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Hello listeners, welcome back to Luke's English Podcast.
How are you doing today?
I hope
I think it's episode number 998, and it's a kind of rambling episode in which I'm going to be talking to you and doing various bits of podcast housekeeping.
I've got just some stuff that I need to deal with, stuff I need to manage, but I'm also going to be describing, well, the situation I'm in at this point, a few updates, a few podcast updates.
I'd like to talk a little bit about the World Cup but not at great length
I know this is not a World Cup football rambling episode but nevertheless I think it would be good to talk about it a little bit.
So this one, I think, again, I think I've decided to call this one Rambling in the Countryside because, yes, I am in a different location to record this episode.
I'm in the French countryside.
And well, I'll tell you all about that in due course.
I'm not alone.
Sitting opposite me is my daughter.
You can speak now.
Permission to speak granted.
Hello.
So I am Olivia.
Olivia, you're Olivia today, are you?
Okay.
So she's sitting opposite me.
What are you doing?
You need to speak into the microphone.
I'm colouring a doll.
You're covering a, you're colouring?
I'm colouring a doll.
A doll.
A doll.
It's not a doll though, it's a picture of a girl.
Yeah.
And you're colouring it in.
Yeah.
Where did you get that?
From the supermarket.
Okay.
What you mean is that I generously bought it for you.
It's the sort of thing your daughter, who is eight years old, if you've got an eight-year-old daughter, it's the sort of thing that she sees in the supermarket and instantly wants.
And there was a little bit of negotiation, but she successfully negotiated the purchase of this notepad, which has pictures of girls in it, and you have to colour in the...
Pictures and they all have different outfits.
One of them is completely stark naked and you have to, most of them are stark naked and you have to kind of like put their clothes on and design the way they look and stuff.
It's just the stuff that my daughter absolutely loves.
You want to say something else?
Oh, she wants me to point out that also it comes with this clever little set of paints and you put water on them.
You put water on them and put a brush into the paint and then you can do little simple watercolour paints.
So I'm in the countryside currently with my daughter.
It's just the two of us this week.
But yes, if you're listening to the audio version, it may sound slightly different.
I'm in a room with lots of glass in it.
There's loads of windows all around.
And so the sound is probably bouncing around a little bit.
If you're watching the video version, you will see that there's lots of greenery behind me, lots of trees and bushes and things like that.
And I look a little bit different because I'm wearing a cap today.
Because often when I'm on holiday in the countryside, I will just put a cap on.
For example, to go outside, to go cycling or something like that, I might put my cap on.
I'm wearing a cap.
It's the only cap that actually suits me.
The only cap in the world that I think...
Actually suits me and i've owned this cap um for a long time can you guess how long i've actually owned this cap how old do you think this is like um oh i know it's wait
By the way, listeners, Olivia is not on camera because, well, it's just general child safeguarding.
I don't think it's wise at this stage yet to put my daughter on video.
I'd like to keep her identity anonymous.
She's eating some cheese as well as doing this stuff.
She's also stuffing her face with cheese like a proper French girl would.
But don't eat cheese when you're about to start talking.
What was the question?
How old is this cap that I'm wearing?
This cap is 44.
42 years old.
42 years old.
So you think that I got this cap when I was seven?
Yes.
Well, no, it's a little bit younger than that.
What?
Oh, I know.
41 years old.
No, it's... 40, 40, 40.
That's enough.
It's about 20 years old.
So my friend Moto in Japan sent this cap to me as a little gift when I... Well, I don't know how old I was, but it's about 20 years ago.
And do you know what?
If you're looking at the cap...
And I sometimes wear this when I'm out and about in Paris.
On the front there, it's black.
It used to be black.
And now it's aged so much.
And the sun has kind of caused the colour to wash out.
It used to be jet black.
And now it's... What colour is this cap, do you think?
Brown.
It's a brownish-grey kind of colour.
And it's starting to get very tatty.
Oh, I know why it's from Tokyo, because there's Tokyo Tower.
It is actually from Tokyo, so there's a picture on the front of the cap.
Whoa, whoa, chill out.
Yeah, go on.
Of Tokyo Tower.
That's right.
It's a picture of Tokyo Tower.
It looks like the Eiffel Tower, but it's actually Tokyo Tower.
I always thought that it was the Eiffel Tower.
You always thought it was the Eiffel Tower.
Just like I imagine every other person who ever sees me wearing this probably thinks, oh, he's wearing an Eiffel Tower cap.
No, it's Tokyo Tower.
Wow.
How fascinating.
So we're here in the countryside because this year we decided that instead of going off to spend our summer holiday in Norway or visiting family in California or something like that, that this time we would do the French thing and that we would rent a house in the French countryside.
And that's what we've done.
And in fact, we...
We kind of have made a decision to rent this house long term.
So we'll be renting it for more than just the summer holiday.
We're going to rent it probably for the entire year because we were fed up.
Yes, my daughter Olivia wants to say something.
And more.
And more, potentially.
12 months or more, if we like it, we'll continue.
But it's a 12-month contract.
And we were fed up of living in our tiny little apartment.
I mean, we love our apartment.
We love the fact that it's so well located in Paris as well.
But obviously, it's very urban.
And most of the time, just a second, most of the time, you know, we're just in the city, the apartment is quite small, and we really miss having access to nature.
