The Door in the Wall 🚪 (Learn English with a Short Story) [962] | Luke's ENGLISH Podcast - Learn British English with Luke Thompson

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Hello listeners.

Welcome back to luke's english podcast.

How are you doing today?

Hope you're doing fine.

So in this episode it's story time again.

I'm going to tell you another short story and use it to help you learn English.

Today's story is another one by HG Wells, one of my favorite authors.

I love his short stories.

This one is called The Door in the Wall, and it's considered to be one of his best short stories.

It was first published in 1906, which obviously is quite a long time ago.

But I've actually adapted the text in this story for this episode.

I've adapted it to make it more modern and more up to date so that you can be sure that you're learning the kind of english that you could, you know, use today.

It's not old-fashioned anymore.

The story is exactly the same.

It's still kind of literary in style, but it's all been updated so that it's um, not old-fashioned anymore.

Now the structure of this episode is going to go like this

So first of all, I'll tell you the story, and I'm going to start doing that in just a moment.

The story will probably take about 20 25 minutes, I think, which is normal for a story of this length.

It's actually about 5,000 words, so it'll probably take about 20 minutes or more.

So I'll tell you the story.

Just listen, try to follow it, try to understand it, hopefully enjoy it.

After that, I'll give you a clear summary of the story in my own words so that you can check that you've understood everything.

Then I'll do some discussion about the story's meaning.

What does it really mean?

What do I think about it?

Just sort of reflecting on the different interpretations and meanings of the story.

And then I'll do vocabulary teaching and explaining words and phrases which come up during the story.

And as you listen to the story, you know the first time round.

As well as trying to focus on what's happening in the story and what it all means, you could maybe think about or predict which phrases, which words or phrases do you think I will be teaching to you later in this episode.

Now, there's loads of vocab for me to go through, okay?

I've been through the story text and I've sort of selected various words and phrases.

So there's loads of stuff for me to teach you in this story.

So the vocabulary explanations which I'm going to do in the second half of this episode might take a long time.

So I will probably continue doing that in a premium episode for premium subscribers.

So, rather than this being one super, mega epic marathon of an episode, I'll probably start doing some vocab explanations here and then stop and continue the rest of that in a premium series for premium subscribers.

So if you want to get those episodes too, just sign up for my premium subscription.

You can get all the details at teacherluke.co.uk slash premium.

Okay, there is a PDF for this episode.

It contains the text of the story that I'm reading and all the notes as well, that I'll be reading from

That PDF is available free.

You'll find a link for that in the episode description.

So we're going to start the story now.

Let me just make sure that I set myself a 30-minute timer for water, as I try not to break my phone here.

Okay, I've set a 30-minute timer to make sure I drink water.

Right, so just before we begin, here are some questions for you to consider.

And just thinking about these questions will help you to prepare yourself to understand the story properly.

OK, so first of all, think about the title.

What does the title suggest?

What do you expect?

The door in the wall.

Well, obviously, this is going to be about a door in a wall.

But what kind of door?

What kind of wall?

What could be on the other side of that door?

Anyway, The Door in the Wall, what does that title make you think of?

As you listen to this, what do you think about the main character who's called Lionel Wallace?

What do you think about him?

What kind of person is he?

What do you learn about his life?

And as you listen, what do you think?

Is Wallace telling the truth?

Is he lying or is he just mistaken?

Is he wrong somehow?

So is he telling the truth, lying or mistaken?

What really happens to Wallace at the end of the story?

What do you think really happens to him?

And also, as I said before, which words or phrases do you think I might be explaining later in the vocab teaching section?

Okay, so let's get started.

Here is The Door in the Wall by HG Wells.

Here we go.

One quiet evening just under three months ago, Lionel Wallace told me the story of The Door in the Wall.

At the time, I believed he was telling the truth, at least as far as he believed it himself.

He told it in such a sincere, straightforward way that I couldn't help but believe him.

But the next morning, as I lay in bed in my flat, thinking about what he'd said, it felt different.

Without his slow, serious voice, without the dim lighting and the calm atmosphere that had surrounded us the night before, and without the cosy comfort of dessert, wine glasses and the elegant dinner we'd just had, the whole thing suddenly seemed completely unbelievable.

He was trying to be mysterious, I thought, and he did it really well, but I wouldn't have expected something like that from him, of all people.

Later, as I sat in bed drinking my tea, I started wondering why his strange story had felt so real.

Maybe, I thought...

It somehow expressed feelings or experiences that we all have, but which are impossible to describe in any other way.

Surely it was just a tall tale, or perhaps a metaphor for something, but it wasn't actually true.

Well, I don't think that anymore.

My doubts have faded.

I believe now, as I believed when he first told me that Wallace did his best to tell me the truth about his secret.

But whether he actually saw the things he described or whether he only thought he did, whether he really had access to something special or was just a victim of a strange dream, I don't know.

Even the circumstances of his death, which finally put an end to all doubt, don't make things any clearer.

That is something you will have to decide for yourself.

I can't remember what I said that made Wallace, usually such a private man, open up to me.

I think I'd criticised him for being unreliable during an important public campaign.

He disappointed me.

But then, very suddenly, he said, Look, I've had something on my mind.

I know, he continued after a pause, I've been careless.

But the truth is, it's not ghosts or anything like that, but it's strange, Redmond.

I feel haunted, haunted by something that seems to drain the joy out of everything, something that fills me with a deep longing.

He stopped, caught by that typical English shyness that often stops us from talking about anything emotional, serious or beautiful.

You were at St Athelstan's the whole time, he said, suddenly changing the subject, or so I thought.

Then, hesitantly at first...

But more easily as he went on, he started to tell me about the thing he'd kept hidden all his life.

It was a powerful memory of beauty and happiness that had stayed with him since childhood.

So strong, in fact, that it made the ordinary world seem boring and pointless by comparison.

Now that I know about it, I can almost see it in his face.

I even have a photograph of him. where that distant, dreamy expression has been captured perfectly.

It reminds me of something a woman once said about him, a woman who'd loved him deeply.

Sometimes, all of a sudden, he just stops paying attention, he forgets you.

It's like you don't exist anymore, even when you're standing right in front of him.

But Wallace wasn't always detached like that.

When he did focus on something, he could be very successful.

In fact, his life was full of accomplishments.

He'd left me behind a long time ago, risen far above me, and achieved things I never could.

He was still under 40 and people were saying he would soon be in the Cabinet and I believe he would have if he'd lived.

At school he always beat me, without even trying.

We were both at St Athelstan's College in West Kensington for most of our school years.

We started at the same level, but he finished way ahead of me, winning scholarships and awards with ease.

I did all right too, but nowhere near his level.

It was at school that I first heard about the door in the wall, and then, only a month before his death, I heard about it again.

To Wallace.

At least the door in the wall was a real door, set in a real wall, leading to something eternal and wonderful.

I believe that now.

And it entered his life when he was very young, about five or six.

I remember how serious he looked as he tried to work out exactly when it happened.

There was a red Virginia creeper growing on the wall, he said.

The whole thing was bright red in the sunshine with a white wall behind it.

That stuck in my memory, though I'm not sure why.

There were horse chestnut leaves on the pavement outside the green door.

Yellow and green, not brown, so they must have just fallen.

That would make it October, I think.

I should know, I always look at chestnut leaves in autumn.

If I'm right, I was about five years and four months old.

He said he was a clever little boy, talked early, thought clearly and was so mature for his age that he was allowed to do more than most children.

His mother had died when he was two, so he was raised mostly by a nurse.

He wasn't too strict.

His father, a serious and busy lawyer, didn't pay much attention to him, though he expected a lot.

Even though Wallace was bright, I think he found life dull.

And then, one day... he wandered off.

He couldn't remember exactly how he got away or which streets he took in West Kensington, but he remembered the white wall and the green door very clearly.

Even as a child, the moment he saw the door, he felt something strange, an attraction, a desire to open it and go inside.

But at the same time, he felt it might be wrong or dangerous.

Still, he knew he was sure that the door wasn't locked and that he could go in if he wanted to.

I can picture the little boy, drawn to the door but afraid.

For some reason, he also felt sure that his father would be very angry if he went through it.

Wallace described every moment of hesitation.

He walked past the door with his hands in his pockets, trying to whistle, pretending to be casual.

He passed a row of shabby shops, especially one belonging to a plumber and decorator, filled with dusty pipes, pattern books and cans of enamel paint.

He stood there pretending to look at everything, but in his heart he wanted desperately to turn back and go through that green door.

Then, all of a sudden, the feeling overwhelmed him.

He ran, stretched out his hand and and pushed the door open.

It closed behind him with a bang and just like that he was inside the garden that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Wallace had a hard time describing what the garden was really like.

There was something in the air, he said, something that made you feel light, happy and full of joy.

The colours were perfect, so vivid, so clean, and everything just felt right.

The moment I stepped into the garden I felt a kind of happiness I've only ever felt a few rare times in life.

When you're young and full of wonder and everything around me was beautiful.

He paused to think before continuing.

You see, he said, slowly, like someone unsure whether people would believe him.

There were two big panthers there.

Yes, real spotted panthers.

But I wasn't scared at all.

There was a wide path with marble edges and flower beds along both sides, and these two big, soft-looking panthers were playing with a ball.

One of them looked up and walked over to me, curious.

It rubbed its ear gently against my hand and purred.

It was an enchanted garden, he said firmly.

I know it sounds unbelievable, but I know it was.

And the size of the place?

It stretched out as far as I could see, in every direction.

I think there were hills in the distance.

Who knows where West Kensington had gone?

It was like I'd come home.

As soon as the door closed behind me, I forgot everything.

The road outside, the leaves, the passing cabs, the pull of home, the rules and discipline.

I forgot my fears.

I forgot to be careful.

I forgot real life completely.

I became, in that moment, a very happy little boy in another world.

It was a different kind of world, warmer, softer, more golden.

The sky was blue and with little wisps of cloud touched by sunlight.

And the path stretched out ahead of me, inviting me forward, with beautiful flowers in beds on either side and the two panthers welcoming me like old friends.

