#102: Have you seen enough of my arse?!

Welcome to blind guys chat, where this guy, Orrin O'Neill.

Hello.

And this guy, Jan Bloom. Hello.

Talk about the a to z of life. Well, hello, ladies and gentlemen, and you are very welcome to episode 102 of Blind Guys Chat. Now, host wise, we are a little bit thin on the ground. Jan has taken the opportunity to go to Barcelona and celebrate with the Spanish. After winning the euros 2024, Brian Dalton is stuck high up in a roller coaster, unfortunately. Hopefully he gets down fairly soon. Blyne Gordon is not available because he's too busy laughing at the fact that England lost the euro 2024 final. And Mohammed, well, Mohammed, he's still looking for a girl, but luckily we do have Clodagh. She'll be along very soon. She's just cleaning the gutters of our house. And thankfully we do have a guest and luckily she stayed with us for the majority of the show. But just before we bring her on, I would just like to remind you that if you want to get in contact with us, the email is [email protected]. and if you did feel like giving us a donation to help us with the running costs of the podcast, that would be very much appreciated. You'll find a link in the show notes. Time for our guest for this week's show. She's so well known, actually, that a country actually named their city after her.

That's true.

And she also has a month in her name. So this is Sydney May. And you're. You're very welcome, Sydney, for the pure fame. So for those of you who do not know Sydney, Sydney was born in Venezuela in 1739, which is more or less 26. Let's say she was then brought up in Tasmania during the winter months and then she was kidnapped. Unfortunately, she had the misfortune of being kidnapped and brought to Brighton, where she has spent most of her life against her will. So, Sydney, you are very welcome to the show. And we met in Bristol a couple of months ago at an event about audio. Well, one of the topics was about audio description, but we'll talk about that. But you're very welcome. Are you speaking in Brighton this evening? And what is the weather like in Brighton?

I mean, it's not quite as hot as Venezuela, I would imagine, or is humid. Yeah, that was the best intro I think I've ever been given, by the way. I love it.

None of it was true, of course.

But hey, no, sadly, as much as I that counts, I am working on my Spanish. I wish I was born in a spanish country and moved over here and was bilingual.

That'd be cool.

Yeah. Still working on it. Yes, it's been a very warm, warm weekend over here in the south east of England.

And are you all still down in the dumps because England didn't win the euro soccer championship last week?

I'm over it. I didn't expect us to win it.

Oh really?

I mean, Spain were a better.

God, we didn't lose the house.

Yeah, Spain were better. They were always, they were always going to win. I think I was fully, I mean, I did take the Monday off work in kind of preparation for Sunday night celebration.

Oh, really?

Did you?

That was optimistic and very forward thinking.

It really was. I was just, you know. Well, I thought it might be a fun Sunday night at the pub anyway, and as it happened, I was home at eleven and could quite easily have worked.

Everybody was redrawning their sorrows.

Were they every. Well, a little bit. But also, yeah, everyone was kind of, you know, everyone gets carried away about english football. Everyone's always like, oh, it's coming home and it never does.

But I do think you jinx it with all this it's coming home thing because I think if you stopped with that you'd have a much better chance, you know?

But also I hate that song. Yeah, football's coming. Sorry, football has been here the whole time. We have one of the biggest. Yeah, football's coming home. No, I've always hated that song. I'm like, what you mean is the trophy's coming home. Football has not gone anywhere. We've got a brilliant, we've got brilliant football leagues in this country.

I think the worst example of that song was when you were coming out of COVID and, and the conservatives were given this press conference about football was going to be starting back, the league was going to start back and it was like, football's coming home. No, just change. Like football is starting again.

Maybe can we just, can we just get over that? And it just needs updating, doesn't it? It needs updating every few years. At first it was 30 years of hurt, now we're up to 50 years of hurt.

It's just getting too depressing at this time.

Edge, come on. Yeah.

Let's run through what you do.

Don't I do?

You are a musician and you are a comedian and. Yes, and you're. Yeah, and you're also an inspirational speaker. And that's how we met in Bristol because we were together. We were both invited to attend a seminar on.

It was great because the whole day was about trying to make television more accessible, yeah, to people with vision impairments. But it was just the whole. The whole day, every single bit of it, I found completely amazing. And I was only there.

It was a beautiful day.

I was there as a helper monkey.

