Episode 5 transcript

So let’s, uh, let’s kick off in the Time On A Traditional Gen X fashion. Emilie, what new aches, pains, and mental illnesses have you had since we last spoke? Oh, I have actually had one. Might be a bit TMI.

So UTIs, TBC. So UTI is a scourge for the perimenopausal lady. Very annoyingly, I think coffee is kicking it off. And honestly, I feel sadder about that than I think I feel about alcohol.

I’ve been on antibiotics for most of July, and this coffee has been the first coffee I’ve had really since, like, it was like a bit of a kind of, can I do it? So what I started doing was I’d have a cup of coffee, because apparently it’s the acidity in the coffee which kind of makes the bladder go, diuretic, is that the word? Yeah, yeah. So we’re a lot more sensitive to it.

And so I had a cup of coffee, and then I had a shot of bicarbonate of soda. So it was like an upper and a downer. So this is what happens in Sniper’s Alley, is that it used to be speed and then weed, and now it’s coffee and some bicarb. Yeah, so your upper and downer was codeine and then magnesium.

I did codeine then magnesium, yeah. Yeah, so mine has been coffee and then bicarbonate of soda. So I had like a little kind of So a little shifty, and I think I’ve nailed it. I think I’ve nailed how I can still keep my caffeine levels at an optimum whilst not triggering a UTI.

This is not medical advice. I don’t think anyone would consider that medical advice, mate, to be honest. I think we’re safe on that front, but yeah. Yeah, I think bicarbonate of soda is a bit of an old wives’ tale, but anyway, there we go.

My problems? Oh, thanks for asking, Em. Yeah, for me, ball of the foot, like near big toe, like when I put pressure on that, it’s a bit— oof. I wondered if it was my trainers were really old, and I bought some new nice kind of bouncy gel-soled trainers.

What, like the orthopaedic ones you get in the back of a magazine? Are you, are you already on those ones? With the elasticated slacks? Are you there?

Yeah, I’m not elasticated slacks yet, but I did get some new trainers, and they, I think they’ve— shout out to ASICS. There’s a sponsorship opportunity. Honestly, we’re open to sponsorships from anybody. Yes, if you work for Big Bicarb, do get in touch because we’ll take your money.

Listen, we’ve had lots of lovely voice notes and people getting in touch on Instagram, and it’s great that people are taking the time to get in touch. I want to play you one that— this only came in literally about half an hour before we started recording. A new voice note popped up, and Em’s not heard this yet. I’ve not heard this one.

My nose is running. Excuse me. Nose is running. It’s the Coke.

Habit becomes glaringly obvious. Not for the first time. Emilie was talkative on the last episode. Has she got a cold?

Right, so this is a lovely voice note. This is from Becca. Thank you, Becca. Hi, Emilie.

Hi, Rob. Now, I am not technically a Gen X. I was born in 1982. So that makes me still technically a millennial, a geriatric millennial apparently, but a millennial nonetheless.

However, I feel I’m right there with you guys in Sniper’s Alley. I’ve got the reading glasses, I’ve taken up strength training, I’m waking up with the aches and pains, so I’m right there with you in Sniper’s Alley. But the main reason for the voice note is because I wanted to thank you guys both for defending voice notes, because I love a voice note more than anything. Nothing makes me happier than receiving a voice note from a friend.

Maybe the only thing that makes me happier than receiving a voice note from a friend is sending a voice note to a friend, because enjoy the sound of my own voice. But I think I have the definitive and correct opinion on voice notes, which is, obviously, you don’t send a voice note for anything that you could have very quickly and easily texted. If your voice note is less than 60 seconds long, you could have texted that. Voice notes are strictly for long anecdotes, gossip, stories, jokes, anything where texting would take too long, or where the delivery is really adding something to the content.

And if you don’t like getting that kind of content from your friends, you need to get better friends. When I see I’ve got an 8-minute-long voice note telling me all of the gossip about her work Christmas party and the scandal that went off there, her next-door neighbour’s affair— I don’t need to know any of these people, but just inject that into my veins. I cannot get enough of that. Yeah, I feel like us geriatric millennials and Gen Xers.