We miss, you know, the trees, the grass, the wildlife, all of those wonderful things.
And also, we wanted our kids, who are now at the sort of...
I don't know how to describe it.
They are...
They're just living their childhood and it's a great time for them.
And they really need to be running around in a garden, exploring nature, spending a lot of time outside, getting plenty of fresh air.
Yes, Olivia?
I want an exploring kit.
Sorry?
I want an exploring kit.
You want an exploring kit.
What's that then?
What's an exploring kit?
Well, like you have a hat, like exploring things like a pencil with gadgets or things like that.
A pencil with gadgets.
You mean a pen knife.
That's what you mean.
You want an exploring kit with a compass and like a long rope.
Yeah.
Because I want to be an explorer when I'm bigger.
When you're bigger, really.
Okay, well, we'll see about that.
When you've finished your colouring book, then maybe we'll get you the exploring kit with a knife in it and things like that.
Okay.
So, yeah, we decided that it was time...
That we let our children spend more time outside and so we made the decision to rent a place in the french countryside for like long term
Now i know that renting people always say that if you shouldn't rent you shouldn't rent a house because it's essentially you're throwing money down the drain
Right but yes but no you're not
Why not
Because it's lovely and like you're not throwing money down the drain because like you're having a good time and it's not like wasting your money because like you're having a great time.
And watch out for the table because if you bump this table the camera shakes yes and everyone on youtube gets miffed and then they start planning to write a comment or they just skip to one of the other videos that they can see um just on the sidebar
So don't you know
We don't want to encourage them to do that do we okay
So but it's not wasting it's not a waste of money
Yeah, it's not at all.
Right, because we have a lovely time.
Well, we are having a lovely time.
We are having a lovely time and the quality of life goes up.
So to put that in other words, you could say it's an investment.
The money that we spend on renting this place, even though we don't own it, and even though we're not paying off a loan, you know, that we took out in order to buy the place, which is normally what happens, you know, you buy a place, you borrow money, and then every month you pay money,
But that is essentially going into...
The equity of the property or the ownership of the property.
This is fascinating stuff, isn't it?
And so people say, don't rent.
You're throwing money down the drain.
You need to buy something.
And then even then you're...
Even though you're paying money every month, the money does convert into your ownership of that property and you can get that money back plus more when you finally choose to sell it.
But we're not in a position to buy a place like this.
And so we thought, right, well, we will rent.
And it's not a waste of money because it's an investment in life right now, right here, right now.
And both you and your brother are able to spend lots of time outdoors.
You go to the local pony club and you practice riding ponies and looking after horses.
And I love making potions.
You love making potions.
What does that mean, making potions?
Well, you put water, you put flowers, you put plants, and then the water changes colours.
Changes colour.
Yeah.
And you can even put, if you put sun cream, it smells.
Oh, okay.
Making a potion
Basically is what my daughter does when she gets something like a cup, a bottle, a glass, a jar or something like that and goes off into the garden and picks as many different things as she can find.
Flowers, leaves, sticks, whatever it is.
A dead bumblebee.
I don't know.
And she puts it in and fills it with water.
And mixes it all up, and then that becomes a potion.
The best potions are ones that involve lavender.
You take lots of lavender and put that in because it smells beautifully of lavender.
And I already did that.
You know the one on the bench?
There's a lavender one.
Really?
Yeah.
So this garden is great because it's got quite a large lawn.
There's a bench you can sit on and enjoy a cup of coffee.
Olivia wants to say something else.
So and well, I have this potion where my potion really worked because I was planning for the water to drain into my ingredients and then no more water.
Drain you mean soak soak into yeah and now it worked and like that i have more ingredients and that that like really are already used and that that are filled with water
This is good, is it?
Yeah.
Then I can put it in other potions.
Right, you've created these things that have absorbed all the water and now they're loaded up with potion.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's okay.
You're not making real potions.
Real potions would...
Create magic tricks to happen instead like someone drinks it and they turn into a frog or something that's a real potion
But your potions don't have actual powers do they yes they do okay what's what are the powers then
Well, there's a power where you can have superpowers.
There's another one where you can transform.
There's another one where you can move things.
Like the table, you're moving the table again.
Is there a potion to take that means you stop shaking the table?
No, sorry.
There isn't, that's impossible.
Clever answer.
Okay.
All right.
So there you go.
That's where we are.
And we worked out that even though we'll be like renting this place and paying for it every month, and obviously you'd imagine we'd just come in the summer, but like...
Almost every weekend we're planning to come here.
We're going to come here during the school holidays.
At other times of the year we're going to spend Christmas here.
It is a wonderful, wonderful place surrounded by lovely fields and nature and it's just fantastic.
Even if it does smell a little bit of horse poo occasionally when the wind blows in a certain direction.
Yes, we've got bicycles which we're riding around.
We don't have a car yet.
So we are essentially the only way we can travel around to do our food shopping is to go out on our bikes and fill our backpacks full of food.
It's a lot of fun.
We're going to buy a car.
I'm actually going to own a car for the first time in my long life.
Olivia would like to say something else.
Okay, so, and there are too many spiders here.
Yeah, there are lots of spiders.
But the worst are the ones with thick legs.
Thick legs.
Yeah.
So, of course, a house in the countryside, in the French countryside, there aren't many things.