I stroked their soft fur, rubbed behind their ears and they seemed to enjoy it.

I felt like they were happy to see me.

It all felt like coming home.

Then a tall blonde girl appeared.

She smiled at me, came over, picked me up, kissed me, put me down and took my hand.

There was no shock or confusion, just a wonderful feeling that everything was exactly as it should be, like I was being reminded of something happy I'd forgotten.

We walked up some wide red steps that led between tall spikes of delphiniums.

At the top, we came to a long avenue lined with ancient shady trees.

Between their trunks were marble seats and statues.

White doves flew around, tame and friendly.

She led me along this cool path.

I remember looking up at her kind, beautiful face and her gentle smile.

She asked me questions in a soft voice and told me things.

Nice things, I think, but I can't remember what they were.

Then a small capuchin monkey came down from a tree and ran alongside me.

It had reddish-brown fur and friendly hazel eyes.

It grinned up at me and then climbed onto my shoulder.

And that's how we continued, me, the girl and the monkey, so happy together.

He stopped for a moment.

"'Go on,' I said.

I remember more little things.

We passed an old man lost in thought among some laurels and a place filled with colourful parakeets.

Then we went through a cool shaded colonnade into a wide, peaceful palace full of fountains, beautiful objects and a feeling of pure joy.

There were lots of people.'

Some I remember clearly, others not so much.

But all of them were kind and lovely.

Somehow, without words, they made me feel completely welcome, completely loved.

The way they touched my hand, the way they looked at me, it filled me with happiness.

He paused again.

I found playmates there, he said.

That meant a lot to me.

I'd always been a lonely child.

We played wonderful games in a grassy courtyard with a sundial surrounded by flowers, and while we played I felt so much love.

"'But it's strange,' he continued.

"'I don't remember the games themselves.

I never could.

Even as a child, I spent hours trying to remember exactly how we played.' crying sometimes with frustration.

I just wanted to play those games again, alone in my nursery.

But all I can remember is the feeling of joy and the two special playmates who were always with me.

Then a serious-looking woman appeared.

She was wearing a soft, long, pale purple robe and carrying a book.

She called me over and though my playmates didn't want me to leave, she took me gently away.

They stopped their game and watched us go.

Come back soon, they called, but the woman didn't respond.

Her face was calm and kind.

She took me up to a gallery above a hall and we sat down together.

She opened the book on her lap and showed me the pages.

They weren't pictures, you understand.

They were real, living scenes.

He looked at me carefully, as if unsure I'd believe him.

Go on, I said.

I get it.

They were real.

Yes.

People moved and spoke in them.

I saw my mother, my dear mother, who I'd nearly forgotten.

Then I saw my father, strict and serious.

The servants, the nursery, all the things from home.

Then the front door and the busy streets.

I watched, amazed, turning pages quickly, wanting to see more.

And then I came to the page where I stood outside the green door, hesitating.

I remembered the conflict and the fear.

What happens next?

I asked.

I wanted to keep reading, but the woman's cool hand stopped me.

Next, I repeated, pulling gently at her fingers, trying to turn the page.

As she let me do it, she bent down and kissed my forehead.

But the next page didn't show the garden.

It didn't show the panthers or the kind girl or my playmates.

It showed a grey street in West Kensington, late in the day before the street lamps were lit.

I was standing there, crying.

I was crying because I couldn't go back into the garden.

I couldn't see my friends again.

They'd called after me, come back soon.

But now they were gone.

The garden was gone.

The woman was gone.

He stared into the fire.

Oh, how awful it was to come back, he whispered.

Well, I asked after a moment.

I was just a miserable little kid again, back in the dull world.

When I realised what I'd lost, I couldn't stop crying.

And crying in public was so humiliating.

That shame, that grief, it's never left me.

I remember an old man with gold glasses prodding me with his umbrella and saying poor little chap, are you lost?

And there I was, a London boy of five.

A young policeman came and a crowd gathered around me and I was marched home, sobbing and scared.

That was the end of my visit to the garden, the garden that still haunts me.

I can't explain that strange, dreamlike feeling it had.

But that's what happened.

If it was a dream, it was the most vivid daytime dream I've ever had.

Of course, there was a lot of trouble after that.

Everyone questioned me, my aunt, my father, the nurse, the governess.

I tried to tell them what I'd seen.

My father beat me for lying.

When I told my aunt again, she punished me for making things up.

Eventually, everyone was forbidden from listening to me.

They even took away my fairy tale books for being too imaginative.

Yes, they really did that.

My father was very old-fashioned, and so my story was locked inside me.

I whispered it into my pillow, crying softly.

I always added a secret prayer to the end of my bedtime prayers.

Please, God, let me dream of the garden again.

Please, take me back to the garden.

I did dream about it often.

I may have added things or changed parts of it, I'm not sure.

I'm just trying to piece together the memories of a very early experience.

There's a gap between that and the rest of my childhood memories.

A time came when it felt impossible to speak of it again.

Wallace paused.

I asked him an obvious question.

No, he said, I don't think I ever tried to find my way back to the garden during those early years.

It seems strange now, but I suppose they kept a closer watch on me after that to make sure I didn't wander off again.

No, I didn't try again until much later, after you and I had already met, and I think there was even a time when I completely forgot about the garden, maybe when I was eight or nine.

Do you remember me back then at St Athelstan's?

Of course I do, I said.

Did I seem like a boy with a secret dream?

He smiled suddenly.

Did you ever play North West Passage with me?

I played on my way to school.

The regular route was boring, so the game was to find a new way, an unexpected route through unfamiliar streets that still got me to school on time.

One day I took a wrong turn and ended up in some rather rough-looking streets on the far side of Campton Hill.

I started to worry I'd be late, so I tried a street that looked like a dead end.

But at the end, I found a narrow passage.

I ran through it, full of hope, and suddenly I recognised the street.

I saw a row of old scruffy shops.

And then there it was, the long white wall and the green door to the enchanted garden.

It hit me so suddenly.

The garden wasn't just a dream.

It was real.

He stopped for a moment.

But that second time I didn't go in.

I was older, a schoolboy now, not a carefree little kid.

I was thinking about getting to school on time.

I had a perfect record for punctuality and didn't want to break it.

I remember feeling the pull of the door, but also thinking, I've got to get to school.

So I just ran past it.

I even checked my watch.

I still had 10 minutes left, but I kept going.

I made it to school just in time, out of breath and sweating.

Looking back it seems strange that I didn't go in, but I think I just assumed the door would always be there, that I could come back to it any time.

I probably saw it as a fun little secret I could explore later, something to return to when school wasn't getting in the way.

The next day was a half holiday and maybe I planned to go then, or maybe I got in trouble at school and didn't have the time.

I can't remember.

What I do remember is that I couldn't keep it to myself.

I told someone.

"'Hopkins.

Do you remember him?

We called him Squiff.'

"'Yes, I remember Hopkins,' I said.

I didn't want to tell him.

It felt wrong somehow, like breaking the rules, but he was chatty and I couldn't think about anything else, so I told him.

And, of course, he told everyone.

The next day, during break, I was surrounded by a bunch of older boys, all teasing me and demanding I tell them more about the garden'.

There was Fawcett, Carnaby, Morley, Reynolds.

Do you remember them?

And Crawshaw, the composer's son.

He actually said it was the best lie he'd ever heard.

I was embarrassed, but also a little proud that they were paying attention to me.

But then Carnaby started calling me a liar.

I told them I could show them the green door, take them there in ten minutes.

Carnaby insisted I prove it.

He twisted my arm until I agreed.

So off we went, me leading a group of six loud, mocking schoolboys.

My cheeks were red, my ears were hot, my eyes stinging with tears.

I was full of shame.

And I couldn't find the door.

We never found it.

I would have shown them if I could, but it was gone.

After that, even when I was alone, I couldn't find it again.

I searched for it many times during my school years, but it never appeared.

The boys mocked me.

Carnaby held some kind of trial and called me a liar.

I sneaked home that day trying to hide how much I'd been crying.

But I wasn't crying because of Carnaby.

I was crying for the garden.

I'd hoped for a beautiful afternoon there to see those kind faces to play that forgotten game again.

And I believed truly that if I hadn't told anyone, I would have found it.

He sighed.

I had a rough time after that.

I cried at night and drifted through the days.

My schoolwork suffered.

You might remember I started getting bad reports.

It was you actually beating me in mathematics that snapped me out of it, got me working hard again.

He paused, staring into the fire.

I didn't see the door again until I was seventeen.

I was on my way to Oxford, having just won a scholarship.

I was in a cab heading to Paddington, smoking a cigarette and feeling very grown up.

Then suddenly I saw it.

The white wall.

The green door.

That feeling came rushing back.

I was so surprised I didn't act fast enough.

The cab had already turned a corner.

I nearly shouted at the driver to stop.

I tapped on the roof, but then changed my mind.

I said...

It's nothing, just a mistake.

And he went on.

That night, after hearing I'd won the scholarship, I sat in my room with my father's rare praise ringing in my ears.

I thought about the door.

If I'd gone through it, I thought, I would have missed all of this.

Oxford, my future career.

I told myself I'd made the right choice.

And I threw myself into that career.

I worked hard.

I achieved things. but I've dreamed about that garden so many times since then.

I've seen the door four times since.

For a while, life was so exciting and full that the memory of the garden faded.

What did I need with magical panthers when I had fancy dinners, beautiful women and important friends?

But disappointments came, as they always do.

Twice I've been in love, I won't go into that.

But once I was on my way to see someone I cared about deeply.

I took a shortcut through a quiet street near Earl's Court.

Suddenly there it was, the white wall, the green door.

I thought, strange, I thought this was in Campton Hill.

I didn't stop.

I was too focused on my appointment.

I regret that now.

I wish I'd just taken a quick look inside, waved to the panthers.

But I knew enough by then, if you hesitate, it's gone.

That time really hurt.

He grew quiet for a moment.

Years passed, no sign of the door, and then recently it came back.

But by then something had changed in me.

I felt tired.

Life had lost some of its colour.

Maybe it was overworked, maybe just middle age, but I found myself longing for the garden again, and I saw the door three times in one year.

The first time was during that rushed vote on the tenants' redemption bill.

Remember that night?

The government survived by only three votes.

Hotchkiss and I had to rush back from Brentford in his cousin's car.

On the way, I saw the door again.

It was lit by moonlight. and our car's headlights.

I shouted, my God!

Hotchkiss asked what was wrong.

I said, nothing.

And the moment passed.

The second time was on the way to my father's deathbed.

I couldn't stop then either.

The third time was just a week ago.

I was walking with Gurka and Ralphs after dinner.

We were talking politics, my role in the new cabinet.

It was important.

I couldn't just walk away mid-conversation.

And then, there it was again, the green door.

I walked right past it.

I was so close.

If I'd stepped aside and opened it, who knows what might have happened.

But I didn't.

I kept walking, thinking of what people would say if I vanished.

A cabinet minister disappears mysteriously.

I couldn't take that risk.

Then he looked at me with deep sadness in his voice.

So here I am, he said.

Three times in one year I saw that door.

The way out of all this dust and stress.

Out of this noisy, empty life.

And I didn't go in.

If I ever see it again, I swear I'll go in and never come back.

But I don't think I'll get another chance.

And now this regret is destroying me.

I haven't done any real work in weeks.

At night, when no one will recognise me, I wander the streets alone.

Yes, people would be shocked if they knew a cabinet minister grieving over a door.

I can still picture his pale face and the strange, serious light in his eyes.

I'm thinking of him now as I look at yesterday's Westminster Gazette on my sofa –

It has the notice of his death.

At the club today, everyone was talking about him and the strange way he died.

They found his body early yesterday near East Kensington Station.

He'd fallen into a deep construction pit, one of two large shafts being dug for a railway extension.

The area was blocked off with fencing, but someone had left a small door in the barrier, unlocked by mistake.

He must have walked through it.

I imagine him walking home from Parliament late at night, as he often did.

Maybe the bright lights near the station made that rough wooden door look like it was set into a white wall.

Maybe something stirred in his memory.

Maybe he really believed he'd found the door in the wall.

Was it ever real?

I don't know.

I've told the story just as he told it to me.

Some people will say Wallace was just hallucinating, and that it was all a tragic coincidence.

Maybe.

But honestly, that's not what I believe.

Maybe you'll think I'm superstitious or foolish, but I'm almost certain he had a special gift, some strange ability to sense another world.

The door was real in its own way.

Maybe it offered him a way out, Maybe it really did lead to peace, beauty and joy.

Yes, he died.

Maybe in a way the door betrayed him in the end.

Or was it his final escape?

That's the end of the story.

So what do you think, everyone?

A couple of questions for you.

What do you think?

What are your immediate thoughts after listening to that?

Did you manage to understand everything?

Obviously, that's one of the main questions.

Did you manage to follow that?

I'm going to explain.

I'm going to go through the story again in a moment just to kind of clarify it in perhaps more simple ways.

How do you feel about Wallace and his life?

What do you think of Wallace's story about the door and the incredible garden on the other side of it?

So is he lying or was he lying?

Was he telling the truth or just somehow mistaken?

Meaning maybe he felt it was true for himself, but maybe the door wasn't real.

Maybe it was all just his imagination, some sort of hallucination or something like that.

But what is the sort of mystery?

What's the solution to this weird mystery about this garden?

And what happened to Wallace at the end?

First of all, did you understand how he died?

And what do you think his death means?

And finally, which bits of English?

So which words and phrases do you think I'm going to explain later when I go through vocab?

So I'm going to summarize the story and then I'm going to discuss what it all means in terms of the themes and interpretations of the story in a moment.

And some of the things that it makes me think about.

I'll go through that in a moment, and then there'll be the vocab stuff.

Let me just take a break for water.

And then we'll continue.

OK, so here is a summary of the story to help you check your understanding.

The Door in the Wall is a rich, symbolic short story full of psychological, philosophical and social themes.

We'll explore some of those themes in a moment.

But first, let me just retell the story in my own words to make sure you understood the basics.

So here's what happens.

OK, let me just go through the story again.

So the main details of this story are retold by Redmond, the narrator.

So that's essentially the person who wrote the story.

Obviously, the story was actually written by H.G.

Wells, but the main narrator is a person called Redmond.

OK, so Redmond is telling the main details, but the main character is his friend, Lionel Wallace.

And Redmond is essentially retelling the Lionel Wallace's story as Lionel told it to him when they had dinner one evening.

So the story starts with the narrator Redmond at home in his flat, thinking about his friend Lionel Wallace, the things that he told him the night before.

Actually, I don't know if it is the night before.

But anyway, he's thinking about Lionel Wallace and the things that he told him and then the way that Wallace died.

Apparently, Redmond and Wallace had dinner together. a month before.

And during that dinner, Wallace told Redmond about a secret which he had kept his entire life.

Redmond, well, I say a secret he kept his entire life.

He did actually tell some of the boys at school about it, but none of them believed him.

But the secret really is the fact that this experience he had as a child.

It affected his entire life.

And it's something that he's carried with him for years.

One of the most, a sort of profound experience that has really deeply affected him in many ways during his adult life.

And something that explains the fact that perhaps Wallace has always seemed a little distant as a person.

And it could explain the fact that he's never really been happy in his life.

There's an explanation.

And Wallace tells Redmond all about it.

And then Redmond explains that to us.

So Redmond first thought Wallace's story could not be true.

But later, because he thinks, oh, surely that wasn't true.

Surely he was just trying to be mysterious.

But then later he decides that it is true, or at least for Wallace.

It is true that Wallace is being honest.

So Redmond thinks Wallace is not lying, but isn't sure whether the door and the garden really are real or whether they're some sort of figment of his imagination.

Or maybe he has access to some special thing that most normal people don't have access to, like some sort of portal to some other world.

So we've got options.

Either Wallace is lying and Redmond doesn't think so, Or Wallace is mistaken, meaning the whole thing is just a dream or a hallucination or something his mind has invented.

And in reality, none of those things happen.

He just imagined them.

Or somehow it is possible and Wallace is able to access a portal to some other magical world.

In any case, Redman thinks that at least for Wallace, what he's saying is true.

But we just don't know how to explain it.

Also we learn at the start that Wallace is now dead and that happened, I think, very recently, and Redmond learned about it in the newspaper the day before.

So here are the main details of the incredible and sad things that Wallace told Redmond during the dinner.

So first we learn that Lionel Wallace was a serious, thoughtful and very intelligent man who worked as a successful politician.

So in terms of his career, he made it to the highest level in politics in Britain and was about to be given a place in the cabinet.

That's basically the highest level of government in the UK.

You've got the prime minister and then just under the prime minister you have the cabinet ministers.

These are the people in charge of the important ministries like education and health and foreign affairs, and so on.

So Wallace was a politician at the highest level, very intelligent man.

He had a successful career, but he was never really happy.

He was born into a hardworking and successful family.

So he was born into what sounds like a kind of pretty high class family, or at least a family that the father was a high achiever.

He was a successful lawyer, hardworking lawyer.

So Wallace was born into this environment, but he had a sad childhood.

His mother died when he was very young and his father was very strict and serious.

He didn't show him love.

He just had very high expectations of him.

Wallace was raised by his father and a nurse and was educated to a very high level.

So a lot of emphasis on his schoolwork and his career.

But all through his life, he was haunted by by a specific and very vivid memory from his childhood.

Normally, right.

We use the word haunted to describe things that ghosts do like you know ghosts, right.

You know what a ghost is?

Ghosts normally haunt buildings like some old castle could be haunted by a ghost, or a haunted house, a house where there's a ghost in it, right.

But a person can be haunted by something as well, which just means that there's like a bad feeling or something, a bad experience that stays with that person through their life and that stops them from being happy.

So Wallace was haunted all through his life by a specific and very vivid memory from his childhood, a time when he was about five years old and he walked away from his home on his own.

When he was five, he was actually quite an advanced child.

And he was given a certain amount of independence because he was quite grown up for his age.

And one day when he should have been studying, when he should have been probably sitting at his desk or something studying, he just walked off.

He just wandered away and ended up in the streets in Kensington near his home.

So he just walked away from his home on his own.

He just walked off.

He wandered through the nearby streets in Kensington in West London and discovered a mysterious green door in a white wall.

And it's not quite.

We're not sure how he knew it was special, but he just, For some reason, he was just intensely fascinated by this door.

He knew there was something very special about it and he really wanted to open it.

But also... he knew that if he did open it, he would somehow be in big trouble with his father.

So the door was there.

He remembers it vividly a white wall with a red Virginia creeper kind of a red creeping plant you know those plants that climb up walls with red leaves on it.

A green door white wall.

He remembers the pavement, the fact there were old leaves from the nearby tree on the ground.

It's very vivid in his memory.

And he was attracted by this door.

He knew there was something special about it.

He was desperate to open it, but he felt like he really shouldn't, like if he did open it he'd be in big trouble with his father.

That's sort of what this represented to him.

He tried to resist the temptation of the door, but in the end he could not resist it.

He opened the door and walked through.

On the other side he saw something incredible, And the descriptions of the garden are rather wonderful in the story.

It was an amazing garden full of beautiful things and a wonderful, joyful and loving atmosphere.

He felt very happy there.

Some of the things he describes.

In the garden there were two large cats panthers, not pumas, panthers.

He says they're spotted panthers.

I mean, I suppose those are leopards right, two large cats basically, which is an extraordinary thing to see.

Of course, these two large cats, normally dangerous predators, but these ones were tame.

They were friendly.

They were playing with a ball.

They came over, they let him stroke their fur and they purred.

Which is that lovely thing that cats do when they're happy, that sound that they make.

There were beautiful flowers and trees statues, a friendly monkey that sat on his shoulder, beautiful doves flying.

A pretty girl came and picked him up and gave him a kiss, and then she led him through the garden.

He met friendly children who played a wonderful game with him.

The garden was huge, with different areas, and he could even see hills in the distance, even though he was actually in the middle of west london, right.

So this is obviously kind of an impossible, an impossible place, right.

Then a serious-looking woman arrived and took him away to another part of the garden.

She showed him a book about his life.

She sat down with him and showed him this book.

And the book showed him in living pictures, which is kind of interesting, because in 1906 there was no such thing as video, I think.

When was the first film ever created?

Hold on.

The earliest surviving moving film...

And what many consider to be the first motion picture captured by a single lens camera is the Rounday Garden scene, filmed in October 14th 1888 by French inventor Louis Leprince in Leeds, England.

So basically, OK, so there were moving images like maybe 20 years before this story was written.

But this book with moving images or videos in it, it sounds like a sort of A vision of a laptop computer or an iPad or something, doesn't it?

HG Wells is famous for having this vision in his stories of technologies or ideas, social changes that really did come true.

So essentially, this woman shows him an iPad.

It's kind of like a book with pictures of his life, but the pictures are moving like films.

And the pictures show different stages of his life so far.

And Wallace was amazed by the book and wanted to see the next page and the next page.

But when they arrived at the page which showed him at the door, in the wall, Wallace suddenly found himself outside the garden again and was alone in the street.

So this picture book showing him stages of his life, what's happened?

What happens next?

They got up to the present moment him, or just before the present moment, him outside the door.

And then, when they, when he looked at that image, he suddenly found himself in the street again, alone in front of the door, and the garden melted away.

He was on his own on the pavement again and he was extremely sad in that moment to be away from the garden and lost in the street.

Presumably for some reason, he couldn't just go back in.

I don't know why that is, but anyway, he found himself lost in the street, but he knew.

He knew that the garden was gone.

He knew he couldn't go back in for some reason.

And he cried and he felt very ashamed of himself standing there on his own, crying in public.

Strangers, people he didn't know, strangers gathered around curious about this young boy crying alone in the street.

And an old man said, what are you doing?

Or something and poked him with his umbrella.

And eventually he was taken home by a police officer.

And then he was in very big trouble with his father, who was angry with him.

In fact, all the adults in his life were angry with him.

Nobody believed what he said about the garden.

They accused him of lying and they punished him.

And Wallace was desperately sad, not just because he was being punished, but because he missed the garden and the friends he met there and their game.

Wallace's childhood was sad, lonely and unhappy, and he always wished to go back and find the garden again where he could be with his friends.

He always tried to remember it.

Before going to bed, he always hoped and prayed that he would dream about it, just in order to be able to go back in someday.

As time passed and as he grew up, he had to focus on his studies and his career.

As a schoolboy, he was a high achiever.

And also in his career, he was successful becoming a famous politician.

As I said, a member of the cabinet involved in very important work in the government.

There's also that passage about how one day he accidentally kind of told one of the kids at school about the door and none of them believed him.

And he decided he would take them and show them, but he couldn't find it.

And they all accused him of lying and kind of bullied him, teased him about it.

And he really believed that if he hadn't been with all the other kids, if he'd been on his own, he would have been able to find the door.

So this odd experience of never being able to get back to the garden.

Yeah, very successful Academic life, successful career.

But despite being a very bright person, his personal life was always dull and unhappy because, compared to the memory of that garden, everything seemed lifeless.

People who knew Wallace said that he could be quite distant and detached.

That's not really emotionally engaged.

A woman who loved him, maybe a fiancé, said that sometimes...

He would just seem lost in his thoughts and very far away.

Presumably, this was during moments when he was dreaming about being back in that garden where he'd finally found peace and contentment.

He always hoped to find the garden again one day where he could be happy, but he couldn't quite remember where the door was.

Throughout his life he tried to find that wall with its characteristic green door, but was unable to locate it.

But sometimes, by chance, he saw the door again.

But he never went in.

Each time he saw the door, just by chance.

He had to prioritise other important responsibilities in his life, including his schoolwork, his career, his love life and the death of his father.

The moment when his father was dying in bed and he had to go and visit him.

Even though he saw the door sometimes, he was never able to take the time to go through it again and revisit the garden again.

At various times in his life, he doubted his own experience in the garden as a small boy.

He thought he had just dreamed it or imagined it.

And yet at other times he was certain that it was real and that if he could just go through the door again, he would definitely find himself back in the paradise of that garden once more and he could find his friends again.

But he never had the chance to go through the door again and he never found fulfillment in his normal life, always knowing that the garden was where he truly felt love and happiness.

He regrets focusing on his career and never choosing to return to the garden when he had those few chances to do it.

Near the end of his life, at dinner with the narrator of this story, Redmond, Wallace is certain that the door is real and has decided that if he has the chance to go through it again, he definitely will.

I just want to make a note here, just...

Obviously, as you listen to this, you listen to my English.

You don't just listen to the, You're not just focusing on the story, but the way that I'm talking to you.

Verb tenses.

This is something that does come up.

Obviously, in the story, I think it's all written in past forms.

But as I'm retelling the story, I'm using a lot of present tenses.

But I said that on the podcast recently.

I think I talked about this recently on the podcast.

It's quite normal to... If you're recapping the events of a story...

Like, if you're telling someone about a book that you read or a film that you saw, it's quite normal to tell that story in the present form.

This is because the book, the story, the film, whatever it is, is actually a permanent thing rather than just one series of events that happened once in the past.

It's a permanent thing because you can go back and read the story again and again.

So it's quite normal to describe the story of a book or film or TV show or something using present tenses.

So that's why I'm using a lot of present tenses here.

There might have been a couple of past tenses when I slipped into the past tense again, but it's normal to recap the stories of books, for example, in present forms.

By the way,

So, yes, the story ends ambiguously.

Redmond reads in the newspaper that Wallace died in an accident.

How did Wallace die?

He fell into a deep hole in the ground.

OK, the hole had been dug as part of a project to build a new underground train line.

I think he fell into a deep shaft.

A shaft is like a sort of...

I'm not going to say high, but deep.

Let's say a deep, narrow hole.

For example, the sort of thing that would be dug out in order to create a space for a lift to go up and down.

An elevator, right, in American English.

Lift in British English.

Lifts go up and down in shafts.

That's the lift shaft or elevator shaft.

So there was this building site where they were building an extension to a train station.

And part of the work involved a deep, deep hole, a shaft going down into the ground.

And he fell into this shaft, one of the shafts perhaps, one that was going to be for a lift, an elevator.

So the construction site where the accident happened was blocked from the street by a temporary wooden wall which had a door in it.

Behind the door was the construction site and the the deep hole, maybe a lift shaft, and someone had accidentally left that door unlocked.

So perhaps Wallace saw the door while he was walking home that night.

And in that poor light maybe a street light or it was dark, you know in the poor light it might have looked like his door in the wall.

He might have seen this in the darkness. this temporary wooden wall with this door in it.

He might have seen that and it might have looked like his green door on a white wall, and he took the chance and went through it.

But as soon as he did, he fell into this hole and fell all the way down to his death.

So the narrator of the story, Redmond, wonders what happened.

Did Wallace think he had found his door in the wall?

Did he think...

It was his green door.

Did he think he was going back into the garden?

Did he go back into his garden, in fact, or did he just die in a tragic accident?

Or there's always the possibility that he chose to do it knowing that he would fall down.

So either it was an accident, he did it on purpose, or he really thought he was going into his garden.

And did he somehow end up going back into the garden in this other world, even though his body in this life fell?

Maybe somehow in this other world he finally did go back to his garden, or did he just die in a tragic accident?

That's the sort of mystery really in the story.

Okay, so talking points and questions for discussion.

So here are some questions for you to consider or discuss.

Okay, I hope that you feel inspired to kind of talk about what the story could mean.

But here are some questions that you could answer.

And you can try and actually give your answers out loud to these questions.

That would be a good idea for speaking practice.

You can do that on your own.

Try and say out loud your responses to these questions.

So did the garden really exist or did Wallace somehow imagine it or dream it?

If he did dream it, why did that happen?

And in fact, how as well?

I mean, these might be complicated sort of existential questions, but still, it's interesting stuff.

What does the door represent in this story and in Wallace's life?

Did it represent freedom?

Did it represent death?

Was it paradise, madness, escape?

If the door and the garden are symbolic as a way of describing something about Wallace's life, what do they symbolise?

Why did Wallace not go through the door again when he had the chance, when he saw it at other times in his life?

Why did he not go through the door again?

Does Wallace's final entry into the door mean he finally found peace and re-entered the garden, or did he simply fall to his death because he was fooled by a delusion?

The answers to that are really open to your interpretation.

I don't think there's one single answer.

I think that's the idea that it's open to interpretation and it's a mystery and you can kind of come to your own conclusion.

But i'd like to know what your conclusions are.

What do you think?

Is the story tragic?

Is this a sad story or or not?

If it is tragic, what exactly makes it tragic?

Why is it a tragic story?

Or does it somehow have a happy ending?

Is there something positive in this?

How does it make you feel?

Can success be fulfilling?

So talking about his career and his school life, can success be fulfilling?

Can it make you feel sort of satisfied, fulfilled?

Can success be fulfilling if it comes at the cost of personal joy? or authenticity.

Authenticity meaning that sense that you've really lived a proper real life where you've really followed your heart right.

I mean, this is a question that we all have to deal with, right?

Of what shall I do with my life?

Shall I follow my heart and do what I really want to do?

Or should I sacrifice those things in order to focus on my career and get success and probably earn money and make my parents happy or make other people happy in my life?

Which one is it?

And do you think we all have a door in the wall in our lives?

Some moment or choice we wish we'd made or alternative life that we wished we could be living?

Number nine, number nine.

What would have happened if Wallace had chosen to revisit the garden earlier?

Imagine if he, for example, had chosen to be late for school that day and gone into the garden anyway, you know.

If he'd prioritised the garden and gone in, what would have happened?

Would it have lived up to the memory?

How would it have affected his life?

What would have happened to him in his normal life?

What would his father have said or done?

Would it have been a good idea to go in the garden?

Have you ever had... Here's a final question, number 10.

Have you ever had a dream that felt so real and was so wonderful that you were desperate to return to it somehow?

And I'm talking about a dream you had when you were asleep.

Have you ever woken up from a dream and been desperate to go back to sleep in order to return to that dream?

Okay, so now I'm gonna do some rambling about the story's meaning and interpretations.

And you could maybe compare your ideas to the things I'm saying now, or at least just listen to me kind of speculating about what it all means.

And also I'm going to just ramble about sort of some of the various things that come into my mind or the things that this story makes me feel.

So I'm now going to ramble about all of this and discuss the meaning of the story, what the garden represents and other thoughts.

I would love to know what you think about all of this too.

So feel free to write something in the comments section and practice your English a little bit in the process.

So for me, this story captures a certain mysterious feeling.

I wonder if you know what I mean.

I love this story because, although it's definitely sad, there is something wonderful in it too, because it somehow captures a very specific feeling which I've definitely experienced.

I mean, I've never found a magical garden, but there's a certain feeling which I have experienced but which is very hard for me to put my finger on.

Maybe you know what I'm talking about.

I hope so. let me attempt to explain myself.

So this feeling is something like the sense that at some point in your past you might have experienced something absolutely amazing and delightful, but you can't quite remember if it was a dream or real, and yet you're desperate to go back there and revisit it.

So that is that feeling of longing that Wallace describes.

He feels a longing, a sense of longing, really wanting to, to go back in this case, a feeling of longing for some perfect moment in the past which might not have even been real.

Have you ever felt like that?

I know that is quite a specific feeling, but it's a bit like the opposite of another feeling which I think is more common, which is this

OK, so here's this is the, just to help explain what i mean.

Here's another feeling which i think is similar, but almost the opposite.

So have you ever felt this right, when you're having a horrible nightmare, so a dream, at night?

You're asleep, you're having a really bad dream, so you're having a horrible nightmare.

The nightmare feels completely real and you have no idea.

You're in a dream and and then suddenly you wake up.

Now, in the dream you were living a horrible, terrible experience.

Perhaps you were lost.

You lost your children.

Everyone was in danger.

Something awful had happened.

You know, the sorts of thing.

Like, yeah, you're outside.

You're desperate to get back to a situation.

You know that something terrible is going on, but there's nothing you can do about it.

You're stuck outside in the street.

You can't even move your arms and legs properly.

You can't speak.

You know, those sorts of horrible nightmares.

And then you wake up.

And it takes a minute for you to slowly realize that it was just a dream.

But the feeling sinks in slowly.

Where you're in bed, you wake up.

Oh, that was just a dream.

Was it?

Wait.

Oh, it was just a nightmare.

Yeah, it was just a dream.

None of that was real.

But are you sure?

Yes, you're in bed, the kids are fine, the awful thing didn't happen, but it felt so real.

Was that really just a nightmare?

The feeling stays with you, sometimes for hours.

You can still have that sense, that that world in the dreams still has a sense that it was still real even hours later.

In the same way, maybe it's possible to have the reverse experience.

You wake up from a truly wonderful dream where everything felt just right and so real.

And you can't wait to dive straight back into that dream and revisit that perfect situation again.

So it has happened to me.

Has it happened to you?

Either of those things either waking from a horrible nightmare and slowly, slowly feeling relieved that it wasn't real, but not being sure, and then realising, oh God, it was just a dream.

So either the nightmare or the other side, where you have a fantastic dream, you wake up and you want to go back.

Has it happened to you?

You wake from the dream and desperately want to fall asleep again, to go back into that thing you were experiencing.

The way HG Wells describes Wallace's desire to return to his garden feels like that to me.

Or here is perhaps another example of the kind of feeling which I think this story illustrates.

It's when you have a distant memory of a wonderful thing that happened to you.

Now, this is not a dream you've just woken up from, but maybe you just have this vague memory of something that maybe once happened to you.

Falling in love perhaps, or being in a place where everyone loved you, but you can't quite remember if it was real or not.

It's more of a sort of an emotional experience memory rather than a specific memory.

So this is not waking up from a dream, but just remembering something from quite a long time ago which you realize you'd forgotten about for some reason.

The memory comes to you in a hazy moment perhaps, when your mind is not occupied, such as when you're forced to stay in bed and rest because you have flu.

You're just lying in bed all day, your mind wanders back to your mind, is free to sort of maybe remember things that you'd forgotten, and Or you're without your phone or the internet.

And so you have nothing to distract you and your mind is free to wander and perhaps remember things that you thought you'd forgotten or that you had suppressed for some reason.

And you think, wait, didn't I fall in love that time many years ago?

Was that real?

What happened to that girl?

Which city was that?

Was that just one night?

What happened to that life I had?

Maybe this just happens when you're getting old.

I don't know.

My point is I think this story somehow captures weird nostalgic feelings, feelings of the loss of something wonderful, but you can't even be sure it was real.

The story uses the medium of fantasy to express a certain emotion.

So I'm still trying to put my finger on this feeling, on the feeling this story evokes, by the way.

I'm still trying to put my finger on it.

Maybe it's something else.

Maybe it's the loss of innocence of childhood, which is obviously something we all experience, depending on your childhood, I suppose.

But most people, I think, probably have a sort of innocent childhood, which is, Especially if you have a stable family life, you probably have that feeling of a certain unconditional love stability innocence, and obviously unfortunately, we lose that, you know, as we enter the real world.

But that memory of it, the memory, is still there, you know.

So maybe it's the loss of innocence of childhood.

You remember it as a distant feeling, a kind of perfect belonging, an innocent happy time.

You vaguely remember how it felt, but it also feels like it could be something you imagined.

I suppose we all experience that, distant memories from childhood which are locked away somewhere, but the traces of it come back to you in distorted ways.

I personally have a few memories like that buried deep inside me.

One of my earliest memories is of being on the floor of my parents' bedroom as a little child, or maybe lying on the bed, and I seem to remember seeing the reflections of headlights from cars crossing the ceiling, like bars of light crossing the ceiling as the cars passed outside in the street with their headlights on.

The light shone through a gap in the curtains, briefly sending these bars of light across the ceiling.

It's a very vivid memory.

It's a very happy, cosy feeling.

Cars going past, bars of light across the ceiling.

I'm in a lovely, cosy place inside this room.

If I think really hard, I can almost go back to that moment and feel the space of the room around me and the fact that someone was with me.

But it's very hazy and might never have happened.

Another one when I was about nine years old.

I remember standing on a window ledge in.

So I climbed out of a window on the ground floor and I was looking at a short wall, a short brick wall in the garden, which was maybe two metres away from this window ledge that I was standing on.

Standing on this ledge, looking at a wall a couple of metres away and wondering if I could jump from the ledge to the wall.

But the distance was always slightly too far and that feeling.

This is strange, but that feeling has stayed with me my entire life, as if it is significant somehow.

Can I make this leap?

Can I achieve this thing?

Is it just beyond my reach, or am I actually capable of doing it?

Could I really jump onto that wall?

I remember perpetually being stuck on that ledge, looking down at this wall, just on the verge of jumping, stuck between self-belief and doubt.

I don't even know if it ever happened. if it's just something I've imagined.

Maybe this just proves I'm a simulant and those are just memories which were implanted in my brain to make me believe I am actually a human.

I mean, I'm saying that because this reminds me of moments in the film Blade Runner where the main character Deckard, is sitting one evening in his apartment.

He's been drinking whiskey and he's sitting there at the piano and these memories come back to him.

He sees a horse running through a forest and he's sort of astounded by this memory.

What does it represent?

How does he have a memory of this horse?

Is this real or is this a dream?

And the way I understand it in the film, that vision actually is supposed to be one of the implanted memories because he's, yeah, spoiler alert, I think he's not, actually human that he's a simulant that's meant to prove that he's a simulant and his memories have been implanted synthetically i don't know so maybe i'm just a simulant and in fact all of reality is a simulation and in the real world i'm just or maybe i'm just lying in a plasma filled pod while ai robots feed on my bioelectric energy and every memory i think i have is just a a fake memory implanted by the my ai overlords but hopefully not but um Seriously though, I do have weird distant memories like that, and I wonder if you have too.

It feels a bit mad saying these things, like maybe I'm the only person on earth to know what I'm talking about now, but I suspect that everyone feels that way sometimes.

But certainly this is what this story captures for me, a certain feeling, and this is why I think it's great.

What do you think?

Am I making any sense?

I'll get more specific in my story analysis in a things to discuss and ramble about in relation to this story.

So I hope you're ready to listen to me for a little while more before I get into the language analysis bit, where I'm going to look at some vocab and grammar from this story.

So here are some more notes with my own thoughts and also a few comments that I found on litchartscom and also wikipediaorg.

So let me give my answer to some of the questions I posed earlier. my answers.

They were something like this.

So was the garden real, imagined or symbolic?

What does the door represent?

What happened at the end when he fell through the door?

So obviously, this is a work of fiction.

And so we can never know the real truth because it's not real.

It's a made up story.

There isn't one single correct answer.

We can only speculate about it.

Discuss what the author was trying to say, or at least what it all means to you.

This story is a work of fiction, but let me speculate about it anyway.

Is Wallace's garden real?

Surely the garden in Wallace's story is not real.

It can't be real because it defies all the laws of physics and things like that.

Magic gardens, they don't really exist, do they?

The garden is huge and even has hills in the distance, if I remember correctly.

And that's not possible in West Kensington in London.

You can't have something that big... just coming off a busy street.

There isn't space.

But maybe miracles are real.

And by miracles, I mean apparently supernatural events that we can't explain.

Like, for example, finding a magic garden.

Yeah, finding a magic garden.

I mean, who really knows?

Our reality is a strange thing.

And us humans are only aware of a very small fraction of everything that is around us.

I mean, we all assume that we see the world as it is, but we only see a tiny little fraction of all of the information.

It's just what our five senses are able to pick up.

Maybe there's a lot more going on in this world.

I mean, who knows?

Maybe there are portals into other worlds that we are not normally aware of, but I doubt it.

So from a more rational perspective point of view, it must be wallace's highly active imagination, from his brilliant mind, even at five years old, i feel like a brilliant mind like his and the growing mind of a child must have the potential to just invent, to just invent experiences like hallucinations, perhaps waking daytime dreams, maybe his mind hallucinated the whole experience as a way to escape reality.

He was suffering from cruel treatment at home, like mental and physical abuse from his father who we know beat him and imposed very strict restrictions on him.

That was basically abusive by today's standards.

He was suffering from that.

Also a lot of pressure and demanding schoolwork, which on its own isn't necessarily the sort of thing that can lead to someone having a mental breakdown.

But combined with a lot of other things, possibly a lot of pressure and a lot of unprocessed grief over the loss of his beloved mother right.

These are the conditions that poor Wallace was living in as a five-year-old boy.

So, perhaps in the midst of all this, one day his mind invented this entire experience as a way to escape from everything, as a way to protect itself and as a way to experience what he really wanted and needed, which was unconditional love, which is what he found in the garden while he was standing alone on a street in Kensington, perhaps just staring at an ordinary door in a wall, or maybe just standing there in a little daydream.

Who knows, it might have even happened in a split second, right?

You know, the way that time perceptions can change.

Maybe he experienced this whole thing of entering the garden and all the things that happened And in reality it was really just a split second.

He may have just been standing there staring at the floor for just a moment.

And then when he came back, you know, it's like the whole thing had happened in just a moment.

I don't know.

The power of the mind.

Can the brain actually do that?

This does make me wonder what the brain can do.

And so while preparing this episode, I did have this thought.

I thought to myself, can the brain go into a hallucination? right?

Can the brain go into a hallucination, inventing an entire experience as a way of protecting itself, creating a new reality in which to escape, allowing a person to heal and survive an otherwise miserable reality?

And yes, I did ask AI that question for what it's worth.

I chose Google Gemini for this one because, well, I get a bit tired of ChatGPT sometimes.

If you're listening, ChatGPT.

I'm sorry, no offence intended, but you know I have been seeing other chatbots.

But ChatGPT, I don't know, it's great, but it just has this tone, you know, which annoys me a little bit these days.

It's just, it can be a little bit too kind of keen.

Like, sure, of course.

Would you like me to prepare a PDF for you?

Or whatever it is, you know, just answer my question and just don't add all that other stuff.

Just keep it simple.

Just give me the basics of what I do.

You don't, anyway.

It can be a bit in your face, but I find that Google Gemini is a bit more chill, you know?

Anyway, so I asked Google Gemini that very question.

The question again can the brain go into a hallucination, inventing an entire experience as a way of protecting itself, creating a new reality in which to escape, allowing a person to heal and survive an otherwise miserable reality?

And this is what it said.

It said yes, the brain can create a new reality as a defense mechanism to cope with a miserable or traumatic reality.

This phenomenon is known as dissociation.

Sorry, I'll say that again.

This phenomenon is known as dissociation.

And in its most severe forms it can manifest as the creation of entirely new identities or a loss of personal memory, a state where a person's brain can quite literally construct a new reality to escape an unbearable one.

Dissociation is a psychological defense mechanism where a person mentally disconnects from their thoughts feelings, memories or sense of identity.

It's a way for the mind to protect itself from overwhelming emotional pain.

The brain essentially tunes out or checks out from a stressful or traumatic situation.

This can happen during a single severe event, like a car accident, or over a long period of chronic trauma, like childhood abuse.

So there you go.

I suppose I was right if what Google Gemini says is worth anything, although I am not sure why.

Wallace's specific experience is typical of dissociation, because dissociation appears more to be a sort of loss of memory or a change of identity rather than a full-on, mind-bending hallucination involving walking through a door into a never-ending garden with two panthers that purr and let you rub their ears.

But still in the story.

Perhaps the door in the wall is meant to illustrate that Wallace's life is devoid of love and care, full of pressure, career focused and ultimately unhappy or discontented.

The garden is his escape from all of this.

Either it is a hallucination caused by some kind of mental breakdown, or somehow he really does have access to a magical power or portal in which he can find peace in some other alternate universe.

And this makes me wonder again, but this time about more supernatural possibilities rather than psychological ones.

Is it possible that a person can have access to a supernatural power which allows them to travel through portals and into alternative universes, defying the laws of physics as we know them and entering new dimensions in which life is naturally more peaceful loving, rewarding and fulfilling and where all your dreams come true a kind of heaven, let's call it?

Is that possible?

So...

I asked Google Gemini that question as well, because why not?

So I asked it is it possible that a person can have access to a sort of supernatural power which allows them to travel through portals and into alternative universes, defying the laws of physics as we know them and entering new dimensions in which life is naturally more fulfilling peaceful loving, rewarding and fulfilling?

I said that twice.

And where all your dreams come true, a kind of heaven, let's call it, is that possible?

And Google Gemini said, no.

No.

Okay, so that's that then.

But again, this is just a story, and of course, the rules are different.

Which leads me to talk about science plus fantasy as a vehicle to explore complex philosophical and psychological themes.

H.G.

Wells was known as one of the innovators of what was a new kind of writing back when this story was originally written.

He was known as an innovator, or he at least came to be known as one of the innovators of this new kind of writing called science fiction writing, although Wells, at the time, preferred to use a different term.

He called it scientific romance.

And this kind of writing took scientific ideas and ran with them, creating adventure stories that blended the extraordinary possibilities of a world opened up by the scientific worldview and a sort of romantic sense of emotional expression, and even fantasy, all as a way to express deeper truths about the human experience, which really is what science fiction the best science fiction is about.

It takes these sort of fantastical ideas and essentially uses them as a way to explore the human experience and talk about what it really means to be human.

Like Blade Runner, for example.

It's all about how do you know if you are a real human or whether you are a simulated human with implanted memories.

And if a simulated human, a replicant, an artificial intelligence has?

All of the same, If it looks like a human, acts like a human, everything's like a human, then is it actually human?

Where's the dividing line?

So this story is a great example of that, that science fiction, basically.

It's a mix of the magical and the scientific, and you can choose how you interpret it.

Can Wallace's experience be explained by science as a psychological disassociation, or is something more magical happening?

I think I prefer not to choose to be honest, but to leave it open, which I find gives me a sense of wonder, leaves me with a sense of wonder.

If I don't choose either the rational or the sort of supernatural explanations, I'm just going to leave it open.

Also, it's just a made-up story, isn't it?

So it doesn't really matter.

Anyway, what does Wallace's story mean?

And it's about loss of innocence, unconditional love, and the choices we make in life.

So that first time Wallace encounters the door, according to his memory, he is able to step through it and experience an alternative childhood of love play time, freedom and collaboration, different from his father's rules and expectations of success.

It's interesting to note that in the garden Wallace experiences a kind of unconditional love that is sadly missing in his real life.

The presence of several lovely female characters suggests to me that the garden represents maternal love that he misses so much.

When he is even just a bit older, in his school days, his obligations and aspirations prevent him from taking the alternative path to the garden of peace and contentment.

Instead, he chooses to ignore the door in favour of getting to school on time, the demands of his academic life and the pressures of competing with his classmates.

This seems to suggest that these external pressures – academic success competition blah, blah blah –

They all seem to be in contrast with what the garden represents, which is love friendship play mystery joy peace, contentment.

So this could even be a criticism of the society that Wallace and we now live in.

Maybe HG Wells is criticizing our society and its values, that our society prioritizes things which don't lead to happiness and it traps us in misery.

Think of soul-destroying jobs, being in the rat race, having to live up to the expectations of your parents and society at large.

The value of status, money, career.

Maybe we've got it all wrong and there are more spiritual, ethereal and emotional paths we should be taking.

The door appears to Wallace multiple times during important career moments in his life, offering him a choice between the path he's on and another path which leads him away from material success but into happiness and contentment.

But ultimately death as well, which is a bit... a bit weird.

But it seems that Wallace is not able to leave his path until the end of the story.

For me.

HG Wells uses this image of the door in the garden as a way of showing us Wallace's strong feelings of loss, longing and sadness of being unable to access love and beauty because of the conditions of his life.

I think it's a very powerful way of illustrating how our emotions are tied to things like memories, places and unexplainable experiences that we have.

Wallace knows, when the door appears to him that it is unlocked and that the people in the garden are waiting for him and glad to see him.

The possibility of that alternative life haunts him throughout his scholastic and political career, but he never chooses to take the final step and open the door that would cut him off from his career.

By not taking that risk, he loses something.

But maybe the door and garden are not real and if he chose to ignore his responsibilities and step inside again, he would find nothing and it would be a feels drawn to the door.

But he also is drawn by responsibility, expectations and his own ambition.

So in this way, the door also comes to symbolise the incompatibility of life in this world a life of striving for success on one hand, and the life of perfect contentment beyond the door, on the other hand.

The two things can't exist at the same time in the same life.

One or the other may be possible, the story seems to say, but no one can have both at once.

So what about you?

Can you relate to that?

Have you ever felt a sense that you have serious obligations to your career, studies or expectations from parents or other figures, but what would really make you happy is a completely different life?

Have you ever had to balance these things in your life serious responsibilities versus what your heart really wants to do?

And do you doubt that, that choosing to do those things that your heart really wants would be a wise move?

That's the thing you might think.

Here are the things that I should do for my career.

All the serious stuff.

Here's the stuff, the life I would love to lead, but I can't do that because it would be disastrous, right.

Is it realistic to drop out and just do whatever you want?

Isn't it too risky?

How would you get money?

How would you manage everything?

I mean, maybe it would be foolish to just drop out and do whatever pleases you.

How would you earn money?

How would you keep afloat in society?

How would you keep other people around you happy?

For example, if you're an artist, if you just decide just to follow your muse and just to follow your art uh, how would you actually survive?

Can we just walk away from the pressures and responsibilities in our lives?

So, going back to the story, when he reaches middle age, Wallace feels that he's always made the wrong choice and taken the wrong path in his life.

He feels that he should have gone through the door when he had the chance.

But what happens at the end?

Well, at the end of the story, we learn that he died, of course.

How?

As I've said, there was a construction site where a train line was being extended.

There was a large hole there. blocked from the streets, blah, blah, blah.

He went through the door, fell to his death.

Now, the story never answers the ultimate question of what really happened.

Did Wallace really make a mistake and think the door was his special green door?

Was this a tragic accident?

Or did Wallace really see the green door there?

And when he went through, he finally got back to the garden where he could be at peace.

Or did the door betray him in the end?

Did it trick him and lead him to his death when he expected it to bring him back to heaven?

Was going through the door a mistake?

By not giving us that answer, the story turns the door into a symbol for the unknowability of whether some kind of heaven exists, an acknowledgement that the only way to learn that answer is to die, or at least the only way to know whether you are making the right choices in life.

We can never know.

We can never know the alternative.

So what do you think?

Did Wallace get back to the garden or not?

Personally, I'm inclined to believe that yes, he did.

Because why not give it a happy ending of sorts?

But here are some other interpretations and responses to the story, which I took from the story's Wikipedia page.

This is what other people have said about it.

So what did the critics say?

And yes, this episode is becoming pretty damn long and I haven't even got into the vocab stuff.

But I just have to say i was just inspired by the story and i i guess part of the reason i chose to tell this story was because it, it just uh, i don't know, it just grabbed my imagination and so i just wanted to talk about all those things.

But i will get onto the vocab in a moment.

Uh, let me have some more water.

Then i'll talk about what the critics said, some quotes from other people who talked about this work, and then we'll get into some of the vocab, which i will continue uh, in episodes of LEP Premium teacherlukecouk slash premium, if you're interested.

Let me have some water now.

Cheers.

Right, you might have heard an advert there while I was drinking.

An advert for water, maybe.

I don't know.

I don't know what they advertised in that little spot there.

By the way, if you want to go ad-free, if you don't want to get any more ads on your episodes, the audio episodes, if you don't want to hear ads there.

Maybe you didn't hear an ad there, in which case, fine.

But if you don't want to hear the ads, then you know, becoming a premium subscriber means you get all of the free episodes with the advertising removed as well, right?

So that's how you go ad-free, just in case you were wondering.

You don't just get the premium episodes, you also get ad-free content too.

Anyway, what did the critics say about this story?

So the door in the wall was acclaimed. from the first, meaning it was given high praise.

People said it was given good, strong reviews.

It was acclaimed.

People said it was brilliant.

Writing in Le Temps.

Some sort of publication, a newspaper, maybe a magazine literary supplement, who knows?

Writing in that in 1911 Henri Durand d'Avray wrote.

A French guy said that it was Wells at his best.

Geoffrey West, that is, a biographer of HG Wells, noted in 1926 that it was often considered Wells' best short story.

And in 1930 he added his own judgment that it was one of the works which will carry his name even beyond our own century into that literary immortality he seems so anxious to avoid.

Interesting that hg wells didn't want to be immortalized.

I think he was more interested in ultimately improving the society he was living in at the time.

And yet the story did immortalize him.

Because here we are now, at least here i am, and i'm not the only one because it's considered now to be, you know, a great story.

Still, people are still talking about it.

Critics in the late 20th century and the 21st century have likewise evaluated it as one of Wells's finest short works.

Adam Roberts has written this.

He wrote.

The tone of this piece is exquisitely handled and it remains one of the most affecting portraits of that palpable but indefinable sense of loss entailed by growing up.

The way the petty business of living repeatedly gets in the way of recovering that childhood numinosity.

By the way, numinosity.

That means a sense of awe amazement fascination, even terror, experienced in childhood.

Those raw emotions of really living and experiencing things.

Numinosity.

So the fact that normal life sort of takes you away from those innocent feelings of childhood.

And although he continues, although it is a sad story, it is indeed one of the saddest I know.

It's not a depressing story because Wells understands that life is the myriad gettings in the way that define our days and the desire to get past that is actually the desire to stop living.

OK, so he's saying that Wells understands that life is the myriad, meaning the various, the many gettings in the way, meaning the many things that sort of get in the way right, that define our days, the stuff like having to find your keys, having to turn on the turn on the alarm when you leave the apartment, remembering to go back.

You know oh, i forgot my phone.

You have to go back and get your phone, remembering you've got to cancel that amazon order that you made and then you've got to uh, you know, get to work on time and deal with the report that you're supposed to be writing and deal with your boss and do this, that and the other, and then you've got to pay this bill and deal with all these things.

These are all things that get in the way.

These are the many gettings in the way that define our days and the desire to get past all of that is actually the desire to stop living.

That seems very profound um, it has.

It has been seen as the.

It has been seen the story has been seen as a nostalgic look back to the simplicity, continuity and easier pace of the victorian age or, more personally, to idyllic scenes in wells's childhood.

So some people have said that the, the The story represents something about a nostalgia for a more simple time.

John R. Reid, That's an interesting and profound observation as well.

Life is like a book, meaning like the way a book is written, which again, which makes me think back to an episode I did a while ago with Ian Moore, who writes books and he writes mystery stories, murder mysteries.

And he was talking about how The process is quite messy.

You have a general idea, you write the story.

Then you go back and you change this, that and the other.

It's all a bit of a mess until it's finished.

And when it's finished, then it's set.

And in a similar way, your life is like that.

It's sort of messy.

It's out of order.

None of it's composed until the moment that a person dies and then their life gets set again.

Right.

I mean, we've seen this from famous people.

Someone like David Bowie, for example.

When he died, it's like his life became a body of work.

It became a story with a beginning, a middle and an end.

Everything suddenly went into a certain kind of order.

We saw it as a whole finished piece.

Life is a bit like that.

It's not really doesn't take form until it's done.

Getting very profound in this episode.

Alfred Borrello believed.

The story showed that our very aspirations can be the sources of self-delusion and ultimately doom, if man understands them only as the means whereby he might escape from his duties to himself and to his race.

What?

He believed it showed that our aspirations aspirations can be the sources of self-delusion and ultimately doom, if man understands them only as the means whereby he might escape from his duties to himself and to his race.

Okay, so basically this means alfred barello thought the story showed that a person's dreams and goals, for example the desire to return to the garden, could be harmful and lead to their downfall.

Right, This happens if they use their aspirations, in this case the desire to go back to the garden, as a way to avoid their personal responsibilities and duties to humanity.

So the desire to leave reality can be harmful for you and for society.

I guess, I think that's what that means.

That if Wallace had gone to the garden, he would have deprived society of this important work that he did to benefit society as a member of the government.

Okay.

W. Warren Wagar wrote that Wells was advising his readers not to give away... Sorry.

W Warren Wagar wrote that Wells was advising his readers not to give way, like Wallace, to the seductions of unreason.

Meaning, you've got to watch out for...

You've got to keep it real, basically.

Keep it real.

That Wallace, at the end of his life, he didn't keep it real.

He kind of lost his mind.

He was seduced by the madness of this idea of this garden.

It seduced him and caused him ultimately to fall to his death because it misled him.

It led him to believe that there was something behind this door when in fact it was something else.

Right, let's continue.

So let me continue my notes.

The garden can be taken as a metaphor for the imagination, which dramatises for us the choice between the aesthetic and the practical sides of life, especially perhaps the choice between imaginative writing and political action faced by Wells himself.

So this is an interesting insight into Wells' life and career.

The idea that the garden... the choice between the aesthetic and the practical sides of life.

And this is what I was talking about before, like just doing whatever you want.

That's the aesthetic side and the practical side of like having to do certain things just because that's how you make money and you know pay for your food and your rent and things like that.

And perhaps it shows us something about the life of Wells that he had to choose between writing imaginative fiction and taking political action in his life.

So this is an interesting insight into Wells' life and career.

Later in his life, he moved towards political action and away from writing fiction.

So perhaps there was a period in which he couldn't decide which path to take focus on solving society's problems in the real world or escaping into a world of fantasy and imagination through his work.

But perhaps, as Sabine Koelsch-Feusner has written, Wells makes the meaning of the supernatural garden motif a mystery to which there can be no final answer.

Was it a daydream, a lie, a sign of the boy's vivid imagination or a token of a hidden dimension accessible only to a visionary like Wallace?

We don't know.

That's the central mystery that kind of keeps it interesting.

By the way, the original text of this story is wonderful.

Remember, I read out a kind of adapted, modernised version, but the original text is wonderful.

You can get it in a lot of the collections of HG Wells short stories.

The one I've got here is HG Wells, The Country of the Blind and Other Selected Stories by Penguin Classics, which has loads of really good stories, including this one.

And it could be an interesting exercise for you to read the story, to compare my new version with the original text.

So you can get yourself a copy of one of his books, which I strongly recommend, or you can actually find the text of this story online if you search for it.

You can find it at classicshorts.com, for example.

As I said before, the original story was written and published in 1906.

So now we get to the language analysis section about an hour and what?

Nearly two hours into this episode.

As I said before, I'm not going to do all of the vocab explanations now because it's going to take too long.

I mean, I did once do a three and a half hour episode of Learn English with a Short Story.

That was Learn English with a Short Story, long edition.

But I'll go for about, I don't know what, 10, 15 minutes now.

And then I'll continue the rest of the vocab review, and some grammar stuff as well, in episodes of Luke's English Podcast Premium.

So language analysis.

This is where we focus specifically on learning English with this story.

So we focused on the overall meaning of the story and interpretations of its meaning.

But now here is the story again, this time broken down into parts, with a summary and vocabulary review for each part.

So I'll start this here in this free episode, but I'll finish it in LEP Premium.

So I'm going to go through the story again in sections.

For each section, I will deal with these questions.

First of all, what happened?

I'll skip through that quite quickly because I think you've got the gist of the whole story now.

But anyway, what happened and what do the highlighted words mean?

So I've highlighted words and phrases in the text and those are the things I'm going to focus on.

At the end, there's a summary of some grammar in the story too, including things like past conditionals, narrative tenses, relative clauses and a lot more.

So, vocabulary first.

Let me now go through the story again and point out various bits of vocabulary and other language.

There's also a full vocabulary list at the end of each section.

You can find it on the PDF.

I'll start this here in the free episode, blah, blah, blah.

I'll continue in an LEP premium in the next series.

Okay, so part one.

One quiet evening just under three months ago, Lionel Wallace told me the story of the door in the wall.

At the time, I believed he was telling the truth, at least as far as he believed it himself.

He told it in such a sincere, straightforward way that I couldn't help but believe him.

So in such a sincere way, this is when you're true with your feelings.

You're kind of honest.

If you're being sincere, it means you are being true to your feelings.

OK, if you speak sincerely, it's like you're telling the truth, and and and especially about the way you feel.

He told his story in a very sincere way.

There was no sense that he was exaggerating or making it up for some other reason.

He was just being honest and simple about it in a straightforward way.

If something is straightforward, it means it's simple and not complicated and direct.

For example, if a language exercise is straightforward, it means it's very clear how it should be done, okay.

If a process is straightforward, it's very clear.

For example, how do you subscribe to Luke's English Podcast Premium?

Well, it's very straightforward, really.

You just go to teachalukecouk slash premium and then just click on LEP Premium and just choose the.

Choose the version you'd like to subscribe to.

Create an account on Supercast.

Add some details.

Click subscribe.

And Bob's your uncle.

That's it.

It's very straightforward.

So Wallace told his story in a very straightforward way.

Just very clear, direct, simple.

So he told it in such a sincere, straightforward way that I couldn't help but... but believe him.

So if you can't help but do something, it means that you you, you sort of you, just have to do that because you that you feel like there's no other way that you can do it.

Right.

So almost like you feel no choice, but to do it.

Um, another example, uh, he asked me so politely that I couldn't help, but say yes.

Or my my, my son wanted uh toy from the shop and he asked me so nicely and so politely and he'd been so good that day that I couldn't help but say yes, meaning I felt like I didn't have any other option.

I just couldn't say no.

I couldn't do anything else except this.

So I couldn't help but say yes to him.

In this case, Wallace told the story so sincerely that Redmond couldn't help but believe him.

He just felt like he had no choice but to believe him.

He couldn't not believe him without his slow, serious voice, without the dim lighting and the calm atmosphere that had surrounded us the night before.

So the word I'm looking at here is dim, dim lighting.

So the opposite of dim, what's the opposite of dim?

It's bright.

Okay, so dim and bright.

In this case, dim lighting.

So what does that tell you about the place where they had dinner?

It sounds like it was quite a nice restaurant, quite a upmarket restaurant, the sort of restaurant that has That's not brightly lit.

That's quite dark.

There's dim.

They had an elegant dinner with wine glasses, cozy comfort.

So it's probably some nice dark restaurant with candles maybe on the table and good quality place and low lighting or dim lighting.

I'm skipping through.

He was trying to be mysterious, I thought, and he did it really well.

But I wouldn't have expected something like that from him, of all people.

If you add of all people, him of all people, of all people, emphasises I wouldn't have expected something like that from him of all people.

It's kind of like expecting.

It's a bit like emphasising that he's the last person you would expect that kind of behaviour from meaning being mysterious.

So Wallace is not the sort of person who would just intentionally be mysterious, maybe in order to appear attractive or to have a certain effect or, you know, to try to be interesting.

Wallace was a very honest sort of straightforward person really, and not the kind of person who would be fake like that.

So that's not something I would have expected.

Wallace from him of all people, meaning there are plenty of other people that I would expect that from, but he's not one of them.

Or it's a bit like saying, I wouldn't expect that from anyone, especially him.

So it's a way of emphasising that he would especially not expect this from Wallace.

I wouldn't have expected that from him of all people.

Okay, so moving on, we've got others.

He talks about how...

At first he thought it was not true and that Wallace wasn't telling the truth, but then he says well, I don't think that anymore.

My doubts have faded.

Faded, I think you know, right?

It's a bit like if the colour of your shirt fades, the colour of your jeans can fade as you wash them again, and again, and again.

They start a kind of rich blue colour, but with age, with time and as you wash them again and again, the color fades right.

So in this similar way your doubts can fade.

Meaning get weaker, kind of diminish, get smaller, get weaker, get less strong.

My doubts have faded.

My doubts have gone away.

I believe now, as I believed when he first told me, that Wallace did his best to tell me the truth about his secret.

Skipping forward again a bit, even the circumstances of his death, which finally put an end to all doubt, don't make things any clearer.

To put an end to something.

I mean, it's quite clear, I guess, what that means, but it's just quite a nice phrase to put an end to something.

That's certainly put an end to his career.

Like a football player got a bad injury which put an end to his career, or a film star was found guilty of some kind of crime which meant that they couldn't get in movies anymore.

Nobody wanted to give them a role in a movie, and that put an end to his career.

The scandal, maybe.

The scandal put an end to her career or put an end to his career.

The circumstances of Wallace's death put an end to all doubt, meaning that if there was any doubt about whether Wallace was being honest, the way he died certainly put an end to the doubt.

So it stopped everyone feeling doubt.

And I just wanted to remind you, doubt, the B is silent.

So doubt, doubt.

It made everyone stop doubting whether Wallace was telling the truth or not.

It still doesn't make things clearer, though.

That is something you will have to decide for yourself.

So, of course, In this section of the story the narrator is describing a conversation he had with Lionel Wallace.

At the time, the narrator believed that Wallace was telling the truth.

But the next day, the narrator can't believe it was true.

I don't think I need to go through the events of what happened in the beginning.

But just those bits of English sincere straightforward, couldn't help but do something, or couldn't help doing something.

He told his story in such a sincere, straightforward way that i couldn't help but believe him.

Dim lighting oh, i wanted to mention lighting versus lightning.

Can you hear that?

Lighting and lightning, lighting and lightning.

So lighting is how you describe all the the way that a room is lit by candles or ceiling lights or lamps on the walls.

This is lighting.

You go into a restaurant and you say, wow, what a lovely restaurant, beautiful lighting.

That's the way that the room is lit.

Lightning is weather.

The electricity that comes through the sky, that's lightning.

Thunder and lightning and lighting is in a room.

Okay, so without the dim lighting and the calm atmosphere that had surrounded us the night before, for example uh, not him of all people i wouldn't have expected something like that, that from him of all people, even the circumstances of his death, which finally put an end to to doubt.

So that is to put an end to something, and just the word doubt.

Okay, those things there too um, But I think you know what, at this point, I think it's time to put an end to this episode, because I don't want it to go on forever.

Some of you still listening are like, no, no, please keep going.

Well, I will keep going, but I'm going to do that in LEP premium.

All right.

So I'm going to now have to work on a bunch of premium episodes in which I go through the rest of the vocab here.

But I'll go through it in premium episodes, which will be available very soon, if not now.

OK, so check your premium subscription over the next week or two and you will find some premium episodes that will deal with all the vocabulary that in the rest of the story that I haven't gone through yet.

I've only gone through a little bit, just part one.

There are how many parts?

Something like eight parts, I think, for me to go through each with bits of vocab to highlight some lovely natural expressions and things, as you've just seen, the sort of stuff that might come up in a Cambridge use of English paper in CAE or something like that.

You know the sort of real English that is used all the time and that you really need to know.

You know prepositional phrases, verb phrases, verb collocations and all that sort of stuff.

That's always the kind of language that I like to highlight and teach to you, to help you notice and learn and get to grips with.

OK, so teacherluke.co.uk slash premium.

That's how you can sign up to LEP premium if you want to get the other episodes that I'm going to do about this story.

And also all of the other premium content that I've ever done.

And there's loads.

There's over 250 episodes of stuff, which is all solid stuff, where I'm teaching you language all the time.

There are stories in there too, and lots of pronunciation episodes where you can practice repeating after me, as well as all sorts of other little hidden gems, like there's a stand-up comedy show of mine in there and a few other bits and pieces.

So sign up if you want to get access to all those things.

It's a monthly payment.

You can cancel whenever you want, so there are no strings attached.

You can listen to the audio episodes in a podcast app on your phone.

Links for video versions PDFs, the whole lot, the whole thing is available at teacherlukecouk slash premium.

But that's the end of this episode.

I would love to know your comments.

I'd love to read your comments.

What did you think of this story?

Yes, plenty of questions for you to respond to that I've given you throughout the episode.

Thank you very much for listening, watching.

And I'll speak to you next time, okay?

Unless, of course, I see a lovely green door and a mysterious white wall.

If I just decide to go for a walk, have a break from podcasting and just go for a quick walk.

And if I do see a lovely green door set into a white wall, I don't know, it might have a little look.

So if you don't hear any more podcasts from me, it might mean that I'm lost in some wonderful garden somewhere.

Yeah.

Shall I or not?

I'll leave it.

I'll see.

I'll see how I feel if slash when I discover something.

A weird magical door in a white wall.

Hmm.

Okay.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks for watching.

Speak to you next time.

But until then, I will now say goodbye.

Bye.

Thanks for listening to Luke's English Podcast.

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[The Door in the Wall: A Journey Through Memory and Regret]-[The Door in the Wall 🚪 (Learn English with a Short Story) [962]]

📋 Summary

The Door in the Wall: A Reflection on Life, Loss, and the Unattainable

The Enchanted Garden: A Sanctuary of Childhood

The Conflict of Ambition vs. Authenticity

Psychological Interpretation: Dissociation or Portal?

A Tragic Conclusion

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[The Door in the Wall: A Journey Through Memory and Regret]-[The Door in the Wall 🚪 (Learn English with a Short Story) [962]]

📋 Summary

The Door in the Wall: A Reflection on Life, Loss, and the Unattainable

The Enchanted Garden: A Sanctuary of Childhood

The Conflict of Ambition vs. Authenticity

Psychological Interpretation: Dissociation or Portal?

A Tragic Conclusion

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

ListenLeap Brings You Into Real Context Learning