896. A Rambling Chat with Martin Aaron | Luke's ENGLISH Podcast - Learn British English with Luke Thompson

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You're listening to Luke's English Podcast.

For more information, visit teacherluke .co .uk Hello listeners, welcome back to Luke's English podcast.

How are you doing today?

I hope you're doing fine.

I'm doing very well.

Thanks very much for asking.

I'm currently sitting in my parents' garden, recording the intro to this episode.

I'm just staying with my parents for a few days, helping them out in the garden and stuff like that.

The sun is actually shining in England in summer.

Yes, it does actually happen.

the sky is not exactly blue everywhere there's still some cloud but it's lovely it's lovely to be out here in the garden so anyway let me tell you about this episode that you're about to hear this one which i recorded a few weeks ago while i was still in in france this is another one of those conversation episodes

which means you can listen to me in conversation with a guest this time my guest is an old friend a former colleague from the days when i used to teach english in london so my guest's name is martin aaron and he's an english teacher a history buff music fan and now podcaster since he started his own

show not long ago i was a guest on it in fact i mentioned it on the podcast a while ago the podcast is called air balls and it's all about talking to people about their jobs and exploring the stories related to their work and martin and his co -host Andy interviewed me for one of their episodes and I

talked about being an English teaching podcast guy on YouTube on the internet and stuff like that it was really nice anyway with episodes like this I really want to invite you into a friendly conversation just to let you listen in if you like you can imagine that you're sitting there with us perhaps

in the pub or something like that.

But for some reason, you can't actually speak.

You can just listen and just feel lucky to be in such great company, right?

And I hope that you enjoy the conversation and that you find it interesting, entertaining, and informative.

And this is all because doing plenty of listening is really important for your English.

And so why not listen to us?

I mean, you could listen to someone else or something else, you know, like an audiobook or someone else's podcast, but you know, don't do that.

Listen to this. Instead, it's a much better idea.

So Martin and I, in this conversation, we talk about the days when we used to work together.

We talk about becoming an English teacher, traveling experiences, and cross -cultural experiences while living abroad, and what it's like for English native speakers to learn other languages.

We talk about Martin's funny stories about learning Spanish in Spain, our memories of being kids at school learning French and the way that children in our schools used to terrorize the teachers and then there's a really interesting bit about how Martin went to a boarding school that's a school where you

you like you you stay there long term you sleep there and everything I mean not sleep in the lessons but you actually sleep there at night and stuff you know like Hogwarts is a kind of boarding school.

But in reality, most boarding schools are not quite as exciting and wonderful as Hogwarts.

Most people don't go to boarding schools.

Most people go to conventional schools.

But anyway, Martin went to a boarding school.

And he talks about that.

And he tells us why he thinks sending your children to a boarding school is a terrible idea.

So I really enjoyed this conversation.

I hope you do too. I'll chat to you again afterwards, briefly.

But now, without further ado, let's get started and let's meet my guest, Martin Ehren.

Hi Martin. Hey man, how are you doing?

How lovely to see you.

Yeah, you too. After all these years, although we did see each other sort of online like this a few weeks ago because you interviewed me for your new podcast, which was nice.

Well, it was lovely to catch up again.

Definitely. I was going to say it was amazing.

Yeah. But then I thought, well, that's not very good.

So for a language podcast, I will consult Miriam Webster, which it says is America's most trusted dictionary, it says here.

And if you type in amazing.

Are there some other dictionaries that no one trusts?

That does imply, doesn't it?

there's some very untrustworthy dictionaries a long list of dictionaries where miriam webster's right at the top and then right at the bottom there's like the you know like who would it be like the uh the soul the soul goodman dictionary yeah hank's dictionary of bob's dictionary hi my name is bob this is my

dictionary you want to know what words mean i kind of know what they mean look at bob's dictionary yeah bob's dictionary he kind of knows what words mean that's the tagline you don't know what a word means you better go see bob bob's the bob knows words and bob's the guy who knows the words in this town

he's got his own dictionary bob's dictionary available now from bobsdictionary .com yeah so So Merriam -Webster, when you type in amazing, it gives you some synonyms, which I thought would be useful for your students.

It says wonderful, okay, marvellous, incredible, and awesome.

I'm fine with all of those.

I also feel all of those things, talking to you today, to talk to you today is incredible and marvellous.

But then just the danger of, you know, thesaurus and stuff, It also says surprising, startling, astonishing, and jaw -dropping.

This was amazing. Yeah, I don't think that's right, is it?

It wasn't jaw -dropping to talk to me on your podcast a few weeks ago.

Well, it was, yes, with hindsight.

But startling isn't quite right, though, is it?

Yeah, how are you doing, Martin?

How are you feeling today?

Oh, startled. why i just spoke to luke on luke's english podcast so i'm just really still startled so none of those make sense do they because they all mean surprised really well i'm not surprised well that's the thing because like uh if you're just using a thesaurus to improve your vocab then watch

out because you know it's going to provide you with synonyms for all the various meanings of the word because amazing can be positive like oh fantastic brilliant awesome as you said but amazing can also be like i saw a ufo i was absolutely amazed you know it was like whoa that's a ufo in the sky although yeah

so but that's a slightly different meaning but the the the thesaurus if only there was another word for the source yeah yeah that would help wouldn't it yeah and then it also has breathtaking and stunning so again how are you how are you today martin breathtaking breathtaking oh yeah i would associate

those with views wouldn't you that would be like that's a breathtaking view definitely stunning view so it means it made like good but you'd only use that for it takes your breath away it's breathtaking right right which is not quite right for having a conversation with your friend on a podcast it's

not or startling as well which is where something has sort of shocked you and surprised you for a moment maybe made you jump oh yeah yeah i mean exactly yeah i do feel that slightly talking to you today but really well it's is it how does it feel to be on on luke's english podcast i mean do you does

it is it at all sort of nerve -wracking or anything like that you seem quite fine you seem fine all right i think the biggest problem i'm going to have is not it's just not laughing for the entirety of it because you do make me laugh yeah it's almost like you're a comedian or something you're quite funny

you should you've ever thought about that you should give it a try yeah yeah yeah maybe maybe that maybe i'll give a give stand up a try now martin we used to work together at a language school in london um what do you remember about those days do you remember anything particular about the days when we

used to sort of be together in the teacher's room and stuff um yeah I hated that job did you I worked in eight I think I've worked and you made me think about this um I think I've worked in eight schools and that's the only one I didn't really enjoy working in but I met you so you know every cloud has a silver

lining yeah there were some other nice other nice people there but um yeah there were there were two sites weren't there so sometimes one of us would be working in one site and then the other person in the other and that meant i might not see you for eight weeks or something yeah until you came back

on that site so that was that was always a bit of a pity but um yeah now what the main thing i learned from working there was that um sometimes if things are pretty good you just kind of carry on in life doing the easy thing and you know nothing much happens but actually sometimes if you have a bad

experience for me working that was a bad experience um it kind of pushes you to to make a big change so it was only because I disliked that place so much that I went I decided to leave and then I I became freelance for a little bit and it was only because i became freelance that i was kind of available

when a job came up at university um it's just like it was just a short course so you wouldn't be able to take that job if you had a proper job because um so anyway what i'm saying is that because that was because of all the things that happened there i ended up in this fantastic job i'm so happy now

and I've been working at university for 10 years now and it's amazing I love it and you know none of that would I might still if I'd been at another place I might still be being a teacher teacher and you know struggling along having a nice life but I anyway I'm just really glad that that that experience

happened because um you know so that that's that's my philosophical lesson that sometimes bad things happen but amazing things come from them you know yeah they force you out of your routine and sort of push you into a new into a new direction or something because i am lazy so i would have just carried

on um you know having an in the boring not having an easy life and um not not not having the courage to go and make a big change how about you what do you remember from working there so i just remember like lots of joking around in the teacher's room um mainly kind of like um i guess sort of like uh

burning off a bit of stress and because it was quite a high the standards were pretty high at the school and the the students um sort of i think paid quite a lot of money or their parents did yeah and so there was a lot of like this kind of burning expectation that every, every single second of the class had

to be, you know, high value teaching.

And it was, it was pretty hardcore.

Plus, you know, uh, when you're, when you've got groups of multinational, uh, students, um, and there's just so much miscommunication that goes on between everyone.

And you know, that can give rise to some, just some funny situations.

I can't actually remember things now.

People, when people, uh you know when i talk to people about the fact that uh i'm a tefl teacher they say oh you must have and a comedian they say you must have so much material from the lessons and i'm like so many funny things happen in classes but i almost instantly forget about them yeah yeah so yeah

the ones i can remember are usually the bad things all the all the lovely funny things I can think of a few, but perhaps not suitable broadcast.

But most of the miscommunication ones are people taking offense when there was no offense was intended.

Yeah. I don't know if you could put this out, but I said to a lovely Colombian girl in one of my classes, she came in really late looking a bit hungover.

And I said, oh, was it a nightclub last night?