But how did you get. How did you get asked to go to that event in Bristol?

I have known Shelley, I've known Shelley Boden for many years. So we met when I first started working for a local sight loss charity based in Brighton, where I am. And Shelley has a daughter who is a client of that charity. But Shelley is also an access consultant herself. She's very interested in all that. And she and I got talking very early on and she kind of enlisted me to do freelance website testing with her. Well, not just websites. We did some work at a couple of local museums. Just about that subject that. That whole day in Bristol was about, about making things accessible.

Let's just spool forward into that a little bit, because it kind of does tie in a little bit with Bristol, which is, in terms of your inspirational speaking, because you were recently talking, you gave two seminars, I believe, in site village in Birmingham.

I did.

What did you speak about?

Well, so that was to do more with my day job.

Tell us more about your day job.

Yeah. So the Bristol thing, that was me being a freelancer, basically, the work I do with Shelley is the freelancer user testing. I'd love to be doing that all the time, but there's not enough of it to pay Brighton rent. So my day job, I work for Thomas Pocklington Trust. They're a national sight loss charity, mostly across England. And so they're based in London. So I work in technology. The main part of my job is producing kind of web based resources about technology. So I do a lot of writing about technology, but another part of my job is representing the charity at the site village events. So we tend to go. We don't go to all of them. We didn't go to, I think it was in Blackpool in April.

It was, yeah, for the first time, I think.

But we will be going to the. All of the rest of them. So I was there representing TPT on the stall, talking to people, and along with that was the chance to do seminars. So I did one on each day. And they were about technology. They were mostly. I focused on some specialist apps and a bit of cool AI, a bit of generative AI. I showed people how you can create a video using AI.

Oh, really?

And on the first day, it was really funny, because the first day I thought, right, the exhibition room is just full of people. They're all wandering around the stalls, they're chatting to people, they're looking at all the cool tech. I was like, nobody's going to want to break away from this and go to a seminar. Like, why would they? And then I went and found my room and I walked into an absolutely packed room just waiting for me to arrive. So that was cool. And that happened on both days. I had about 30 people, basically filled the seminar room, really keen to hear about technology and AI. So, yeah, that was awesome.

Well, if we had been there, we would have been at your seminar for sure, Sydney.

Well, maybe you would have learned something. I don't know.

I think we would have.

What kind of things were you talking about then, on the day?

So I just did little demos of things like seeing Aih and just the. I showed them the different ways of reading text. So you've got like the instant text or the taking a photo of a whole page. Kind of chatted a little bit about the different, different occasions where you would use those different modes. And then I just demoed be my. Be my AI, which I think has been pretty life changing, really, the depth of description you can get from images. And I demoed this by taking a picture of my view from the front of the room. And I had to kind of caveat it with, I wish not to offend anybody who it describes in the. In the photo.

Oh, no, that's so funny.

And I kind of had to add the caveat of, you know, this is AI, it makes mistakes. I'm very sorry if it offends anybody. And, yeah, on the first day, it did misgender a long haired man as a woman. Oh, no.

Oh, dear.

He was fine with it. It's good humour, because I did warn that it does that. I mean, it calls me a four year old boy and that's because I've got short hair. So.

Sydney, you do not look like a four year old boy.

Thank you. Well, seeing AI thinks I do. You know, the facial recognition thing of seeing AI where it guesses your age, but it's not.

Yeah, I must do that to see what it says. But no, I don't know if you've ever seen the AI that generates images and it can be completely bananas. It can be three legs and have your head bent.

I mean, it'll give you, hopefully, what you asked for. So the second part of my seminar was to demonstrate one of the platforms I've discovered called invideo.

Give me an example of what you've.

So the example. So I asked people to suggest things. So on the Monday, this was two weeks ago, this was the day after the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. So one of the, one of the young people said, give me highlights of the British Grand Prix and Silverstone. So I asked for that. They asked for the voice of Mary Walker because that was appropriate. That didn't have work. It wasn't Barry Walker's voice, but it was a good sort of minute or so video talking about what had happened at the british grand prix the day before.

Brilliant.

And as far as I know, the visuals come out quite well, too. And it's just. It's a bit. It's a bit of fun. You have to pay to get rid of watermarks and stuff, but it's really interesting what it comes up with.

So.

Brilliant.

So I'd obviously, if the. If the rooms were jam packed, you obviously everything went well.

