0:14
14 seconds
we formed the Dolan's Club a while back we got tired of reading and hearing so much about people always trying to get a
0:22
22 seconds
fancier car a bigger house uh travel to more exotic places and come home and tell everybody they go to Las Vegas and
0:29
29 seconds
come back said hey I heard I heard Neil Diamond you know big deal dull men's club is a place in cyberspace where dull
0:37
37 seconds
men can hang out and share their experiences with fellow dull men and women that appreciate dull men it's a sanctuary for them a place they can hide
0:46
46 seconds
out get away from the glitz and Glam the hurly Burly all the noise of Modern Life the pressures to keep up with the
0:53
53 seconds
Joneses I don't know who the Joneses are anyway do you
1:05
1 minute, 5 seconds
we regard ourselves as dull but not boring we're grateful for so many things in our lives there's the uh biscuit
1:12
1 minute, 12 seconds
Appreciation Society the traffic cone preservation Society the apostrophe protection Society the cloud
1:20
1 minute, 20 seconds
Appreciation Society it goes on and on
1:24
1 minute, 24 seconds
Music
1:33
1 minute, 33 seconds
the minute I rolled up to this roundabout I was tingling all all over at the beauty of it this all setting
1:40
1 minute, 40 seconds
just just greets you it's it's so quintessentially English in its appearance it's a listed Duck Pond
1:49
1 minute, 49 seconds
actually on a roundabout I I've travel from Jano Gro to lend and I've never seen a duck pond on a roundabout I
1:56
1 minute, 56 seconds
thought I'd seen everything but this is certainly going to Grace the front cover of our calendar for
2:04
2 minutes, 4 seconds
2014 over the years I've seen some darn good roundabouts some people go for uh picturesque roundabouts like the one I'm
2:11
2 minutes, 11 seconds
sitting on uh we call those titch marshes which is an island in full bloom but other people the functionalists in our society they might go for the magic
2:20
2 minutes, 20 seconds
roundabout in Swindon which is the White Knuckle ride of all roundabouts it's a real malstrom of motom our society go on
2:29
2 minutes, 29 seconds
day trips there and and spend the day just going round and round there's the ding cockro there's the bath Regency
2:36
2 minutes, 36 seconds
roundabout you could almost see the crack of leather on Willow with that roundabout it's beautiful I like to see
2:43
2 minutes, 43 seconds
roundabout uh as an oasis on a sea of tarmac I think they lift our sagging spirits on Long tiresome Journeys
2:52
2 minutes, 52 seconds
they're not like robotic fascist traffic lights how many times have you been on a set of traffic lights and there's nothing coming but you just stay
2:59
2 minutes, 59 seconds
standing there burning up petrol roundabouts are far more green than traffic lights which have to be maintained after all whereas to maintain
3:07
3 minutes, 7 seconds
it round about so you've just got to mow the lawn how green is
3:11
3 minutes, 11 seconds
Music
3:14
3 minutes, 14 seconds
that we find there's a lot of joy in just sitting on a park bench for example like here in this beautiful Park in
3:22
3 minutes, 22 seconds
right in the middle of London to take my time time is what keeps everything from happening all at once but you know
3:29
3 minutes, 29 seconds
Cleveland square is not really a square it's actually a trapezoid a lot of the squares in London are not squares Sloan
3:35
3 minutes, 35 seconds
square is a rectangle grovner square is not a square it's an oval I think there really should be a renaming of these
3:43
3 minutes, 43 seconds
squares in London we have a dull men of the Year listing every year and one of the nominees last year was a retired
3:50
3 minutes, 50 seconds
Postman living in melin in
3:52
3 minutes, 52 seconds
Music
3:54
3 minutes, 54 seconds
werer wonderful box absolutely love it 160 years old but rubbish plate and when
4:01
4 minutes, 1 second
it was put on it was put on crooked I like this spot enjoy it very quiet you got two boxes for the price of
4:10
4 minutes, 10 seconds
one the hobby has become a photographic challenge I don't think I could ever photograph them all there are
4:17
4 minutes, 17 seconds
115,000 take or give of boxes in Ro M's collection I think I've probably done about 2 and 1 half thousand it's become
4:25
4 minutes, 25 seconds
addictive in a way that it takes me to places that I would not normally visit and one of my dear wife's interests is
4:33
4 minutes, 33 seconds
following a musical show around the country and we've actually seen it over 80 times now in 40 different theaters
4:40
4 minutes, 40 seconds
and we've stayed in many many hotels and one of the the advantage of that is of course invariably there is a post box
4:48
4 minutes, 48 seconds
near the hotel and they come in all shapes and sizes in Stoke some years ago three boxes right outside the front door
4:57