And she just looked furious.

do you know do you know what i'm going to say no i don't but that's that's quite a normal that's quite a normal thing to say if someone comes in a bit late they might you know you might say oh well you know what was it her nightclub or something yeah that that's kind of a thing that i can imagine someone

saying yeah so i said this entirely innocently and um i don't think i'd been teaching that long so you know but i had a really nice relationship with this girl in this class it was lovely and um and she's so so strange she just looked furious she looks so angry and she just stayed like that for the rest

of the class I kept trying to uh and um she just faced like thunder and uh at the end of the class I went and said look what's what's the matter what happened and she said you know what you said and um anyway it turns out that the word nightclub columbia means something else oh dear and it's not a place

where everyone goes to dance um it's another place it's where some people might go to work and other people would go as as clients sort of thing yeah and probably clients would probably be men yes yes so anyway i'd said look i didn't i had no idea that is not what i meant i'm so sorry you know and yeah

she didn't really forgive me i don't think she believed me oh oh that's yeah that's painful yeah that's tough that's tough um sorry to bring back these painful memories for you i remember once is this not right didn't someone once accuse you of being like a football hooligan or something maybe you don't

remember this i remember once you were you came into the teacher's room you kind of like really pissed off it's like one of those students just said uh you're you you're a football hooligan martin is a football hooligan and you were like really annoyed about it pissed off about it because sometimes

like you know our students who are learners of english they don't have the full command of the uh nuances of english and so what they might be trying to do is play around and have a bit of fun you know and but it comes out as you you are a football hooligan you make fight with man in street you know

and you're like what no i no i don't you know because you're probably like you know a little stressed out about the lesson you had to teach or something and yeah that sort of thing i don't remember that but i'm sure that sort of thing did happen a lot yeah um i remember when i traveled i went traveling

around argentina and that was my eye -opening experience of how other people see british people oh yeah i was in i was in argentina for a little while and i i think every time i said someone said where are you from and i i said in english they said either margaret thatcher lady dunghanna or football

hooligan wow that's all you think about or oh sometimes ecstasy the drug ecstasy right okay i'll take that one over the over the other the other options yeah yeah yeah uh yeah yeah it's it's funny isn't it Like in my experience of living abroad, certainly in, in France, the image of Brits is one of two

extremes and we're all somewhere in the middle that the extremes are either you're a very posh sort of basically a character from Downton Abbey or something.

Or you are, yeah, a full -on drunk football hooligan covered in tattoos, sunburned on some Spanish beach somewhere, eating chips, you know, you're either one or the other.

And, you know, I'm often put in the first category.

People sort of assume so many things about me that they think I'm like, kind of, I don't know.

they just think that i'm some sort of i guess i'm from some um uh like period drama or something that the the god knows but it's americans a bit like that too they kind of uh assume that we are all super posh that's often the way the americans see us they're like british people you know like oh my god

and they're far more they're far more obsessed with um royal family and all that stuff than any any british person i know i've got i've got quite a few american friends live where we are um and yeah if there's any sort of question in a pub quiz or something like that about the royal family what's the name

of the third from the you know the third child of i don't know no no interest in it whatsoever yeah but american friends were like oh that's that that's george and that's henry and oh my god okay yeah yeah it's interesting interesting that i don't know anybody under the age of about 70 who's interested

in the royal family do you in this my wife but she's french there you are you see but she sees it as a kind of soap opera like the the the netflix series the crown and the actual real life of the royals i think for her somehow blended together into one single real live Netflix drama, which is like happening

in... But that is what the royal family is, isn't it, to an extent?

That's kind of part of what their function is, is to be some sort of strange living soap opera for us, oddly enough.

I don't know if that's a good thing or not.

I think sometimes for the people involved in it, that's definitely not a good thing.

It must be very hard to be a royal, I would say.

It's probably quite rough, actually.

I think if you're cynical, though, I think a more negative effect they have is that they are a distraction from everything that's important.

So often the government will do something terrible, and the next day most of the newspapers in Britain will put the royals on the front.

so that for sure yeah you know and um so i think they're quite they're quite damaging to the uk if you're if you're british they're good if you're a tourist but i think they um but anyway it's a bit too political suddenly got a bit opinionated controversial and political well cut all that yeah really

don't know whatever i might i might not anyway you mentioned going to argentina but as an english teacher a lot of the time um we travel and live in other countries it's kind of a thing that we can do that english teachers can do you know it's one of the perks of the job i i you know i live in france

i used to live in japan for a while What about you?

Where else have you lived?

You live in the UK now, right?

You live in England.

Yes, I've been back in the UK since we worked together.

And I work at a university in London.

But yeah, you're absolutely right.

It's that freedom to travel is why lots of us get into it in the first place.

And that's my backstory.

story i i went traveling when i was about one of that 30 i'd done other things and um no interest in teaching at all but i'd gone traveling i went to south america and i went to other places um on the way and argentina and um asia and stuff um and when i got back i just wanted to carry on but i hadn't

got any money so i thought ah if i become a tiffle teacher i can keep traveling my My plan at that time was just keep traveling.

I've been to all these different countries, loved it, loved all the different culture and experiences.

So I thought, well, I'll just do this teaching qualification and then I'll just keep going.

And I'm just going to not stay in any particular place.

I'm just going to keep moving, travel the world for the rest of my life.

That was the plan at the time.

Yeah, wow. And then I did the course, like an intensive TEFL course type thing.

Most of us, I think.

And and then I got a job in London and actually, oh, hang on a minute.

Everyone can come to me.

So I would have a class of 20, 20 different students from 20 different countries and countries I'm never going to visit.

You know, it wouldn't be your life wouldn't be long enough to visit all of these different countries.

Burkina Fassar and, you know, Ivory Coast and all these wonderful places.

and I loved it, it was in Fulham in London and every day he'd have all these amazing general English classes and I loved it, so it took me quite a while to get away, but I was hang on a minute, I've got to remember the original plan was to go travelling so I went to the Czech Republic briefly and then

I came back and then I went to Spain, end up in Spain for five years.

I went with my partner and we met teaching in this Fulham school.

And one of us wanted to go to Brazil and the other one wanted to go to Japan.

We can't remember now which was which.

Pretty much opposite directions.

Yeah. So somehow, and again, I can't remember how, but we compromised and decided on Spain.

So I'm not really sure.

Is it kind of between the two, I mean, from our point of view?

Certainly closer. And neither of us still to this day have not been to either Brazil or Japan.

Still very much like to one day.

So that's still an ambition.

Have you been back to Spain?

Yes, so we ended up living in Spain.

And again, the plan was just to go for one year.

I had gone to the Czech Republic just for one year.

But we ended up staying for five.

yeah and you know suddenly you're going to live there for the rest of your life so we had to really sort of make a big effort to move away make a big change again and move to germany and lived in berlin for two years um but by this point yeah my partner wanted to do secondary school teaching so we came

back to england so that she could do that qualification and start working here so yes so what about spain whereabouts did you live so the first year and a half when we were totally new teachers and didn't have any experience or anything yeah we just ended up in wherever would take us um so you just

applied for work in in the uk and no no so i asked i asked a class in fulham i had lots of venezuelan spanish italian students and i explained look i'm gonna go to spain where do you reckon um and they said well look the most beautiful girls are in seville seville yeah but um in granada in the south

um the tapas are free free okay well i'm i'm going with my partner so best maybe maybe the second option sounds good so we lit we literally moved to granada on that basis that the tapas were free someone had told me so we went to granada and we went at like the worst time of year we went just after christmas

when all schools have filled all of their vacancies they don't need anybody in january you know so we couldn't we were we were newly qualified under experienced arriving in january couldn't get a job anyway moved to valencia um couldn't get a job it's a long story i did get a job but anyway another

time and anyway ended up in the middle of nowhere three hours from madrid three hours from anywhere in the mountains it's where they filmed the you know dr shivago i've heard of it i've never seen it it's it's a it's a film about the russian revolution filmed in you know siberia and everything anyway

this is where they this is where they made that film because it looks so much like siberia right oh god pine forests and very cold in the winter so it wasn't the spain that people imagine you know this was living in the mountains in pine forests um i was the only english guy in that town there was a very

small town we lived in and actually i didn't even have a job to begin with natalia my partner got a job there that's why we went there yeah and i just kind of did private teaching and stuff used to teach little kids and eventually i got a job there but yeah i used to go to this local bar um and they

just knew me as the in fact they didn't they could never remember my name so they used to refer to me as either pink floyd or beckham's cousin that was the other thing and they'd go hey Beckham's cousin hey Pink Floyd come here get a drink Beckham's cousin I get because Beckham was playing in Madrid

at the time right so it was like the other English person they knew and the only other English reference these guys had was Pink Floyd so you became Pink Floyd just because you were English and so were Pink Floyd yeah it's not bad i mean are you a pink floyd fan no oh god not really not really well

i don't mind i like the early stuff um well the psychedelic uh the sid barrett stuff yeah yeah um okay and so right did you learn spanish a little bit yes badly um so maybe this is i don't know if it's something we're going to talk about but um uh one thing i didn't know that one of the main things

you learn about um living in other countries is that there are among the many cultural differences there are some actual differences in the way people approach learning languages right you must know this you must find that yeah that the way the way when you were living in japan japanese people's approach

to learning english must be different to the way french people think about learning languages do they um well surprisingly enough like the old school traditional education system is not dissimilar in the sense that there's a lot of um reading and writing a lot of translation a lot of group study with a teacher

at the front and all the kids at tables with their heads over desks not a lot of communication going on not that much speaking and the teachers often in schools um are not native english speakers and so it's like french a french person teaching english to a group of french people and a japanese person teaching

english to a group of japanese people and so you know so they lack exposure to native speakers they don't do a lot of communicate a lot of actual spoken communication and there's a lot of translation and reading and writing and when it comes to the actual social side of having to speak to another human being

then it can break down but then the cultural stuff comes into play as well for the japanese speaking i mean more is in those days was more difficult yeah anyway no i mean more they're sort of they're how they feel about making mistakes and how they feel about um you making mistakes all right yes when as

a british person we are probably the worst in the world at learning other languages so we are always grateful that someone else is speaking English to us because we are hopeless at learning their languages generally um and if we do know a little bit of a language we will try and use it so if a British

person who doesn't speak any French it's a French person they will say bonjour that's that one word of English they know bonjour Merci.