And something that did surprise me, not that I cast aspersions or make assumptions, there was a large majority of kind of the older generation really interested in this technology, really. And particularly kind of older, older, partially sighted people who were really interested in how technology could help them.

That's great to hear.

Yeah, I thought it's a great thing. It's a really good thing. And I had a few chats with people afterwards and definitely, you know, older people who maybe have lost their sight later in life who are looking for solutions and ways to make their lives easier, which. Yeah, I thought, great.

Fantastic.

Technology is not just for young people anymore.

No, it's absolutely not.

No.

And did you get an opportunity as well to look around site village? Did anything pop up, spark your interest?

So the. I saw the. We walked.

Yes, we've seen this. Yeah.

Yeah. Have you. Have you seen the new one last November?

Last November we saw. So I'm not sure. Was that the latest one?

That was the new one.

Was it?

It was like a hoover handle or something?

It was like one of those, yeah, the first one was very chunky. The new, the type two is much more similar to a standard cane handle. Much nice. So that's cool.

And what's your feeling about it?

I don't think I would get it, but I mean, I'm also waiting for a guide dog better than you.

I didn't know that.

Oh, yeah. I'm on the list.

And what's the waiting list like over there?

Well, I am two years and a month in.

Oh, wow.

They did say about two years. So.

Okay.

Yeah. It's bad down here. It was massively affected by Covid, they're still catching up. They stopped everything. Breeding, training, it all stopped.

Oh, God, that's busy.

Yeah.

And there's only one guide dog organization there, isn't there?

Yeah, pretty much, yeah. Yeah. So it's tough. I know a few people recently who've got them quite quickly in different areas. It's tough. I was broken hearted when I lost my first, so I needed time to grieve. I think a year was fine. Yeah, I needed. I needed to grieve. I couldn't have coped with being offered one straight away. So in a way it's been fine. It's okay. I'm now at the point that I can think about another dog and look forward to another dog.

Good.

That's good to hear.

Is the training for guide dogs in the UK, is it the same as it is here in Ireland? Is it residential or is it.

Yeah, they do. I didn't for my first. I was on quite a time constraint. I had quite a tumultuous day. I was offered a job and a dog all on the same day.

Buy a lottery ticket quick.

Yeah, it was a crazy day, so I had to kind of sort it all out. So because I was on a time kind of. Yeah, limited time. I did all my training at home and didn't do the residential thing. But, yes, that is what you're supposed to do here. The hotel thing. Is that what you did, oren?

No, it's not a hotel. So what happens is you go down to. The Irish Guide Dog Society is down in the south of Ireland in County Cork. So they have. That's where their kennels are and they have residential accommodation there. So the way they do it all in house. They do it all in house. Yes. You're walking, you're training with, in my case, Larry, in areas every day where he is very familiar with, but I wasn't. And I think it might be that way because, you know, to bring a dog into an environment that they're not familiar with to begin with and then also say, yes, but this person is now your person. You know, you've been with your trainer for so many months now, you know, but now you've got a new person and maybe that's just a bit too stressful. So I think the idea of the residential is they're walking around areas that they know very well. They're in a place, they're staying in a place they know very well. So really it's just trying to get used to the new person and it's.

Really cool, though, because it's all in the one center. You've got your own bedroom. The moment you meet the dog, he's with you the entire time then. And you're supposed to be there for three weeks. You did just a little over two weeks or in, I think, didn't you?

Yeah, I asked. Asked in the first couple of days. I asked her trainer, could we do it in two weeks? And he said, well, if you think you can go for it. And we did.

The way they do it here is you go to a hotel and it's. You're really an unfamiliar place for both of you, which.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. I don't know. I feel like. Because then you do all this training in a place that neither of you know, and then you have to come home and do all the training in your home.

Yeah, that's it, exactly.

And I think, to be honest, I think the way I did it was preferable.

Yeah.

Because straight away I'd started and I was training because I had a time constraint. I needed to start work on my routes to my new job and stuff. So for that whole two weeks, I was doing routes I was going to be doing in the future. And that, to me, makes far more sense than going into a hotel.

It does to me as well.

Learning all these routes that you're never going to use. Yeah.

It seems like a better use of resources that are quite scarce as it is. I'm sure they don't have that many people.

