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Hello and welcome to the Learning English Stories podcast.
This festive season, we're sharing some of our own stories from this time of year.
So get cosy by the fire, grab a mug of hot chocolate and get ready for some wintry tales.
Hello, I'm Pippa and welcome to Christmas Stories.
In this series, we tell real stories about Christmas, New Year and the festive season.
Today, our stories come from Beth.
Hello. And Neil. Hi.
So, Beth and Neil, can you tell us about your story in three words?
ouch skating embarrassing um wrong tool and failure okay i'm intrigued uh let's start with you beth can you tell us your christmas story please okay so um my best friend and i went ice skating, we decided that we were going to have a Christmas tradition.
And we thought, yeah, why not make it ice skating?
So we were really bad at the beginning, we were like clinging onto the sides feeling quite nervous.
But then towards the end, we were getting quite good.
And in fact, I thought, yeah, I'm really good.
I can go fast bit of showing off.
And my friend decided to get her phone out to film how great we were doing at ice skating so yeah I was going quite fast I thought I looked really cool um and then I looked at the camera and I tripped and I smashed both of my knees onto the ice um so first aid people came over I was put in a wheelchair
taken off the ice and I had to go to A &E and everyone was asking me what happened but my friend had been recording me so she was telling everyone I have the video do you want to see and everybody really wanted to watch and they all found it quite funny so I was in pain they were looking at my legs and they
thought that I had broken both of my knees but they were all quite enjoying this video.
Anyway, got to A &E and all of the people in the waiting room were shown this video by my friend of me falling over on the ice.
I went in to get an x -ray and when I came out of the x -ray I saw the nurses and they were gathered around my friend laughing watching this video of me falling over and in the end it was okay.
I didn't break my knees I was on crutches for about two or three weeks including over Christmas so ice skating has definitely not become our tradition oh no this is a really sad story um can you laugh at the video now do you find it funny I can, but I also don't find it that funny that everyone was laughing
at this video of me because I really hurt myself, but it is quite funny.
And when my friend talks about it, she still laughs a lot because she still finds the whole thing quite funny.
Can we get this video on our website, please?
Yes, I definitely, I have a copy of it and I'll show you all and maybe we can get it on the website.
Okay, I enjoyed your story, Beth.
Thank you very much.
Neil, I think it's time to hear your Christmas story, please.
Yes. OK, are you ready?
It was just a few days before Christmas.
I had just one day of work left.
And I was planning to go to spend Christmas with my parents in the west of England.
But unfortunately that morning, I discovered that the battery in my car had gone flat and stopped working.
So I just bought all of my Christmas presents for everyone.
in the family. And so I didn't really have any money.
And so I didn't want to spend money on a replacement battery.
I told one of my colleagues what had happened.
And she said to me, Oh, that's okay.
You don't need to buy a new battery.
I've got a charger, a battery charger for a car.
And I will bring that in, you can borrow it.
And I thought, fantastic.
So she brought in this big piece of electrical equipment in a plastic bag and handed it over and I bought her a drink to say thank you after work and I went home and I put the bag down by the front door and I didn't look at it or anything and I just started packing my bags for my trip on Christmas Eve
the next day and I didn't really get up early or I wasn't in a rush at all in fact I was quite relaxed and later on I regretted that very much so um after my nice sort of leisurely breakfast um i thought i better start charging this battery so that the car works for me to drive down that afternoon so i
picked up the bag with the charger in it i went outside i opened up the car bonnet and then i uh took out the charger from the bag and it didn't really look like any kind of charger for a battery that i'd ever seen before.
In fact it looked really like a power saw and as I looked at it more and more closely I realized that that's because it was not a battery charger it was in fact a power saw but in that moment I could see that my Christmas was going to be a complete disaster because I wouldn't be able to drive down to
visit my parents and so I had a little bit of hope that this power saw or would work as a battery charger and I even sort of held it against the battery to see if it would work.
Obviously it didn't.
I didn't have the right kind of insurance for somebody to come and fix my car at my house and things were closing because it was Christmas Eve so my only chance was to go and buy a battery from a shop and there was a shop quite far away.
I kind of ran down there to get to the shop on time which I did and then I realized that car batteries are very, very heavy and I waited ages for a bus and then I couldn't get on the bus because it was so full so I had to walk home carrying this enormous really heavy battery, sweating and then I got
back and I opened the car bonnet again.
I realized at that stage that I had absolutely no idea how to change your car battery.
And that also the one that was in the car at that time was so old and rusted that it kind of needed to be forcibly removed.
I kind of worked it out, but it was very unstable.
And I was convinced that all the way on this journey that my car was about to explode at any moment.
But I did get there.
I did get to my parents' house late on Christmas eve and when i got in i sent a lovely text message to my friend saying thanks for the battery charger um you saved my christmas did you ever tell her did you ever tell her that uh that she'd given you a power saw and not a charger did it ever come out
that that she'd ruined your christmas i did i did eventually yes um and she thought it was very funny and i i thought it was very funny soon afterwards but at the time i thought um this was the most ridiculous thing but it seems completely crazy that you actually kind of managed to fit it and you drove
the car like without it