I mean, you should feel lucky that you don't live in some other part of the world.
I know.
I know, she's terrified.
You should, because in other parts of the world, there are poisonous snakes, poisonous spiders, all sorts of things, scorpions that creep into your slippers, all sorts of...
Snakes in the toilet.
All sorts of things that you don't even want to think about.
You're lucky that here in this part of France, I think there aren't really any dangerous animals.
And that includes even the big spiders that you see crawling across the carpet.
They're harmless.
They just look scary, but they're harmless.
But there's one who's dangerous.
There's one who?
There's one that's...
It's not a person, is it?
There are two animals that are dangerous.
The rat and the...
Rats and?
Mice.
Rats and mice, okay.
Yeah, but they're everywhere, aren't they?
Everywhere.
Not everywhere.
I mean everywhere in the world, you know.
Everywhere in the world.
So despite the fact that, yes, there are spiders and cobwebs and little creepy crawlies and things in the countryside, it is lovely.
So that's where we are.
But I was saying that we worked out that last year we went on holiday, right?
We spent about three weeks there, plus some time in England.
There was quite a lot of flying involved, renting a car for a long period of time, and a lot of other expenses.
We worked out that our holiday in Norway is equivalent to...
About three months of rent for this place.
And there are many ways that choosing to come here on a regular basis will save us money while also increasing our quality of life.
I'm not quite sure how I'm going to do my podcast while I'm here.
What room I'm going to use.
There's a lot more space here than there is in our apartments at home.
I'll find a space or find a spot for podcasting.
It might just be on this sofa here, although I'll have to contend with you and your brother and your mum as well.
And I don't know how I'm going to deal with that particular conundrum, but that's something for me to work out.
Olivia would like to say something.
Yes.
And it's lovely because you can even do it.
Oh, no, you can't do it outside.
Podcasting.
I could.
I can.
I have.
I have.
I will.
And this house is certainly a lot, a lot, like nearly a million times bigger than your office.
A million times bigger.
No, not a million, but like 10 times bigger.
It's certainly much bigger than my office, but it's not equipped in the same way as my office because my office is a bespoke.
Place
Bespoke means it's been specifically designed and created for doing this podcast whereas what i'm doing now is a form of gorilla podcasting
Not gorilla like the ape but gorilla g-e-u-r-r
Oh god how do you spell gorilla
It's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A, gorilla.
Anyway, it's a different spelling of gorilla.
It means finding ways to improvise your podcasting on the go so that you are essentially sort of breaking the rules.
You're recording in the living room or you're recording in the garden.
You're not doing it in your normal podcasting space.
You're just finding ways every time to do it whenever you can.
That's how I see that.
Yes.
You're really breaking the rules?
Well, I mean, not really breaking the rules, but not doing it in the normal standard way.
Yeah?
Okay.
You're muted.
I've muted you again, yeah, so that you don't... Because you were rubbing the microphone against your T-shirt and...
Breathing into it and stuff that people don't want to hear
Hear breathing do you on the podcast
I don't know
So anyway there you go
That that's where we are now and that's where we're going to be um until um the kids go back to school
So pretty much for the rest of the summer i will be here and um starting next i'm
Week all four of us will be here and that means that I don't know how I'm going to continue doing my podcasting in the way that I normally would
Right you've come to expect one free episode every single week
Plus yes they have plus plus premium episodes on a regular basis as well so I'm going to be improvising as I said guerrilla podcasting trying to find time and space to podcast
In the midst of family time here in the countryside.
The fact we've got more time, the fact we've got more space and we're not rushing around a foreign country, you know, being on holiday is great because it does mean that I probably will have more time to do this.
But what I will say is that it might not be on the same...
Regular basis that you've had for the rest of the year.
So I might not... You might not get an episode every Monday.
You might get, you know, episodes arriving on different days of the week.
You might get more than one episode a week.
We will see.
You might get slightly less.
I'll attempt to give you the same number of episodes I would normally give you during this period, but it might be a bit haphazard.
My uploading schedule might be a little bit haphazard.
So there you go.
That is that.
All right.
Now, other bits of housekeeping.
So listeners,
You remember, don't you?
Was it two months ago now, he says, scratching his knee?
My legs are a bit itchy.
Yours as well?
They can't hear you because your microphone is muted.
Yeah, mine are so scratchy.
Why are your legs itching, do you think?
Because of the chenille urticant.
So that's French.
You need to put that in English.
Do you know how to do that?
Like, I don't know how to say it.
Basically, so as you know, in the countryside, there are things like mosquitoes and other little... Stop kicking the table, please.
Mosquitoes and other little creepy crawlies that will bite you and leave you scratching your legs and stuff like that.
But it seems that here in this part of the world, there are these caterpillars, right?
These caterpillars that make their nests in trees...
And they shed the little hairs on their body.
These are caterpillars that are covered in hair.
I don't know if they're like butterfly caterpillars or moth caterpillars.
I don't know what they turn into eventually, because of course all caterpillars, you know, undergo metamorphosis and turn into...
Other, you know, butterflies or moths.
But these ones, what they do is they nest in the trees and there's loads of them all nesting in a big bunch.
And they spin a kind of web of thread around them.
And then they cut...
I think they sort of shed the hairs on their body.
And the hairs go in the air and go everywhere.
