:30] Unknown:
You built your own. Well, that must have saved you a bit because I've just recently spent about £150 on one of these water go to water or something. I don't know. Plumbed in under my sink anyway. The Bear Grylls 1. Yeah.
[00:46:44] Unknown:
Yeah. So, well, I base I don't know if you've heard of a Berkey water filter. Yep. They're gravity fed. They so they don't need any electricity because I'm off grid, so I haven't really got that much electricity to throw about. So, I had to build something that was off grid. And so I I looked at the Berkey's, and I wanted a big Berkey, which is 25 liters. And they're, like, nearly £600,
[00:47:07] Unknown:
you know? Yeah. Not cheap.
[00:47:09] Unknown:
So so I thought I could build one of those. So I built 1, and I also, went, to the stand in the park in Truro. And we had a workshop there. And I we had, like, 10 of us build them. And I built them you know, got 10 people building their own water filters. And, we can build a big Berkey, basically, for about £60, so a 10th of the price. Yeah. Just a slight difference. Yeah. So I use that every day. All of our water goes through that. Bogs for us, for everything. And it is I mean, the water that I put in the top is, compared to the water that comes out, the color change is unreal.
It's like, you know, it's so clear the water that comes out. And it also takes fluoride out. I don't think we've got fluoride. We might have trace amounts of fluoride It's coming soon, isn't it? Really, really. Yeah. Not to me, it ain't. So, the art the recurring cost of this of this water filter is that, they advise you to change the filter elements once a year. I could probably get away with 2 or 3 years because I we use such little water. You know, I prob we probably use less water in a day than somebody uses flushing the toilet twice. Right. So, we use very little water through it.
So but I I replace them every year because it costs like 42 quid. So 42 quid a year ain't too bad for perfectly clean water. On the food front, we're looking to we've we've just had our 1st Cornwall prepper meeting for 1st face to face. So we've we've had this, yeah, Facebook group going for a little while, and we've got over 200 members. But we had a meeting over at Tricky's in Red Roof, and, 20 people turned up. So that was good. And we've got a plan for the future for things. So I'm organizing a, a fishing a guided fishing day. So I'm gonna get, some local fishermen to take us out fishing, angling, you know, not on a fishing boat, fishing off the shore, and coastal foraging for crabs and lobsters and scallops and that sort of stuff.
Because, we're lucky here in Cornwall. We're surrounded by by coastline, and and, there's an abundance of food out there if you know how to get it. Luckily, most people don't know how to get it anymore. So, you know, despite what they say, you know, they say all the the the oceans are empty. They're not. So, yeah. I think, we're gonna supplement our diet with, fresh fish. And also, I found somebody who's got some land, who's got a rabbit problem. So, hopefully, we're gonna be going and doing a bit of shooting and get some rabbits as well.
[00:50:16] Unknown:
Wow. I couldn't do the whole deferring it, just skinny bit, whatever you call it.
[00:50:22] Unknown:
Well, we did a we, yeah, we organized a, a survival course last year over at Red Roof over at Scarier. There's a fantastic company called Survive and Revive, and they do these, survival courses. And we went and did a a rabbit course. So it taught you how to how to process a rabbit, and then we cooked it up in the forest and had a rabbit stew. Mhmm.
[00:50:45] Unknown:
Tasty. But when you're starving, anything is, isn't it? If you had to, you know, if we got to those times.
[00:50:53] Unknown:
Well, it's not only that. I just think even if because I eat mainly meat. I'm a mainly meat eater. I don't eat an awful lot of vegetables, to be honest. And even though I try to find the best quality meat I can find, you still don't know what the hell they're popping into this meat. Do you know what I mean? And it's not that they want to. I mean, a lot of these growers would rather not, but, you know, what with all these fake scares going around, like, we got a bird flu scare at the moment. You know, they're gonna vaccinate them against things, and you god knows what you're getting in this meat. So I just want to try and source my meat locally and from the wild as much as possible. So that is a kind of a goal for next year as well to start adding a lot more wild food into my diet.
And you don't even have to I mean, you can just walk along on a low tide and and pick up things, you know. We used to eat loads of stuff when we were kids, limpets and mussels and wrinkles and stuff, you know. Yeah. You can even get sconps in quite shallow water. You can just walk along and pick up scallops.
[00:52:04] Unknown:
Well, because Scallops are lovely. I know when we spoke more. I'm I'm not a big fish eater myself, but if it's desperate times, I suppose I'll eat anything. But, I know you've got a field. So do you grow your own vegetables as well?
[00:52:19] Unknown:
We don't because we don't own the field, and, we're just renting the field and at any time, and we've had this because we've lived off grid for 20 years, but we've never had our own piece of land. I just can't afford it in this country. And plus, it's such a gamble because you could save up and save up and buy a piece of land and then never get planning permission to do anything on it, and they kick you off your own piece of land, you know. So now you've got a useless piece of land. So we're just renting the piece of land, and I don't really want to invest too much in the land and then be kicked off it again. You know, it's happened, like, several times in our lifetime.
So that will happen when we go to Russia. Land is a lot more available in Russia, and, and they're more open to you being off grid over there. So, yeah. But what we're looking into is a thing called Kratky. Kratky is, k r a t k y, Kratky, hydroponics. Anybody who's looked into hydroponics, it's kind of like a, a science experiment. We've looked. It's my Okay. It's like a science experiment. But with this crack key hydroponics, it's, a lot less complicated. There's no pumps. There's no electricity and that sort of stuff. So it can be done off grid very easily. So we're looking into that because, basically then if we had to move we could take all our vegetables with us. They're not in the ground.