We need to embrace the voice note. It’s the dream medium. Becca’s nailed it. That is, we don’t need to add anything to that.

Isn’t that great? Not everyone agrees. Like, this is from Ben Myers who got in touch on Instagram. Thank you, Ben.

Uh, who says, I’m 51 with 2 young kids and can thoroughly relate to just about everything you guys discuss except the voice notes. That’s sociopath stuff, leaving long voice notes. So I very nearly left him a voice note in reply, but because I’m respectful of people’s boundaries, I didn’t. I just said thank you for his message.

But maybe if I’d left him a voice note, I could have won him round. This is the thing, is that no one’s gonna leave us a voice note saying, I hate voice notes, are they? Because that’s a trap that they’re not gonna fall into that trap, are they? So what we will say, if you do wanna send us a voice note and you hate them, just state that at the start of the voice note.

Say you are doing this under duress, you’re not happy about it, but you do wanna state your case for why voice notes are terrible. If you want to get in touch, it’s snipers-alley.co.uk, or I think actually if you go to our Instagram page, there’s a WhatsApp button, isn’t there? So you can WhatsApp directly from our Instagram page. Yes, Becca absolutely nailed it there.

And she also, which is handy, at the start she talked about Gen X and millennials and geriatric millennials. Because now, funny, you see, I was talking to my wife about this and I was saying, oh, next episode we’re going to be talking about the differences between Gen X and millennials and, you know, those kind of traits and things. And my wife was born in ’83, and she describes herself as an elder millennial, which I quite— she’s got a very wise head, and I quite— it’s like the elder of the village. I quite like this.

And see, she would say elder millennial. And I was asking her about some of the stuff we’re going to be talking about because I know, I know you have theories. We’re talking about Gen X a lot, and I think it really is— and it is ridiculous. It is a kind of a demographic kind of marketing term which is not watertight, right?

To try and say that all of Gen X feel one way is obviously ridiculous, and that all of Gen X feel one way and Millennials feel a different way by the nature of their age and that kind of stuff. But there is definitely some truth in it. So, without wanting to get all kind of Richard Dawkins on everybody, nature, nurture, that kind of thing. Where we grew up and the space that we grew up and the time that we grew up and the social impact of that time influenced us, it changed us.

So, my theory is, is that— so, when you were at primary school, and if there was a wet playtime, were you shown a public information film that most likely ended in the death of a child? So, whether or not they were playing in fridges, or they were going to play by a lake, or if they were playing— Pylon. Yeah. Electricity pylon with a frisbee.

Or was it a kite? No, it was a kite, wasn’t it? Was it a kite? I thought it was a frisbee.

Remember children, don’t play in substations. If you were shown those in your formative years, and I encourage anybody to Google them, to go and— because they’re all still available on the British Film Industry website, I think. I showed one to my son, when he was 20 years old. So, I showed him this and I said, we were shown this in primary school.

His jaw was on the floor. My son’s jaw was on the floor. He said, I cannot believe children were shown this. And there was one, there was one which ended in, I think, like multiple deaths of children on a railway track.

Have I remembered that correctly? And I think that was the end of it for parents. Parents suddenly went, yeah, hang on a minute. I don’t think they should be showing this to children aged 7.

And I think we grew up with that happening in school assemblies. School assemblies now are like daytime therapy speak. Like, everybody’s talking about kind of mental health stuff and, you know, all of this kind of stuff. It’s very— so inevitably, we are going to be very different creatures, is my theory.

Thinking about those, there’s a famous one. I don’t know whether it was in this country or in the States, but there is a famous one that It’s 10 o’clock now. You’re about to go to bed. Have you checked the children are inside?

Like, literally, have you forgotten your children? That was a real thing in America. Have you checked that your kids are home? It’s time they came home.