I will ask when the time comes if I can do it that way again, whether they'll say yes, I don't know, but, yeah. And also, when you do the hotel thing, they're training a few people. They train you in a batch and there's a lot of waiting around.

There is, yeah. You and your trainer are the trainer. To go off with somebody for 20 or 40 minutes and then you're around doing nothing, and then, yeah, you get to do.

Whereas I had my trainers undivided attention for two weeks and it was great. It was brilliant. Yeah. And after two weeks, I was qualified and ready to go to work.

But tell me, are you likely to. This is of interest because you're also a comedian and you have your own, you have a band. So are you planning. I don't want to move on to those in a moment, but are you planning to when you get your dog?

What?

Are you planning to bring your new God dog on stage with you?

It's a really tricky one. No, definitely not for the band.

Oh, right.

Okay.

Too loud, too loudly.

Too loud.

Yeah.

I mean, I wear earplugs. Given how sensitive dog's ears are. My first dog was quite. He was quite sensitive. He didn't really like a lot of noise.

Yeah.

No, I think. No, for music comedy, I've only been doing since not having a dog. This is quite new. My only worry with bringing a dog on stage is that he'll completely still focus. I know.

You're like, oh, look at the dog. And he'd be like, hello, I'm here.

Exactly as I think if the dog does something funnier than me.

It could be a little sidekick, though. It could be a prop part of your act. I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know because I haven't been doing comedy for long. It's been under a year. So the whole time I haven't had a dog, I did a course. I did an incomplete comedy course in 2020, just before lockdown happened, which is why it was incomplete. And I had my dog then. I didn't take him on stage, but he was there, you know, in the. In, during the course. And obviously that was very popular.

What steered you towards comedy?

People telling me for a long time that I should.

Yeah.

I think I just. I have a way of telling stories and I like to tell stories and you know what it's like Orin when you can't see. Just stuff happens. Yeah. And I feel like you two will get this. Like, I grew up in a family that we very much. We take the mick out of each other. We laugh at each other. People, my family are very ready to laugh at me if I do something stupid or something blind. I've been brought up to be human, to just to see the humor in things and to be able to, you know, and I always say growing up with a disability is a phenomenal lesson in the concept of, if you don't laugh, you'll cry.

Yeah.

Because stuff goes wrong.

Yeah.

Stuff just goes wrong. And life is harder for people who can't see. Your life is harder for anyone with disability, and you have to accept that.

But if you can laugh at yourself, I think it does make it a lot easier. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's. That's always been my choice. And just sometimes just ridiculous stuff has happened that do with your disability. And you're like, yeah, yeah, you got to laugh about this. And I've always been one for kind of writing a whole story for a Facebook post. People have been telling me to write a book for quite a few years as well, which I may do at some point, but really, what happened? A friend wanted to do a stand up comedy course. This was, again, beginning of 2020. Started doing it for fun. Never got our graduation gig because lockdown happened. And then last year, I decided to join Toastmasters, which is international speaking club, because I really wanted to do public speaking. I wanted to do serious public speaking, but they kept telling me I needed to do stand up comedy, and that kind of steered me back to it.

Yeah.

And then I finally did a complete course last year, completed it in November, did my first gig in November, and it's. Honestly, it has changed my life. Fantastic. That is not an exaggeration. It's not like I'm a famous comedian now, but I gig most weeks, sometimes two or three times in a week. That's amazing. Yeah. I think I've done about 35 gigs since November.

When you went on stage the first time, what was the feeling? Or rather, what was the feeling when you came off stage?

Yeah. So when I'm on stage, it's mostly kind of stories and observations from my life. It's a lot about my blindness, but not entirely about my blindness, because I don't want it to be the only thing about me.

Yeah.

You know, there's more to me because.

You'Re a person outside of that.

Exactly. But if I didn't acknowledge it, it would be like ignoring the elephant in the room. So my debut gig is on YouTube, and I start it by walking on the stage and facing the wrong way. And I hated it. For me, I was like, this is so cheesy, it was so cringe.

But everyone loved it.