[00:53:52] Unknown:
But you don't if you don't eat much, I suppose there's well, there's not much need for it, is there?
[00:53:57] Unknown:
But if you don't get to make it more when you need them. Well, we do eat. So it's it's it's it's I'll tell you what it is. With this is something that's always annoyed me about the prepper movement and the survivalist movement is 90% of the people that are into the into prepping are into stuff. They're into kit. They're into, you know, stockpiling stuff. Physical stuff. The problem is with that is in with most of it, unless you know how to use that stuff, it's pretty useless. And, unless that stuff is actually with you at the time when the shit hits the fan, that stuff, you ain't got it. You ain't there. You ain't so all this stuff. Now I I'm I'm I think if there's ever a proper shit hit the fan situation like, you know, where lots of people, lots of the population die out, which I hope never happens, there's gonna be plenty of stuff just hanging around. You know? Mhmm.
Uh-uh. There's gonna be a lot more stuff and a lot less people. So I I I think that you're much better off stockpiling knowledge and skill because there's no point in having all this stuff hanging around if you don't know how to use it. So That would be a good logo for something, wouldn't it?
[00:55:18] Unknown:
Stockpile your knowledge and skills.
[00:55:20] Unknown:
Sorry. Carrie. Well, I what I always say what I always say is that knowledge trumps, stuff Mhmm. And skills skills trumps knowledge. Mhmm. So knowledge could could be reading about how to skin a rabbit. And you could read all the books and watch all the YouTube videos about how to skin a rabbit. But unless you skin a rabbit regularly, you ain't got the skills to do it, you know. And it's the same with anything. So even though we we don't eat an awful lot of vegetables, we're gonna grow some with this cracking method and then give it a go. Because when we do have to use that method, you know, in a shit in the pan situation, at least we'll know how to do it. All we have to do is upscale it. You know, if you can grow 10 carrots, you can grow a 1,000 carrots. You know?
So yeah. So we're gonna try the cracky method, have a little go at that over the next, in the spring. Don't it doesn't it's it's quite fascinating if you look it up. Basically, you you you choose a, a a vessel like a, big bucket or, it could be as small as a jar, like a big, like a gherkin jar or something like that. And you, fill it up with this, formula, which is made up of certain minerals. It sounds like it's made up of lots of chemicals. When you look at it, it's like lots of chemicals. You're not putting anything organic in there at all. It's all chemicals. And that worried me to start off with. But when I started talking to people, they said, well, it's not really chemicals.
It's more minerals. And that's what that's what a plant takes out of the soil is minerals, you know? So you're basically giving the plant the minerals that it needs. So what you do is you size the vessel to the type of plant you're growing. So if you're just growing a to a lettuce, you could have like a big jam jar. You fill it up with this stuff. You put your plant in the top when it's a little seedling, and it uses up the the the solution at the same speed as the, roots grow. So basically, as the solution goes down, the roots grow longer, they reach the solution. You end up with this oxygen rich area above the solution, which gives you the oxygen for the plant. And, by the time it runs out of the solution, you harvest the plant. So you never have to water it again. You only have to water it once.
You set it up and you leave it and then you harvest it. Oh, that does really, really interesting. Yeah. It sounds interesting. It it's very, very, low input and maximum yield, gardening. The problem with gardening is it's quite easy to put in more calories than you get out.
[00:58:01] Unknown:
Yeah. I can imagine.
[00:58:03] Unknown:
So, yeah. So we're looking into this cracking method. It's gonna be an experimental thing. So that along with, a bit of fishing and foraging and hunting. So that's what we're trying to do next year to try and just, give us a little bit more resilience in our food
[00:58:23] Unknown:
on the food front. Well, it sounds awesome, and we've got to wrap it up, Paul. That hour has flown by. Always does when I talk to you. You're just a wealth of knowledge. You should have a YouTube channel and, I don't know, create things because, it's wonderful to hear somebody that can set themselves challenges like that. You've inspired me anyway. But, any last words quickly, my friend?
[00:58:45] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, when it comes to things like Russia and and things like that, really don't listen to what they say on the BBC or write about in the, Daily Mail. It's go on. Find some channels on, on YouTube that where the Westerners are living in Russia and just listen to what they have to say. It's a fantastic place to go and live, and
[00:59:08] Unknown:
more and more people are moving there. It sounds fascinating, and you must come back and tell us all about it. Well, thank you so much, Paul. It's always it's always a wonderful conversation with you, and I wish you luck. And I'd like to follow your progress. Yeah. Definitely. So we will speak soon, my friend. And I'll see you on Saturday. Yes. See you at the rally on Saturday. Thank you, my darling, and I'll speak to you soon. You take care of yourself, Paul. Thank you. Bye. Take care. Bye. Well, that's that for this week. So I will be back the same time next week, and I hope you have an awesome week. Farmers rally this Saturday in Truro. Go to the Facebook page and have a look at times and stuff. See you soon.
Introduction and Guest Introduction
Paul's Upcoming Trip to Russia
Life in Russia and Moving Challenges
Paul's Personal Challenges and Adventures
Overcoming Addictions and Lifestyle Changes
Exercise and Mental Health
Learning New Skills: The Rubik's Cube
New Ventures: Motorcycling
Prepping and Self-Sufficiency
Hydroponics and Future Plans