And this is why, you know, because that’s part of the kind of Gen X traits thing that we’re the kind of latchkey kids, aren’t we? That’s, you know, the parents were out all the time. We only had 2 TV channels, so we kind of basically had to make up our own entertainment, which generally involved flying a kite near a pylon because, you know, What, what else are you going to do? Climbing into fridges.

This is what we, this is what we did for fun. Oh look, something’s cold in the fridge. Why don’t we go lie in it? Yeah.

Yeah. So I think that you see this, that’s it. That’s, I think this is more interesting because the easy thing to do is go, oh, millennials are this or Gen X are that. But I think it’s interesting thinking about where people came from.

And like you say, it’s the nature-nurture thing. Where did people come from? And does that explain some of their traits? And I think there is something in that.

I mean, I do think we look at some of the stuff with a little bit kind of— it’s a bit like not wanting to come back to your drink. It’s a bit like the whole drinking thing. Like, we aren’t necessarily going to kind of bare our souls and talk about— Bare our souls? I’m not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing.

I think we were a bit hardened by those public information films. We’re not prone to the kind of the self-analysis. That came out with daytime telly. Oprah Winfrey, I hold responsible for all of this.

Let’s go after Oprah. Go on then. So Oprah Winfrey, I hold responsible for all of this, that she, she ushered in your inner story, your inner self, and she platformed people who actually were grifters, who had— so all that misery memoir stuff, there was that, there was that one guy, can’t remember his name, obviously James something, It was all fake. He faked his whole kind of childhood thing, and the whole misery memoir about childhood and abuse and all that kind of thing was given airtime by Oprah, and Oprah became this sort of pseudo-therapy kind of thing.

And now all of this therapy speak is now part of our lexicon. It’s all kind of— it’s all— we kind of engage in all of this sort of, oh, that’s very triggering, and everybody’s very kind of, oh, well, I’ve got trauma, and all this kind of thing. And I think it’s seeped into everything we do. And I think we were the last generation for that not to happen to as children.

We did not, and for right or wrong, we did not have anybody who gave two shits about whether we were upset about something. Like, they didn’t. No, because the general parenting thing was, you know, you’d get used to answers like, well, that’s just the way it is. I’ll give you something to cry about, Rob.

And I don’t, you know, I don’t want, I don’t think we should all start raising our children in that kind of way again. I’m not saying it’s necessarily a good thing, but I do think that we were the last generation to have that sort of slightly sort of, so for example, being a show-off was like the worst thing you could be. You know, don’t get above yourself. Don’t be a show-off.

You know, there were, we would never have been encouraged to, post stuff on Instagram. Like, this idea that we would be this sort of exhibitionist type thing. So this— so the worst thing you could be would be a crybaby, like sharing your kind of— like being called a crybaby in the playground, like deeply shaming. Being a show-off, being up yourself, and also having a big bum, which is also now very acceptable.

Was not acceptable. Wow. Yeah, I didn’t— I hadn’t, uh, I hadn’t considered that. But yeah, these are all things that are now to be aspired to.

To the point where you can create an inflatable bum these days. What a thing to change in our lifetime, going for bum implants. I’ll tell you someone else who I think is responsible for— this is kind of the oversharing thing that I think Gen Xers, it’s— we’re not totally on board with this, the oversharing. And I think some of it stems from this TED Talk from, it’s got to be pushing 20 years ago now, from a guy called Simon Sinek.

And his thing is all about, and he’s written books about it, and it’s all about— it’s not about your product when it comes to businesses. It’s people don’t buy your product, they buy your why. They care about why you do something, and if they get on board with that, then they will buy your products. As a Gen X, when I first heard that, I just thought, well, that’s absolute bollocks, because if I’m going to the shop to buy some, uh, hemorrhoid cream— deeply concerning, that was the first thing that popped into my head— if there were 3 different brands of hemorrhoid cream I’m not delving into these brands’ stories to find out which one I’m going to buy.