Je m 'appelle Luke. J 'habite in London.

J 'ai un frère et un chat qui est très, très, très mignon.

Exactly. That's all I learned at school.

And you think, hey, you think that their response, the foreign person's response will be, oh, that's great.

But I discovered this is not the case.

so in spain i'll tell you two quick stories one when i was first living in this little town i didn't know anybody i was in a bar one night and i got talking to this a couple at the bar really nice people and um we just chatting and drinking for the whole evening um but we were chatting in my terrible

spanish my six month old spanish you know which was even after five years it was pretty poor but after six months or so maybe a year it was terrible but we managed to communicate like somehow you managed to do yeah for the whole evening with my spanish i i live here i i go tomorrow i go far village

village i work village teach teach man in factory you know all this sort of stuff yeah yeah that's that's the equivalent of my spanish at the time in a bar as well where there's music playing so i i go and you're kind of shouting over the music as well yeah exactly and then um yeah and at the end of the evening

we've been talking about all sorts of things at the end of the evening i said to this couple so what do you do what's what's your job and they said in spanish oh we both teach english at the university oh what what so they just were embarrassed to speak english to a native speaker because they thought

their english wasn't very good and that is something i came to realize is very common in spain that was like i don't want to i don't want to speak english yet because i'm going to make some mistakes and that will be embarrassing and i will feel ashamed and i don't want to upset you by speaking terrible

english to you so i will just you know so a massive lack of confidence in their own abilities yes but the fact that this happened that the people who teach english didn't have the confidence to speak to me in english you can imagine often if you'd say to someone spanish do you speak English no no no no and then

you'd start talking to your friend in English and they don't understand everything you're saying yeah yeah yeah so just a very low level of their self -belief their English actually often very good but they'll always tell you no no no you know I can't Portugal just next door you'd think well they're

the same absolute opposite really so in Portugal they have the BBC see on TV with just Portuguese subtitles in Spain everything is dubbed into Spanish so in Portugal there's generally a pretty good level of English but sometimes their level of English is not as good as they think so it's the reverse

so they will find you say do you speak English and they'll say of course don't you know so well i'm not an idiot of course i speak english so you say okay i'm sorry could you just tell me the way to the train station then and this like this again this happened to me in in lisbon and the waiter came

out said yes yes of course and then he sort of went um so uh tree um big house no right yes okay so you know clear his english was not that great and yet he had he was totally fine you know yeah that's very interesting but that's happy to make mistakes no problem and i think we as british are perfectly

happy to make mistakes we don't doesn't never occurred to me that all my sorry this is a very long answer to your question of but my answer what happened was my spanish was terrible and for the first year um um Spanish friends and my partner's family were out there and stuff so friends and family were very

very patient with me for the first year with my terrible Spanish but after about a year they start to start to be a bit embarrassed for you because you really should be better now than you are you know and by the first year they're just people were just appalled that my English my Spanish was still

so bad you know whereas i think if you're british you're just like hey it doesn't matter you make lots of mistakes it doesn't matter we thank you for speaking english we're just very grateful it's it's interesting that uh there must be something to do with the sort of uh value or status of a foreign language

and that actually english obviously is that it's it's kind of like something you've got to have on your cv and if you want to compete in the job market this is like in places like France or Spain.

Um, and so being good at English is considered to be like a, a high, high, fairly high status thing.

And something also that everyone is told at school is really important.

They tell you that all the time.

They say you need to be able to speak good English for this, this, this, and reason.

So it's drilled into everyone that how important it is to be good at English.

And so it's kind of like a standard that everyone feels that they should be at.

Um, and so, yeah, and, and meanwhile, also it may be in the culture, there's this sense of correctness that those, those people that you spoke to, they're like, no, we're not ready to speak English yet because we wouldn't want to make any mistakes.

And that's, that's a common thing that loads of people have, isn't it?

They feel like they're just need to study a bit more and then they can actually start using the language.

Um, but yeah, maybe there's some correlation between the uh the status or or high standard of a of of a language or high value of a language in a culture that if english has got this kind of like cachet that people will feel a bit more nervous about speaking it with mistakes because that will be seen

as being kind of a dumb thing to do that you should be at this level you know and if you're not then you should be ashamed whereas for us unfortunately like second languages don't have the same kind of value, unfortunately.

It is a pity because I think it's a really good thing to learn another language, but the fact is that in the UK, second languages don't have the same value in the way that English has value in other places.

For us, it's like, well, the stakes are not so high in terms of getting it wrong.

You're in Spain and you're like, well, yeah, hey, I'm just going to try and speak Spanish.

This is going to be cool because it doesn't really reflect that badly on you if you don't speak Spanish really, really well, because no one is expecting you to speak Spanish really, really, really well in terms of your parents and your teachers and stuff like that.

You know, the, the expectations are pretty low.

So, you know, it's kind of a stress -free situation to an extent, you know, that might account for that.

I think the Japanese also suffer from that.

And I've had, when I was in Japan, I had like lessons with Japanese people.

Often there would be small groups of three or four people and I'd be there and I'd just sort of be like, hi, good morning, how are you today?

And sometimes some of these guys would really struggle with the kind of social aspects of just engaging in a conversation.

some of them weren't some of them were like some uh my students were like really gregarious and really good fun and like so much fun but then you get these occasionally you get some some guys who are kind of like university students or company workers usually the men were more nervous and they'd be

like you know like really struggling and sweating onto the desk and stuff like that and you'd say so yeah what did you do yesterday and you know like oh god it's all right relax don't worry too much you know just take your time take your time but then they would take a long time so like you know a lot

of a lot of location location but what about you when you spoke japanese well how did they respond to you if you made just delighted though they were delighted but but they would almost see it as kind of like you know that this they wouldn't judge you in the same way that they would maybe judge each

other in speaking english but like a foreigner trying to speak japanese they yeah they love that you know and and they just they're probably very forgiving you know and you just speak some really crap japanese and they all say oh your japanese is really good and like oh thanks a lot you know you're

gonna feel really great about yourself until you realize oh wait a minute they're just being nice it's not good at all like a talking monkey you did very impressive yeah he said oh he said a word in japanese what about in france what's how does it what's their response french people when you speak uh

french with them so their response is generally to uh switch to english almost as soon as they possibly can because they can't bear the sound of their language being desecrated in front of them and they just can't stand to watch me struggle and you know i'm basically like the japanese guy and that's

just like uh you know trying to conjugate some verb in the past form or whatever yeah so no a lot of a lot of french people will switch to english with me uh more and more you know but that's an important difference isn't there is it because they want to help you and they want to use their english or is it

because you're causing them physical pain with what you're doing.

It could be one or the other.

Sometimes you go into a shop and you just get the impression that they've been told or maybe that they just feel that if they sense that the customer is a tourist, that they should switch to English and this is good customer service and that they finally get a chance to actually use the English that they've

been told is so important.

They're delighted, actually, to actually give it a shot.

You know, and that's like half the reason they're working in Pret -a -Manger anyway is because they want to practice their English with tourists.

Like they don't care about serving coffee to people.

They just want to, you know, they need the job and they need, if they can practice their English, then that's a huge advantage for them.

So they'll just like, their motivation to speak English is pretty high.

um yeah but then also there are some people you just definitely sense they're just like like you know they don't like to hear that they don't want to tolerate hearing crap french too much but then i don't know maybe i'm imagining it like my barber the guy who used to cut my hair was actually really

nice and i don't know if he was putting it on or whatever but he was always fine you know with with me chatting to him in admittedly terrible uh french i mean know we used to talk about music we talk about the beatles and stuff together and i'm in my the white album uh je sais pas si c 'est la même chose

en france and then i'm like conjugating all the verbs wrong and and i'm all getting the gender of every single noun wrong and you know he was fine he was like breathing you know yeah fine and i was like i'm sorry every other sentence he's like I'm really sorry for my bad French.

And he's like, oh, super grave.

I don't know if, like, when I leave the salon, if everyone in the rooms, like, when I leave, they're all like, oh, for Christ's sake.

Quick, put on the radio.

Let's just hear lots of French being spoken really well for a while.

You know, just to kind of wash that.

Just clear the air.

Yeah. I don't know.

Or rushing home to speak more French.

Yeah, they're just like, quick, you, you know, Jean -Christophe, please just speak French for half an hour about the Beatles.

Go. I'm sure your French is very good.

It's not really. It's not that good.

But, you know, I think maybe sometimes because of my job, you know, because I sort of, maybe I add pressure to myself in the sense that kind of like i feel like well i'm i'm i'm an expert in in language teaching so i should be an expert in language learning as well right yeah and you moved to germany

i was gonna say you move yeah oh spreken si deutsch uh i don't know what to say next yeah so we love to we love living in spain it's fantastic but i like it's feeling like we got to go got to move on and too much tapas yeah yeah oh that was actually true i'm only the size because of the um yeah having

tortilla every morning with my coffee basically like peter crouch before you before you went but no we just wanted a change and well i wanted a change and so we went to i was trying to think What's the opposite of Spain?

