Episode 9 transcript

Let’s just really quickly update the health spreadsheet, Em. What’s going on? What’s going on with you? I’m not doing too badly, actually.

Let me have a think. Sleep’s not been amazing, but you know, there’s been a few 3 AM wakings. How have you been? Hey, if your sleep isn’t great, Em, you should listen to episode 4, was it, of Sniper’s Alley with Sarah?

I think it was. One of our most popular ones, that, our sleep one. I have 2 issues. I have my fascia in my foot.

My fascia’s fucked. I don’t know what the technical term is. I think it’s fucked fascia. Also need an MRI on the knee just to see, like, just to establish kind of exactly how fucked that is as well.

So, you’ve got to go for an MRI? Because there might not be a lot of cartilage knocking around, so they need to have a little look. So, what it made me think was that all my money in my 30s went on alcohol, in my 40s went on therapy, and we are now in the physio 50s. That’s where all the money and time goes.

Physio 50s. Yeah. All of mine goes on my side hustle, which is the perimenopause. So neither of us have time for hobbies, do we?

And he says, steamrolling into the next bit, because that’s what we’re talking about today. This is amazing. It’s like you’re such a professional. We are talking about hobbies, whether or not we need hobbies, and what kind of passes as a hobby, and why we don’t have hobbies.

Why don’t we have hobbies? Right, this is it. So one of the reasons— I mean, I know this is— you’ve been wanting to talk about hobbies for ages. It’s been on your Mood board.

Do you have a mood board, Em? Oh, I’ve got right next to my manifesting board. Yeah, you know how I feel about that. I imagine your mood board would be full of little woolen voodoo dolls of people you hate.

My perimenopausal resting face board. That’s my mood. That’s my mood. Hobbies has been on the radar for a while, hasn’t it, to talk about?

And part of the reason is that according to absolutely shitloads of research. Hobbies, especially social hobbies, and especially social hobbies outside, are ridiculously good for you, especially as you get older as well. And this is maybe even going slightly into kind of boomer territory, more into kind of like post-snipers, I would say. But if we’re going to get into the hobbies, we’re probably gonna have to start now.

So this was my hunch. This was my hunch, is that if we’re going to be talking about longevity and things like that, having some kind of club that you needed to join. I don’t know. Like, I can hear the trepidation in your voice.

Yeah. Like, being sociable, getting on with people, getting out of the house. These are things that we need to do, and— but you need a reason to do it. So, that reason becomes your hobby.

We did a little thing on Reels, didn’t we? Saying that how we were going to be talking about hobbies and how we felt we didn’t have any, and for people to get in touch, which they have done, which is great. And we’ll read them out in a minute. But I realised that when we were doing that reel, I was saying I didn’t have any hobbies, and behind me was 2 guitars and a keyboard.

But I don’t really consider that as a hobby. On that reel, somebody who I presume knows you, somebody called Ruth, said, hang on, because we were both saying we don’t have hobbies, and she commented and said, Emily’s got a hobby. She’s a DRW. That’s definitely a hobby.

And I worked out that that is dry robe wanker. Yeah, I mean— Is that right? It is right. I am a dry robe wanker.

I do have a dry robe, and I do go swimming. What do we call it? Don’t call it wild swimming. You’re fighting it.

It’s wild swimming. That’s what you do. I just, I just, I don’t, I don’t want this. So I’ve— I’m really reluctant to say that this is my hobby because I feel like the, the— and it is usually women who are in the sniper’s alley age who go wild swimming.

Open water swimming, and they would definitely say that this was their hobby or this was their thing. But you used to do it a lot though. You used to put the hours in, didn’t you? Right before you got that lung disease that nearly killed you.

Probably just coincidence. Yeah, completely coincidental. It had nothing to do with the River Cam. Um, there are groups of women who go wild swimming and they are in clubs and they call themselves, they call themselves the Blue Tits.

And they have matching swimming costumes. They all go on Instagram, and they find each other, and they go swimming in groups together. I would not do that. Not because— I just would— it’s just not my thing.

It’s just not. So, for me, it’s like I have an interest, as in I enjoy going swimming, and I enjoy swimming outdoors in lakes and things like that, but I don’t have— I don’t want to join a cult. So, it’s a bit like being into somebody, like I quite fancy somebody, or being their stalker. Like, that’s the difference.