I want to know how much is it and is it going to work on my piles. Okay, so I, I think it’s bollocks. I, I do. I just think his examples aren’t very good.

It’s on YouTube, you can watch it. I, I don’t think it stands up, but it’s been taken as gospel, especially by— and, you know, unfortunately me and Em both do some freelance work, so unfortunately we have to spend part of our life on LinkedIn. God help us. And it’s massive on there, especially with kind of small businesses in that word got out that you’ve got to stop talking about what you sell, you’ve got to talk about why you sell it.

And then people took that as, oh, I’ve got to share every kind of microscopic detail of my life. I am aware that I’m doing this on our own podcast and the irony. Yeah, I told you all about my UTI. Yeah, we kicked off with Em’s UTI story.

Talking about my bladder. Yes, we do not like oversharing. So we are aware of this. And then it gets to the stage where we are now, where like over the past couple of years, every single major brand, retailer, company, whatever, they all seem to feel like they have to take a particular stance on different— whether it’s political things, whether it’s marginalized groups, whether it’s the kind of hashtag awareness days.

And I’m not saying it’s a bad thing that marginalized groups are getting talked about and it’s getting more out in the open. Obviously. But what I am saying is that companies don’t have to have opinions on these things because they are— and this is a very Gen X kind of cynical point of view, but I completely stand by it— they don’t give a shit about these hashtag awareness days or these marginalized groups. All they care about is making money because that’s their— that’s what it’s all about for them.

And fair enough, because businesses do exist to make money. But for them to kind of claim that they gave a shit, I just think is is ridiculous. And what they forgot was just core business. Core business, your core market, and what you were selling them.

You know, Rob needs hemorrhoid cream. He doesn’t need to hear— can we not use that as the clip for this episode? Would that be okay? Robin needs hemorrhoid cream.

He just wants, you know, he probably wants the cheapest. I want results. I want to be able to sit down in comfort, but I don’t give a shit about your per— your story, your brand journey, or whatever. Can I, can I throw in another thing as well that we were talking about the differences between kind of Gen X?

And, you know, so I said being a crybaby, being a show-off, um, oh yeah, having a big bum. The other thing as well that I think was an absolute anathema to, to our generation that we would never have said about ourselves would— I’m really proud of myself. And it’s this kind of thing that you hear on things like, say, things like X Factor or any kind of reality TV show, when at the end, say, somebody’s been voted out or whatever. But you hear it now as well.

So, I hear kind of people like Claire Balding say it. Claire, you should know better! Come on! I hear about Claire Balding say it when she’s interviewing, you know, like an Olympic gold medalist or whatever.

So, somebody has just you know, they’ve just, just had an amazing sporting feat, she goes, do you feel proud of yourself? And I just think it’s such a lame question anyway. Stop asking people if they feel proud of themselves. What, what are you learning from somebody?

No, I don’t actually. Don’t feel proud of myself at all. I’m stood here. But also, to say that you feel proud of yourself, it’s like giving yourself a round of applause.

We don’t need to be clapping ourselves. And it brings out the most kind of Downton Abbey grande dame in me. I’m get— really sort Guys, we’re not Americans. Come on, get a grip.

You could not waterboard it out of me that I’m proud of myself. God, no. Anyway, that was my rant. That went on for quite a long time.

I think we’ve established that the coffee’s kicked in, but the bicarb still hasn’t quite yet. You can tell I haven’t had coffee for a while. I’m actually sweating a bit. So yeah, I think that’s the thing.

It’s not like saying, You know, like a generation. I mean, I think, you know, basically every generation thinks that the new generation is soft and the generation before was repressed. Yeah. And I think every generation thinks that, don’t they?

Also, I would say, like, I’ve got millennial friends, obviously, you know, we’ve got— I like sitting next to them for their estrogen. Hope some of it might come to me via osmosis. Keep me young, my millennial friends. You know, and obviously, you know, we get on, they’re brilliant, they’re really funny.

You know, it’s not a line that can be drawn that everybody who is born later kind of is this kind of way. It’s not. I mean, kind of culturally. I don’t mean in terms of individuals.