So Germany. Yeah. I'm not sure if that's true, but I had this image of what Germany would be like.

And I think Germany, you know, being very organized and clean and sorted and on time, on time, everything very, very orderly, no, no litter, no graffiti, you know, very organized and clean.

but we went to berlin and berlin is not like it's not like at all and i think most i think the rest of germany see berlin as a bit different um i think berlin and hamburg are a bit different bit more rough and but that you know really interesting and i loved it um but um yeah same same sort of thing

most most of the most of the fun is all the mistakes you make in another language uh when you think you're you think you think you're speaking the correct word and then you find out later that you said slightly the wrong word so when I was in Spain again um I once tried to congratulate a guy he supported

Real Madrid and they just become champions so I wanted to say congratulations you are champions but what I actually said was congratulations you are a mushroom oh yeah and um he looked at me like what so he was very confused and then in spain and then in berlin every three times a week i went to this big

company and i had to go up to the front desk and ask for the key and then go upstairs um and with this key open the classroom and then all these employees came and had an english lesson and i'd been there nearly a year of doing that before I realized that I had been asking for a small bowl every day.

Good morning, I am Martin, I am the English teacher.

Please may I have the small bowl?

And she would give me the key.

It's like a year before, hang on a minute, schlüssel, schlüssel, they sound very similar, don't they?

but um yeah so that's all the all the pleasure of all the mistakes you make in another language yeah absolutely yeah what's your french equivalent of that oh god i don't know uh just like saying the fact i can't say thank you oh you know i say merci fine but i can't do that sound and i end up if i'm

not careful it'll sound like thank you mercy mercy beaucoup which means nice out nice ass right thank you nice ass yeah it's nice ass bo ja it's like beautiful coo ass bum thank you nice bum the joke and that the joke is this is why the the the postman doesn't want to deliver the post to my door anymore

you know because every time as he's walking down the stairs.

I'm like, thank you, by the way, nice ass.

And then, you know, the next day is like ringing up through the intercom.

Hello. Yes. Will you come up?

Uh, you know, and they're like, no, can you come down please?

Uh, all right. What did I say?

And, you know, in the boulangerie, you know, I'm just, I don't know.

So there's that. And another, another situation was like, I don't even know what the problem was, but uh i was somewhere outside of paris where people generally speak less english or a less familiar less used to encountering anglophone people and in paris that happens all the time the people just switch

to english you know um but i was somewhere else and uh i think it was in montelimar at some cafe waiting for a train you know we went for a drink first and the waitress came over my wife ordered her drink and then i i said uh a caraf caraf dough right which means a jug of water but i again that i can never

order water i can never order water so i always these days i always order fizzy water because it clarifies because it's o do petty and i can say pétillante quite well.

And if you say me pétillante, then the me always means water.

You know, adding pétillante at the end contextualizes the first noise that you've made and clearly makes it the word water because no one ever says some chocolate pétillante or café pétillante or anything else other than de l 'eau pétillante.

So I say de l 'eau pétillante, I always ask for that and then I always get what I want because if I say which sounds fine but you'd be surprised the number of times people are like you know and anyway holding up an empty carafe yeah again part of my problem is that I'm better at communicating something

in English even like very simple English or sign language or mime like my ability to communicate concepts through the medium of mime is better than my French.

And so, you know, often I'll just be like, uh, but a dough, you know, you know, and then they're like, ah, bottle of water.

Okay. Uh, or they'll just look at me like a weirder.

But anyway, this girl, I was like a cow have dough.

And she was like, huh?

And I said, uh, uh, do, do low.

She went coca I said no uh Dulau she went she was like shocked she's taking her back you know yeah she was she was taking her back she was just she was like huh what and I was like uh Dulau and she went beer and i was like oui yeah i was like fine just give me the beer fine great great even better i

need one now that's the best isn't it when you change the change the order because you can't say the word that uh yeah there's a common a common joke among comedians in france which is like uh you know i can never remember the gender of the bread in the boulangerie i can't remember it's un baguette

or arm baguette so i always order two you know yes that's what i was gonna say when i lived in the czech republic i could i only learned a very basic czech but the numbers are uh and then i can never say four it's like something and then five is piet and there was always four of us me and these three

guys so we always want to order four but it was like 20 it was like 20 cents you know it's like so cheap yeah it's a i i want to order but i can't say that so yeah yeah just get another one for 20p it's easier than me trying to struggle and say four i'll just say five we'll have one we'll share it out

later it's quite good for their economy the czech economy that just make the word make odd numbers like really difficult to pronounce we'll sell more beer and i remember ice cream ice cream was the most impossible word to say so i'm gonna i'm just gonna i've just written it for you here it's z r m z

well this is this is the word for ice cream in check yeah yeah all right so z z r m yeah z l i n a so you've got five i n a so i've got five vowels so you've got five consonants before you get to your first vowel i was going to say thank god for those two vowels at the end of the word because if it

wasn't for them i mean i'd be complete at least i know it's ina at the end but like the r's got a the r you have to it's got a little thingy on the top and so that means you have to roll it so and i can't i can't do that so it's something like zlina and i can never see it and so i never had ice cream

oh how sad what a sad story you couldn't order ice cream you could just like stand there kind of looking at it wistfully uh just desperately attempting to pronounce however however hold on i'm going to try and work this out maybe some of your Czech listeners can I don't know Yeah, anyone listening from the Czech

Republic please you know get in touch and let us know I'm just going to Google Translate this very quickly I want to find Czech let me just check Google Translate all right hold on let me see if I can make this make this work oh no I won't be able to play it I'll maybe add this in Zmerslina it's impossible

isn't it Zmerslina smerslina it's great smerslina I love that it's a challenge it's a challenge you feel like you've you've earned your ice cream if if you manage to say it and someone's understood you well enough to give you one yeah but you're so right about learning there's a period when you're learning

a new language where you would be better off just using sign language or just shouting in English because i remember in america i seemed to go around south america fine well i didn't speak any spanish yes no um hello goodbye please thank you and ashtray that was it so i got around all of south america with that at one

point i'd gone the wrong bus the bus had finished we'd come to the end of the line and the driver got out and i i was well i don't know where i am now what's happening here and we communicated by drawing with a stick in the earth on the ground in the mud yeah like cavemen and we're pointing 2001 space

odyssey and we communicate it was fine meanwhile after moving in spain for like two years i would if the same thing happened i would be saying um Entonces, yo no quiero, I have no idea what I'm trying to say.

If you just scratched a little very basic diagram on a piece of wood.

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Also, the other thing about traveling around like that, and surviving on three words and sign language and some grunting sounds.

The thing with that is you never have to see those people again.

Whereas if you live in one place for a long time, you can't keep seeing the same people and continue communicating like that, can you?

Because there's a certain amount of leeway that they'll give you.

They're like, okay he hasn't learned the language but if you come back you know after four years and you're still doing that then they're just gonna that just doesn't work you know there's an expectation for you to develop the language to a certain degree yeah this is a very special thing to be british

isn't it i don't imagine other countries are as bad as we are um well in scandinavia they speak like four or five languages and that's been perfectly normal thing to do isn't it i know it's terrible really isn't it i mean not that they speak other languages but i mean that we don't yeah and it's it's

not better it's not better now you know because like these days in school kids don't actually have to learn another language it's an optional thing isn't it now yeah it was compulsory for us do you do did you do you remember your language lessons in school yeah i did yes i i was i i was quite good at latin we

did latin at school Really?

That wasn't very useful in the end.

And, yeah, very boring French lessons.

So I didn't pass. I didn't get any of my exams in languages.

You remember the language lab?

This was obviously the new technology when we were young.

I do remember the strange room, and there'd be like a cassette tape played, and the teacher would sit at the front of the class with big headphones on, and you all had headphones on.

and I don't think I learned anything in those type of lessons.

Tell you what I learned.

It came from when I was about eight or nine in a previous school where it was just old -fashioned, you know, parrot -fashioned type learning, but I did remember it all.

So all my friends, from when I was 8, 9, 10, 11, and then everything I did from 12 to 16, I don't think I learned anything.

Yeah, the language lab definitely didn't work for me either as a learning experience.

I remember it again that our classroom looked amazing because there were these sort of like individual booths around the side of the room with, you know, yeah, the teacher had this amazing desk with all these buttons and controls on it.

and like a cassette player built into the desk and all these like you know uh plugs and stuff and then around the room there were all these separate little little booths with cassette players with other buttons all over them and headphones and stuff and all i remember learning was how to overdub yourself

onto a onto a cassette and you know how to kind of hack the system a little bit as well where you can like press a few buttons and you can listen in on other people's conversations and you can sort of like start to listen to you couldn't he the teacher could listen to you and sometimes you'd get told

off because you were just sitting there not doing whatever you were supposed to be doing yeah yeah yeah i can imagine it was you know one of these things in a new technology uh it's going to be great and yeah just one of those ever really applied properly in theory when someone is reading about it and they

they're speculating about it or some academic study about it, they're sitting on paper.

It's definitely going to be great, but then in practice there's this random factor, which is like 12 year old kids, and what 12 year old kids wants to do is rewind the cassette.

That is more motivating or interesting than repeating some baguette order in a boulangerie or talking about like a holiday.

is like rewinding the cassette is way more fun or just at least pressing these, all the buttons to see what they do and trying to hack into your partner's player so you can listen to them or even record something over what they're doing.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's what we all ended up doing.

So yeah, my French lessons at school were just full of that sort of thing.

Just lots of mucking about, or at least lots of the other kids mucking about as well.