4 minutes, 57 seconds
brilliant one of the benefits of joing the letter box study group is access and use of their database and with the help
5:06
5 minutes, 6 seconds
of my son I have been able to get those references into my GPS unit and we've set it that it will give me an alarm a
5:14
5 minutes, 14 seconds
little dingling warning when I approach a post box I never leave home or rarely leave home without it I would try and
5:23
5 minutes, 23 seconds
hunt out the grade A's and the grade B's and try and find them one can go walking around the side streets in towns and
5:30
5 minutes, 30 seconds
Villages and you meet with different people new people their curses to what one is doing sometimes one can get some
5:38
5 minutes, 38 seconds
Hoots and laughs from passing
5:42
5 minutes, 42 seconds
Music
5:49
5 minutes, 49 seconds
Vehicles one of our members has a collection of airport sickness bags another member collects toothpicks
5:55
5 minutes, 55 seconds
another member collects restaurant menus we have over 100 cat categories of items now that they're museums for like soap
6:04
6 minutes, 4 seconds
coat hangers typewriters staplers shopping
6:08
6 minutes, 8 seconds
Music
6:18
6 minutes, 18 seconds
trolley like all collecting you've got the dealers you've got the people who collect from monetary advancement but there are quite a few of us who are
6:26
6 minutes, 26 seconds
quite dedicated milk ball collectors who collect them for their own sake I mean technically 175,000 milk bottles are not worth
6:34
6 minutes, 34 seconds
anything just glass the most common thing on the planet but to me they're worth millions because they're my pride and joy as far as we know because
6:43
6 minutes, 43 seconds
there's no way of checking um it is the largest collection of British Milk Balls overall in the UK but I do have friends who
6:51
6 minutes, 51 seconds
specialize it ties up well with um holidays trips abroad we go to places where you wouldn't imagine people would
6:58
6 minutes, 58 seconds
go even Trappist mon from Hong Kong had their own milk in bottles somebody Rings me up or I get a tip on there's a dairy closing down or somebody's found a barn
7:06
7 minutes, 6 seconds
with some milk bottles um I'm away I like the glass and I like the social history they're nice to handle milk
7:14
7 minutes, 14 seconds
bottles um do have a sort of tactile feel to them this one is um has got Union Jack on and this is just a very
7:22
7 minutes, 22 seconds
nice example where you have the blue and um the red and obviously the milk when it's inside provides the white background
7:30
7 minutes, 30 seconds
well um I've always never not really just don't like milk um it's nothing nothing I would ever drink um I always
7:37
7 minutes, 37 seconds
believe it t as a baby food and ever since they brought out what I call Blue milk which that milk with no fat in it have you ever had cornflakes with
7:45
7 minutes, 45 seconds
skimmed milk it's awful topics we talk about when do men get together of course are airport
7:52
7 minutes, 52 seconds
luggage carousels we started making notes whether they go clockwise or counterclockwise we don't like the word so much anti clockwise it infers that
8:00
8 minutes
we're against clocks we like clocks we particularly like clocks twice a year when we get to stay up late and change
8:07
8 minutes, 7 seconds
them at 2: in the morning but anyway the predominant way is counterclockwise not clockwise and the engineer from Gatwick
8:14
8 minutes, 14 seconds
Airport explained to us why is because most people are right-handed and you got better leverage to pick up your bag off
8:21
8 minutes, 21 seconds
the rack if it's coming from your left in clockwise from your right
8:31
8 minutes, 31 seconds
it all started back in around about 1999 I worked for for 16 years at
8:38
8 minutes, 38 seconds
Rothwell Cy uh just south of Leeds all the buildings have been demolished it was a deric
8:45
8 minutes, 45 seconds
site the reason I uh got into brick collecting um was uh because I noticed that these bricks were lying about and
8:53
8 minutes, 53 seconds
the names of the brick makers were there and that's where the interest started because none of these brick makers were still in business I thought really that
9:02
9 minutes, 2 seconds
um it was part of our industrial Heritage that's gone by the board so anyway when I got them home by this time
9:09
9 minutes, 9 seconds
I picked up maybe about 40 different bricks with different makers names on didn't know what to do with them so I
9:17
9 minutes, 17 seconds
eventually finished up putting a path down and building a small wall here with
9:24
9 minutes, 24 seconds
the name showing and it became a bit of an obsession so every time we go out now nine times out of 10 I will come back
9:33
9 minutes, 33 seconds
with a brick and it would add to the collection any hedge Roar you've be surprised where they are they're all over the
9:40
9 minutes, 40 seconds
place and nobody wants them except
9:44
9 minutes, 44 seconds
Music
9:49
9 minutes, 49 seconds
us my wife Morin is a wee bit long suffering over the brick problem because I put maybe three rows of bricks down
9:58
9 minutes, 58 seconds
here and as I got more and more I had to extend it but I was taking up grass so then I had to go to the wall and build
10:06
10 minutes, 6 seconds
the wall up a we bit but that keeps falling down it was a Battleground yeah but I won eventually but I D put any
10:15
10 minutes, 15 seconds
more down there the line's definitely drawn my wife of 41 or 42 years is very
10:24
10 minutes, 24 seconds
very supportive of what I do she uh is a bit more minimalist if you like than me she often comes with me while we're
10:33
10 minutes, 33 seconds
watching and looking for post boxes she helps me once every year or so where we clean every bottle in there this is dull
10:41
10 minutes, 41 seconds
it is not all post boxes but I am leted off the leash every now again um and she's quite happy for me to go wandering my ex-wife hated the fact that I was
10:51
10 minutes, 51 seconds
roundabout sputter and in the end she left me but I don't mind that because I can go out and there round about spotting whenever I want
11:00
11 minutes
I love riding escalators a long ride is enjoyable you
11:09
11 minutes, 9 seconds
can stand there and relax and not be anxious uh about getting off for a while just stand back there and look at the
11:17
11 minutes, 17 seconds
pictures on each side the adverts and a longer ride the adverts repeat themselves every so often so if you miss completely reading one at one point you
11:25
11 minutes, 25 seconds
can just wait till you get a little farther down the escalator and it'll appear again again I quite frankly don't know why people walk on escalators and if you're
11:34
11 minutes, 34 seconds
going to walk take the stairs leave the escalators alone for us people to just enjoy a pure escalator
11:42
11 minutes, 42 seconds
ride I just marvel at at engineering behind escalators to think that they're doing the job for us that I don't have to exert myself to go downstairs or go
11:51
11 minutes, 51 seconds
back upstairs it's like I'm just floating down into the subway station
12:02
12 minutes, 2 seconds
if somebody were say I were doll I take it as a compliment actually you can call me dull if you like I thought there's no such thing as an uninteresting
12:10
12 minutes, 10 seconds
roundabout even the humble PMT stroke of Genius it was but we don't like driving over those things you should navigate
12:18
12 minutes, 18 seconds
accordingly and go around them and if it does look artistic I suppose it does really don't they Tracy eming could make
12:25
12 minutes, 25 seconds
something out of them do you think all right
12:33
12 minutes, 33 seconds
mate this is one of the fellow uh roundabout spotters here he's actually made love on a
12:40
12 minutes, 40 seconds
roundabout haven't you he's a what we call a bunking
12:49
12 minutes, 49 seconds
Music
12:50
12 minutes, 50 seconds
bter you know life seems to be continually speeding up cars are faster planes are faster now the modern world
12:59
12 minutes, 59 seconds
was busy busy busy the the thing that illustrates it more to to us is the mobile phone to date I don't have a
13:07
13 minutes, 7 seconds
mobile phone they can play music they can they can do everything with a simple mobile forms about half the size
13:16
13 minutes, 16 seconds
of a brick don't need one I don't walk into Telegraph poles I like to take in as much of where I'm going what's in
13:24
13 minutes, 24 seconds
front of me as I can you can take time and reflect on life could be an old lamp post a finger post a directional sign we
13:32
13 minutes, 32 seconds
need to just take a step back and just go around around about twice slowly there's a lot to be said for being dull everything that's You're Made Of lasts longer it used to get us out actually it got you the exercise if you suffer from a nervous disposition or or got heart trouble it's the perfect hobby for you is just to sit back and and take in these beautiful pieces of round architecture people often ask us is this dull men's club is it a movement no it's not a movement we like to stay put people also ask us is a dull men's club one of these 12-step programs no 12-step programs try to get people to change your behavior the Doan's Club is a two-step program we admit we're dull and we're going to keep it that way yeah I'm the type of guy who likes to stay as home I'm always in one place and that's my front room and when I find myself noding off a bit I get myself to bed cuz that's a sensible thing to do I'm not the wonderer I don't like wondering I don't know why though yes I'm the wer no I'm not the wer I like to stay at home that's right not bother to roam around think I got to bed now