733. A Summer Ramble (Early August 2021)

hello there audio listeners welcome to the podcast hello video viewers welcome to the podcast as well how are you today i hope you're doing well as i take a sip from my coffee it's quite early here it's the very beginning of the day it is friday the 30th of july and here i am recording episode number 732 of luke's english podcast and this episode i'm not sure what it's called yet but it's going to be a ramble okay now if you are a long-term listener to this podcast you'll know what that means a ramble is when i just kind of talk off the top of my head without any specific script without any specific topic it's basically just kind of me talking and let's see how i can manage to keep going uh just kind of improvising it all i guess the first ever rambling episode was something like episode 700 not 700. episode 75 i think was probably the first ever rambling episode that was called the ice cream episode and i thought to myself i wonder if i can just talk without having anything planned can i just kind of talk for half an hour and see if i can keep going without stopping that was my challenge in episode 75 and it turns out i was able to do it it's quite nerve-wracking i mean you kind of feel like oh god i'm not sure if i'm going to make a stupid mistake any second now it's a little bit nerve-racking but that's all right so yes let me just put my headphones in here so we have started we have started i'm just sipping from a cup of coffee just to make sure i'm fully awake are you awake too are you fully awake too i should hope so because you're now listening to this new episode of the podcast um and yes there's a video version of this as well as an audio version uh you'll be able to see the video version on my youtube channel or my website and recently i have been doing youtube videos i've been sort of trying to make as much content that will also go on youtube as possible and often that means adding something else on the screen so you're not just watching me talk but there's other stuff on the screen as well often like text you know vocabulary or a script or something there isn't any of that this time i would normally be putting up my notes or if there's a transcript my transcript on the screen so that you can see it too but there's no there are no notes there's no script there's nothing all i have is a few simple one word uh cues to help me remember the basic things i'd like to talk about in this episode so if you are watching on youtube i think it's just going to be my face sorry about that but i expect that automatic subtitles will be available so why not uh check to see if they are available and they are pretty accurate i would say they're about 99 accurate especially when it's just me on my own when i'm just talking on my own doing a monologue like this google's or youtube's automatic transcriptions or subtitles seem to be a lot more accurate so anyway welcome welcome to my apartment welcome to my flat welcome to this room where i record my episodes um yeah the purpose of this episode really is for me to just talk directly from me to you and i do these sometimes in order to kind of give news and just generally talk about various things that i haven't really had a chance to talk about recently now if you are a regular listener to my podcast you will remember that over the last couple of months i've been saying that i've got a big backlog of episodes well the backlog is nearly done i've nearly got through all of them now i've i've got about three more episodes after this one that have already been recorded and ready to go and they'll be published soon but the backlog is nearly done but it's time for me to go on holiday pretty much so i suppose this is a this is one of those pre-holiday summer rambles that i do sometimes just before i go away on holiday and kind of maybe don't upload anything for a few weeks i do this sometimes so i'm just sort of checking in with you and sort of saying to you okay here's the situation this is what's going on in my life here's some here's some news about the podcast and all that sort of thing hmm i have to say at this point um at the beginning i feel a bit overwhelmed by the prospect of doing this that i'm am i really gonna talk unscripted for for about an hour yes i am okay another thing uh video viewers you might be thinking luke where's your beard what's happened to your beard and that's that's kind of uh for some reason the video community the video watching community are obviously because they've got video of a video version they're far more interested and invested in the way that i look so what's my what does my haircut look like do i have hair on my face and in the last i guess the last few uploads it's been sort of like beard no beard beard no beard half beard various states of uh facial hair growth in recent uploads but that's because the the videos i've uploaded recently have been taken from different periods so i've kind of like grabbed um i've got various bits of video footage of me recording the podcast and i used those to make some youtube videos and some of them in some of them i've got beard and some of them i don't but i suppose that's the thing that i i'll let my beard grow let it grow and probably let my hair grow a bit and then i get fed up and i get a haircut and i shave my beard off and start again so it's kind of like sometimes i've got a beard sometimes i don't okay that's not very important but for some reason the um the video leopsters out there seem to be very interested and invested in whether or not there is hair pushing its way out of my chin or not and to what extent i've let it happen so anyway there you go i've got stubble i've got stubble today but not a full beard okay stubble that's the hair that is starting to grow out of your face before you have a beard you have stubble and then you afterwards you have a beard and you can you shave the beard you can shave it off or you can trim the beard meaning make it a bit um make it a bit shorter there you go beard vocabulary for everybody um stubble a beard to trim to shave off yes there you go um so how about you how's your english going how is your english this is this these are these are my one word notes by the way i've got youtube beard english moving holiday premium football opp um daughter and music that's an overview of the stuff i'm gonna talk about youtube i feel like i've done i've said that this is on youtube there's no text on the screen but there should be subtitles uh beard i've mentioned that i've kind of explained