Yeah, exactly. And I. And I did this and I walked on stage and I turned the wrong way. I warned the MC that I was going to do this, so he didn't try and correct me because that had happened in dress rehearsal. We did a little practice gig in a pub the week before, and the guy who led me on stage was like, no, no, no. This way. I'm like, no, you're ruining it. But to me, it was awful, but to the sighted crowd. And I just. And I faced the wrong way and I stood still for a second and I could hear, like, ripples of laughter going across the room as people. And you could almost feel people thinking, does she know? Is this an accident? Is this the act? And as they realized it's the act, the laughter just kind of ripples nervously across the venue. And I really milked it. And they say, you know, when I was doing the course, they said, what you want to do is get that first laugh as quickly as possible, and then you feel good, and then you're off. And by doing that, I got a laugh by not even saying anything.

Wow. And not many people would be able to do that, in fairness.

Well, yeah, I don't do it anymore. I milked it for a while. I left that as my opener for a while. And to me, it was so cringe, and I hated doing it until that time. And then I realized, yeah, okay, this works.

Yeah.

But, yeah, most. I try not to make it all about my blindness. I've got some good stuff in there about dating and dating apps, because there's a lot of material there, but, yeah, no, I just. And it's just, you just get such a buzz. Like, I'm used to being on stage, so I've been doing music for much longer. This is the first time I've been on stage solo. I've always been in bands. I'm not a singer, so I'm always with a band. So this is different.

That's really different.

Very different.

Because in a band, you're very much kind of protected, aren't you?

It's like, yeah, and I'm the bass player, so I'm looking out at the back. I'm not.

You're the cool cat. You know, that's the thing. Bass players are cool. They really are.

You can't argue bass player. And the Moppas are very cool.

That's true.

Yeah. We're the cool people that you don't realize are cool.

Oh, I don't know. Bass players and drummers are the ones that always get the attention, I think the romantic attention.

But it's the guitarist. Well, no, see, I'd say it's the guitarist and the singers that get. The ones that get laid. Do you know what?

I disagree, though.

That's interesting.

I don't know.

Well, I've been a bass player for a while, and I can say I think that's the truth.

Okay.

I've been a single bass player.

We should do a research study on it somehow take the fun out of the thing.

Yeah, well, maybe.

Tell me, have you. Have you had. You said you've done about 35 gigs.

Yeah.

Comedy gigs. Have you been. Has anyone heckled you yet, or have you, in the course that you were doing was that approach.

Oh, you'd have to work out how to deal with hecklers, right?

Yeah, yeah. It's approached, but not in a. You can't really teach how to respond to a heckler. I did a gig. I did a gig not long ago. Actually, only a couple of weeks ago, that was in the trickiest ones, I think, are a lot of these open mics are in kind of a separate room where you've got a function room where the only people in the room have come to see the comedy.

Okay.

Whereas I've done a couple of gigs like the one I did a couple of weeks ago, which is just in the main bar. So you've got people.

People basically want to drink, and you're just interrupting them their own chats kind of thing.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so I did this gig at quite a rough end of Brighton. Basically, it's a Thursday night, and you've got these standard group who've been in there drinking since 05:00 on a Thursday, and you're like, okay, this is clearly just what you do. And there was one guy there who just, you know, that one drunk guy who just can't stop himself. He thinks he's just as funny as everybody on stage. He's got a comment to make. Yeah. And his own wife was sitting there just going, shut up, shut up.

Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know.

I didn't make a show of me.

Jason, just go away.

And that.

That was probably the toughest woman can't see anything.

She doesn't even know you're there, Jason.

But I just. I just played to him and I was just like, yeah, you know what? Yeah. I just. He wasn't heckling me in a bad way. He was just trying to join in because he thought he was just as funny.

But you see, I think that's where a guide dog would come in. Brilliant. Because if you got a guide dog that. That was a german shepherd, then you would just go, Fido, kill. And they would just give, you know, give a kill, you know?

Yeah, I don't know. Don't know if they know that one.

That's true. I've been very lucky. I haven't had any really bad heckles. We did this kind of dress rehearsal before, the first ever gig, so really our first ever pub gig. And again, same situation, just a corner of a bar, and this really, really hammered woman kind of staggered in and started kind of laughing and. But she was a good heckler. She was like, oh, my God, you're amazing. I came off stage and she tried to just literally put coins in my hand, and I was like, no. Like, no. I let her buy me a drink. Yeah. And then she was heckling one of the guys on after me, kind of just standing there while they're already on stage going tell us a joke. I've never had anybody.

Don't invite Oren would. He'd be a pretty good heckler, wouldn't you, Orin?

Bring it on.