I mean, I think this kind of sort of leads on quite nicely to talking about hugging though. Yeah. Now, we mentioned this at the end of the last episode about hugging and it— well, God, I’ll leave because this is— you have a thesis on this, Em, so I want to listen to it. So, it’s not just that we’re hugging friends and things like that.

So, you know, when you kind of— but it is kind of about friends as well. It’s people hugging in the workplace, people in a professional setting hugging. And because we’ve worked freelance, and we’ve been to these kind of co-working networking things, people hug. Like, people I don’t know will hug me, and I kind of, I will kind of hug back, and it’s like a bit like, oh, you know, and people will say, oh, you know, I’m so glad that you’re here at this networking event, and I don’t really know who you are, and I’ve only ever seen you really on LinkedIn, have a hug, and it feels really odd to me, and I kind of got into the hugging thing for a bit, And now I’m really like, you know what, I’m not a hugger.

I’m just gonna have to accept it. A bit like wearing high heels. Can’t do it. Can’t pull it off.

There’s something, you know, something wrong. I asked my husband about it. I said, what’s the hugging situation at your workplace? He works in a corporate place, and he said, yeah, I know some people do it.

And I said, it feels really weird. And he just said, boobs. And I said, yes, it’s the boobs! I don’t— it’s like you put— I mean, Even kind of hug.

It’s like we’re putting our body— I mean, everybody knows what a hug is. I don’t know why I’m explaining it. But you’re putting like your whole body next to somebody else’s body. And all I can think— I find it really weird.

Now, I wondered if the recent upsurge in hugging, and it very much depends what you do, because I asked like, like my wife is always, she’s always, she did a very sort of corporate career. And she said, no, not, no, no contact. She’s— I think she’s— she said that, um, a couple of times people have asked for a hug if she’d like given them a leaving present or something, and they wanted a hug to say thank you. And she would— she was asked and she said yes.

But she said as a general rule, in that setting, that very corporate setting, hugging’s still not massive. I— a couple of things. Has it got something to do with everybody was 2 meters apart a few years back and this is— this is the reaction to it? Because personally, you know, the COVID elbow bump, Loved it.

All for that. Better than a handshake. I mean, if anything, that rule of 6 was probably too many people for you, wasn’t it? Little bit, yeah.

My bubble, I prefer 2 people in my bubble, absolute max. Yeah? Bring back 2-person bubble. You’re like, yes, please, stay 6 feet away.

Is kind of the hugging thing a reaction to that, and people wanting more intimacy? I don’t know. You know, that kind of thing. Or— Right, so I, I kind of mentioned this at the back end of the last episode, and this is kind of like a modern life and how this might have impacted on hugging.

Because— and I’m going to use our relationship as an example, Em, okay? Yes. We met— I think it’s pushing— if it’s not 10 years ago, it’s very, very close to 10 years ago that we met online, basically because we were both sarcastic twats on Twitter. Back in the kind of good old days before Musk and all that, and Twitter was quite good fun.

And we had very sort of very similar sense of humor, which I would say is a very Gen X sense of humor, um, which is very dry, very sarcastic, cynical. So we, we knew each other for, for a long time online, and then we happened to be working together on a project And I think the first time we actually met in person was only about a year ago. And we’ve only met maybe 2 or 3 times, I think. In person?

Yeah. So, you get this weird scenario where you’ve known someone for like 8, 9 years, and you get, you know, you get a good feel for them, and you think you know this person, and you get on with them, and you do become friends, even though you’ve not met in person. And then the first time we met in person was at King’s Cross Station. What?

Was that the first time? That was the first time we’d met in person, when we both were working down in London on this project. And we did hug. We did.

But I remember thinking, this is kind of weird, because I feel like I know you well enough to hug you, but also my brain is going, you have not met this person. Yeah. And that must— that didn’t used to happen in the olden days. In the olden days, you always met people face-to-face.

