Podcasts…

As mentioned previously, in a case of being on sickleave, due to your eyes, there isn't a lot of reading or telly watching you can do…

Granted, my girlfriend and I did keep up with our regular shows, but to say I could see it, was a very big stretch, I was looking at flickering box with sound coming out of it really, but hey, it kept me sane I guess..

However, that only really covers evening time in a way.

What to do during the day?

Well, my routine seemed to have been..

Hear my girlfriends alarm go off about 12times before she would get up… hear her rush around for about 20minutes, and when she goes off to work, I slumber back to sleep for another hour orso..

Once up, its time for a coffee and a home-made drink yoghurt, then Dutch radio for an hour or 2, then a stream of a daily Dutch TV programs that kept me sort of updated with what was happening in the homeland.(again, all i could do is listen)  then BBC 5 Live or LBC for another couple of hours…  yeah, talk radio suddenly becomes fun.

Then, depending on my mood there might be a couple of chapters of an audio book aswell.

And that was basically what it was until my girlfriend came back from work…

Going back to "listening to stuff" though, at some point, I discovered “podcasts” .

I had come across them before of course, but never really got into it.. but now, having had all the time in the world really, I figured why not?

I had been listening to Richard Bacon's show on BBC radio 5 Live, and there was a mention of the daily podcast of the show, so I ventured out looking at this, (with the settings of my browser set to 200% to just see a bit of what I was looking for..) and when I found it, I discovered a whole treasure trove of BBC programs to listen to, which I promptly downloaded and got myself occupied with some really good interviews.

From this I came across some other brilliant Dutch and English language podcasts, either made for podcast or extracts from proper radio shows.

The one podcast that was my sole companion for a long long time since then, and probably kept me saner for a bit longer during this whole situation,  was the weekly podcasts of radio duo, Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode, 2 middle aged men that bicker like a married couple over movies…

If this premise does not do anything for you, I urge you to look it up,and try it anyway, as I got addicted, and I was able to find a back-catalogue  going as far back as 2005.

These 2 know what they are talking about when talking movies, but more importantly are just very (un-intentially) funny along the way.. it provided me with loads of (much needed ) entertainment and laughs, and a list of movies to go watch (again) once my eyes were back on track…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/kermode