It's January the 5th, 2016 or 2016.
I'm sitting here.
I'm looking out of the window.
I can see the rain.
Today is a big day for children in Seville and the rest of Spain, because it's the day the three kings come to bring presents for the children.
And then tomorrow morning, they'll open those presents.
And so there are big parades, Christmas parades, processions in the streets.
Today, it's raining, though, and the procession has already left.
It's out in the street.
And the rain came down pretty hard here in Seville.
I'm not sure what's going to happen.
In England, we call this Twelfth Night, which is the last night of Christmas.
And it's a tradition that has gone back to medieval times.
I can remember in my family many years ago, with my mother and father and brothers and sisters, we celebrated this in the traditional way, which was to have a cake on Twelfth Night.
In this cake there was a hard uncooked bean or a pea, and the cake was served to everybody, and the person who received the piece with the bean or the pea in it was the king or queen of the feast and they could tell other people what to do, for example, to do the washing up.
This is a tradition that goes back to medieval times.
It may have been that perhaps in a large house where there were servants, one of the servants would be the king or queen of the feast and tell everybody else what to do.
But today, actually, in UK especially, it's not a day which is celebrated very much.
Christmas is really forgotten about.
This is the day when traditionally, again, the Christmas tree should be taken down.
Or perhaps tomorrow as well, which is Epiphany.
So tomorrow is Epiphany. which is the day that the three kings arrived, according to the Bible.
But in the UK, we've lost a lot of the tradition that they keep here in Spain.
And Twelfth Night really has almost been forgotten in reality in families.
Anyway, I'm continuing with part two of my story, The Hole.
As you may remember, it's a B2 level story.
And in this second part, I'm going to bring out another 10 B2 words and tell you about them.
I also mentioned last time that this story was based on something that really happened.
And the outcome or the result of that event a few years ago was really quite tragic.
It was about a little boy who fell down a borehole.
And if you listened to last week's episode, then you'll know that a borehole is a very deep hole in the ground which was used to extract or look for water for irrigation and watering.
This little boy fell down the hole.
He was only about two years old and he died because we did not have the technology, the know-how, as we say, to be able to extract a two-year-old boy out of a hole.
And you'll see, as you listen to the story, the point that I'm trying to make, that how, in this world, we produce things because they're profitable, but not necessarily because they are always useful.
Many people die.
Hundreds of people die every year in earthquakes.
When the earth moves, the ground moves and houses collapse, and people get trapped underneath all those stones and falling rubble.
And we have very little technology that knows how to reach those people and get them out.
So this is a reference to that.
It's a reference to everything, really, that we do in this world.
Although we are really very inventive, we're very resourceful as a species, but we seem to produce things only if they are going to be profitable in our capitalist society.
Okay, so that's the point I'm making with this story, which I've retold in a very positive way and where the outcomes is going to be completely different.
Okay, so here is the vocabulary.
Off we go.
Hello and welcome to Practicing English.
My name is Mike Bilbre and these are podcasts for students of English at B1 or B2 levels.
For transcripts, please go to practicingenglish.com.
Would you like to see my books for learning B1 and B2 level English?
Then go to the show notes at your podcast app, and just below today's lesson you'll see a link to Amazon and there you'll be able to read about my new B1 book and my B2 book.
Check it out today.
Right, so the first word that I have in the second part of the story for you to listen to is listen to kneel down.
As I always say, you can read the audio script, the story, at your podcast app, in the show notes, or you can go to Practicing English, podcast 286, and you'll find the whole story there for you to listen to and read and see the words which are written in bold, which are B2.
So to kneel down, is to put your knees on the ground.
And the past tense is knelt.
So it's spelt with a K, isn't it?
K-N-E-L-T.
This person knelt down.
So to kneel down is to put your knees, which is the middle part of your leg, on the ground.
The next word is to brush.
To brush could be with a brush, which is a noun as well, which is something that we use to brush or sweep the floor.
To get dirt off the floor or dust which is on the floor, we use a brush.
We use a brush for lots of things as well maybe for your clothes, to clean your clothes by brushing it with a brush.
But also it means to move against something and rub against it.
To brush against would have to put that preposition in there.
To brush against something.
If you, if you come into contact with something and move against it quite gently.
Listen to the context of that in the story.
The next one is unlike, which is a B2 word which comes up quite a lot in the Cambridge first certificate exam.
Unlike meaning not like.
It's the opposite of being like something.
So to be similar to something is to be like something.
Today, for example, it's raining.
It's like a, well, I suppose it's like a typical autumn, winter day.
Okay, so unlike is the opposite.
It's not typical or it's not similar to.
Listen for the use of that word in the story.
Right, the next one I have is disturb.
Disturb and to disturb.
Well, you will perhaps have seen that in the context, if you go to a hotel and you stay the night in a room and there's often a piece of card which you can hang outside your door during the day to stop the cleaner coming in and making up the room or cleaning the room, and on that it often will say in english, and perhaps in the local language too, of course, in the local language too, do not disturb.
So it means do not bother us, do not come into the room.
But there's another meaning of disturb as well, which is to move something, something which is perhaps usually still not moving.
And to move that is to disturb it, usually perhaps because the consequence of moving it might be very serious.
Listen for the context of that in the story.
To disturb.
The next one is ensure.
Now, to ensure as a verb then means to make sure or to try to be in control of something.
When I left the house, I ensured that it was completely locked up by closing the door with the key.
All right, to ensure, to make sure that something has happened.
Listen for the context of that in the story.
The next B2 word is to dare.
And to dare to do something is to do something which is very brave, because there could be danger involved.
Okay.
For example, if you go to the beach this time of year, there can be some very big waves and the sea is cold.
But some people dare to swim in winter, even though the sea might be very rough and perhaps dangerous as well.
The next one is to lower.
So we have the adjective low and there's a verb then to make something go lower down, and that is to lower.
If you lower something, then something is at a height which decreases.
It goes down to lower.
And we can also say to hire something.
We have the adjective high, and so we can hire something.
We put er on the end, and that means to make it go up, to raise something.
My next one is to stroke.
So often when we think of to stroke, we think about animals, our pets.
It's what we do to our pets when we love them very much.
We stroke them with our hand.
We move our hand across their fur and that is to stroke.
But again, it can have other meanings as well, or rather other contexts.
It can be used in other contexts.
It's used twice in the story.
Listen for the verb to stroke.
And you'll see it has two different contexts.
The word I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast, earthquake.
To quake is to move, actually.
And so the earth actually quakes.
It means the movement of the earth.
And this is a natural occurrence when the earth moves, and it can have disastrous results, with buildings falling down.
Earthquake.
And my last one then, is a word which again, I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast profitable.
This is the adjective of the noun profit, which means to make money from something, from some sort of trade that you're doing build something and you sell it for a profit.
You sell it for more money than you made it for.
So you make a profit and it is profitable.
And these are B2 words.
OK, so those are the words to listen out for.
This is now part two of my story, the whole.
Here we go.
I hurriedly set up the equipment from out of my bags.
Can I help, senor?
Pedro stepped forwards.
Please, undo these two ropes.
One has the harness and the other is fixed to this small sack.
Will I set up the laptop and monitor?
I then had to think fast.
After I had the computer equipment ready, I knelt down at the side of the borehole and felt the walls.
Cement.
Pedro, are these walls cement all the way down to the bottom?
I imagine they're not.
These holes are dug with a machine, and lower down, the walls are just earth.
So as the child fell, his body brushed against the sides of the hole, bringing the earth down on top of him.
I thought to myself.
Not good.
I turned to Heidi.
I had already typed in the program for her to follow.
Go, Heidi!
She almost jumped into the hole headfirst.
Even her small body would find it difficult to descend.
But she disappeared rapidly into the darkness.
Unlike the slow and clumsy articulated robots we usually see...
Those constructed at my company had the ability to react and move with lively and precise movements.
I looked into the borehole, as did Pedro and the father.
I could see Heidi's multiple phosphorescent bulbs on her titanium frame had now lit up.
The brightness descended as her feet dug expertly but carefully, into the walls of the borehole so as not to disturb the soft soil.
I then turned to the laptop screen and monitor, and Pedro and the father followed.
I examined the screen.
There was now a crowd of people behind us, silent but impatient.
The camera and microphone on Heidi's tail showed her metal frame moving mechanically down meter after meter.
"'There's the bag of sweets,' said Pedro, pointing at the screen.
"'And there's the earth.
The tunnel stops there.'
Heidi did not pause.
She began digging with great care into the floor.
We could hear the sounds of the speakers."
I then picked up the rope with the sack and dropped it into the hole, ensuring that for the last few meters they were lowered slowly.
Heidi now had two feet fixed firmly into the tunnel walls, the camera and microphone on its tail, while the remaining two feet pushed the soft soil into the bag.
People crowding behind the monitor watching waiting, hardly daring to breathe.
Then it happened.
The rest of the earth on the tunnel floor then dropped down, showing the head of a small boy.
Raise the bag of earth, Pedro.
Don't let it drop down onto the child, I shouted.
While Pedro rapidly pulled up 70 meters of rope, I lowered the other rope with the harness.
It was a matter of a few tense minutes, but eventually the harness appeared on the monitor screen.
Yet at that moment, something truly amazing was taking place.
During the wait, Heidi had attached a small mask to the boy's face and a tube then led to a tiny bottle of oxygen visible inside Heidi's frame.
The body moved and everybody clearly heard a small cry.
"'He's alive!' shouted the father.
"'Carlitos is alive!'
The boy was covered by earth above, but below there must have been an airspace' so that he could continue to breathe.
I suggested.
We could now clearly see Heidi's expertly attaching it to the child's body.
Heidi paused.
She had no voice, but sent a message that appeared on the screen.
Pull him up carefully.
Pedro and I both pulled up the rope and we could see Heidi below the boy holding his legs with her two feet, so the body would not come into contact with the tunnel walls and cause another fall of earth.
The boy cried again and, despite this desperate sound because this meant the boy was alive people started cheering behind me.
Then Carlitos appeared at the whole entrance, with Heidi close behind.
An ambulance medic picked him up in her arms.
I think he's going to be okay.
I understood her to say in Spanish as the mother stroked away the warm tears on his cheeks.
He's suffering from hypothermia.
We'll take him to hospital straight away.
The parents can come with us in the ambulance.
The mother came up to me before she left and held my two hands in hers.
Thank you.
You are a good man.
Thank you so much for everything you have done here.
I couldn't have done it without Heidi, I answered.
We both looked down, but Heidi had collapsed on the ground at my feet, her batteries exhausted.
But Sunny, my golden retriever, was looking up at us, hoping for some affection.
The mother bent down and stroked her head.
I must go, she said, and began to walk towards the waiting ambulance.
Happy New Year, I called after her.
Incredible machine you have there, Mr. Finnegan.
It was Pedro, the firefighter.
Thanks, I answered.
It did its job today.
I developed it as a rescue dog robot to save people buried under collapsed buildings after an earthquake.
You must have sold a lot of them.
Not so.
I haven't sold any, Pedro.
Buying an expensive robot like this is not profitable.
It seems I'm just a dreamer.
Nevertheless, said Pedro, you designed and built one at your expense.
We are grateful to people like you, Mr. Finnegans.
And that is the end of my story.
And next week, I go back to school and back to routine.
I'll be back again with you next week with a B1, a B2 podcast.
Until then, I wish you a happy 12th night and a peaceful epiphany.
Goodbye for now.