That’s the closest that we think you’ve got to Hobbyworld. There was a thing, there was a thing saying that if you’re looking for a hobby in your Sniper’s Alley years, you should think about what you were doing at 17, and then go back to doing that again. And I was— Getting drunk, playing in Darlington’s second-softest indie rock band, and failing with the opposite sex. So, none— apart from the band, I might revisit, but I don’t think that’s a runner.

What about you? I could probably do a couple of them, but they would have been rebranded for 2026. So, I was writing terrible poetry in my diary. Podcast gold.

Have you got them? So I’ve probably still got them. We saved— that’s just bought us 100 episodes. Brilliant.

I know, I know. So probably still got them. Um, my mum dropped a whole load of them. She had a bit of a clear out, my mum.

And I had pictures of boys on the front. I have to— I, I was at an all-girls boarding school and all I had was— so now we could rebrand that and say I’m doing journaling. That’s it. Now it would be journaling and you could sell— you could sell courses and put it on Instagram and stuff.

Absolute twat. I was probably listening to The Smiths. I was probably looking quite sad and out the window, but also hoping that I might catch a glimpse of a boy. So, I was probably doing something like that and journaling.

But also, also, I was smoking a lot, and I was hoping that one day a boy might kiss me. Esther got in touch on Instagram and said, because we were talking about what you’re doing at 17, and she said, well, she can’t go back to shagging in cars with her knees. Yeah, you see, this is it. This is it.

We’re very limited for what we can do because of our knees. Chris said, the people with hobbies I’ve met were best avoided. You see, this is the bad rap that hobbies have got, is that people think that people with hobbies are saddos. And you know what?

I think I did. I also thought that. But, and even if that is still the case, I’m kind of all for it now. I think we need more saddos.

I think a bit of escapism and maybe I don’t know, dressing up as a roundhead and a cavalier at the weekend and reenacting. I thought you were going to say you were— what are they called? Is it furries where they dress up as— We’re not Gen Zs, Rob. We’re not.

I do wonder as well, is that, you know, when you are a bit younger, you tend to get a bit wrapped up in the whole work and career type thing. And I’m not saying that Gen X— I’m not saying that Gen X don’t take their jobs seriously, But I think priorities do shift, as we’ve talked about on the podcast before. You know, I think these days, and when time doesn’t feel quite as infinite as it used to, that I think you want to spend your time maybe not working for, you know, all hours, and hobbies do kind of become more important. So, I can see something in it.

You kind of got to fill your time, and I think if you can’t handle the hangovers anymore, you’re not kind of drinking like you used to, you’ve got to find something to do with it that isn’t having an existential crisis, reading the news. That’s exactly where this voice note comes in. This is great. Hi Rob, hi Em, it’s Sarah here.

I’m so grateful that I am attempting a voice note for the first time. It makes me horribly uncomfortable, but I am rapidly discovering that being in your 50s constantly means feeling some sort of discomfort, so I am just gonna go with it because I need to talk to you about hobbies. I’ve had the disturbing realisation recently that I have basically turned to doing the laundry into my main hobby, and I can’t work out if that’s quite cool in a make the best of the small things in life, hashtag blessed, slightly millennial kind of way, or if it is literally the saddest and most tragic thing anyone will ever have heard, in which case I think I need an intervention. So I mean, obviously the best bit is it is a chance to go outside in the sunshine, sometimes for as much as 15 minutes, Those chances don’t seem to come along much otherwise.

Like full-time job, a family, there’s always some shit to do. And if it’s not any of them, then there’s a whole list of other things I should be doing, like exercise to stop my muscles atrophying. So I can’t just go and sit in the garden for 15 minutes when the sun comes out, but I can go and stand and hang laundry out when the sun’s out. So I get some vitamin D, I get some rays.

So you tell me, like, do I need saving? Is it okay that laundry is now my main hobby? Do I just go with it, or is all hope lost? I love that.

Sarah, lean in. Lean into it. Absolutely. That’s, you know, this is practically mindfulness.

She’s outside. We know that’s a good thing. It’s, you know, sorting out all the socks into pairs. I think that’s a cognitive thing that’s got to help.

That’s a bit of thinking involved. I mean, the only thing it’s not got is the social aspect, but she’s telling all us about it. So, you know. And that’s what we were kind of saying is that, you know, nobody’s got any time.

We don’t have to— it’s not like we’ve got oodles of time to do stuff. So, this idea of kind of reclassifying shit that you have to do as a hobby, I kind of like it. So, this kind of reminds me of when my kids were little. And you would go and do the big shop.

