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Get your paper tablet Hello and welcome to the English Like a Native podcast. My name is Anna and you're listening to week 27, day 5 of Your English 5 A Day, the second season.
This is the series that helps you to get into the habit of dunking daily into the English language.
and by doing so you are well on the road to feeling more like yourself when you communicate in English.
Now all of the vocabulary that I cover in not just this week's episodes but the entire series which is now spanning hundreds of episodes, all that vocabulary is recorded for you with definitions and examples in our Vocabulary Vault, which is a huge database that you can access for free.
We constantly update it for you, and I'll leave the link in the show notes.
But now it's Friday, so we're going to bring together all the vocabulary we've looked at this week in one big story.
You're going to enjoy this story.
It comes from one of our team members, but I'll read it as if it's my own.
So sit back, relax and enjoy.
Have I ever mentioned the bizarre saga of my bicycle?
It's one of those stories that sounds Sounds too strange to be true, yet here we are.
The whole affair began during what was supposed to be a perfectly peaceful week in early summer.
I had just wrapped up an exhausting period at work.
The kind where you barely see daylight and survive on coffee and determination alone.
By the end, I was practically ready to starve rather than grab another tasteless sandwich at my desk.
I'd been dreaming of proper meals, maybe even treating myself to some delicacy from the fancy deli down the road.
Anything that wasn't the pungent leftover curry I'd been reheating all week.
My flatmate always jokes that I eat like a horse when I'm stressed but, ironically, I'd been getting terrible nutrition during those busy weeks.
Finally, blissfully, I had a week off stretching ahead of me.
My plans were wonderfully simple.
Sleep in, potter about, cook decent food and do absolutely nothing urgent.
it was going to be magnificent.
Of course, the universe had other ideas.
Monday morning arrived with all the subtlety of a fire alarm.
At half past seven, a time that, according to my holiday schedule, simply didn't exist, our building's intercom began its relentless assault on the morning silence.
Buzz, buzz, buzz. Each electronic shriek felt like a personal attack on my carefully planned lie -in.
I tried the noble art of ignorance, pulling my pillow over my head and pretending the world didn't exist. But whoever was downstairs possessed the determination of a medieval siege army.
The buzzing continued with mechanical persistence until eventually one of my flatmates cracked under the pressure.
Through my bedroom wall I could hear him stomping to the intercom, muttering the sort of colourful language that would make a sailor blush.
There was a crackle of static, then voices.
His irritated, theirs urgent.
Then, unexpectedly, I heard the word, bike.
Now, in our little household of three, I was the sole owner of two wheels.
My flatmate appeared at my bedroom door with the expression of someone who'd just been asked to solve quantum physics before breakfast. It's for you, he said, holding out the intercom handset.
Something about your bike?
Still half asleep and thoroughly confused, I took the call.
The voice on the other end was crisp, professional and completely unexpected.
unexpected. Police here.
We've recovered your bicycle.
We need you to come down to the station to identify it.
My bike? But my bike was...
I glanced towards the window, thinking of the street outside where I'd left it chained to the racks the night before.
A cold realisation began to dawn.
The officer explained what had happened with the calm efficiency of someone used to delivering surprising news.
They'd been patrolling the street when they spotted a figure hunched over the bike racks, working at something with suspicious intensity.
Upon closer inspection, they discovered a would -be thief in the process of cutting through my lock, a cheap spiral cable that I'd optimistically hoped would deter opportunistic criminals.
The timing had been perfect.
The thief had been caught red -handed, quite literally in the act of stealing my bike.
It was, the officer assured me, rather unusual luck.
Uh, do I need to come right now?
I asked, still processing this turn of events.
Fortunately, they were amenable to my schedule and I was granted a few hours to properly wake up and make myself presentable for this unexpected adventure in law enforcement.
late that morning i found myself walking into the police station feeling rather surreal about the whole situation i was led into a storage area filled with the detritus of urban crime recovered property waiting to be reunited with its owners and there amongst the miscellaneous collection stolen goods, sat my bicycle.
It was a humble thing, my bike.
A second -hand decathlon rock rider mountain bike that I'd purchased as part of a job lot from someone leaving town.
£50 for the bike plus various other odds and ends.
Hardly a fortune, but it had served me well.
The idea that someone had thought it worth stealing was almost flattering.
Standing there in that sterile room looking at my rescued bike, I felt genuinely amazed.
Everyone knows that stolen bikes are gone forever.
The chances of recovery are so slim.
Yet, here was mine, returned to me through what could only be described as miraculous timing.
I cycled home with a renewed appreciation for both my modest transport and the randomness of good fortune.
My landlord and I arranged for me to store the bike in a small cupboard space inside the building, no more leaving it vulnerable on the street, no matter how convenient the location.
For a couple of years, this arrangement worked perfectly.
My bike lived safely indoors.
I had had convenient transport and the world seemed a more sensible place.
Then I moved house.
My new street was quiet, the sort of peaceful residential road where children played and neighbours knew each other's names.
Perhaps it was this tranquil atmosphere that made me complacent.
Perhaps I simply forgot the lessons of my previous near loss.
Whatever the reason, I began leaving my bike in the communal entrance of my new building, unchained and trusting in the apparent safety of my surroundings.
You can probably guess what happened next.
One morning, roughly a year after I'd moved in, I went to collect my bike for a journey across town.
The space where I'd left it the night before was conspicuously empty.
My humble decathlon rock rider had vanished without a trace.
This time there was no helpful police officers, no caught in the act thieves, no miraculous recoveries.
This time my bike was simply gone, disappeared into the vast network of bicycle theft that plagues every city.
lightning as they say doesn't strike twice in total I'd owned that bike for about three or four years it had been stolen once and miraculously returned then stolen again and lost forever the experience taught me several valuable lessons about urban living the importance of proper security, and the dangerous allure of complacency.
Interestingly, that same year turned out to be my personal golden age of civic responsibility.
I made three separate trips to the police station.
Once to reclaim my stolen bike, and twice more to hand in lost property I'd discovered on the street.
first someone's wallet complete with cards and cash then a few months later someone's identity documents scattered on the pavement like urban leaves perhaps it was good karma for being a conscientious citizen that led to my bike's first miraculous rescue or perhaps it was simply Simply the kind of random luck that makes life simultaneously frustrating and wonderful.
Either way, I learned to never again underestimate the determination of opportunistic thieves, even on the quietest of streets.
These days, I invest in proper locks and secure storage.
some lessons after all are worth learning properly even if it takes losing the same bike twice to drive the point home I do hope that you enjoyed today's story and I want to thank you and you should thank yourself give yourself a pat on the back for turning up today and every other day that you tune in your regularity is really helping you and if you'd like to take your learning further then maybe consider becoming a plus member where you not only get access to the transcripts for recent episodes but you also are provided with easy to use comprehension questions accessible on your mobile or desktop where you can check your understanding and you have an opportunity
to write your own example sentences and share them with us.
I'll leave a link and all the details for PLOS membership in the show notes.
Until next week, take very good care and goodbye.