And you built up to that. I know them well enough now to hug them. Yeah, so I think that that’s why— that’s what confuses me sometimes about this. ‘Cause it’s a parasocial relationship. So, we kind of have a parasocial relationship.

But I mean, I know that’s for kind of famous people that you think you kind of know. But it’s kind of that sort of thing, isn’t it? That you develop this sort of, kind of friendship and sort of level of intimacy and sharing stuff. And sort of baring your soul and all that kind of thing, but you’ve actually never met.

But imagine, let’s take ourselves back to King’s Cross when we first met. Imagine if I’d gone to you, hey, Emilie, come on, I’m a hugger. I would’ve been red flag, awkward. I’ve gotta get through the day.

He’s not the man I thought he was. He’s not like, I don’t wanna be friends with this guy. Any man who says, I’m a hugger, needs to be put on some kind of register. I think when I next see you, I’m gonna just shake your hand.

Oh, can’t we just— I’d rather elbow bump. Well, this is it. Like, what? But also men, and men, men are starting to hug.

I urge anybody— in fact, I think we should share this to our Instagram. We’re very bad at our Instagram, but I think we should share this to our Instagram. Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband trying to hug, and it is— oh, it is— bless him. It isn’t— it, it doesn’t feel good.

And I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard of the— there was like a 10-second rule, like if you really wanted a hug to matter, if for a hug to really work, to kind of give off the kind of the good dopamine, whatever bonding thing, you had to hug for 10 seconds. And I said it to my children, they’re like, you know, like they’re terrified. They don’t want to be hugged for 10 seconds. Because famously, if you go to any of the Disney resorts, do you know about this?

There’s a rule for the staff that work there is that you, as a staff member, you must must never be the person who breaks the hug. So if you’re dressed up as fucking Daffy Duck or something, and a kid hugs you, you are not allowed to break the hug until the kid goes away. So— You could be there forever. You could be there all day.

I put it to you, Emilie, that maybe your next job should probably not be Disneyland. I could be, I could be like with my resting perimenopausal face. Amazingly unapproachable and unhuggable. That’s probably what I am.

Yeah. But I find hugging— I’m fascinated. I’m absolutely fascinated by the etiquette and the politics of hugging in the workplace. I have heard a story.

They were interviewing somebody, and the person they were interviewing hugged them. Oh, right. Okay. So, the interviewee hugged the interviewers at the end of the interview.

Yeah, that’s just batshit. That’s batshit! It wasn’t a Disney, was it? Because if that was the case, they’d have pulled off the ultimate shrewd move at the end.

That would have been, that would have been. By going in for the hug and then never letting them go. That would be genius. You’d be like, when do you start?

Anyway, that’s how I feel about hugging. So, to conclude today’s lecture, and it has been a lecture, hugging, more popular than it used to be, Bit of a minefield. We have covered the fact that neither of us are going to work at Disney. Em’s after some financing from Big Bi Carb.

Yeah, any tips on UTIs, very much welcome. This is prime Gen X sniper’s material, isn’t it? This is what it’s all about. And as I said, oh, Janelle, we’ve done it again.

We all— we never remember to— well, we never remember to do many, many things on this podcast, but we always forget to ask that you subscribe if you enjoy it, because that really helps. And if you could leave a review as well on your Send to a friend who also has aching knees, aching feet, maybe who’s got UTIs. Send it to one of them. Send it— everybody knows somebody who’s got something.

This would be a great way to kind of stop one of those conversations. If somebody comes up to you and says, oh, you know, I’ve got my sciatica playing up, just go, stop. Don’t say another word. Just listen to this.

You’re in sniper’s alley. But also, please follow us on Instagram. We are meant to be growing our followers, but we’re not, you know, we’re not very on it. Well, because frankly, enthusiasm on that front is not there.

Particularly high, is it? Yeah, we’re not digital natives. You’ve got to play the game. Yeah.

But if you would like to find out more about me and Em or the podcast or get in touch, it’s snipers-alley.co.uk.