that for all the the facial hair oriented leopsters out there in video land english is the next item on the list and then moving that's moving flat because in the next couple of weeks all of this around me is all gonna have to come down and go somewhere else uh holiday where where i'm going and what i'm doing on my holiday oh that's gonna be exciting for you to hear um and various other things so english how is your english i think to to i'll give you a very quick summary of sort of what i think at the moment so i've always said that luke's english podcast is best consumed as part of a balanced diet so do you have a balanced diet in your english uh part of that diet is you need lots of exposure to authentic english in my opinion so you should listen and read a lot and that's sort of learning by input and then you that's not enough on its own that's obviously very important i was talking to christian from kangaroo english about this that's obviously very important but it's not the only thing of course how could it be you can't just learn a language just from consuming it you also need to be doing it too so remember that english is something that you can do not something that you know okay so always remember that it's english is a thing that you can do and focus on being able to do things and focus on practicing doing things it's no good knowing all the rules of grammar knowing a lot of vocabulary you've got to use it too and if you don't use it you lose it so practice practice practice practice practice the five ps um what else some um some some specific study as well some focused study uh like it's called deliberate study i saw a video of christians with um is his name paul mason a guy who's been in the industry for decades and should know everything there is to know about learning english and he talked about deliberate study and the importance of it i suppose this is where you instead of just sort of assuming that you're picking up or acquiring grammar and vocabulary from just listening to it and reading it a deliberate study is where you go you do some focused study work in order to apply yourself and actually understand the language and understand how it works and this is definitely worth doing it can really speed up the process if you do some grammar work or some vocab work not too much it shouldn't be the first thing that you do especially the grammar but it's worth looking at various forms understanding how the language fits together and trying to just like maybe fix certain common mistakes which are the result of your first language so some focused studies is necessary so input learning learning by doing focused study i would also recommend um doing pronunciation work as well listen and repeat drills learning the phonemic alphabet and practicing and practicing again and again um is there anything else fluency learning as well is important you've got to learn how to put all of your words together and actually express yourself and speak without pausing too much and that's also about confidence you've got to activate the english that you've learned and there you go that's kind of just a little i don't know why did i say that i guess it's because i asked you how your english was and i thought i'd give a little summary there's obviously a lot more i could say about learning english and you can check out some of my other stuff relating to that so anyway i hope your english is going well listen regularly but also try to do things regularly speaking other types of practice write regularly and do do some focused pronunciation work this year i've spoken to six winners and runners-up from the wispolip competition and they all had great english and really good things to say about learning english and i recommend that you go back and review those episodes because there was some really genuinely good advice in there including well i mean for example if we just pick out michael from poland he talked about using a text online called comma getsecure and working with the text practicing it again and again listening to samples of other people reading it in different accents and working on it again and again and again um okay anyway keep up your english now let me talk let me talk now about moving so i i said before that all of this is going to have to go so this is basically information which other normally i wouldn't really i wouldn't tell you i don't know if you'd be interested in it but i'm telling you because it could affect the podcast so you might know if you're if you're someone who listens to the end of each episode i've kind of rambled a little bit about this lately at the end of episodes that we are moving to a new flat we've actually bought our first flat together as a family which is quite a big deal and we've bought a place in paris we were wondering where to buy should we buy in paris should we buy it in the outskirts of paris should we buy somewhere way outside paris where it's much cheaper and you get a lot more space but you're miles away you know um we were def we definitely wanted to buy somewhere in the paris area in france because we basically live here now my daughter's going to school here and also it would be difficult for my wife to move to england because of brexit frankly and you know we're happy although i do miss the uk and so does my wife because she um she loves um the uk as well uh but we're basically happy here so anyway to cut a long story short we decided it was time to buy ourselves a place but um obviously it's very expensive in paris so the place that we're moving to is considerably smaller than the place that we've been living in for the far the past couple of years um we're renting this place and it's got a fair amount of space i mean there's a room you know there's a bedroom for my wife and me there's a bedroom for my daughter there's a nice living room kitchen uh bathroom and stuff plus this room which is just up a little flight of stairs this room which we use for storage over there and for my pod room but we're moving okay so this could cause disruption i don't know how it's going to affect the podcast over the coming couple of months um the story is that we're going to we're actually kind of demolishing um the apartment from the inside so all the walls inside the flat are not supporting walls so in houses or apartments you have supporting walls and non-supporting walls so all the walls inside this flat are not supporting walls you can knock them all down and the building will stay standing the ceiling is not going to collapse so that means that we can knock all those walls down and sort of redesign it re-jig it so that it is a lot more practical so we're going to do that we're sort of making some changes we're opening out the kitchen we're going to add some storage because that's obviously very important and various other things but we're going to have loads of work done new kitchen new bathroom oh my goodness it's going to be a big project and so i don't know how long it's going to take these things always take longer than expected then we've got to move all of our stuff we've got a oh we've got a lot of stuff to do you know what it's like if you've moved house you know how complicated that can be so i don't know how that's going to affect the podcast good news is that as well as moving into a new flat we've also managed to buy a little office space which is not far away it's like a couple of minutes on foot from the new apartment so this little office space is a sort of about five five and a half meters squared little room and that's going to be my pod room um so i should be getting access to that in september so the podcast is going to move to its own separate space it won't be in my apartment anymore i'll go there every morning a bit like a job and that's where i'll podcast from and i'll be having to you know decorate it and put my books up on the walls and guitars up and i'm going to need to build a desk in there and stuff like that it's it's quite an exciting time but it's a disruptive time so yes i don't know what's going to happen to the podcast obviously i will do my best to keep making episodes and it's possible i don't need to have a fixed location to do this um so we will see but there's a chance there'll be there'll be fewer episodes possibly even none it depends how it all goes um and how chaotic things are but there you go okay i'm moving to a new flat the move is going to sort of take place over the next couple of months as we get the work done the decoration work the actual moving the installing of everything moving into my new office getting everything set up getting an internet connection sorted out all that stuff who knows we'll see but if i go quiet and there aren't any podcasts for a while you'll know what's happening next word on my list is the word holiday and so yeah so i'm going i'm going on holiday like most normal humans i am going on holiday this year and we're going back to england now this is a bit complicated i mean you know it's a weird time for holidays isn't it a lot of people are doing staycations this year staycation do you know a staycation is well you know what a vacation is that's where you go away for a while on holiday a staycation is like a vacation but you stay where you live so you have a holiday at home basically a staycation so lots of people in the uk and probably france too are doing staycations this year although in france they don't call them staycations of course but in the uk the word is being used a lot so people are staying in the uk staying in the country for their summer holidays and so are people in france and this means that many places are fully booked lots of places are completely fully booked so it's been really hard to get a holiday but we wanted to go back to england to see my parents so that my daughter can see her grandparents so basically we're doing that we're going to go to england there's a an annoying quarantining process i mean it's necessary i suppose that when you come from france you've got to quarantine for 10 days in the same location and you have to take certain tests you have to take a test a cover test on day two and a covet test on day eight and if you're okay then you're able to leave quarantine on day ten but the weird thing is you could also do a day five test and if you do the day five test and it's and it's it's negative then you can be released from quarantine early which kind of makes me think what's the point of day eight why doesn't everyone just do day two and day five i don't know and the other thing is that if you plan to do day five you still need to buy day two and day eight you can't just buy day two you gotta buy day two and day eight you need both tests to be confirmed as booked before you can travel even if you plan to take a day five release from quarantine early test and it you know the whole thing seems to be a bit of a scam where basically you're being forced to pay lots of money to dubai tests which you might not even use and where does all the money go well in the uk at the moment all the testing all of this testing process is all being handled by private companies and they are charging 50 pounds per test which is really expensive considering in france for example these tests have just been given out free uh by the health service so you've got to pay private firms about 50 pounds for tests that you don't even really need sometimes but anyway going back to the uk so we're going to have to do all the quarantining and testing and shoving things up our noses and yes it's disgusting yeah you've got to shove things up your nose to do the the covid test anyway we're also going to be going camping which will be a bit of a gamble with the weather nice camping i mean glamping that's glamorous camping we've had staycation now we've got glamping so we're going glamping we're staying in a nice tent in a nice part of the country on a quite a fancy camping site that's a bit more like a festival or something they have different events happening every day there's like craft food trucks and craft beer and all sorts of different activities you can do and the tents are quite luxurious they're very comfortable they have carpet on the floor there are even electrical plug sockets in some of them there are fire pits and barbecues and other cooking facilities it's going to be amazing we're going to do that for about five days but only if the weather holds out so it's never really a good situation to be um what's the word for it sort of relying entirely on the english weather for your enjoyment but that's what we're gonna do and just hope it doesn't rain on us the entire time there you go that's holiday moving swiftly through my list of items i don't know how long this is gonna be normally my rambling content goes on forever because i can't finish making a point but i'm doing okay maybe i've been improving maybe i've been working on my rambling and i've i've managed to hone it or maybe it's because it's the morning i don't know because it's kind of early in the morning my brain still hasn't woken up i don't know the reason but i'm flying through