Well, I'd be like, I wouldn't be a hector. No, I don't believe. I think it's very tough to get up on stage on your own, so I don't think there's any. There's any need for any.

Okay, put it this way. When you're sitting on the couch in front of the television, watching something, maybe that's different.

It's easy to do that when you know they can't hear you.

Yeah, that's just me being grumpy. Yeah.

Yeah. Brave.

So brave.

Hiding behind the scene.

So the 35 gigs, have they all gone really well? Like, have you gone. Have you come off the stage yet? And I don't even know if this. I presume it happens with. With more professional. And I'm not calling you unprofessional or anything, but I presume if you've done a huge. A lot more gigs, there have to be some gigs that you think, God, that didn't really go well. Have you come to that stage or is everything been really good so far?

And, I mean, every. Every crowd is different, and so you could do the same set a million times, and it will be received differently depending on the crowd.

Really?

Isn't that weird that, like, there's a collective energy that happens? What is that?

Absolutely.

Very strange, isn't it?

But laughter's contagious, isn't it? So if you're in a room with people who are well up for a laugh, they're already up for a laughter. One person laughs and it's contagious. I actually. I had to. I had to comment on it. I did a gig, did an open mic last week, which is always a really nice gig, and I got my first snort.

That's a really good snap.

I had to acknowledge it. I know I got a proper. In the front row, a laugh, and then I had to go and I was like, I've been doing this since last November. And that was my first snorthenne.

But isn't it so do you find it weird or unusual? Like, the fact that you cannot. The fact that you cannot see sometimes? I like. I like to bring. I'm doing. I'm actually doing a speech this week, presentation. I like to bring some humor into it. And I was thinking about telling a joke at this speech today. I was actually thinking about doing it, but the reason I. Not the the full reason I do it because I think some, sometimes presentations and that can be extremely boring.

Yeah.

You know, and I like to bring a bit of humor in. I don't like to do a lot of prep and I kind of like to feel what people. But what, what I find one of the reasons I kind of bring the humor into it is to hear that giggle.

Yeah.

To know those people in the room.

And you can feel them.

Yeah, that's exactly. So you obviously get, you know, you obviously there are, you're doing this open mic, so you've got, what, ten, seven or 810 comedians going on in one night, would it be?

Sometimes more. So it's generally five minutes each. So, yeah, you might get six per half.

So you're kind of the only one that is going on stage. All the rest of them, I presume, are sighted. So they're looking at the people and they can point to somebody and say, you know, being funny or whatever. But for us and for you in particular, you've got to get that, that verbal kind of indication of. Yeah, yeah.

Audience interaction is harder. Yeah, that's, you know, that's something other comedians do that because you can't make.

Eye contact, I guess. So you can't pick somebody out from the crowd easily. Not easily, anyway.

No.

Unless you were to say, hey, mister snorter. Like, what's your name?

Well, exactly. Yeah. And I have found ways of doing it, but I think because I would love to try emceeing. But of course, a big part of MC ing is interacting with the crowd. That's something I can't really do. But. So there was, there was a gig a while ago where the MC was chatting to someone in the audience who was taking a lot of photos. And I did my whole facing the wrong way thing. And, and the way I break that is to say, you know, if you've all had a good look at my ass, I want to turn around now to make it really clear that I knew exactly what I was doing.

Yeah.

And when I did that joke at that gig, and I remembered she was chatting to this, this photographer who was, I can't remember what her name was, but then I turned around and I was like, did you get a good picture? And said her name? So there's ways of interacting with the audience.

Yeah.

If someone else has already kind of done it.

Kameer, we never asked your band name and what kind of music you play.

So, yeah, my band, I was just having a drink with my singer before coming home to do this podcast.

Lovely.

And she's always like, get the banding. Get the band in. So the band's name is torrid. Well, torrid. And then brackets a love affair. We have an album, it's on all the streaming services. The album is called Poems from Mars.

What kind of music? What are we talking about? Bluegrass? Classical? What are we talking about here?

Definitely not bluegrass. So I find this quite hard to describe. I was applying for a festival the other day and they were like, right, name three bands that you're similar to. And I'm like, this is really hard. So we're rock.

Yeah, right.

We are. We're very influenced. So Sarah, who's the singer, writes all the songs and we. We then kind of club together and embellish them, but she does the main bulk of the writing and she's very influenced by kind of post grunge nineties, post grunge queens of the Stone Age.

