Hi. My name's Amanda Danells Bewley. And this week, I've taken over the Ilkley Lockdown podcast. I'm going to be chatting to Ian, who's your normal host of the podcast, and we'll be talking about things tech, bird song, and night walks around Oakley. Enjoy.

So welcome. Welcome, Ian. Of course, it's your podcast. But for the purposes of continuity and keeping your podcast the same as all your other podcasts, why don't you say who you are and what it is you do?

Wow. Well, I'm Ian Smith. I can say that in a normal voice rather than the sort of drama voice. I feel I have to say it when I'm recording it. I was contemplating saying I'm a podcaster, but, I think that's just this month really.

It may be a bit misleading, but, come on Ian you can do better than this.

It's hard, isn't it?

Yes. Not fair. I don't know. Why am I making myself do it?

Let let me feed you another question then. So what is it you normally do in your normal everyday job?

I've spent, many years working in tech, and I'm now a a freelancer. And my thing is to try and help clients to solve problems around creativity, technology, and innovation. I actually love technology. I always have. I'm an early adopter of everything, hence I've got a 3 letter Twitter account, which is apparently a thing of great wonderment.

Although, unfortunately, for the three letters, they're also the the initials of Ian Duncan Smith. And so whenever the DWP does anything, when he was in charge of it, I used to get torrents of abuse on Twitter from people who thought they were addressing him.

Oh, dear. That's a little bit like, the, John Lewis guy who every Christmas

Oh, yes.

Gets yeah. He gets lots of stuff on his Twitter, to send to you about about this of the Christmas adverts. What kind of things have really changed for you, during this coronavirus crisis, do you think?

Business has been very quiet. A lot of what I was doing or was planning to do immediately before this involved things like going to India and teaching a class of people about design thinking for a large company. And a lot of things like that have all gone either off into the future sometime or been canceled. So that has given me a lot more free time. So, in that sense I've been able to go on a lot longer walks more often.

I often go for walks in the evening in Ilkley and when it's dark and I'm wandering around with my hat and my beard thinking people probably find me very suspicious. But what I've really loved is being able to go for walks in the daytime, and I've been exploring all these footpaths on the on the moor, because I've been able to have time to do it. And I've also, because of the free time, been sort of doing some work stuff, I've been trying to work out how to run creative workshops remotely without needing to be there in person, which is interesting as well. It's, given me more time to explore some things.

Yeah. Doing the the walks is is lovely, isn't it? I've been doing evening walks in Oakleigh, and it every everything's so still. It's really beautifully still and quiet.

And I think the beauty of the environment, I think it is good for your I think it's good for mental health, good certainly good for mine being able to just go out into the middle of almost nowhere and hardly be able to see any other people and just sort of communing with nature. In a minute, I'm gonna start hugging trees. I can tell, so I should probably calm down. But

Oh, and bird song. I've noticed a lot of birdsong. Yeah. I don't know about you, but I love that. That's really calming.

Yeah. Me too. No. I think it's I think nature is good for you, actually. I feel as though it is.

Definitely. I I definitely do. And we live next to the river, so I love listening to the sound of the river and the birdsong, that sort of thing. And what so because we've just been talking before we started recording. We was talking about schooling at home, and I think I probably would have been pretty rubbish at that had I got school aged children.

But what's what's some of the things that you're doing differently during the lockdown?

Well, that is a definite source of some of them. So one of my sons is, in year 10, so GCSE is next year. And it's a very hard year in terms of work, and, the school are sending, you know, quite a bit his way. And so I've been doing things like taking some of my work stuff. We've we've got a wall of the kitchen now with post it notes all over it and writing about which subject it is and and we've got to move these ones into the done box when they get done and all this kind of stuff.

So that's one sort of area where I've been kind of bringing work home a bit. And I suppose the other thing that really strikes me is about this rote workshop thing, which I found to be very interesting because, obviously, as a sort of technology person, I'm very hot on the tools and there are some great tools. And, you know, we're using Zoom at the moment, and that's definitely one. And there there are others. But what I find is really, really interesting is actually and people talk about Zoom fatigue now, don't they?

And and it's how do you keep people engaged in something? If you're doing something that's important enough to be spending you know a group of people's time on it, how do you make sure that you keep them engaged and keep it alive and and keep it active so that people aren't just kind of falling falling asleep. And a lot of that some of that's having breaks and some of it's doing, like, energizer exercises and stuff like that. I've learned a huge amount about that. Actually, I'm finding it's it's quite effective.

So I'm quite pleased, really. I think it's an a really useful new thing to have learned about.

I think the Zoom thing, there's so many of us have learned how to use Zoom and, like, on my podcast, that we did together couple of weeks ago. I thought that was, like, one of my big things that I'd learned.

Yeah.

I'm just about to do my first ever webinar as well. So I think it is an opportunity to learn, isn't it? During this time, is to learn new things, whether that's technology or perhaps picking up a ball or, like you say, going for a walk and learning which bird is singing which song, it is an opportunity for learning.

Well, it has been for me, certainly, and I I really value it, actually. I I think it's been great from that point of view. Just need some more money.

And I I suppose this sort of leads on to quite nicely. What's the biggest thing that you've learned? What's the big what's the one thing that you would take out of this whole crisis and one big positive?

Well, I know where a lot of the footpaths go on the moor now.

That is useful.

It is actually because I've been arriving in places and seeing, oh, I know this place. I just I've never approached it from this angle before. So that's been quite nice. And I think the biggest thing though is is this work thing of learning the reality almost of of remote working and and how to make that work. I think that's been the biggest thing for me.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a big one. I mean, sort of like for freelancers like myself, we learn we we work from home a lot. Mhmm.

And really, sort of sort of not any different for us. But actually, what we've done is actually, speaking for myself, is we look to work in different ways, really. So what would be the tips that you would sort of pass on to people about coping in the time of self isolation and of this crisis if there were things that you would share with those people?

I think the top one would be go outside. I I know it seems odd that we're in lockdown and to to say go outside, but I think it's interesting. I was talking to Duncan Cooper in one of the episode, and he was saying that actually going outside and from a distance, interacting with people saying hello, whatever that is. He was talking about how it kind of it boosts your endorphin levels and that actually boosts your resistance against disease and all that kind of stuff. So I think to go outside and just smile at people and wave and and be in nature, I think that's my that would be my top tip.

I think that's what's kept me sane during this.

I think you're not alone there. I've noticed that when I'm out walking, people just say hello all the time. And I think they did anyway, but it's like even more now that people just want to sort of have that connection, don't they?

They do.

So we've talked about going outside, and we've talked about tech. What would be the things that you would continue sort of going forward, you know, in 6, 12 months? What would what would be the things that you would like to still be doing in 6, 12 months time?

Well, I guess one thing that springs to mind is more of an external thing, but I have really loved the reduction in traffic. And I know it's starting to sort of go up again and it's probably coming to an end, but one thing that we've shown is that we can still move forward without the level of travel that we thought was needed. And obviously, some things supply chains are just a physical thing where you need products to move along and you need Tascos to get things on the shelves or whatever. But I think that if we could try and find ways of continuing with the benefits of of being able to work remotely and and maybe reducing the carbon emissions, reducing the traffic, you know, I'd love to see what schools have learned from from all this and whether they they need to work in the same way as they always have in the past or whether some new thing has come along as a result of doing things this way that we kept kept going. So I think if we can somehow keep hold of the the green benefits of this as we move onwards, I think that'll be that'll be the thing I'd most like to see.

And for me personally, I want to still go for walks in the daylight. I used to do a lot of the walking at night as I think I'd said, and walking in the daylight is the real pleasure, so I'd like to keep doing that.

Oh, it's lovely. Yeah. I think I love the the whole thing that we it's almost like we've been forced to go and have an hour's exercise every day. Isn't it? It's just like made us fitter as a nation Yeah.

Because we've had to go out and do ourselves our our hours walking. And if you don't walk for an hour, you feel like you've wasted that opportunity to go out. I don't know about you, but I'm like, okay. I've got another hour. Let's see how far we can walk

Definitely.

And really make the most of of that time. So yeah. We've almost come to the end of our podcast today. What's gonna be the one thing that you're going to do as soon as, like, lockdown finishes completely and we're all allowed to get out and do what we want?

It's hard to pin it down to 1, actually. There's quite a lot of things I quite like to to do. I think the first thing would probably be I'd like to just hug my parents. They live, they live in Ilkley, and we see them sometimes. We go and drop things off and everything, but it's all very socially distant.

I would like to give them an actual hug. And the other thing I want to do is to invite everyone who's been kind enough to be on my podcast to a thank you drink at Friends of Ham or somewhere like that. That's what I'm gonna I'm gonna do.

Well, I am definitely in for that because, a, I love a good party, and, b, I love Friends of Ham. So, count the in for that.

Totally.

So yes. Well, it's been really lovely, interviewing the interviewer. So, thank you very much for letting me have that opportunity. Thank you.

It's a great pleasure, and thank you so much for volunteering to do it. I really appreciate it.

You're welcome.

Thanks to Amanda for most capably taking the driving seat for this episode, which has definitely felt very different for me. Now I know what it's like to be in the hot seat. Look in the links for the episode to find more information about some of what we discussed. The next episode will be out soon. And as we draw towards the episode 12 podcast finale, we'll be giving some thoughts what comes next and what form the podcast might take in the future if we carry on with it.

If you have any thoughts, then get in touch via Twitter or on our Facebook page. The best way not to miss out on the remaining episodes is to download the Apple or Google Podcasts app on your phone, search for Ilkley Lockdown, and hit the subscribe button. You can also subscribe on Spotify if that's more your cup of Yorkshire tea. See you next time.