There was like a hell of a lot of just, um, interruptions and people just doing whatever they could to avoid learning French or avoid having to, to do what the teacher was telling.

I remember the French teacher in my school getting furious with the kids in my class all the time.

And it was always just like, you know, when the teacher just lost it, you know, whenever the teacher would kind of be already annoyed and pissed off, but then they would get to some sort of, they would erupt.

It would just start and they'd reach some new level where they've like, right, the teachers lost it now.

And everyone would be like just frozen while the teacher is completely ballistic and going off on one on someone.

That used to happen a lot.

I remember once a girl pretended to faint at the back of the class.

She didn't faint. Everyone knew that she didn't, but it disrupted the class for a good 20 minutes.

You know, everyone's sitting around.

I'm just doodling on my pad.

you know well this has to be sorted out when you look back at your teachers at school i often think about like it seemed to me there were three types there was the ones who were who never got angry and somehow managed to sort of keep control you know calm nice they were always friendly everyone liked

them that was great and then there were teachers who ruled through fear everyone was very scared of them and so their classes were also very disciplined and well organized because no one dared say anything or do anything bad um but then there was a sort of middle other type of teacher who seemed really

really nice but every now and then would as you say like a volcano go berserk and lose their mind so angry and i remember you know we used to have certain teachers weren't mentally stable um oh yeah because they could be so nice and then they would be so angry and it's like well what's the problem but now

i realize i would definitely be that would be me and in fact when i when i worked in spain i did teach like little six -year -old kids and i i just thought they would be terrified of me if look at look at me you know this big man coming in like this they're gonna be definitely going to be scared of me

but somehow kids just know oh this gets easy and they didn't listen to me at all i had no control over them whatever that whatever that skill is of keeping control with children i did not have it and um and so occasionally having trying so hard to be nice be nice be nice be nice occasionally sit down

and i realized oh wow i'm that guy i'm that teacher you know what's his problem he's so nice all the time but then occasionally he just gets so angry what's his problem yeah but the kids at the time we don't realize just how stressful and how much pressure the poor teachers are under and like the kids

can be so kind of mean in a way so evil because they've got no world view at all when you're 12 or 13 or whatever it is you really don't you don't really know what you don't know you've got no perspective on things at all.

And you're unable to imagine that this person has a sort of a life outside of this particular situation, that maybe they're going through something difficult, that maybe they've got the head teacher breathing down their neck, making life difficult.

Maybe they're under tons of pressure, you know, and it would be probably nice, in fact, good to help to try to make the situation work.

That would be the right thing to do.

But when you're 13 or when there's 30 13 -year -olds in a room, the collective brain of those 30 13 -year -olds is just somehow unfeeling, completely ruthless and completely psychotic in a way, psychopathic, sociopathic.

You know, where I remember like in one of my classes, an art class, um, no one liked the teacher.

So the teacher was not nice, first of all, but she was, you know, again, looking back, she was probably having a difficult time or something, but she wasn't very nice.

And there was this period where all the kids in the class started doing this.

They would all go, hmm, makes me laugh just thinking about it, but I shouldn't laugh because it was not nice.

but all the kids just started going like this, right?

Humming like that. And the thing is you can hum like that without your face moving at all.

And so it's impossible to know who is humming, right?

So this poor teacher got tortured by this group where everyone in the class suddenly all together starts going, and she was like, stop it.

Will you stop that?

the class we were called 3b or something 3b i will you please stop doing that you know yeah she couldn't stop it she couldn't make us stop did you go to a was it a quite a was it a rough school or a posh school or what sort of average there were rough elements it wasn't posh at all it was a standard

comprehensive school near coventry um yeah and there were a lot of kids who were really rough there actually.

A lot of kids who were less rough.

I was kind of one of the less rough ones, but yeah, there was a lot of, there were quite a lot of rough kids.

And I remember like, Oh God, I remember this one kid who came into our class maybe for one term or something before he was expelled and moved on to somewhere else.

He got the impression he was just one of these kids who was moving from school to school.

Uh, but he caused so many problems in just like even just a couple of months and once uh our teacher brought him up in front of the class and this teacher was like a real uh he really sort of uh was really confident i had a bit of swagger about him and thought he was brilliant he really thought he was the bee's

knees and he used to say things like uh mr thompson will you just uh step into my office please you know and that means come and stand here next to my desk step into my office he would say and so he was really full of himself and so this kid and him had a real kind of uh like a range of rivalry for about a month

or something and at one point he lost his the teacher lost his temper with him and brought him up to stand behind him with his back to the board next to his desk and this teacher was teaching and he didn't see that this kid it was like we all could see it the kid spat in his coffee right first of all

he kind of he didn't go you know he just kind of let a a bead of spit drop from his mouth into the coffee and then he like put spit on his fingers and ran it around the rim of the coffee cup and we're all there kind of going we're all watching you know we couldn't contain ourselves we're like oh my

god i can't believe he's doing that and he had this cheeky grin on his face as he smeared his spit around the teacher's mug and i thought oh my god yeah he got expelled he got expelled did the teacher find out about that no i mean who's gonna tell him as well not which which kid but uh sir uh sir steven's

steven spat in your coffee sir because steven is gonna headbutt you when he sees you you know next we had a class uh two or three years above me at school and on the last day of of this of this in those days you could leave school at 16 and so for many of them this was their last day of school ever

and the french teacher going back to french classes same guy i had in the language labs um they put a little they put a little wire across the bottom of the door what the kids did yeah they somehow fixed this i don't know if it was a rope or a wire a lead or something across the bottom of the door so it

was about one foot about half a meter 30 centimeters yeah off the off the ground whoa and so that when he came in he tripped over it and fell into the class and then they all jumped on top of him no really shouting bundle i don't know was that a thing with your school you shout bundle yeah bundle everyone

jumps on top of each other yeah if one person's fallen on the floor as they're playing football or something and someone goes bundle and everyone just runs and jumps on top of that person who's on the floor yeah and you get sort of crushed underneath yeah yeah so someone shouted bundle and well i don't

know about the whole class probably not the the good boys but um most of the um a lot of a lot of boys anyway just jumped on top of him probably the boys who had that was their last day and yeah this guy got up just walked out and went straight to the headmaster's office and resigned that was he resigned

yes oh my god so yeah going back to what you're saying you don't realize how how terrible children are to the teachers yeah so yeah he didn't last this this just reminds me i did an episode with my brother about the the band madness um a few weeks ago and we were talking in that about the song baggy

trousers which is kind of all about kind of school days and how the kids were completely out of control and stuff and we made that point again going back to pink floyd mentioning them is that that pink floyd song the wall is all about teachers leave those kids alone you know a kind of political statement

about how school is kind of brainwashing kids and turning them into sort of like you know part just sort of socializing kids and making them part of the system but really like our experience of school is more often more like you know children leave those poor teachers alone which is what it's like in the madness

song and it's definitely what it was like um yeah although having said that the teachers would would also be very strict and yeah we had those teachers who who would rule with the kind of uh fear i remember i had a maths teacher who was like that where it was like icy silence in the room like cold hard

silence and if you if you did one thing he would it'd be right on you he'd be like you i will send you to the head teacher's office before you before your feet can touch the ground i remember him saying that to me once don't even remember what it was i'd done but he's like you keep quiet or i'll send

you to the head teacher's office before your feet can touch the ground like oh whoa that's like way too much all these standard phrases that all over the country all the teachers are saying the same little phrases before your before your feet can touch the ground who says that in any other context nobody

where's my dinner if you don't bring me my dinner here i'm gonna before your feet can touch the ground i'll send you back in that kitchen before your feet can touch the ground like yeah only in school yeah it's the only situation maybe in the army Maybe.

Maybe, yeah. Like a nice soldier before you teach.

I don't think an army officer would actually use the phrase before your feet can touch the ground.

I think they would.

That's a bit lame, isn't it, for an army officer.

But for some reason, for a teacher, that's kind of the worst threat that you can make.

You will go into this place very quickly, is essentially what it means.

Do you have any teachers who had that sort of like sarcastic, tone of voice who would speak to the kids like that so sometimes you have teachers like that where you'd turn up in the class a little bit late and they go oh Mr Thompson very you know Gary I was just about to say they will the next line

is how nice of you to join us exactly Mr Thompson how nice of you to join us and then if there's a list of phrases that all teachers must learn yeah it's cliches that they all say exactly to join us oh mr thompson how nice of you to to join us and the other one is um if uh uh if like your your classmate

is also late they will say this you didn't happen to see mr harrison on your travels around the school did you by any chance yeah i do wonder if that um that sort of madness baggy trousers world has gone a bit i don't i don't know i think schools have had to deal with you can't you can't have that that kind

of 1970s 80s anarchy in schools of of children sort of running doing all these things we've been talking about jumping on teachers and stuff i don't know if that could happen now at this school that might because my natalia is a is a secondary school teacher and she teaches languages and in their school

um there if if you do one thing wrong so that maybe you didn't do your homework or you throw some paper at somebody or you shout something if you go one warning in that class the second time you do something that's it there's none of this i won't another another cliche is i won't tell you again well

in this school they don't tell you again because you had your warning the second time they press some button on the desk and someone from sort of management comes and just takes that student out and they are taken to kind of like a special classroom for the rest of the day so that's that so like one

one warning for for any kind of bad behavior and then if they do anything a second time the teacher doesn't even say anything to them they just press a button and somebody comes and takes them away and in my nephew's school which i think is is even rougher um there's they have to have complete silence

at all times between classes so at the end of each lesson when all the children are moving around the school thousands of kids all it's just complete silence if anyone speaks or says and it does anything trouble wow these are not these are not posh schools these are the opposite um so i feel like the good

old days of jumping on your teacher they're long gone aren't they yeah that's amazing the teacher presses a button and someone just it's kind of a bit like security um you know kill him yeah take him away or i thought when you said that the teacher presses a button that there would be like some the chair

would tip backwards and the kid would just slide down into a like a sort of a into a hole in the ground dungeon into a pool of sharks shark -infested water that underneath the classroom i don't think there's the funding anymore no they can't keep sharks they can't no one can afford sharks the sharks

yeah where did you go to school by the way which part of the country Bedford not not that far from you any Bedford yeah where's Bedford this is sort of one of those in the center Northamptonshire keep going up we get to you so all right I'm sort of from Northamptonshire but I went to school in Bedford

oh yeah yeah yeah yeah so yeah it's just a little bit to the to the um east of uh where i'm from but yeah so i was at school near coventry and it's just like the kids that and some of the things that they used to say and i so i'd be on the bus with like these sorts of kids we're like what what the fuck are you

looking at you fucking twat that sort of thing you get a lot of that like shot you know like um Shut your fucking face, you twatter, I'll fucking pan you.