And when they touch your skin, they actually kind of spike your skin a bit like the way a mosquito bites you.
And the hair goes in, and it contains some sort of annoying chemical, and essentially it leaves very, very itchy little bites.
This is what it's like in the countryside.
Us, this Parisian family, going to the countryside with no idea about these things, and our first weekend here.
We all on the first night, we woke up in the morning scratching terribly.
I was covered.
My arms were completely covered.
Whatever, recent weekend, but, okay, the second weekend, but the first weekend that we've been here in the summer.
It was the first weekend.
It was the first.
How dare you contradict me on my own podcast?
They can't hear you because you're not speaking into the microphone.
Anyway, we all got sort of all these little bites all over our arms and legs and they've been very irritating and scratchy, but I think it's less bad than it used to be.
We've still got a little bit of that, but that's life in the countryside, isn't it, you know?
You're kind of living in the middle of nature and you end up with these things like you just end up scratching.
The weather's much nicer and the garden is lovely, but I keep scratching my knee.
What can you do?
You know?
This one is Chinese or Japanese.
This girl that you're drawing is Chinese or Japanese.
I could just quickly show her on the screen.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right.
Good.
I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with that one.
So, some of you listening will remember that a few months ago, I had Anna Brooke on the podcast, and she told us various paranormal stories, if you remember, all about the kind of weird experiences, weird sort of poltergeist experiences that she had at home.
And she talked about her new book.
Which is called Death by Chocolate.
Love it.
If you want to speak, speak into the microphone so we can hear you.
I love it, Death by Chocolate.
It's so exciting and I love it.
Like with, what is it called?
Monsieur Framboise.
Yeah, Monsieur Framboise and the girl Coco and his boyfriend.
Her boyfriend.
Her boyfriend.
Yeah.
And her dog.
And they don't know that the grandma is... Don't spoil it.
Spoiler alert.
You can't give away the big twist of the story, but you really enjoyed it.
Okay, so this is Death by Chocolate, a book for children around my daughter's age, sort of pre-teen, basically.
And Anna came on.
She told...
The true stories of her paranormal experiences, which had inspired the book.
And then we launched a competition, which was basically listeners.
We wanted you to send in your experiences, your descriptions and stories of...
Paranormal experiences that you've had or just strange experiences and I received about a hundred different stories and it's it's first first of all it's taken me a long time to um
Go through them all.
But the point is, the reason I'm saying this is because you might be thinking, well, when are we going to hear the stories that you've selected?
What's happening with that competition?
So it's kind of on hold at the moment.
What I've done is I went through all of the stories.
It took me a long, long time.
And I chose my favorite.
So I made a short list of my favorite ones.
And I'm waiting for Anna to read my shortlist and to choose her favourite.
That's why it's taking so long, because I'm waiting for Anna.
And Anna has been incredibly busy as well with the publication and launch of her new book, Death by Chocolate.
But also, just like for us, it's been the end of the school year, the beginning of the summer holidays.
And that means that she's also been incredibly busy doing this, that and the other.
And there have been other things that she's had to deal with recently.
So I'm still waiting for her to read the shortlist I've given and choose her favourite story.
Once we've done that...
I will be able to do the competition episode.
I'll read you the stories that we chose.
I'll tell you the one that we consider to be our favourite, the person who's going to win a copy of Anna's book.
But also I've decided I'm going to do a kind of listener's choice award for this as well, which means that when you listen to all those stories, you'll be given the option to vote.
For the one that you like the best and the one that gets the most votes will be the winner of the Listener's Choice Award and you will be given an item of Luke's English Podcast merchandise.
Oh, you're so excited.
I can tell.
You might receive a Luke's English Podcast mug.
I think it's probably going to be the prize that I'll send you a Luke's English Podcast mug with a design of your choice on it.
Based on the selection that you have in the uh lep merch store and my daughter would like to come in here
Yes but how do you make how do you make the people vote how do you like how do i make them vote
No that how do you um let them vote yeah how do you yeah yeah it's a very good question
There's two ways I could do it.
One way is to use a kind of a website where people can launch... Or they just email you.
Yeah, no, that's not good because then I've got a million emails coming into my inbox and it gets too difficult to manage.
You're like...
The easiest way, I think, is to create a poll, an online poll through a link.
I think you can do it with Google and it just creates a poll.
Or I think on YouTube I can create a poll.
Or simply this.
I'll just say in the comments section, just name one.
The story that you like the best.
But we don't need to worry about those details yet because this isn't that episode.
I will find a way to let you choose your favourite stories.
So that's going to be great.
But the stories are really good.
I was like really, really, really impressed.
I'll read them to you later because my daughter wants to hear them now.
But the stories are really, really good.
I was really impressed.
And I've managed to reduce the number and distill it down.
So we've got...
A good set of genuinely interesting, entertaining, quite scary, quite moving stories from listeners.
So that is, that's something that's going to be coming up.
Okay.
She's just said to me, can you say my daughter loves scary stories?
My daughter loves scary stories.
Why do you love scary stories so much?
I don't know, but...
Into the microphone, please.
I don't really know why.
It's just that they're exciting and there's a lot of movement.
And I love movement.
There's a lot of action in Scary Stories.
And I just love that.
So recently I was in England with your brother.
I'm talking to my daughter at this point.
And when we were there, I went around all the charity shops that sell secondhand books and things.
And I bought loads of books for you, child.
Wait a minute.
I bought a lot of books for you, child one.
And included in it was a Sherlock Holmes story.
Yeah, just talk to me and answer my questions.
There was a Sherlock Holmes story.
Can you just tell us the name of the story and what you thought of it?
Scandal in Bohemia.
A scandal in Bohemia, yes.
And it was exciting.
It wasn't very scary, but it was exciting.
Mm-hmm.
And, like, I liked how Sherlock Holmes did that thing with his hands.
He took red paint in his hand, he did like this.
Put it on his face.
Yeah, and because he was in the middle of a fight, and he did like this, which he asked the people to do a fight.
Wait a minute.
When you say he did like this, people can't see what you're talking about.
He put his hand on his face and dragged it.
So basically he put paint in his hand and smeared red paint and smeared it on his face to make it look like he was bleeding from the face.
And he asked the people to do a fight.
And then the girl, the girl who was...
Who was the baddie, she thought that he was really bleeding.
She took her in the house, and then when Sherlock Holmes' friend Watson said, Fire, fire!
Well, the girl...
Took the letter, the precious letter, and then Sherlock Holmes saw it.
And when Sherlock Holmes said false alert, well, she put it back in the place that he was.
So this is Sherlock Holmes' way of tricking this woman into revealing, wait a minute, into revealing the location of some very important letter.
But, go on.
The girl was more smart than him and took the letter and took with her and went somewhere else and left another photo.
Left another photo.
That's right.
So she outsmarted him.
So this is the only person, one of the only people ever to outsmart Sherlock Holmes.
There are two people who've done it.
Was it Moriarty and hers?
Irene Adler is the name of the character.
So anyway, that was good.
A scandal in Bohemia.
She really enjoyed it.
And, well, I'm going to do another Sherlock Holmes story on this podcast.
So maybe the next episode, episode number 999, I think...
What I'm going to do is read through another Sherlock Holmes story for you.
And I've been trying to think of ways to do it.
Because what I can do with a very short story that's about a thousand words or less is I can read it.
In 10 minutes, and then go through every single line and explain loads of detailed vocabulary.
And that's like a decent sort of hour and a half episode.
But a Sherlock Holmes story is typically about 9,000 words long.
I've talked...
Yeah, I've talked about this before.
And, you know, just sort of debating about, wait a minute, debating about what the best approach is for telling a story like that on the podcast.
I could just tell the whole story from start to finish, but of course a lot of people are going to get lost and are not going to understand what I'm saying.
But on the other hand, if I read through the story and stop regularly and explain things, that's going to slow down the story.
There's a bird in our flat.
Really?
There's a little Robin who's just jumped into the house and he's currently bouncing around investigating.
And now it's flying up against the window.
You able to open that door or just shoo it shoo shoo shoo out of the room oh dear we're gonna
Oh it's flown in here oh and it's it's all right let's deal with this okay sorry don't worry little bird
Don't worry little robin let's open this up for you it's on the what cable it wasn't the cable
Get out of the way.
It's scared of you, so don't go over there.
Oh, and it's gone.
Well, wasn't that exciting?
First time I've had a bird on this podcast.
And I think it appeared for a moment on video.
I think you could actually see it on video.
It was an exciting moment.
So anyway, I can't remember what we were talking about.
You were about to say something.
I was going to say.
About my approach to telling a Sherlock Holmes story on this podcast.
Oh, yeah, true.
So, I really like Sherlock Holmes stories.
So, I'll maybe comment sometime on the Sherlock Holmes story.
Yeah, well...
If I tell the story and pause regularly during the telling of the story to explain details and explain things, the problem is that other people also get frustrated.
So either the sort of higher level listeners get a bit frustrated because the story is slowing down or the lower level listeners get frustrated because they can't keep up and they just get lost after about five minutes.
So what do I do?
Well, I'm always trying to choose the best option.
I think what I will do this time is this, and the drawback of this approach is that it's going to take a lot longer.
So what I will do this time, I think, is just read the entire story from start to finish.
And I've made a few little changes to some of the vocab...
But I'll read the whole story from start to finish, and then I'll go through the story again and explain some details.
That's probably going to make the episode about three hours long.
But I did it once with the Apionis Island story.
The one about the bird, the large bird that hatches from an egg.
You know that story.
So I did it with that one.
It ended up being about three hours long, but it was really, really popular.
Lots of people commented on how much they liked it.
So I think I'll probably take that approach.
But I just, listeners, I want you to know...
That actually telling a story on the podcast is not as simple as you might think.
And if I just tell the story, a lot of people will get lost.
And actually, occasionally, I get comments from native English speakers who are usually the most critical audience of my podcast, because this podcast is not for native English speakers.
But I do get comments from the occasional online English teacher who has chosen to criticize me for my work.
And they say things like, what is this?
This is supposed to be learning English.
Where's the learning?
Where's the teacher teaching?
He's just telling the story and that's it.
And I kind of...
There's a certain...
Appeal to that, that my audience liked listening to those stories told in my voice and that they liked the way I do it.
But I think I agree.
There needs to be some sort of teaching involved.
So...
Essentially i'll read the whole story and then go through it again and explain details but it's going to be a really long episode
I don't know how long that will end
What what what what what what what what what what what what
Maybe just also ask an activity like like um now try to like
Change the vocab of the story and do a thing like that, a little activity.
Yeah.
I mean, I can offer my listeners some sort of series of activities that they can do with answers.
I mean, that's normally the sort of thing I do in a premium episode, to be fair.
Like in a free episode, I'm not necessarily going to go that far and, you know, do all that stuff.
What's a free episode?
Yeah, most of the episodes are free.
So anyway, that's probably what's going to come up in episode 999.
Then there's episode 1000, right?
So this episode is 998.
The next episode, 999.
Then it's episode 1000.
And I've got a little bit of a problem with that because...
Well, first of all, I don't have anything ready.
And second of all, I think the audience, everyone expects something extra special because it's episode 1000.
And I've talked about it over the last couple of months.
I keep saying, oh, episode 1000 is nearly here.
Oh, I better do something special.
And I keep talking about it.
But, as you know, it's been such a busy time that I haven't had a chance to prepare something super-duper extra special.
And I suppose what I mean by something super-duper extra special is a sort of long anthology episode...
Where I feature conversations with regular guests and maybe even some contributions from listeners.
And it's a long thing with like a sort of best of the podcast, where you hear from all my audience, from all my regular guests in some format.
Some incredible smorgasbord of guest appearances.
What's a smorgasbord is the question from my daughter.
It's basically a kind of a large plate or tray covered in different types of food.
That's a smorgasbord and it's a Scandinavian thing, I think.
Yeah, your mum is calling me.
Everything is happening today.
It's so hard to do a normal podcast in the midst of all this stuff.
No, I'm going to take the call.
I'm going to pause the podcast and take this call.
Bear with me, listeners.
Okay, it's not urgent.
I'll talk to your mum later.
But news, good news.
You're able to go to your horse training this week.
Every afternoon from 2pm till 5pm.
Questions?
Am I going to go on the horse or just help?
I think you're going to ride ponies.
Oh, baby.
I hope I have Katya.
So, okay, she's very pleased to be able to ride ponies this week.
So that's after.
Pony.
Catia is the best pony.
Yes.
They've all got names, these ponies, and Catia is the best one.
Well, of course.
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay.
And then it's Estus, and then...
Be quiet now.
Thank you.
Stop knocking the table.
So, yes, episode 1000.
Everyone probably expects something incredible.
Stop knocking the table, please.
Everyone... Well, you are.
Everyone probably expects something incredible with, you know, all the...
All your favourite guests all being included in the same episode
But that actually requires a lot of organisation because I've got to arrange calls with all of them record things with all of them take all those recordings somehow find a way to put them in and um
Everything's been so crazy and up in the air, what with finding this place, moving into this place, trying to buy a car, going testing cars, the kids ending school, all these different things.
Travelling, travelling to England with my son and all that stuff.
And it's been really, really hard to find the time to organise episode 1000.
And then I find it getting closer and closer with every single week.
And so I don't really know what to do.
I've had some ideas.
I've got some ideas for it, which I think are probably okay.
I got a suggestion from a listener called Alex.
You want to say something, Olivia?
But it's maybe just going to be simple.
What's that?
How could it be simple?
Just like always, like just on a topic.
Just me talking on my own.
But I don't think so.
Maybe it can be.
The thing is though, I don't want people to be disappointed that if episode 1000 comes around and it's just me...
Maybe people will be like, oh, I thought there would be something a bit more special than this.
But it might not be possible.
So I got a suggestion from...
I've got a few suggestions from listeners.
A lot of the suggestions, to be fair, have been a little...
They've been great suggestions, but they've just been suggested by people who don't necessarily know what it takes to produce an episode like that.
So some of the suggestions have been very outlandish and ambitious.
And don't sing, please.
Outlandish and ambitious and the sorts of things that would take a hell of a lot of time and organisation to do.
I got a suggestion from Alex, a regular long-term listener of the podcast, who said...
Here's a quick and strange idea for the 1000th episode in case you're still not sure what to do.
Imagine a 10-hour ramble.
I don't know if I can do a 10-hour ramble.
But anyway, he said zero preparation, zero editing.
I like the sound of that.
100% your style.
And I guess the YouTube algorithms love this sort of thing.
You could simply take a day and go and sit on a hill somewhere in the French countryside with a couple of power banks.
That means a couple of batteries.
And a microphone and reflect what it's all been about and where it's heading and uh and to not run out of things to say simply open the archive of all your episodes and talk about them one by one with some nostalgia and warmth and that will surely resonate with the listeners
If you want to talk about every single episode, you'll have about only 40 seconds for each one.
That's 10 hours divided by 1,000.
Right?
Works out at about 40 seconds per episode.
Oh my God, I can't possibly go through my entire archive and say something about each one because it would take over 10 hours.
So he said, maybe you could select some episodes that you remember recording or...
Choose some that mean a lot to you anyway there's just some food for thought uh sorry thank you alex for that suggestion yes and um um you could also but maybe select your favorite ones like with me
Olivia Violet and all the other names.
All the different iterations of you that have been on this podcast over the years.
Yeah, certainly.
Every episode with you is one of my favorites.
That's absolutely true.
And also mine.
Also yours or your favorites.
Well, I'd never really heard an episode before.
You've never really heard an episode, no.
No, you're not.
You don't listen to my podcast.
With Prum, my best friend.
Yeah.
Well, on her Alexa, we always try to put your podcast on.
And then it makes like another girl that talks.
English with Lucy.
Yes.
Yeah, I know.
So your friend has got an Amazon Alexa.
And when you're at her house, you say, Alexa, play Luke's English podcast.
And it puts on English with Lucy or something like that.
It's like, what?
Yes.
Like, we want my dad's, not Lucy.
She's going to be on my podcast in the autumn, Lucy.
Yeah.
Anyway, my brother, your uncle, suggested another good idea.
I might do this too.
I might do all of this in one massive episode.
It's going to take how many hours?
Too many, obviously.
But his suggestion was that simply he interviewed me.
He just has come up with a series of questions.
Oh, that's good.
He could ask me the questions.
And I think he's in quite a good position to be able to come up with insightful, interesting and entertaining questions that could generate an interesting conversation.
I guess it's the other way around.
What's the other way around?
Normally, it's you who ask the question.
To the people who help you.
But now it's...
It's...
It's... James.
James who asked you.
Who will ask me.
Yeah.
Who might ask me.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that's a good idea too.
I'll just need to organise that with him.
So listeners, basically what I'm saying is for episode 1000, maybe just, you know, reduce your expectations somewhat.
Lower your expectations a bit
Take the pressure off me a little bit and we'll see what we get
Another thing is that if i'm not ready i might need to publish some episodes that don't have numbers so you might
It might get a bit weird over the next few weeks as i publish things randomly at different times of the week and also there might be a few episodes that don't have numbers
As i try to make time for myself to put off episode 1000 so i might that's very good you might get some more bonus episodes some slightly more random things bear with me everyone okay yes um
I think we're nearly finished.
I don't want to go on for too long here.
How many hours has it been?
It's been about 45 minutes, this.
So actually fairly short considering my normal output.
But I'm quite happy with that.
I'm okay with that.
I wanted to talk about World Cup 2026, FIFA World Cup 26 here.
This is not a football ramble.
I don't want to go on about this for ages.
But I think that summarising the tournament and just giving a few comments about it
And at least sort of finishing the things I've said about it in previous World Cup episodes would be a good idea.
And non-football fans might appreciate getting an overview of the World Cup.
Okay?
Yes?
I love the match of the Miami one where there was France-England and that England scored six and France four.
Yeah.
Because I'm English and French, but I like more English than French.
Why?
I don't know.
It's just the way you are, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's fine.
But Marguerite, my friend, likes French more than English.
Your friend is also English and French, just like you, but she prefers France.
It's funny, isn't it?
I don't really understand.
But anyway, so the World Cup ended yesterday.
I'm recording this on Monday, the 20th of July.
And the final of the World Cup was yesterday.
And the winner was Spain, who beat Argentina 1-0.
It took them 120 minutes to do it, but they did it in the end.
And so congratulations to Spain.
And I mean, how can I describe the game?
If you're Spanish, you should be very, very happy of yourself.
I'm sure they are very happy with themselves.
Proud of yourself.
Happy with yourself.
I'm sure they are very happy with themselves.
So the game itself was, I suppose, typically for a World Cup final.
World Cup finals are never the best games of the World Cup, as we know.
And this was certainly true for that.
But it was a...
Tough game not particularly satisfying game not many goals just one goal right at the end of extra time
But Spain were absolutely dominant and clearly the better side Spain with a much better team
They completely outplayed Argentina Argentina didn't get one single shot on goal for the entire 90 minutes and um
Well, they didn't get a shot on target for 90 minutes.
They only got two shots on target in the entire game.
Both of them came in extra time.
So it was not a good performance by Argentina.
And I think...
I think a lot of people were quite happy, actually, to see Argentina not win that game.
I know it's a little sad.
And for me, I thought, actually, the way that they played was not good.
They played badly for several reasons.
And in a way, I think that they got what they deserved.
So the first thing is that Argentina just didn't play very well.
They didn't create many chances.
They didn't manage to do the things they needed to do.
The second thing is that they just played really dirty again.
And they were kicking and fouling and doing all sorts of other things.
And...
I don't know how they get away with it.
I really don't.
A lot of the challenges, a lot of the fouls against Spanish players were worthy of yellow cards, but they didn't get them.
One player did get sent off.
Fair enough.
But I think the world, and maybe not the world, but a lot of people, unfortunately, were quite glad to see Argentina lose that.
And for me, it's nothing to do with the political situation, because I'm actually very, very...
Balanced about that i'm very very even-handed about all of the the history and stuff i'm just talking purely about the football and purely about the sort of behavior and um
Approach of the Argentinian players which I thought was cynical and negative and you saw it at the end
There was actual violence where I think Argentinian players were punching some of the Spanish substitutes who ran onto the pitch and things like that
So
Kind of despicable stuff from Argentina, really.
And they, you know, they didn't deserve to win, quite frankly.
And I was worried that they wouldn't do anything for the entire 90 minutes and then they would score one goal at the end and then they'd win on penalties.
And I thought that would have been unjust.
But I understand that Argentina are a great team.
They've got so much quality.
They've got the greatest player in the world.
Right?
Yeah.
Messi is the greatest player in the world.
Messi is generally the...
Although he didn't win the Ballon d'Or this year, which is the prize for the best player.
That was won by... Was it Rodri, the Spanish player?
No.
And Mbappe won the Golden Boot for the highest number of goals.
So, Argentina...
Harry Kane, no, he didn't score that many goals, actually.
So, Argentina, great team, capable of playing such fantastic football, but were disappointing, in fact, cynical and negative and didn't deserve to win.
So, I'm sorry, Argentina, for that.
But, I mean, what do you think about that, Argentinian fans?
What do you think about the way Argentina carried themselves through this competition?
I know that you might be feeling a bit hard done by because you look at the world, you look at the internet and you think, why is my team so unpopular?
And there are allegations of all this stuff about, there are allegations of things like match fixing and corruption and stuff.
I don't know about that.
But what I do know is what I saw on the pitch and they were not great.
I need to finish very soon.
There was also the bronze match between England and France.
And that was a fantastic game.
Ten goals in that game.
England scored six.
And France scored four.
God knows what was going on there.
But that was so entertaining and so bonkers and mad and crazy.
Mbappe scored two goals, which meant that he went on to be the highest goal scorer in the competition.
Yeah.
The Halftime Show, obviously, because this one was being held in America, there was a big show at halftime with Madonna and Shakira and Justin Bieber and Robbie Williams and all sorts of other people.
Big entertainment show.
And on the TV, it was quite funny because...
On the BBC, they had Wayne Rooney was one of the pundits.
So a pundit is a kind of journalist.
Usually they are...
Former players who now are in the TV studio commenting on the game.
So one of the BBC's pundits for the final was Wayne Rooney, former England international megastar, Wayne Rooney.
And he's like a really kind of down-to-earth scouser.
And the presenter said to him, Wayne, what did you think of the halftime show?
And Rooney said, well, you know, I thought it was crap.
I thought it was just total crap.
So he wasn't very happy with the halftime show.
I think that's enough from me today.
I think I need to go into the kitchen and start preparing some dinner.
So I'm going to stop here.
There's more I could say about the World Cup just to finish off, but I think I'm not going to.
I have to know when enough is enough and the fact that my daughter is sneaking into the kitchen to eat more cheese, which she definitely shouldn't be doing at this time.
So fatherhood.
Is calling me away from the podcast, but there it is.
Overall, the World Cup was a sort of bloated, exciting...
Mega competition, full of goals, full of controversy, allegations of corruption.
It might never be the same again.
Hydration breaks or commercial breaks.
Split the game into four parts
I'm not entirely sure how i feel about that
In a way it was quite good because during the hydration break you could nip to the toilet go to the kitchen to get yourself a snack
It did make it a bit more comfortable to watch, but are they going to go back to the normal two-half structure in the future?
Who knows?
FIFA, the corruption?
How long are we going to continue watching football despite the fact that FIFA are doing the naughty shenanigans they're doing?
I don't know.
But football is a fantastic sport.
It remains the world's favourite sport.
It's an amazing thing.
It's wonderful for the teams of the world to meet each other and compete against each other.
It's still a fantastic international celebration and event.
I love it.
Absolutely love it.
Listeners, I'm looking forward to reading your comments.
Tell us what you think about the World Cup.
Also, tell us what you think about plans for episode 1000 and any other thoughts that have occurred to you while listening to this episode.
My daughter is desperate to say something to me now.
What is it?
It's that my dad will show the three first drawings that I made.
OK, so my daughter would like to show on video.
This is just for the video version.
The three drawings that she did.
I mean, you coloured in these pictures of these girls.
So there's a girl wearing a nice pink jacket and a blue skirt and a yellow T-shirt with a tiger on it.
And she's wearing a red beret, I think.
She looks really cool.
Another one.
It's the coolest.
The coolest one.
This is my daughter's favourite one.
It shows a girl with sort of beautiful ginger hair, leather jacket, a white t-shirt with a rose on it, a kind of patchwork red, orange and yellow skirt, grey stockings and black boots.
She's a sort of a rock chick.
Yes, so rad.
And then the third one is...
Is the one that you thought looked maybe Korean or Japanese.
And there she is in a little black skirt with a black dress with a skull on it, a blue denim jacket over her shoulder, and sort of thigh-high stocking socks and boots on.
And a yellow hat on her head.
They all look really cool.
I like the designs.
These are boots.
So these are thigh high boots that she's wearing.
Great stuff.
Great stuff.
Great stuff.
Great stuff.
Great stuff.
Thank you to the Robin who came in.
And became the very first bird ever to feature in an episode of this podcast.
I think that's the case.
I don't think we've had a bird on the podcast before.
But that's it for episode 998 of this podcast.
Listeners, please leave your comments in the comment section.
And thank you, me.
Thank you to Olivia for her contribution in this episode, even though she did bump the table quite a lot, but that's okay.
We don't mind, do we, listeners?
Yeah, okay.
Speak to you next time, everyone.
OK, but until then, I will just say the usual stuff about how, you know, I hope you have a fantastic morning, afternoon, evening or night, wherever you are in podcast land.
She's saying, wait, wait, wait, go on.
And bye bye.
That's not that's not how it's done.
Bye, bye, bye.
But it's normally like that, isn't it?
I think it's time to stop.
So do you want to do it together?
Thanks for listening, everyone.
Speak to you next time.
But for now, it's just time to say goodbye.
Bye, bye, bye.
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