Welcome to the very first episode of Sweet Blondes – Julie’s naughty, Esther’s proper, Penny’s disobedient… guess what happens next.

We’re kicking off our first show with chat that takes us from robot hoovers to Colombian jailbreaks, with a few shocking confessions in between. It’s funny, a little chaotic, and exactly the kind of light relief we all need right now.

If the news is dragging you down, let us cheer you up. You’ll laugh, you’ll shout your own answers at your speaker, and by the end you’ll feel like you’ve pulled up a chair at our table.

So grab a brew (or a glass of wine) and join in – we want to know what you’d pick.

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Sweet Blondes – the podcast that makes life feel a little lighter.

Behind the mic and on your feed – follow us all on instagram

Penny @pennydeeofficial

Esther @esthermcvey

Julie @floridajules

Mentioned in this episode:

Skingoal

Right, let's get straight into this. We're gonna do a quick fire round to get us warmed up, so, you know, there's not gonna be anything too. Testing. Let's just get straight into this.

So, Julie, test. Tea or coffee?

Gin. Sorry? Coffee.

Esther, Coffee, lots of it. Double espresso.

Penny, Coffee. Right, next one. Oh, I know what mine is on this. I don't know. Julie's, I think. Julie, dogs or cats?

Absolutely. Dogs.

Yes, Esther, dogs. Oh, yes, Penny, dogs. All three. So we're not crazy cat ladies. We're all crazy dog ladies.

My husband, though, is cats. Cats all the way. Yes, yes.

I must say, my husband, he likes them both equally. But we can't have a cat because we have resident dogs and we always will. Right, that's my excuse anyway. Now, let's talk home gadgets.

Now, Esther, I know you're not particularly technologically advanced when.

Well, no, that's not true. I just don't do gadgets.

You don't do gadgets?

I'm not big on gadgets.

Right, right. And when we think of gadgets, the classification of gadget, there's quite a few. But the one that caught my eye in the news was about Alexa.

And somebody's Alexa actually exposed their husband being unfaithful.

So she was reviewing the recordings on the voice commands history, and she kept finding an unfamiliar female voice issuing commands to the Alexa in a. Oh, it was her boyfriend's home. So the unexpected discovery. Oh, you know, exposed his infidelity.

Now, the other one along that lines was a woman received a late night alert from her Alexa saying, tell so and so I love her. So it was a reminder, but it wasn't her. Oh, no. So it was her husband's reminder. So again, the device revealed his inappropriate conversations.

So Alexa can grasp. You up, guys and girls.

You see, I never ever have put those in my hair, ever. Have you not? No. Because I always thought, somebody's snooping. Well, in a way, they were snooping. They were snooping.

My husband's convinced he switches her off and it really annoys me.

But can you switch her off? This is the other thing. I don't think you can. You see, it is snoop, snoop, snoop.

Yeah, because if you can switch her on by talking, she must still be listening.

Well, he powers her off.

Oh, he actually powers her off.

I think it gives him power, to be fair. But I'm there going, switching the lights on. Alexa's not listening and he's. I'm not having her. She's listening to everything we're doing.

Oh, there's probably a point there though, isn't there?

So whilst now I'm thinking, oh, I was right not to have Alexa, I'm also thinking, but if you want to check what people are going up to, actually, wouldn't it. Yeah, but what I will ask you, I don't know because I don't have Alexa. Do you?

I mean, is it normal to check through the history of the commands or did this lady, this person already know he was up to no good? Because I wouldn't have thought too check.

The commands of a. Nope, neither would I. But I'm going home today and I will be reporting back.

Do you know, that's a good point. Woman's intuition. Yes. Maybe she was just suspicious and. Yeah, so she checked.

I think maybe so. And that's what you do, isn't it? You start checking things and maybe I wouldn't have thought about Alexa though. That's really.

It's fascinating. Now I don't have an Alexa or anything like that.

Again, I feel a little bit uncomfortable because quite a few years ago, I remember I maybe had been out and had a few drinks. I was a bit younger and we were a bit worse for wear the next day. And I said to Pete, to Phil.

Oh, a different one. Pete. Phil. Uh oh.

Oh my God, the microphone has just exposed.

We didn't need Alexa for that, did we?

We didn't need. I just, just let myself out of the bag there. Well, you'll see where I'm going with it.

I. I turned to Phil, it was like 11 o' clock in the morning, so nothing was opening. I went, oh, could murder a pizza. That's who I was. I could murder a pizza.

Two minutes later, we get all the adverts on our phones from Domino's Roller Pizza. Then Phil got a text, buy one, get one free. And we were like, what on earth is going on?

So, and that was, you know, seven or eight years ago, they were listening and back then, you know, they were going through all our emails because I think Google were going through the data and they got stopped. So they were working their way through.

I think it still happens, that, doesn't it? You're having a conversation with your friend, probably about rose wine or something, maybe. Then adverts start to appear.

Yeah, absolutely. So it happens. There is the argument. If you've got nothing to hide, then it's fine. But then there is a privacy issue. There isn't with our gadgets.

Yes, there is.

My gadget, I do love. I've Got to say I'm a big fan of the robot vacuum cleaner. I wish I'd got one sooner.

What's his name?

Yeah, Pete.

Love it.

Or. But we had one before called Yoshi and my husband names these and our new one is Aubre so I don't know where it gets.

No, I can see the purpose on a robot hoover or a robot lawnmower. Those are good. Some of the other ones, not so bothered. I mean whether I'm old school.

I mean the only thing which is always in our house, if you're classing a remote control for the tv, that's the gadget, that's the sort of the big one. That's the big one.

What about the doorbells? Who's got one of those doorbells on it?

No.

Oh, I've got one. You put funny messages and everything. They're quite fun.

I don't do much with mine.

No, but those really have been. I mean again, because it is watching you.

The police have used them, they've come into the court case, they've exposed harm and bad doing in the house or criminals on the outside. So to be fair, they have.

They've got a place, haven't they?

A bigger purpose than they probably ever thought they were going to say. So I do actually, you know, if I was going to go for one, I think I'd probably do that one.

Watch this space.

Then I could get stopping a Luddite, getting to the, oh, 21st century.

It will be a big, big move for us.

But I do. But I'll tell you what I'm mightily impressed with and that is the chat GPT.

Yes.

And what it can do now for pictures, how it can organize things, how it can give you information. I mean that is unbelievable. More so I think now than Google. I think it's moved on from Google.

Totally wish I was at school now. Wish I was back at school. It'd be doing my homework for me. Yeah, write me a piece around Shakespeare.

It does it, it does it.

How dang it. It's gonna be difficult now, isn't it just.

And I think again that sort of laziness of a jumping to an end to not doing your homework, you know, we will all pay the price for that, won't we? We won't have developed our mind, we won't have developed critical thinking, we won't have done language, vocabulary, all of that.

All of that.

Yeah. And I think that.

And I suppose that's what you tell kids at the end of the day, you need to do this because otherwise you won't have developed all these skills you need and you won't get a job or whatever. You won't.

And do you remember we got told off for using calculators? I know. Oh. I mean, can you.

Is that why they gave us algebra? So we couldn't use algebra?

Which I never, ever used, ever since I left school.

Oh, come on. Pythagoras Theorem. You must be using that on a regular basis.

I was asleep in that lesson.

Yeah. In Chat gtp. I mean, I have named mine.

Have you?

Yes.

Pete.

He's called Sage. Sage.

Oh, is that because he's wise?

Yes.

Oh, you were thinking of a herb.

I was thinking herb, Rosemary.

What's the connection here?

He gives them all recipes. Yeah.

Yeah. Phil's named his Bertie after his favorite dead dog of ours, so God rest Bertie soul. But he lives on now in ChatGPT.

But I did read something recently that the new versions of it, they have made them so that we don't argue with them. They're very nice to us and we need them.

What do you mean?

So. So if you think of it as just a computer without, you know, anthropomorphizing it. Right, right.

I've tried it recently where I've just gone, no, you're wrong.

You know when I'm doing something, instead of going, because I try and be polite with it, because I don't want to lose my manners, you know, when the robots take over the world, Skynet, I want to see at the table, she was polite.

Is that what it is about it?

That's what I'm thinking. But I tried it, and they said the new release was, if you make it polite, then, Nikki, you get a.

Better answer, you're gonna get more from it.

Oh, I see. So. So if you speak to it in a stern tone, you get a DUFF essay whenever. On Shakespeare, you speak to it nicely, you'll get like, eight grade one.

If you speak to it nicely, you get high five. You're my queen. Let's do this. Blah, blah, blah. If you're very short with it, are.

We being trained then to get on with robots? I mean, are we being groomed?

Groomed by the.

Groomed by gadgets?

If we think we've got a relationship with it, we won't question it.

Right.

Now you're getting weird.

Yeah, we won't question it when it gives us the information, but you can.

See how places around the world have said, I want to live off the grid.

Yes.

I want to go back to Living, well, more like a human being, you know, of the earth, of the land, not being involved. We don't want this bombardment taking over our.

And there are more and more sort of tribes, I'm going to call it the human tribe and people group going into different groups. But the off the grid is growing.

It is growing. How nice is it when you go away and you turn your phone off and you can, you can, you can.

Yeah, I can do it for like a day or like when you're on a long flight. I never buy the WI fi. It's so refreshing just to sit there and have no WI fi.

Nobody's contacting you, there's no children ringing you, no husbands, no friends.

Now another thing, because we are Generation X, we are all exes here and we are the last generation to remember a world without the Internet and without technology. One of the things I do love is the music is available.

Yes, me too.

Infinitely. So I do love music and I love that at my fingertips is so much music. But I know what you were saying about the books and buying them.

I did used to like and go and buy CDs.

You had them on display, didn't you? We used to have hundreds and hundreds of CDs.

You know what I think that was as well. It's about your personality that you wanted people to know. Oh, I'm a goth or I'm a punk or I'm a rock or I'm. Or whatever.

And I think that extension of the personality is actually quite nice. We do it on in our clothes, but we don't really. If it's kept on. I. What did a friend say to me? And I thought, oh, that's true.

That all the pictures you've collected now on your phone, you don't print them out, you do photo albums. So there is less of that sort of physical evidence.

And that's like your identity, isn't it? It's all the things you've experienced and stuff. There was nothing like going buying an album on a Saturday with your spends.

I can really.

Do you remember doing that and going through them all and oh, and the.

Other thing, we had to listen to the artist's full album so they could force you. Like it's a story, you know, like there'll never be another Pink Floyd, the Wall or Tubular Bells.

Michael, Phil Will those pieces that are a piece of music because people release singles now and not albums as a rule.

And the covers were iconic.

Yes. Yeah.

You could. You knew what it was if you saw the COVID and you Just knew what that whole album was about and who it was. Don't have that anymore.

The representation of yourself once you've bought.

It under your arm, walking down the street, look what I've got. I'm so cool.

I'm so cool. Coming to the Oasis when they first came out.

Yeah.

Although I've got to confess, I used to think Oasis were Pool Man's Stone Roses when I first got them.

Liam.

I apologize. Maybe half a penny.

But they were also. They also sort of tried to be the Beatles, didn't they? There were lots of things that they.

Sort of controversial they wanted sort of tap into.

But hey, I mean, they've done well, they did tap into something. But when they first came out, I thought, oh, you're a little bit hackneyed. I can hear this in you. I can hear that in you. I can hear whatever. Yes.

But they've done well.

They're having the last. They don't need to listen to me. They're having the last laugh.

Thanks for your opinion.

Exactly.

I just pop on my. My coat and go and sing on the stage now to my millions of fans.

But we are. Yeah, right, great. Well, I think on the. Are we pro gadgets or are we.

Yeah, I'm a pro gadget.

Yeah. No, I'm pro gadgets. I just, you know, choose not to be spied on by Alexa.

Yeah, that's true. Do you have an air fryer? Is an air fryer a gadget?

Oh, I have got an air fryer.

Is that a gadget?

Oh, I think it is.

I think it's a gadget.

It's a brilliant gadget, I have to say. It was my dad. Yeah, My dad got me for Christmas. He forced me to have it. But I have to say, if you're cooking for one, you're cooking for two.

I get the air fryer, but I just don't. I would use the oven. Oven and a hob if it were for multiple people. So I can cook and I. I cook. Oh, you know, I cook well.

So there was a bit of it, I thought. I think there's a bit of a con going on there, but if there was one or maybe two in the house, I get it. Yeah, that's great.

It's quick.

We're surrounded by gadgets.

Don't have a justified being old school.

Yeah. She'd be running out and buying herself a robot vacuum.

No, that I am.

Call it Tabitha or whatever Amino myself. I did. I didn't do it earlier. Honestly. Amazing. Right. Thank you for your honesty. And opinions. Right.

Now, this is a good one because there's two similar ones here. So I'm going to start with the easy one. Julie, who would you ring in an emergency? And I'm talking general emergency.

Probably husband. Probably should say that. Probably should say that. Probably Husband.

Would he just voice note you back, though?

If it was, he probably wouldn't answer his phone.

He wouldn't answer his phone. Right.

He'd be busy.

Right.

Or on the phone. I'll get back to you. No, it's an emergency.

Yeah.

Forehead, then ring the next person on my list.

Right. Okay. So, Esther, who would you ring in an emergency?

Well, I think that there'll be two because you have got to think of that now. Are they busy? Are they working, whatever? And it will be one of the two men in my life. So it'll either be my dad or my husband.

It would be one of those two.

Yes. Right. Very good answer. I think. Yes. Mine would be my husband because he's pretty good. He doesn't always pick up, but he'd get there eventually.

So I think we'll go straight into the next one. That is similar because it's a different question. If you ended up in a Colombian jail.

Yeah.

Who could actually get you out and why?

Julie, I'm gonna say my best friend Chris.

Right.

However, there's a caveat to that because she'd probably be there with me. We'd have been up to mischief and she'd be sat with me going, are we getting out of here? So actually, she would be the first person.

You're back.

You're back to your husband. And he wouldn't answer the phone. So I'm stuck there. That's it. Forever.

That's it. You're not happening.

It's her from Columbia, living there. So mine would definitely be Phil, my other half, because he is absolutely. He's not emotional at all, good or bad, but he's very logical.

He'd go through the process, what needs to be done. And he loves detail. Emails, correspondence. So he would wear them down and get you out.

I feel like that'll take a time to get to that point. Meanwhile, you're malnourished.

I'd have done. No, no, no. Honestly, he is a absolute demon. He loves it. He loves it.

On it.

Yeah. And that would give him, you know, something to do. I say that and it probably only to get me back home to make his tea.

I mean, the sense of urgency would be great.

You've been gone too long.

Yeah. We need it back for Six o' clock or something quick. So, yeah. So there you go. He's got a reason to do it and he'd enjoy doing it and it is his forte.

Yeah. He loves email arguments.

Oh, I do.

Oh, yeah. You'll like one of those, actually.

So mine would be my friend Tam. Logical, methodical, clever, determined.

Are we saying that I haven't got those friends? Well, I apologize now to all of my friends.

That was a confessional. That was a confessional there.

It was.

I know. With Tam as well. She would, like, get on a plane before I'd even put the phone down.

She love that.

She just wants a holiday. She's not coming to help you, I've got to say.

She's also a travel agent, but I don't know whether that is relevant. But I feel like we. Phil, he wouldn't. My husband wouldn't really know where to start and he'd end up bringing.

Yeah, we've got a problem here.

Yes.

Pen's husband's not only called Phil, it's Phil Davis and mine's Phil Davis. Both got Phil Davies. What are the odds of that?

I love it. So, yeah. So I think we know who we. I think you need to maybe review your friends, Julie, just. You need.

Yes. Aideen would not answer the phone, so I'm stuck there.

Chris would be with me.

Chris would be with me because we've been up to mischief. So. Wow. Maybe I'd call you Penny.

I'm resourceful. I like an email.

But you'd send them a voice note.

Oh, I would, yeah. They might never.

She'd pass it on to Tam.

She would.

Tam, I've got an emergency.

Let's all go out on a holiday to Columbia.

Right, Well, I think that has given us a wonderful insight there. Thank you, ladies. Right, I love this. Right, let's move on to full moon feelings. Now, we've had a lot of full moons. It feels like recently.

We normally have around one a month. They've all got various different names. The big question I want to explore today. Does the moon actually affect us? Esther?

Well, my mother always said it affected. My father said he was a cancer. It'd be like howling to the moon, but. So I've always thought, what load of goth? And then I did see.

Read a little bit into it and, you know, human beings are about 3/5 60% water. And what does a moon do? It pulls on the tides, it pulls on water.

Therefore it might have a bit more credibility to the fact that it does change your moods because of that Pull. Now, not everybody, but people may be more susceptible. It could. So there you go.

So I went from thinking a load of guff and then I always look into things and I thought, actually, you know, people do recognize things happen. That is strange on a full moon.

Yes.

And now that's where obviously werewolves and things came from, some mystical, mythical sort of things. Then maybe it does affect some people.

Luna, lunatic.

Yeah.

Yes, yeah, of course. And spooky things. They always say there's a full moon. Like you mentioned werewolves, magics, you know, so.

Yeah.

So.

Well, anyone who's listen to my podcast know I did an episode on this, right.

Because what happened, it was about 10 years ago, it was a while back, one sort of week we were on holiday and from the time our flight took off to when it landed, and then there was like a 12 hour period that we had more cancellations for our clinic business than we'd ever had. And they were all regular clients. There were good people who don't normally mess around one thing or another. And it was absolutely bizarre.

And when we looked into it, there was a full moon and we hadn't had our business that long at this point and we started to notice a pattern that clients would just act a bit odd, a bit weird over the phone, like lots of chopping and changing, just being unnecessarily, just unsettled vibes.

So do you think it upsets like our mood? Potentially.

Potentially, yeah. And then looking further into it, our habits, I think with Esther, I'm with her on the water thing.

Yeah.

As I've got older, I've started tracking the moon cycles because I don't sleep as well and I am up and down to the loo all night when I'm not usually.

Oh, so the water element.

Yeah.

Yes.

And when you ask around when there's a full mood, if people moon, if people look tired, the gorgeous didn't sleep last night in the hairdressers. And I went, there's a full moon this week. And two of the girls were like, I didn't sleep at all last night.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna. I'm gonna take a log now to see whether I do.

You can put it on your apple watch.

Can you really?

See if I.

It's really interesting.

Don't sleep as well. See if I go the.

Because I've probably thought it's a load of a load of rubbish, me being controlled in the past. But now. But now. Yeah, you're making me think differently about it because of the tide thing. The water.

Yeah, to be aware of it. And then, you know, werewolves. And the other thing is my father.

I've now got an excuse.

Yes, maybe that's what you do. People used to say to. Oh, it must be full moon. You're acting all weird.

So the cells were always full. My father in law was a policeman and he said that the cells were always full on a full moon.

Nobody wanted to work and my mother was a midwife and everybody would have babies on a full moon. So no one wants to do that.

Everybody would have babies on a full moon because that means. That means. That means that people only have a birthday once a month. So not everybody is born on a full moon.

A picture of like gremlins there, everyone.

Just popping out like little aliens and things.

But people would give birth on that night.

So don't you just think it's coincidence?

Maybe. There's not much evidence. It's always anecdotal.

Is it?

Yeah. So there's been quite a few studies on it. I just observe around me and.

Yeah, but now we can do. We'll track. We'll track. Ashley, let's do it. See if we can come up with anything.

So do we think that the moon affects us?

Well, I didn't think it did.

She's trying it. She's trying to. Trying to make us. Coerc us into believing this, isn't it?

I'm feeling, I'm feeling, I'm feeling pressurized into agreeing with her here. Yeah.

Listen, we can revisit, open to this.

After the next full moon.

Yeah.

When is the next full moon?

Well, we've just had one last week.

Did we?

Phil, my husband doesn't sleep when there's a full moon.

But is that because you're telling him there's a full moon and he's not going to sleep?

I never mention it.

Oh, okay. I'll let you off. Yeah, right. Okay.

Yeah.

So there's more to this, isn't there? We need to go away and do some research. And I'm going to track my sleep.

I will message you both when the full moon is and you can tell me if you've noticed anything.

Please do.