Which means shut up or I will hit you.

Shut up, you idiot, or I'll hit you.

I'll pan you. With that accent as well.

Oh, dear. Good times, but bad times too, really.

I was happy to leave school.

I'm not really sure what it prepares you for.

I don't seem too much.

As soon as you leave and you go into a workplace, it's nothing like that, is it?

Go and work in an office.

No one's beating each other up or – Maybe prison.

Maybe prison. Or the army, maybe.

It's a good preparation.

You know Stephen Fry, the author and actor?

Yes. Of course you know who Stephen Fry is, but he's a famous actor and comedian and author.

He does everything, in fact, doesn't he?

But he famously went to school when he was about 90.

he went to prison when he was about 18 19 and he did some sort of he stole a credit card and got into trouble and he had a wild wild years when he was sort of 18 19 so he went to prison do you know this he said people often ask him how was that it was absolutely fine because i went to boarding school

in you know been to loads of boarding schools in england so prison's just yeah absolutely fine because if you've been to boarding school in england you've got all the necessary skills and it's not that hard because that's a whole other thing boarding school so did you go to a comprehensive school no i

went to um well i did when i was a kid when i was small but then from about 12 i went to boarding school in bedford oh really boarding school you mean like like where you slept you slept there and stuff i'm not during the classes but I mean sometimes yeah really so boarding school from 12 to 18 and there

were some kids there who were much younger some kids were eight so they started they got sent away from home and yeah it was tough um I need to just clarify this just for the listeners just in case they're not picking up on it so let's say if I just kind of quickly and we're gonna have to finish soon because you

know um you know I've got to go and pick up my son and stuff like that and I wonder how many listeners yeah okay yeah true we do have to watch football uh exactly england versus denmark that gives you an idea listeners of when we're actually recording this it's going to be published uh like a few weeks

after we're actually recording so we don't know how badly england played but um so since we're talking about schools different types of schools that you'd find in the uk um uh there's like most schools are would you call them day schools as you know basically no one really called them that, but let's

say that, meaning that these are schools, the kids go there during the day, the parents drop them off in the morning, and they come home at the end of the day.

Normal schools. Okay.

You've got comprehensive schools, you've got private schools, and you've got public schools.

Comprehensive schools are the most common type.

They're state schools, right?

They're free because it's state education.

Then you've got private schools where you have to pay, and there's probably entry requirements of some kind maybe to get in and then there's public schools which are the very very exclusive private schools these are the ones that's like prince harry prince william went to uh most of the members of the conservative

front bench you know oh well a lot of them anyway boris johnson that sort of david cameron they went to these super exclusive schools those are public schools which are actually private i think private schools and public schools are synonymous aren't they i think they're the same i think so i think

it's Yeah. I was going to say, for me, when I think of public schools, I think of certain types of private school, which are the kind of more, the sort of really top, super posh, top level ones.

But maybe you're right, maybe that really, there isn't really much of a distinction between a private school and a public school.

that they're kind of the same thing it's very confusing for non -british people because in most english -speaking countries a public school is is for the public and it is state educated and it's free but for reasons that we don't need to go into in the uk it's um it's the opposite of that the public school

is actually the one you have to pay for yeah okay and then there's boarding schools which are ones where the kids kind of live there there are dormitories where they sleep at night and and the rest of it okay so what how how was your experience at boarding school i mean was it are you happy to talk

about it for example for some kids it's it's a quite a difficult thing you know it was difficult and it you know i i what's interesting is actually how you look back on it in adult life because i spent maybe up until the age of 30 thinking oh it's good for you toughens you up you know made made me made

a man of me and you know when i went to university there were people crying because they were homesick because they missed home and they you know it was their first time away from home and i was tough and i didn't need you know i don't need anybody in my life um but now i think very differently about boarding i

think it's a terrible thing to do to your children to send them away.

And in fact, I had a friend who's separated from his wife and his wife wanted to send their children to boarding school aged 10, 11, 12, something like that.

And I started ranting to him about why boarding schools were terribly damaging, awful places.

And you really shouldn't, nobody should be sending their children away at that age.

And I ranted so passionately and so powerfully that afterwards he said the next day he said you know all that stuff you said about could you write that down for me so i said write an essay about why boarding schools are terrible yeah and then he i think he gave that to her and in the end they they didn't

go so yes it was a successful essay the kids didn't go yeah okay well done i didn't go so yeah that i think that was the idea in the in the past in the sort of the 19th century anyway that you had a sort of british empire and you if you were rich you sent your children to these schools and it toughened

them up and sort of trained them to become either civil servants you know running the empire around the around the world or army officers who would be able to go and you know command large groups of men without you know without all the problems that these french teachers had that we were talking about yeah

and so that that they're probably quite effective for that they you know they produced 18 year olds who are very tough and independent and um probably quite well educated too yeah but in the modern age i don't know why you would decide to send your children away so it was very you know it's it's i think

it's very damaging i think there were two types of people who went to public school sorry who went to boarding school yeah there were the people who think there were the people who think it was good for them because they haven't had therapy yet, or there's the people who have had therapy or some sort

of counseling, some sort of, and now fully understand the damage it did to them by having their parents send them away when they were children.

I just think that's a terribly damaging thing to do, but I'll just finish.

But there were kids at my school who lived in Bedford, who lived in the same town, who became boarders when they were sort of 16, 17, 18, because they wanted to, because it was more fun living with your mates in a boarding house.

And in those years of kind of conflict between children and parents, in normal sort of teenage, you know, do your homework.

No, I don't want to do my homework.

I want to go out. Oh, no, you're not allowed to go out.

It's so unfair. Yeah.

that was great for them they had a they had a lovely time in boarding house but the important thing is they wanted to go they asked to go and it was crazy you know they only live live 10 minutes walk away um they'd still go home and probably get some you know extra extra chocolate or something whatever

yeah um so i think that that's a a an exception so that that's That's fine if you want to do that.

But I think it's terrible to send your kids away when you're young, when they're young.

I just want to ask you two questions.

Question one is, why would parents send their children to a boarding school?

And question two is, what is it that's so bad about it?

Well, in my case, I lived in a village where I was the only kid.

So there were maybe 10 houses, 12, 15 houses, but there were generally elderly people or farmers or whatever so there were no no other children and i think my parents felt that it would be bad for me socially to so i at the time i was just going to a normal day school you know a day you know going coming

home every day like every you know normal person yeah yeah um so that was their reason that they thought that i would grow up to be some strange child who you know just sat around talking to himself playing with the dog and the you know his imaginary friends in the fields so i think that was their thinking

but i really didn't want to go i was very happy in my previous school and um so yeah but maybe if i'd gone when i was 16 17 it would have been different but uh 12 was too young for me um and it's just damaging i just think even the kids who say they they enjoyed it and they had a good time and it was it

was a lot of fun a lot of the time but it's just still why why do why do um as a child why have your parents sent you away you know you have this feeling of rejection of like did i do something wrong am i not good enough or yeah i didn't think that but i'm sure it has that effect on you um and mess

you up in sorts of ways and makes you resentful and makes you angry and makes you, you know.

So I think it's a source of a lot of mental problems.

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I do find that fascinating though.

It's really interesting to talk to someone who's been to a boarding school and just to kind of like, you know, to hear about it like that.

Yeah. Well, what? I mean, another time I can fill three hours with all the horror stories of things that little boys used to do to each other you know there was a big laundry basket i'll just give you one there was a big laundry basket like a large basket a large box which people put their dirty clothes

in to take away and wash yeah and it had it had sort of a buckle on it like a strap um like like a like a belt buckle on the front of your belt like here on bag here so like a like a buckle like this a clip that would clip the the the basket closed together and what they would do the older boys would take

a small boy yeah put him in this basket lock it shut and then throw the whole thing down the stairs whoa really and then if they if they were crying they'd just say well oh well done good boy good lad off you go and then like they'd go and look for their next victim so wow this kind of thing actually

while i was there there was a big change and this kind of victorian 19th century um system of brutal um you know brutal prison -like existence all got changed and they they closed all of the boarding houses these old -fashioned Victorian buildings and built a new boarding house and in the old boarding

house you have many boys all in one room and in the new one it was mostly just you just share with one other person so not so different to being at university really and um so it was a new new boarding house small rooms nice new teachers who were all lovely nice like as a music teacher and they were really

nice people yeah and the whole system changed the whole um what's the word culture changed and all the old traditions of bullying of like oh well it's your first day so we have to put you in this basket and throw you down the stairs you know all of that all of that ended and so it was like a fresh start

and there was no bullying no no violence no and it was it was very nice so I was lucky to live into that period.