So, you’d leave your very small children at home with your other half, and you’d be— you’d go and you’d do the big shop, and it would be like fucking amazing. Like, you would just feel like so free, and you just go, this is incredible! Like, this really boring chore felt like a weekend in Rome. After you’ve gone around the supermarket, you then have your little micro nap in the car park as well.

Ah, joyous. There is shit that you have to do, and so you may as well rebrand it in your mind to, this is me getting outside in the sunshine and taking the small pleasures. What can we take then that we might do every day? Or, you know, let’s say that we don’t have time for actual hobbies.

What can we kind of do that we’re already sort of half doing that we can kind of rebrand as a hobby? And therefore sort this out. I like sending Instagram Reels to my friends. So, spending yet more time online.

So, as I’m going through Instagram Reels, because obviously I’ve just sat down, it feels like I’m doing something productive if I know that I’m going to send it to one of my sort of 3 or 4 friends, and I will send them a Reel that either is going to make them laugh or is going to resonate you know, with them in some way or another. And it’s kind of, you know, and you know what, if a friend— and so we will ping Reels backwards and forwards to each other. And like, if a friend hasn’t sent me a Reel for a few days, I will check in on her, make sure she’s okay. It’s like the modern-day equivalent of seeing that somebody’s bedroom curtains have been shut all day and you need to go make sure that the post is piling up by the door or something.

Yeah, they haven’t brought their milk in. You all right? It’s been ages since you sent me a Reel. Just checking in.

You haven’t sent me a Reel since lunchtime. Are you okay? So I think, and honestly, if, um, like maybe at my, um, at my funeral people could stand up and say, I will miss her and the reels that she sent. What?

Yeah, thoroughly depressing thought. Yeah, what a life well lived. And all the congregation are just on their phones, not even looking. This is it, this is it.

It’s just taken me all morning to make a reel, so you know, there’s no point. This is so funny. Just before we started recording, Em said, oh, I’m doing a reel for the Snipers Instagram. I said, oh, brilliant, yeah, what’s it about?

Had a little chat about it. She said, I’ll send you what I’ve done. It took, it took all morning, but I’ll send you what I’ve got. And it flashed up on my phone when she WhatsApped it.

It was 13 seconds long. An entire— I know it’s good, I really like it, but oh yeah, you’ve put in a shift. You have to go on YouTube to work out how to do something. Anyway, okay, so yeah, so I do swim outdoors.

I do send people reels. Yeah, I do like very cold water, so I would do those kind of cold dips for my very cold heart. I do like doing that. So, sending reels, sending memes, sitting in very cold water.

What else do we like doing? I like scrolling at 3 AM when I can’t sleep. Yeah, right. This is— All your hobbies can’t just be doomscrolling, because that’s what we’ve got so far.

We’ve got cold water and doomscrolling. I’ve got one for you. And this goes on something I know that you’re into, because you messaged me about it a while ago. And I actually had to stop you from going into too much detail, because I found it too horrific.

Which was you could be a dog pimple popper. I would love to do that! Well, any kind of pimple popper. Oh, it’s not just canine?

No, it doesn’t have to be a dog’s. Would you do another person’s? Yeah. Oh, Em, that’s disgusting.

Yeah. Popping one on yourself, fair do’s. Like, that is a perfectly sensible thing. Oh no, I’d much prefer to do somebody else’s.

No, really? Yeah. Oh, that is grim. My husband, my husband, like years ago, once let me do one on his leg, and sometimes I still think about it.

I did one in my daughter’s ear. I did one in my daughter’s ear. Honestly, my mind sometimes goes back to that moment. Oh, it was so good.

It was so good. Honestly, it was really like, they rarely, my family rarely let me me. So when I do, when I’m allowed— I mean, there are like YouTube channels devoted. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, hell’s teeth. Oh man, Rob, I’ve actually got a little bit— I’ve actually like broken out in a bit of a sweat talking about it. Yeah, it was absolutely amazing. When I was in Norfolk with my dog, we were in a pub, we’re in a pub garden, and I was stroking my dog and she had this lump on, on her back, and I was having a look and I thought, oh, that’s got a head on it!

Because I was a little bit kind of, oh no, my dog’s got a tumor. And I, and I, and I looked at this lump and I was like, I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna slightly press that and see, see if something happens. And I, and I, and something did. It was the best 5 minutes of my life, I reckon.

It was amazing. Anyway, I got it all out and it was just, I mean, I, I could— it was— I’ve known you for over 10 years now, and this is the most animated I’ve ever seen you. So this could be— yeah, honestly, if people allowed me to squeeze their spots, that would honestly— I’d be a proud— that would be a proud hobby. I would love it.

I would— oh, oh, oh, it’s amazing. Absolutely amazing. I can’t believe people get paid for it. Do you want to just take a little— take a little sip of water, calm yourself down, as we play Is It a Hot Flush or Enthusiasm?

Our new quiz show. Oh dear. So I’ve been trying to think what I— because all my favourite activities are solo activities, and listeners can do their own punchlines there. But I did something the other day that I’d not done before, and I thought— and I really enjoyed it.

And I gave blood. Now, don’t look at me like that. No, listen, here I’m gonna— this is my case for it becoming a hobby, right? Okay.

One, there were lots of other people there. Didn’t have to talk to any of them. Okay? So, it feels like a group thing, but you’re not doing group stuff.

Oh, that is the dream. That is the dream group activity, actually. That is the dream group, isn’t it? You talk to the nice kind of person who was doing the blood thing, but a room full of loads of other people.

Didn’t have to talk to them. So, that’s good. I felt like I was doing something good. There was that kind of, you know, altruistic kind of thing going on.

So, you feel all good afterwards. And number 3, last but not least, free KitKat. Okay. And you also, you know, you’re basically lying down for 15 minutes.

Amazing. That’s great. And nobody bothers you. You just lie down for a bit.

Downside, men can only do it 4 times a year. Women can only do it 3 times a year. Okay. Okay.

So, you could do this quarterly. I could, a quarterly hobby. That’s enough for me. That’s enough for me.

I think that’s about right for you. Yeah. I did have some other ideas of hobbies for you. Thank you.

Thank you. Which weirdly ties into this. Okay. I did, I did, I did I did think that you could become somebody who gets things tested, a bit like one of those longevity kind of bros.

So, you could be some— so, your bloods, obviously, but you could just go and get your hearing done. You could go and get your eyes done. But also, I know you never know when you’re going to be called upon for a poo sample, so you could really develop your gut biome. That could become your hobby.

Like, you could just be somebody who— you could have a spreadsheet spreadsheets. I do like a spreadsheet. And if you had— you do like a spreadsheet, and you could like put all of your, you know, this could become your thing. I did very recently have the poo thing.

I think when I turned 52, the poo mail envelope came through, and I did. And funnily enough, I was chatting with someone on our Insta. If you’re not on— if you’ve not seen our Instagram, it’s— what is it? @SnipersAlleyPodcast. Lovely conversations like this, are going on every day.

People chatting about their poo samples? Yeah, somebody else was chatting about their poo, and they said that they felt quite a lot of pressure. And this is exactly what I felt. They kind of left it for about 5 weeks because they wanted to come up with, you know, the good stuff.

This is so male. No, I was exactly the same, because when the envelope first came through and I read it, I think the little one had been ill and we were living off takeaways. And I thought, I cannot send them a poo that is 90% chicken chow mein. That is not a good Look, so I waited.

I had a really healthy fortnight. And you know, when the results came back, I’m reading between the lines, but I think they were basically saying this is one of the top 5 poos we’ve ever seen. You wanted them to have the best poo you’d ever done. I just, I care.

I care. That’s it. Yeah. So maybe developing your gut biome and producing the perfect poo sample.

The only thing about the getting everything tested thing is just that then the health anxiety, my God, that would go through the roof. Proof. Oh yeah, do you know what I mean? So what are they gonna find?

So you don’t, you don’t want a spreadsheet on your aches and pains in your MRI scan? Yeah, I’ve got enough on that front. But yeah, okay, maybe the donating thing, there could be something in it. Yeah, okay, I’ve got one here, but you’ve just told me about your knee, so this is probably— you’ve probably got a note to get you out of this one.

Okay, high rocks. No. Can I just say— How you seamlessly went from poo donation to High Rocks. I can’t.

So can I— ‘Cause this is one of the reels that you sent me. Oh, I did send you it, didn’t I? I’m so sorry, yes. That was more poo there in High Rocks than when I gave birth to my nearly 11-pound child.

Do we need to explain? Let’s— well, basically— People must have seen. Yeah, if not, Google High Rocks and— I would imagine it’s the first hit now on just putting High Rocks in. You don’t imagine it’s even worth it.

Kind of High Rocks the brand, that, that’s all you’re dealing with now. Yeah, okay. I, I tell you what, I, I have a, I have a worrying, worrying, worrying conclusion that I actually fear that what we are currently doing now is actually my hobby, because we’re sinking loads of money into it and not going to get any of it back. That, that’s quite— not complaining, it’s our choice to do so, but we’ve not even appealed for sponsors, have we?

Yeah, no, we’ve done nothing like that. Sponsored by Rocks. I don’t think they’ll be calling. We shit on other podcasts.

Yeah, so yeah, we’re sinking money into it. It does involve other people. I chat to you, and other people get in touch, and we get nice voice notes and things. So, you know, yeah, we do get lovely voice notes.

Okay, I would hope that people get in touch and you know, give us some ideas. Some inspiration would be good. I think Sarah’s nailed it. So what Sarah made me think of is, um, like the mental load.

And I used to think about the mental load, and I used to resent the mental load. And what I mean by the mental load is you’ve got an email and one of your kids needs to, um, be, you know, dressed as a— yeah, it’s National Dress as a Badger Day or whatever, like Tudor Day. Yeah, like it’s Tudor Day tomorrow at school or something. So you get an email like that and you’ve got to dress Tudor Day, and the other child has got Egyptian Day or something.

This is what I mean by the mental load. And they’ve got a different pickup time, they’ve got a different drop-off time. All of this kind of family stuff that’s constantly going around, all the domesticity and everything, and all your work stuff, you’ve got the mental load. And there was a lot of stuff about the mental load, berating it and saying it falls mainly on women.

And there was a kind of move saying it’s like an unfair thing. And when I got ill, I couldn’t do anything. Like, I couldn’t open an email. There was none of that stuff.

I was double-dropping morphine and codeine. I was, you know, off my head for, you know, in hospital for a long time. So I was in hospital for a month, and I was ill for about 6 months, and there was no mental load, right? That, that completely all switched off for me.

I could barely kind of engage with family life. And I have to say, I’ve looked at the mental load really differently since I got better. I don’t— I still— and it’s been nearly 18 months now— I still kind of feel like Sarah does, like, get out, like, rebrand putting the laundry out to getting outside. And I kind of feel like that there will be a day— oh, this is getting a bit emotional, isn’t it?

There might be a day when you can’t do any of this stuff, and there might be a day when actually you wish that you could do all of it. You know, the sorting out the socks, and putting a wash on, and answering a school email. The mental load, without wanting to sound too bleak, the mental load is a sign that you’re alive, and you’re— you’ve got stuff to do, and you’ve got a life. Well, I just remember that when you did, thankfully, get better, it was at that point that you started offering to send round photos of pus coming out of your lungs.

Which I politely declined, much like I politely declined the pimple popping video of— Did you not? Did I never show you? I’ve never shown you. No, no.

So that’s it. We’ll make a reel out of it. It’ll take you 4 years, but make a reel out of it. Yeah, so I showed somebody.

I said, oh yeah, I had these 2 chest strains. They’re like, oh, oh, what are chest strains? And I said, do you want to see a picture? And she’s like, yeah.

And I showed her a picture and she went, what am I looking at? And I said, that’s my chest. And she was like, that’s a body! That is your body!

It’s like, I mean, and after I came out of hospital, I still had them in. My husband had to take pictures and send them to my surgical team. And he says every now and again, they’ll come up as like, this time last year, like your happy reminder. On this day, and it’s got the jingly music in the background, and there’s, what the fuck is this?

This is it. And he like jumps. He’s like, oh my God, it was so bad. He says, he says, you like, you forget how bad it was.

It was just like, it was so bad, you know? Yeah. So basically our conclusions from today’s lecture, and it has been a lecture, um, is let’s just take stock of the fact that we can go outside and do our washing in the sunshine And we will be grateful for that. #Blessed. And Em is going to dredge up her journals of yesteryear and has just unearthed literally 100 episodes worth of material for us.

I’ll see if I can find my teenage diary. If anyone wants to get in touch, we’d love to get some more inspiration on the hobbies front, anything like that. We’re on Instagram, @SnipersAlleyPodcast, or the website is snipers-alley.co.uk. I might have finished the reel by then.