Yeah, good.

That kind of fit alison chains, but a little bit kind of prague. So I'd kind of say we have heavy guitars in the backing but very melodic vocals. We do three part harmonies, so. And it's female, female fronted, female lead, so it's very melodic vocals with some quite heavy backing. That sounds fab and a little bit proggy with. We'll throw a time change in. We'll miss a beat here and there.

Keep people on their toes.

Yeah, we don't being going.

So I met Sarah in 2018, so, yeah, we've known each other and she was just putting the band together in 2018, so what's that? Six years ago?

Six years ago, yeah.

We've had three drummers in that time.

Ooh.

That's the only change. So there's only four of us flaky drummers. So I'm on bass and back in vocals. We've got Sarah, who's the lead, and Adam, the guitarist. The three of us have stayed constant and then we had one drummer who didn't really get going and then he decided to go off and travel, basically. And then we had another drummer for a while. He's the one on the album and then he left us. So we're currently on our third drummer. Good drummers are really hard to find. It's the biggest challenge, I think. And so many good drummers are in multiple bands, which is what our original drummer, that was his problem.

So do you gig around all of the UK?

Oh, God, no. Mostly Brighton, couple of London gigs. The problem is we've all got day jobs.

Yeah.

You know, Adam, the guitarist, has got a young daughter. They both do kind of shift work. I'm a nine to fiver, so we've all got day jobs. We don't do this. Anticipating Wembley stardom. I mean, it'd be amazing. I don't think any of us would turn it down.

Yeah, but it's not what you're aiming for.

But you might turn it down if it happened to be clashing with a football game at the same time.

Oh, yeah, that's been a. That's been a problem. I did actually once turn down a gig with a different singer because I got tickets to an Arsenal FA cup final. He never asked me to play with him again, but it was worth it.

Have you been a football fan all your life or is this recent?

All my adult life, I grew up with an older brother, he became an arsenal fan and now I've definitely been to way more games than he has.

Wow.

And how do you find that experience? Because Jan and I have been talking about audio description, live audio description in football stadiums and during the euros. I don't know if you know, but they're on the euro app for every game in the. In the. In the language of the countries that were playing, so.

Oh, wow. I didn't know that.

Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, like, I could only hear it for the scottish game and for any time England were playing, but otherwise, like, if it was Germany and Austria, whatever, you either are getting it in German.

Yeah.

I feel like that wasn't very well publicized.

I put it like this. It was a brilliant concept, but the execution wasn't that good. But there were. Yeah. And there was a lot. I didn't make it. To make it a little bit more. To make it better. You took train the commentators a lot more on the audio description side of it, rather than. Because they were commentators.

Yeah.

Okay.

Given some train, it's a difficult animal if you're used to being a commentator where, you know, people are looking at the same thing as you're looking at to do it without that, it's got to be a huge challenge. Like, I find it hard enough to direct you down the street, Orin.

I was just listening to the radio commentary because that's all. Yeah. It's usually better people who can't see it.

So how do you manage in games and live games and stadiums if you go to.

Well, so it's a service they provide. So I think every team now in the Premier League, certainly you get your headset. Oh, which is linked. So you get your kind of. Your receiver, which is linked to a person in the stadium who's doing that commentary specifically for the visually impaired fans.

Wow, that's amazing.

It's brilliant. I mean, I've done it. It's. I mean, to be fair, it used to vary. For last season, it was the same two commentators every time. So in seasons gone by, it's been different. I think they're volunteers.

Wow.

I don't think they get paid. I think they're volunteers on the basis that, you know, they get in to watch the game.

Right. Okay.

So it did vary, but like I say, the last season, it's been the same two guys every time I went. And it was really, really good. They knew why they were there. So they clearly knew they were commentating for divisionally impaired fans. And it was extremely good. And, you know, my frustration sometimes even with the radio commentators who know people are just listening to it and they suddenly go off and start talking about the earlier game or something that happened five minutes ago. And it drives me mad if they're talking because I'm a football fan. And something I noticed.

Yeah.

Because when I was talking to. When I heard about this first was about handball in Germany.

Right. Was that in German, too?

It was in Germane.

Who was talking to me about it was saying that they were. They had tried it and we're going to do more of it in Germany for football.

Right.