Yeah, okay good for you.

But still that's not the point still it's your parents sending you away when you don't want to go that's the bad bit.

Yeah that must be horrible the first day first week I can imagine yeah it must be really tough well anyway very interesting to find out about it.

Thanks for telling us about that.

We covered quite a lot of stuff in this conversation didn't we?

we have haven't we yeah yeah it's gonna be the hell to edit yeah well i'll be yeah i'm gonna have to take some time to edit this not too much i think i think mostly it's it's fine i can leave it as it is uh but anyway thanks a lot for being on the podcast martin i didn't get to thank you so much for having

me it's been amazing lovely yeah definitely i didn't actually get to ask you some things about your podcast as well which you're kind enough to invite me on to just can you give me a very brief summary of the concept of the podcast yes well talking about schools I do it with a friend from school my

friend Andy we've been friends since I was like 12 and it's just a bit of fun and we talk to people with interesting jobs we've had all sorts of people on there's a teacher and a police person and what else have we had on sound engineer lots of different jobs anyway but we talked to people and um since

we since we had you on our podcast we've now got people from 81 different countries in the world listening to us so it's called air balls air balls podcast say it again air balls okay maybe you could um i'm gonna put a link on something but i will i will there'll be a link in the description air balls

yeah i would say we're always interested in anybody coming if anyone's got a interesting job or knows anybody but he got a cousin who's a shark farmer or uh something strange do do send us a email maybe you put my email on it and um we're always looking for new guests people just to come on and talk

about their their lives and their jobs okay we just had one on a tv producer she's she talked about she's done music videos for madonna and taylor swift uh so she had met those people and worked with them yeah yeah that's interesting and before that we had this stunt woman the woman who does all the dangerous

things in her in films she'd been um what's the name of the something from she's been anyway she's been in all the harry potter films as is it bellatrix bellatrix lestrange okay so she she she was in all of those films as that as bellatrix and james bond james bond films and things so she was very interesting

and we did a music guy he he signed loads of famous bands like blur and arctic monkeys and white stripes and people so he was yeah so lots of interesting people but also ordinary people we we did one who was just a he's a cafe owner and we talked to a nurse and teachers and stuff.

So it doesn't have to be crazy celebrity stuff.

Everyone's story is pretty interesting.

Yeah. Have you heard any sort of particular anecdotes or anything from people that you can remember?

Well, yeah, lots of them.

My favourite one was, one of my favourite episodes was with my nephew, who is a oscar -winning visual effects guy so he's he worked on he works on visual effects on things like you know black black mirror oh yeah yeah and um and he's got the oscar for i think the the new version of the jungle book you

know um live action no no not live action but very realistic i think yeah yeah cgi yeah well yeah that's his thing so um uh yeah he just talked he told some funny stories about famous film directors and he was too diplomatic and nice to name them but i'm happy to name him if you want yeah of course

i said what who's the have you worked with any difficult people you know he said he said various names of lovely people ridley scott he said was very nice and stuff but he said yeah there was this one director and they come in to watch the viewing you know to watch an early version of the film in a little

small cinema and sort of while they're editing the film and um he said that this guy had a like a bodyguard with him this big you know gorilla man yeah um and he would only speak through the bodyguard so he wouldn't speak directly to anyone in the room And so he said, so my nephew Joseph would say,

so what, what do you think?

And the director would whisper into the ear of his bodyguard.

And then the bodyguard would say, he doesn't like it.

Who, who is so famous that they need to behave like this, you know?

Yeah. And so, yeah, so he's a famous British film director.

and we've already mentioned his ex -wife.

Oh, yeah. So this famous British director who makes kind of like movies about cockney gangsters and geezers.

Yeah, that's the fella.

He'd probably like a bloke with a broken nose to be his bodyguard and walk around with him all the day.

Yeah, he doesn't feel comfortable unless he's got some tasty geezer standing next to him who's ready to nut someone who don't agree with the way his film's getting edited yeah you're looking at me um no i'm just editing your film yeah so that was that made me laugh wow and then the other one was that tim

burton who he did mention he said very nice but throughout the screening so you're watching an early version of the film to you know make some editorial decisions and he just kept his sunglasses on the whole time very cool but it's like surely you need to see the film so he's in this cinema with his stark

glasses on wow what a cool dude okay that's why his films are so bright that's why his films are always think tim pertains films are the ones that aren't in black and white are always like far too bright and colorful because he's watching the screenings with dark glasses on now it all makes sense you

should listen to joseph he's very funny just the way he describes it but him sort of a bit like um you know tim out the office looking around to see does anybody else not think this is absolutely crazy am i the only person here who thinks this is strange that's great i'll have to check that one out

so he's the visual effects guy he's yeah that's he's a lovely guy all right very cool okay nice one martin thanks a lot really good to meet out with you and talk about all these things what a pleasure yeah it was amazing yeah it was not in any way startling no or jaw -dropping well maybe a couple of a couple

of those stories were pretty jaw -dropping like you well not you but some of the kids jumping on the teacher my god like like a booby trap like a trip wire and then jumping on top of him and then he went off and resigned and extraordinary jaw -dropping yeah all right nice one mate so uh let's let's hope

england uh you know actually play some football this evening yeah great thanks luke nice one see you later why does my screen keep doing these funny things you've seen this like i put my put two thumbs up and it does that what was the and also what a thumb came up in the middle of our chat?

Yeah I do if I put one thumb up then that happens because I'm using an Apple Mac that is just making these decisions for me.

Is there something else that I can do that will do other things?

Because there's other visual effects, talking of visual effects, I don't know what happens if I put my two fingers up it's American isn't it, I don't know what that means Have you ever talked in one of your episodes Sticking two fingers up can you remember can you remember do you ever think like i've

talked about this before because when you've done a thousand episodes i think i've i think i've started to feel like i've talked about almost everything and this does happen that's quite often i say i've i've said this before on the podcast and then i realize oh i've said that before on the podcast

so i've said the fact that i've said this thing before that i'm now saying again uh you know i like get trapped in some sort of loop or like it's like inception for yeah for a podcast so smaller and smaller into the distance yeah so i could just keep repeating the same thing but you know after 300 episodes

or something i probably said it 300 episodes ago so the people who heard it probably have forgotten if i've forgotten they've probably forgotten too so it's kind of okay yeah okay thanks again to martin for being a guest in this episode uh this isn't actually the end of the episode because now i'm going

to play you a bit more actually here's some more stuff that martin and i recorded together but i actually cut this from the start of the conversation so this is actually this bit i'm going to play you now is the first part it's actually what came at the beginning of the conversation but I decided to

cut it because it was a bit bit strange a bit of a strange way to begin uh the episode so I cut it but I thought that I'd play it to you now anyway for some reason at the start of our conversation I decided to go off on a weird tangent about Martin's name in fact about how he's got two first names I

mean there's Martin which is his actual first name and that is a normal first name right it's normal to have martin as your first name because it typically it typically is a first name right but his second name is aaron which is actually usually a first name it's more normal to have aaron as a first

name right now i don't know why but i just love it when a person has two first names like martin Aaron.

I mean, a first name as a first name and then a first name as a second name or surname or family name.

Do you know what the hell I'm talking about?

Maybe I'm not making any sense, but I hope you understand.

So as you will see, what I wanted to do was get a list of other celebrities who have a similar pattern with their names, right?

A first name and then another first name as a surname.

I wanted to get a list of other celebrities in order to share that with Martin, just because I, for some reason, I'm sort of, I just enjoy this phenomenon.

I wanted to share that with Martin with a list.

So I tried to ask AI to help me, but neither chat GPT nor Microsoft Copilot, neither of them could understand what I was talking about.