the list quite quickly next in the list is premium and i just wanted to mention that luke's english podcast premium yes i've been updating it as i do every month and recently episodes i've uploaded are this p30 which is a pronunciation video all about helping you to speak clearly with the right pausing the right kind of emphasis to make you sound persuasive and fluent and engaging and interesting to listen to so there's a a lesson with lots of practice on using your voice and pausing in certain places to make yourself sound more engaging that's p30 and then p31 parts one and two are are now available part three might be available too and this series is all about english used by my mum and me in our recent conversation about the beatles or a book about the beatles and it includes lots of grammar for talking about the past speculating about the past and talking about alternative pasts so that's modal verbs and third conditional structures plus loads of vocabulary as well in the series uh with all the pronunciation drills that you would normally expect so just a heads up there for any premium lobsters uh two new premium episodes or an episode and a series are available now in the in the app and by the way um you if you're watching this on youtube by the way this podcast is primarily an audio podcast i do videos sometimes as well but it's primarily an audio podcast and i've got i mean you can get luke's english podcast wherever you get your podcasts and i'm assuming you know how to use podcasts you just get your podcasting app and search for the name of the podcast that you're interested in and then subscribe so luke's english podcast is available on itunes on squad car or squad cast new on pocket casts on google play and all the other things but also i have an app and you can just search the app store for um for it and it's called luke's english podcast app okay and um with luke's english podcast app you get the entire episode archive on your phone every single episode i've ever done including all of the premium content all of the free content and also there's a category here as well which says app-only episodes and that's full of episodes that are only available in the in the app and nowhere else jingles and music you can listen to samples of my jingles and little bits of music and stuff um pronunciation drill videos videos and plenty of other stuff so check out the luke's english podcast app it's completely free and you can use that also to access all that premium stuff okay the next item on my list is football and i feel i should probably mention the football right i did two bonus episodes with uh martin and zdenek about the euros and england of course actually got to the final of euro 2020 against italy and of course you know i live in france and of course like loads of my french friends went oh england are in the final we know an english guy let's let's go and hang out with him and watch the game with him everyone wanted to sort of watch me watch the game so we went to a pub with a lot quite a lot of us to watch it and obviously i was chuffed the england scored early but i was a little disappointed with the rest of our performance we we were a little bit unimaginative and and um a bit defensive trying to protect our one nil lead and italy ground us down and finally equalized and then of course it was a penalty shootout and england are renowned for being a complete disaster at penalties we always get knocked out of these international competitions on penalties and sure enough we did it again three of our guys failed to score and italy went through and it was obviously disappointing but you know what i wasn't that disappointed because i just felt like well this kind of disappointment it's just normal isn't it it's just back to normal again i didn't feel extra disappointed i just felt like all right just back to the normal level of disappointment so i was impressed with the team i thought that we played well we were a little unimaginative and conservative at times but we did well and obviously it's the best that we've done for decades i like the manager gareth southgate i think he's he's got some class to him i feel i felt terribly sorry for the three lads who failed to score their penalties i just felt really sorry for them because it must be so tough in that situation and the mental load uh must be very difficult i've just realized at the beginning of this episode i said it was episode 37 732 didn't i wrong it's not it's 733 you start to lose count after about 730 episodes i think so anyway i was proud of the players proud of the team felt sorry for the guys who didn't score but i don't feel very proud of the english fans and the racists who felt it necessary to abuse some members of the team i mean it's absolutely pathetic and ridiculous and stupid including the fans who booed the team when they were taking the knee now i know people will have strong feelings about footballers taking the knee like kneeling down to protest racism but i mean ultimately isn't it this it's like you you can make statements about gesture politics and um what's the other one virtue signaling and all that stuff okay so gesture politics and virtue signaling are not great things but racism is worse don't you think so i don't know why people get so upset about footballers making a a statement against racism what is wrong with that i don't know uh there's a lot of racism in football and hooliganism too and english fans were really awful they were booing during during other nations um national anthems they were being racist to their own team which is ridiculous uh violent off the pitch and generally making england look very bad normally england are quite a popular team in international tournaments but i definitely noticed this year that england were not very popular not many non-english people were supporting them and it seems that we've sort of become one of those teams that people don't like very much and i wonder why i don't think it's because of the the individuals in the team who all behaved very well it's more to do with other things like the fans and probably things of relating to brexit that england is no longer well i don't know if it ever was but england's not a very popular country at the moment what do you think let me know in the comments section what you think so i'm going away on holiday for about three weeks right my flat's gonna be my life's gonna turn into chaos uh when we move flat um i don't know how this will affect the podcast but if um you are if you if you need to listen to me for whatever reason obviously you've got the episode archive which you could listen to but also recently i've been featured on lots of other people's podcasts so the item on my list here is opp meaning other people's podcasts so i've been invited onto other people's podcasts recently um i don't know like a lot more than normal i i usually get invited onto onto podcasts and stuff quite a lot but um for some reason the last few months have been even more than normal it seems that during the pandemic over the last 18 months it's lots of people started doing podcasts lots of new podcasts have arrived a lot of learning english ones as well and i guess since i've been doing this for 12 years i feel like almost like the grandfather of english language podcasting or something and so people invite me on um to interview me they invite me on to their podcast to interview me it's nice to be such a influential and um interesting person to be invited anyway you could listen to them you can find them and listen to them uh most of these are just on these are just episodes of other people's podcasts that you can find wherever you get your podcasts right um not all of these are on youtube you might need to just search your podcasting app so the first one i was on was the level up english podcast the level up english podcast have you heard of it the level up english podcast so just search for level up english podcast with michael lavers so i was in an episode of that um by the way you'll find links to these on the page for this episode and also you will find links to youtube versions if they are available so i was on the level up english podcast with michael lavers and we talked about uh the usual things that people ask me about actually when they interview me it's just like you know why i started my podcast and uh my experiences of learning french you know the all those sorts of things and i sort of tell a few stories about embarrassing experiences of learning and speaking french i was also on the al slagel english 2.0 podcast al slagel otherwise known as al sensei um who sort of disappeared for a few years he was quite a big podcaster in the sort of learning english category a few years ago al slagel based in japan al sensei he disappeared for a while but he's back again and he interviewed me for his podcast so that's the als legal english 2.0 podcast then there's glass onion on john lennon now that's anthony ratuno's podcast and he didn't actually feature me on his podcast i'd love to be on it although i sort of feel i don't have that much to contribute because his podcast he's had so many guests with incredible levels of experience and knowledge so i don't know if i if i really deserve to be on it but um he did an episode a while ago which was sort of like question and answer answering questions from listeners and i sent in a question but anyway generally speaking you can listen to the glass onion on john lennon podcast if you want um more john lennon chat with anthony including a brief appearance by me in the recent question and answer episode then there's the stories of language learners podcast okay stories of language learners podcast with charles from brazil and charles is a learner of english and he's very passionate about learning english and he's decided to start doing his podcast and he's amazed by the doors that have been opened since he did that and he's spoken to some he's interviewed lots of people on his podcast and stuff like that he interviewed me we talked about all sorts of different things i can't remember all of it but you could check out stories of language learners podcast again i will try and put links or maybe embedded media players on the page for this episode on my podcast website also there was english with rod uh rod or rodrigo is a an english teacher from brazil and he invited me onto his show as well i think that's not been published yet that episode but it's coming soon also coming up um also coming up i should be making an appearance on the clark and miller podcast that's another podcast by an english teacher from the uk uh gabriel clarke so he invited me onto his podcast we spoke yesterday so it's probably going to take him a week or two to get it done but anyway you can check out the clark and miller podcast i should be on that soon and i should be on english with rob as well at some point if he actually if we actually have managed to get it together um so that i can be on his podcast so i should be on that as well okay so there's lots of other stuff out there obviously lots of other people's podcasts that you could listen to there you go check out the page for this episode on my website you'll find links to those things or maybe players for those episodes as well okay we're nearly at the end of this this is like the i know this has been 35 minutes but i feel like it's been the most uh concise rambling episode i've ever done but we're not done yet there's there's more stuff for me to play you so every now and then on the podcast i play samples of my daughter speaking english again long-term listeners will know because every now and then you'll hear little bits of her speaking she's three and a half years old now okay and so it's a sort of an ongoing not experiment but an observation to see the development of of her english she's three and a half years old here's the base here are the basic facts about my daughter so obviously i live in france in paris with my wife and my daughter i'm english my wife is french she's from paris my daughter was born here in france she goes to school in french all the kids around her and the teachers and stuff speak french at home we speak mostly english with some french i always speak to my daughter in english and she speaks to me in a combination of english and french my wife speaks some english and some french with with my daughter and we have books that we read in english also she watches like some cartoons in english and stuff she's got a little radio with stories in it that aren't english as well she speaks to my grandparents my grandparents she speaks to her grandparents that's my parents in english the rest of her life is in french her language is developing her the two languages are are developing at the same time often she mixes them up so she will speak half french and half english sometimes she's still doing that we expect that to diverge in the future that she'll more and more get a sense of what is english and what is french and she'll be able to divide them but at the moment they're still a little bit mixed up um that's all you need to know i suppose but now let me play you a recording of my daughter and me this is um how long is this hold on a second and i'll tell you it's about 16 minutes long so for the video viewers i think what i'm gonna do is i might pop downstairs and make myself another coffee so you'll be able to just look at the wall in my in my room while i'm um playing you this recording so this is a recording of my daughter and me and we're just in her bedroom um recently and um i decided i would tell her a story so she's got lots of books lying around so we picked a book and i decided that i would read the story to her so you can also listen to me telling her a story which might be nice for you um i know i'm going to be reading a kid's story but then they're nice stories anyway and you can just listen to my daughter speaking english it's quite good fun really i hope that you enjoy this and when i finish playing this to you i'll also play you a little musical collaboration that i did with my daughter as well which you might enjoy okay so for this it's about 15 16 minutes long i will just let you listen to my daughter and me talking you can hear her english and you can enjoy the story which i read for her as well okay so here we go i'm going to play the um play the audio of the story to you now while i get myself a coffee here you go press record now the battery might run out no no no no no no don't want the battery to run out no let's see anyway so you're listening to luke's english that's right and today i am talking to my daughter who is in a musical mood um how are you today i'm fine yeah that's good that's good how about the weather how's the weather today raining yeah it is raining isn't it what do you think of the rain not bad not bad do you like the rain what's your favorite weather rain and sun rain and sun in the same day yes really why do you like the two in the same day sun in in rain storm sun and rain yeah because that makes things interesting does it okay do you remember the last time we did this when was the last time you were on my podcast no it was it was a year ago and we were on holiday and i had my recorder mummy was having a having a shower and i decided to record you on holiday maybe you don't remember i don't know if anyone else does either anyway what's happening now what's mommy doing sleeping yeah she is sleeping because she's quite tired now darling i want you to stay close to me okay for this recording so do you do you know who who are you talking to now no you don't know who you're talking to no would you like me to tell you yes okay so we are talking to the lepsters can you say lepsters yeah who who are the leopsters do you know you should say that's a bit of french there that you don't know so i just said i don't know just start randomly singing how old are you now three and a half so i was saying the leopsters right the leopsters they are my listeners and they live all around the world all around the world yeah the world's a big place lepsters it's just a nickname right lepsters is a nickname for my for my listeners what's your nickname uh that's my name nickname isn't is what we call you sometimes sometimes we use your name sometimes we call you other things what else do we call you bubble bubble yeah that's your nickname bubble playing the re playing the recorder again can you hold the microphone so the way it works is you have to put your fingers over the holes so this is a recorder listeners lobsters right my daughter's got a recorder not this this is this is a recorder too this is an audio recorder but the instrument this this is called a recorder as well and you put look you put your thumb over that hole and you put your fingers over the other holes here and when you lift different fingers it makes different sounds i can't play it so it doesn't sound very good all right don't press the buttons here we go i know i know i know now all right i'm going to read you a story now okay let's do a story can you choose a what's your favorite little miss book choose a little miss book please now we're going to do a little miss i know you do but this one's in french and i want us to do an english story darling i know yeah well this is luke's english podcast it's not luke's french podcast i'm afraid so instead look do you want a selection yes yes a selection little miss splendid little miss hug little miss chatterbox little miss whoops little miss somersault little miss bossy little miss naughty little miss scary uh little miss greedy and little miss shy and little miss someone little miss someone else let's have one more okay this one little miss lucky but i'm not sure this will work as well for the audio but we'll see so which one would you like i know which one i want i know the one that's going to sound good on the podcast i i think little miss shy is usually a good one for the for the audio should we do this one yes okay you're going to choose that one perfect okay do you know why we do you know why we call you bubble sweetie sweetie why do we call you bubble you don't know i'll tell you hold on i'm gonna tell you why and then i'll let you hold the microphone okay we call you bubble because when you were in mummy's belly before you were born i used to put my ear to mummy's belly and i used to speak to you right and you know i used to hear i could hear little bubbles like the sound of little it sounded like little bubbles inside mummy's tummy and so i called you bubble even before you were born and it sounded like a little bubble and then when you were born you used to make little bubbles with your mouth you used to kind of little bubbles would come out of your mouth so that's why you're called bubble it's just a nickname okay so now here's the thing all right listen here are the rules you can hold the microphone but you have to hold it here like that so everyone can hear us okay so i don't want you to be distracted by the microphone i want you to listen to the story okay all right don't press any buttons just hold the microphone there that's perfect so everyone can hear okay so this is the story of little miss shy are you shy no sometimes a little bit no when you meet new people you're a little shy sometimes at the microphone not too far okay so here we go you ready yeah here's the story i i should say first of all this story is written by roger hargreaves and it's it's from the little miss collection by eggmont publishing there's the little miss collection and then there's the mr men collection as well this is from the little miss collection this is a little miss here we go are you ready so little miss shy i get to put the microphone here little miss shy just couldn't help it being shy that is she was terribly desperately shy she was so shy it hurt which is what they call painfully shy being freely sad yeah yeah hold it here hold it here that's right if at any time at all anyone at all said anything at all to her she blushed like a beetroot she lived all alone in a little house quite a long way from where you live in fact quite a long way from where anybody lives three four five five five little hills in front of her house and the house is called thimble cottage one two three [Music] one two three four five six seven 15 16 17 18 19 and 20. this needs to be closer to me okay all right don't press any buttons all right thimble cottage was the name of her house a thimble is a little metal thing no a thimble is a little metal thing that goes over your finger so that you don't when when you're sewing with a needle so that the needle doesn't hurt your finger you some people wear a little metal thing on their finger it protects the finger from the needle it's called a thimble it's a nice little word anyway thimble cottage is the name of miss little miss shai's home so little miss shy was so shy she just couldn't bring herself to leave her little cottage don't press the buttons she never went shopping she thought of walking into a the thought of walking into a shop and asking for something was absolutely terrifying so she grew her own food in the garden of thimble cottage and lived a very quiet life very very very quiet indeed bang bang bang little miss shy who was having breakfast in the kitchen of thimble cottage dived under the table in terror but it was only the postman knocking at the door anybody home he called little miss shy under the table put her hands over her ears and shut her eyes because she was so shy she must be out thought the postman to himself and pushed the letter he was carrying under the door and walked away little miss shy waited and waited and waited until the sound of his footsteps had died away and then she waited some more in fact she spent most of that day under her kitchen table it was dark by the time little miss shy dared to come out there it was on the doormat the very first letter she'd had in the whole of her life she opened it cautiously it was from mr funny you are invited said the letter to a party it went on on saturday it said at three o'clock it added it's going to be fun fun fun a letter from mr funny little miss shine was horrified [Music] wait a minute little miss shy was horrified she looked at the letter again i can't go she thought there'll be people there people in the whole wide world there was absolutely nothing that frightened little miss shy as much as the thought of people she worried about it all night long but the following morning she made a decision i'll have to go she thought it wouldn't be polite not to but five minutes later she changed her mind and five minutes later she changed her mind back again but five minutes later guess what happened that's right yeah she changed her mind again she didn't sleep that night at all the following day was friday and that friday little miss shy changed her mind 144 times that's how many five minutes there are in a day she was going to the party she wasn't going to the party she was going to the party she wasn't she was she wasn't it was a long day can you turn the page okay and that friday night was even worse than thursday night had been she didn't sleep a wink not even half a wink saturday morning came and went saturday lunchtime came and went little miss shy just couldn't eat a thing one o'clock in the afternoon came and went two o'clock in the afternoon came and went and then three o'clock the party time came and went but poor little miss shy didn't meaning she didn't go she couldn't she just sat there a tear rolled down her cheek oh i do wish i wasn't so shy she sobbed oh it's a sad story isn't it four o'clock came there was a loud knock at the door knock knock knock little miss shy hid behind her chair the door opened and in walked mr funny i knew you wouldn't come he laughed looking at her behind the chair so he went on i've come to take you little miss shy blushed and blushed and blushed come on cried mr funny seizing her by the hand you'll enjoy it once you're there and he marched the blushing little lady off to his party everybody was there little miss shy didn't feel very well but everybody talked to her and everybody was nice and gradually the longer the party lasted bit by bit little by little eventually guess what happened she stopped blushing and actually started to enjoy herself told you so laughed mr funny little miss shy nodded and giggled she was having the time of her life and only blushing a little bit and do you know who she met at the party no you don't know mr quiet he's blushing too yeah and he says he said i used to be shy like you he said little miss shy looked at him i don't believe you she giggled and then she thought would you like to come to thimble cottage for tea tomorrow she said mr quiet looked at her me he said blushing like a beetroot tea he said blushing like two beetroots tomorrow he said blushing like a whole sack full of beetroots and then he fainted and that is the end of the story okay and my recorder has not run out of batteries it's amazing it's a miracle normally this thing runs out of batteries really quickly what did you think of the story little miss shy go on good good good [Laughter] don't eat it don't eat the microphone it's not an ice cream hey what's your favorite food what's it no don't eat me what's your favorite food favorite food is daddy scrambled daddy yes not scrambled eggs scrambled daddy yes oh my goodness hi no no no you can't eat me no no don't eat me please you were trying to eat me last time we did one of these recordings what is what's all that about anyway scrambled daddy huh hmm what does what does that come with what's your favorite drink what's your favorite drink what hey don't drink me get off get off me daddy milkshake maybe yes all right all right all right there it's just a joke it's just a joke hmm okay well i think that's good i think that's it so what she was about to ask me though is like what's your favorite drink and i even had a joke lined up but the battery ran out on the recorder just just before i could say it so she was going to say what's your favorite drink and i wanted to say bubble tea [Music] okay so that's my daughter and her english i thought that you might be interested to just to hear the way it's developing she obviously speaks a lot of french too but the english is definitely coming on and it's really amazing to be able to actually talk to her and have conversations with her okay now i said before that i would like to play you a little musical collaboration now i don't know if my daughter's musical or what but she does spend quite a lot of time singing so she will just um [Music] if you just leave her alone she's just doing something occupying herself she'll suddenly start singing which is amazing obviously it's so cute and she's pretty good sometimes it seems that she's got like a tune going on and her vocals are quite kind of they're quite soulful i'm going to give you an example this is when she was just playing sitting with some toys and she started singing in french and the lyrics are basically this all around me i have lots of flowers all around me i have lots of flowers and it's lots of flowers lots of flowers lots of flowers all around me i have lots of flowers which is quite beautiful really um here we go this is her can we hear it [Music] i told him which is like all around me i have flowers now she sounds like uh she could be like a soul diva singing over house music [Music] it's like a soul singer let me just play a little bit more [Music] means lots of flowers so i was so impressed by the vocal that she came out with that i thought right i've got to um i've got to try and make a piece of music for that so i think this is what i came up with are you ready for this so i my wife recorded my daughter singing on her own she sent the recording to me and i worked out what key she was singing in i tried to work out what key is that is that c is it g is it d what is it and then based on that i kind of came up with some music that would hopefully try and fit in with her singing and it sort of pretty much worked so i put some guitar i put bass and i put drums on the usual things and so this is the result this is called fleur baku and it's the collaboration between my daughter and me [Music] wow yes [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] yes [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] so you get the idea [Music] okay so you get the idea right that was quite fun that was quite a nice thing i just felt like i wanted to play it to you just for a bit of fun because it's one of those episodes okay now just before we end here i'm going to try and sing a song for you i don't know if i'm going to be able to do this we'll we'll see we'll see we'll see now what talking of we'll see what can you see camera wise because it would be good if you could see the kind of good bit of guitar bit of my face that would be good so if you could uh see this so i'm going to sing a song by one of my favorites i always sing songs by this person it is neil neil innis who is just my i guess it must be my favorite songwriter [Music] so i'm going to try and do this without being able to edit at all i'm gonna try and do this on the first go one take only so this is a song by neil innis and it's called love is getting deeper and it's kind of the way he used to do it he would sing it as if it was like a french song with a french vocalist two kinds of things in this sort of way as a kind of comedy song i can't do it like that so i'm just going to try and do it normally but the lyrics are all about sort of the everyday drudgery of married life and domestic life and how it can kind of be quite miserable it can get on top of you if you're married to someone and you you know you don't have a lot of money and your daily existence is just repetitive and yeah that's kind of what it's about it sounds depressing but there's a lot more to it than than that there's love in there as well okay i'll look let me try and do it first take i'm gonna need to move my hand to drag down the uh chords and lyrics here as well i think i think i do okay [Music] [Music] we have no time for lovers games of hide and seek or cat and mouse i come home tired you call me names you work all week at keeping house i understand the drudgery of what you do but don't you think the office is the same for me you asked me to unblock the sink life is getting shorter nickel diamond quarter talk is getting cheaper love is getting deeper [Music] i get to work under the sink i bag my head the spanner slips i cut my hand and wish i had a drink but curse instead the water drips you nag at me i raise my voice the baby's toys are on the floor [Music] you say be quiet i have no choice the slightest noise disturbs next door life is getting shorter nickel diamond quarter talk is getting cheaper love is getting deeper [Music] the kettle boils the baby cries i pick him up his little teeth are coming through i dry his eyes you break a cup and underneath the kitchen light your pretty face is close to tears and so my heart goes out to you [Music] as we embrace love reappears to play its part [Music] life is getting shorter nickel diamond quarter the talk is getting cheaper love is getting deeper [Music] okay that was love is getting deeper by neil innis oh can you see me can you hear me and that's pretty much the end of this rambling episode in which i told you that uh things are going to be a bit complicated in leopland as we move apartments over the next couple of months that might disrupt the podcast also i'm going away on holiday um i'm in the middle of premium uh series 2031 so that's going to be coming as well over the next few weeks if i can find a way to do it and that's it i hope you have a lovely summer you've got three episodes of the podcast already recorded which will be released after this one to keep you entertained hopefully the disruption of my personal life is not going to affect things too much but thank you so much for being a listener thank you for subscribing to my podcast on youtube and uh have a lovely summer yourself if it if indeed it is summer where you are good luck to your country in the olympic games and all that stuff and take care of yourselves be excellent to each other and i will speak to you again on the podcast soon but for now it's time to say goodbye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye

Channel: Luke's English Podcast

Views: 32,023

Rating: 4.9583063 out of 5

Keywords: learn, learning, english, lesson, lessons, luke, podcast, luke's, vocabulary, native, speaker, interviews, listening, pronunciation, british, accent, london

Id: DwLSdXXE0JQ

Length: 66min 57sec (4017 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 03 2021