The main complaint, this guy was working for one of the broadcasters in Germany, was a broadcasting event I was at. And he said the main complaint from the viewers, the Vi viewers, was the fact that you had two commentators commentating on a match and they were going, oh, there's, you know, there's job blogs. And apparently he was seeing down the local nightclub with his wife there last week.

Yeah.

And you're thinking, as a Vi person, you're thinking, no, just tell me where the bloody ball is.

I don't care about the gossip. Just.

And sometimes you can hear that the crowd have reacted to something.

Yes. And they don't say anything.

No.

Yeah.

And they're still talking about. And maybe they're talking about, you know, a free kick decision that happened five minutes ago.

Yeah.

And that really does my head in. And it just, like, how can they do this on the radio? They know on the radio you can't see it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But that on the live headsets in the game, that generally doesn't happen.

That's amazing.

It's generally.

I wonder how many people at a match, on average, would take those headsets. I wonder how many. What the uptake is.

I don't know.

I'd love to know.

I know. It's. It's so. I mean, so Arsenal have been second in the league the last two seasons running and the demand got so high they had to turn into a ballot system.

Wow.

So now. Yeah, for every game you enter the ballot. I've managed to get tickets for the first game of next season, which I'm very excited about.

Well done.

But, yeah, it's a ballot. I don't know the numbers. I don't know how many visually impaired fans they have. I'd be interested to know. But when you go in the ballot, you select, yes, I'd like a commentary. And then before the game, somebody appears at your seat and gives you. Gives you this little receiver. Yeah, it is brilliant. And I tend to have one ear in and one ear out, so I can. Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah.

Brilliant. Yeah.

Oh, it's. I mean, I. Yeah, I'm a lover of football. I love just. Just going to the game and I think even if you're not a football fan, if you're in that crowd, I think it's hard not to get.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

My only problem is I'm a wimps, you see, so I don't want to go to. I want to. I don't want to go to a football game in the middle of winter, fair weather, unless. Unless, I mean, the. I'm open a box, you know, where.

It'S looking warm and thanks for some cold games.

I'd say so, yeah.

I have. I've been in multiple layers, but more.

The more you jump, you jump up and down and yell, the warmer you get.

Well, exactly. If it's a good game. If it's a good game, you don't notice it. If it's a slow game, you're in trouble. Yeah, I like on the BBC, so for the BBC euros games, you can press the red button and get the radio commentary synced up with the tv.

Ooh, that's very clever. I like that.

Yeah. So they do that. I don't think there's any option on ITV, but that's something they do on the. On the games, on the BBC. So I like that.

We're gonna wrap up because, believe it or not, absolutely. It's fine. We've made a show out of this, which is absolutely fantastic. Tell us, where are you gigging next? Be it inspirational session, comedy gig or music or, you know, do you do any knit? Could people, what's your knitting? Sew or anything like that? What's coming up next?

I'm allergic to wool, so knitting's not my thing. Yeah, I know. Again, all those cold football matches. I wish I could wear wool. Yes. So mostly I do gig around Brighton. I think the band are getting a London gig on the 1 November. Oh, well, yeah. But yeah, there'll be gigs in Brighton. I've got a few gigs around Brighton in August. Basically, I'll do a shameless plug. If you want to know where I'm gigging, the best thing is to follow my social media.

Yeah, good.

Which is at Sid May. Coach says, s y d m a y, coach. C o ach. And I always post where I'm gonna be.

We should put that in the show notes. Definitely.

Brilliant. And in terms of you're talking Instagram and all of the.

All the usuals, mostly Instagram and Facebook.

Brilliant.

And there's a YouTube channel where I do post a few things.

Sydney, thanks so much. That was absolutely brilliant.

Thank you for having me. It's been a delight.

Thank you so much. And we are actually, folks, we are. We are out of time. We're gonna wrap up the show and thank you to Sydney for staying on for so long. And if you do have any questions for us, blindguyschatmail.com or if you have any questions for Sydney, we can pass them on to her. Just write to blindguyschatmail.com and we'll send them on to her. And we really look forward to. Hopefully we can go to your gig maybe in November. That'd be amazing if we're going to.

Be around, if it lines up with side village, maybe.

Yeah, that'd be great.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for taking the time today, Sydney, to chat to us. We really do appreciate it. And good luck with all your endeavors.

All your many endeavors.

Okay, folks, bye.