TUESDAY BLOG: DRY OCTOBER

Happy Tuesday, y’all.

I was hungover at the weekend.

Having been raised in a family of lightweights, I’ve never been a big drinker. My dad enjoyed a shandy on a Saturday night – literally a shandy – and my mum and sisters only ever seemed to drink at Christmas or family parties (usually just a Barcardi and Coke, if anything).

Oh, admittedly I’ve had my fair share of boozy nights out with mates, but I’ve only ever really been a social drinker. Even then I couldn’t really keep up with some of my friends.

Whenever a doctor asked me how many units I drank in a week, they generally didn’t believe me, because it was so much lower than average.

 Though Sanja’s even less of a drink than me, as we’ve gotten older, we did enjoy sharing a bottle of wine or two on a Saturday night. It was kind of our reward for getting through another week.

However, she stopped drinking entirely earlier this year – I think she’d  had a cold that lasted a few weeks, or something, rather than it being some big declaration - and hasn’t touched a drop since. Consequently, that Saturday bottle of wine became mine to drink alone.

I’ve always been lucky in that I’ve never really suffered from hangovers, but the last couple of Sundays I’ve felt rough AF, and I wonder whether it’s my body’s way of telling me that I can’t do it anymore.

I mean, I’d wanted to go for a walk on Sunday, but ended up napping on the sofa instead. I don’t want to waste my weekends anymore, so, yeah, I’m going to give up for a bit I think. Just thought I’d share!

UBI

 In other news… the UBI video is doing really well for us. It got off to a miserably slow start, and we were pretty disappointed as we’d worked REALLY hard on it, in terms of ensuring it was pacey and would keep people watching.

 But gradually, somehow, it broke through over the past week. It’s not exactly viral, but it’s doing really well by our standards – our best performing video since the one we filmed down in Sussex at the start of the summer. Plus, we’ve picked up a ton of new subscribers. Yes: even with Toilet Squad and my breakdancing! Silly stuff doesn’t have to be a barrier.

 We’re also close to 21,000 subs now, which is a figure I never thought we’d reach. We started this year at 16,000-and-something, where we’d been stuck for a long, long time. So, that’s nice.

Oh, and we've more or less put back on most of the Patrons we lost at the beginning of the month, so hello to all the newbies (and welcome back to a few of you).

The next video you get from us will be something a bit different – it won’t be scripted for a start, and it’ll just be us having a chat and a wander.

Because I’ve spoken about our struggles of the last couple of years in videos and on here, I’ve been getting a lot of comments trying to comprehend how we’ve coped. I don’t really know, to be honest – and I’m not entirely sure I have coped completely with it all – but I guess I have somehow kept putting one foot in front of the other.

With this week being World Mental Health Awareness Day, I’ve been trying to figure it out, and thought it could be a video that some of you find helpful.

After that, you will finally get the God’s Banker video – sorry it’s taking so long, but I decided to get really fancy on the presentation side of things. Other YouTubers have whole teams to do this stuff! We’re going to be interviewing a certain ex-Freemason for it…

And then we’re planning something for Halloween. We’ve got an idea, but we’re looking for a way to spooky it up a bit.

We’ll also do a new Ask-Me-Do this week and a Writer’s Club, as we’ve a ton of questions to get through. Oh, and Biffo’s Brain on Thursday. Mark it down.

LASTLY

Talking of Writer’s Club, we’ve been tentatively discussing whether it’s giving you enough value. We’ve noticed we never get a massive amount of engagement on that tier, so we wondered if there would be anything else we could that might convince you to support us at that level, or – if you’re already a member – what we could do differently?

Especially if, in the new year, I start up the new writing channel.

I know about half of you just want to support us, and aren’t that bothered about the exclusive Patreon stuff, but we do want to keep offering it.

Let us know!

Paul