And it became for me sort of a funny moment, which I removed from the start of the conversation because I thought it would just be too weird to have this at the beginning but I didn't want to just delete it completely from the episode and that's why I'm now going to play it to you here okay bloody hell

seems a bit complicated in any case here we go so Martin um your full name is Martin Aaron which is interesting to me because you're one of those people who's got two first names yeah it's annoying yeah go you know what i mean does i mean two first names because martin is a first name aaron is a first

name as well i mean first of all yeah does that cause you any any problems do people call you aaron all the time all the time really people because martin is quite a common surname but aaron as i pronounce it aaron is um it's quite unusual to have to have a surname beginning with double a so people

just immediately kind of override what i say so you know it's quite clear i think if you sign an email you're sincerely kind regards whatever martin aaron then a large number of people will reply dear aaron yeah it's like if you're maybe if i put a comma martin comma aaron then maybe that would that would mean that aaron was my

first but that'd be a very strange thing to do wouldn't it so constantly throughout my life i have to say martin martin martin is the first name aaron is the yeah so they're not you're not going to people it doesn't happen in conversation though does it where you're like hi uh what's your name oh mine

is martin aaron okay so aaron um thanks for coming um i don't think that happens so much that's good it's mainly in the written written written form in emails and so on yeah yeah but you're part of an illustrious list of people who have two first names okay maybe even in it to an extent you've got like

a surname for a first name and a first name for a surname but um you're you've got there are other people who have two first names and I don't know why but I'm just sort of slightly obsessed with this that I like to sometimes when I'm bored or something i'll just try and think of other think of people

who've got two first names uh yeah you're just yeah a little bit yeah or or it's the sort of thing i talk to my brother about where we'll we'll we'll be talking about someone and we'll say oh yeah he's he's one of those people who's got two first names and then we'll try and list all the people we can think

of we've got two first names for example jamie jamie oliver rick james george michael paul simon Daniel Craig, Craig Charles Craig David, David James Bruce Lee, Chris Martin and the list goes on I've never thought of Bruce Lee before, that's a good one yeah, I asked Microsoft Copilot actually for examples

I don't know if you've ever used Microsoft Copilot, no, tell me about it so it's like the Microsoft AI Assistant so everyone's talking about chat GPT but there are other ones Microsoft Copilot is quite a useful one because it gives you it works in the same way i think it uses the same engine it's it

uses chat gpt3 or four or something but it also gives you links to uh its references you know where it's actually got the information which is quite nice um anyway i asked microsoft copilot for more examples of people who have two first names but it was quite frustrating to get it to understand what the hell

i was talking about right so let me just share with you the the conversation i had with microsoft copilot please so i started by going can you give me a list of celebrities who have first names as last names for example jamie oliver rick james cliff richard and it said certainly here are some celebrities

with last names that can also be used as first names right right is that the same thing or not no and it went like this and it said beckham a surname associated with soccer star david beckham marilyn monroe monroe linked to iconic actress marilyn monroe elvis presley presley associated with the legendary

elvis presley and it went on right and i was like it doesn't really understand what i've asked it to do and then it said feel free to explore these options for unique and stylish baby names like no and i wrote back i just wrote back like no i mean celebrities whose last names are actually first names

like oliver richard james etc there's another one richard james richard d james the apex twin david james goalkeeper david james goalkeeper exactly underperforming goalkeeper for england over the years great is he he was on strictly was he on strictly come dancing i think so sorry i trough so anyway

right Right. Back to this very important conversation I had with Microsoft Copilot, right?

So I said, no, I mean, celebrities whose last names are actually first names, blah, blah, blah.

And Microsoft Copilot said, I apologize for the oversight, meaning for getting it wrong.

Thank you for clarifying.

Here are some celebrities whose last names can also be used as first names.

Oliver, associated with British chef Jamie Oliver.

Richard, links to singer -songwriter Cliff Richard.

James, often used as a first name and shared by James, shared by actor James Franco.

Feel free to consider these unique options for baby names.

So just basically use the same names I'd listed as examples.

Yes. And I said, I just wrote, I want a full list of celebrities whose surnames are usually first names.

And it said, certainly, here are some celebrities whose last names are commonly used as first names.

Beckham, associated with Stocker star David Beckham.

Monroe, linked to iconic actress Marilyn it and elvis presley angelina jolie michael jordan and it just gave me the same list it came up with at the beginning and i said right never mind i'll ask chat gpt i said so i switched oh no what did it say to that oh dear i'm gonna remember i don't remember

what he said i said no please don't go please i'll try again let me give another try i'm new here hopefully microsoft copilot's not gonna hold a grudge against me now forever which it will remember for all time um so i switched over to chat gpt right and i said hi which is how i like to start my interactions

with ChatGPT. Hi. And it said, hello, how can I assist you today?

And I said, you know the way some people's surnames are usually first names?

Like Jamie Oliver, Cliff Richard, Rick James.

And it said, yes, I understand what you're referring to.

Some people have surnames that are commonly used as first names, which can sometimes lead to a bit of confusion or curiosity.

This phenomenon can be quite interesting.

Here are some examples and explanations right so it gave me jamie oliver cliff richard rick james which were mine and then it continued taylor swift uh no no you got that wrong swift is not a first name if anything that's two surnames isn't it if anything taylor's yeah taylor's a surname not a first

name jordan peterson steven tyler and then it's and then and then i said i said no can you just give me a list of oh sorry sorry about this is going on far too long but in the end it just gave me this really long list of celebrities and i had to go through about a hundred celebrities just picking out

the ones who had two first names so i think i could have just said give me a big list of celebrities names yeah and they would have done it yourself i could have done it myself this isn't this doesn't bode well for the future of ai does it um i'm slightly reassured that you it was you had such difficulty

and it was yeah maybe i that was a little bit of a waste of time there but i really just felt compelled to get ai to understand what i was trying to what i was trying to do um i i just one final thing i should add i hate the name aaron as a as a first name i think it's fine don't it's quite quite good

with it as a surname but i never really liked it as a there was a kid called aaron in my school maybe that's it i didn't it really i don't think it sounds nice do you it sounds like darren or you know aaron aaron as a first name it's going to be difficult at school because it's double a and you're always

going to be the first one in the list the teacher's always going to it's quite useful sometimes really like an injection or whatever you know at school everyone had to line up and you're going to be like two hours for everyone to get the injection and uh but if you go first you get to go home two hours

early it's great so yeah that's good yeah and the exam some you know oral exams you'd come out and they'd go what was it what was it about and you could just lie it was really hard and you know i quite i enjoyed going first it was quite fun when i got my first degree at university it was you know cathedral

you had to get your certificate and the way it worked was that hundreds and hundreds of people are collecting their degree that day and they just tell everyone just do what the person in front of you does you just got to follow so they only explained right to me right you're going to come up here then

you're going to step up those steps then go over shake hands with the man there and then you take this and then you come back down around the side and then you need to go all the so i explained one person and then everyone else follows you so that meant that when you get up first hunt everyone is staring

because they're all worried they're going to do the wrong thing there's this pressure on me so i thought i could do anything i could do like a i could do a little forward roll you know yeah just do a little do a little dance or spin around and people would think oh i have to do that that's what you

have to do all right so there you are now there there are also those people who have two surnames as well of course right that is another thing as well you got people like taylor swift it's two surnames harrison ford morgan freeman anderson cooper curtis mayfield those are people who have two surnames

but anyway that's enough of that nonsense, isn't it?

How are you doing, listeners?

You made it until this point.

I want to just ask you how this conversation was for you.

Did you enjoy my conversation with Martin?

How was it for you?

Was it breathtaking?

Was it startling? Maybe it was.

I mean, the stuff about kids being extremely badly behaved in school was probably quite shocking for some of you.

I don't mean to give the impression that my school that I went to was completely out of control or anything like that.

It wasn't that bad.

Most of the time at school, it was completely normal.

But then every now and then, there were moments of particularly bad behaviour from one or two kids.

But most of the time, it was to be fair, just a normal school.

So I don't want to give the impression I went to some sort of terribly rough school.

But what about Martin going to boarding school, though?

i'm sort of fascinated by that actually it must be sort of horrendous to be sent away to boarding school when you're so small listeners do you have experience of that did you go to a boarding school how was it for you now i found it personally i found it awful just going to a new school when i was nine

you know and i was allowed to come home at the end of the day but having to stay there all the time and even sleep there and never see your parents it must be traumatic right you must kind of wonder why did they send me away what did I do wrong now the old -fashioned attitude and this is obviously Martin explained

this already but the old -fashioned attitude is that it makes you stronger but I've heard a lot of people say that it leaves kids with issues like it leaves them with abandonment issues like when they've been abandoned by their parents and other issues that kind of last or that continue into adulthood.

But I'm glad to see that Martin has kind of come to terms with it and has a good balanced view about it now.

So anyway, Martin's podcast is called Airballs, A -A -R -B -A -L -L -S.

You'll find a link in the description.

Conversations with interesting people about their jobs.

What a good idea for a podcast because everyone has an interesting story to tell, don't they?

Everyone, you know, most people spend so much time at work getting deeply involved in the work they do.

It's curious, it's interesting to find out about how people end up doing the work that they do and what is involved in it.

It's a really good idea for a podcast.

Everyone has an interesting story to tell.

It's all about, on Martin's podcast, it's all about giving people the opportunity to tell their stories people's jobs are fascinating i think um it's one of the things i've always enjoyed about teaching people english one -to -one often you get to find out all about the work they do whether they are physicists

who work for companies that make computer hard drives and they then have they try to explain to you how hard drives work i remember sitting with a group of Japanese technicians who tried to explain to me how exactly it is that computer hard drives really work.

And they got into incredible levels of detail about it.

It was fascinating.

Or, you know, or if my student works in a Swiss investment bank, they would have to explain how the bank sells debt packages to each other and somehow make loads of money as a result people's jobs are fascinating now on the podcast Martin has spoken to an interesting variety of people working in various

jobs it's available wherever you get your podcast and you'll find a link in the description you can click the link and then find the podcast in various different podcast players okay but that's the end of this episode now all right everyone i hope you're having a lovely time wherever you are in the world

whatever time of day it is but that's the end of this episode thank you so much for sticking with me until this point i hope that you are not a skeleton don't be a ninja leave a comment in the comment section and i'll speak to you next time but for now it's time to say goodbye bye bye bye bye bye thanks

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[Reflections on Teaching, Boarding School, and Language Learning: A Conversation with Martin Ehren]-[896. A Rambling Chat with Martin Aaron]

📋 Summary

Introduction: A Casual Conversation Among Friends

The Teacher's Room: Shared Memories and Miscommunications

Living Abroad and the "Language Learning" Struggle

The Reality of School Life: Then and Now

Conclusion: The Value of Storytelling

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript