[50:00]
L: “It’s such a pain doing Christmas shopping”
J: Yeah. It’s a real pain.
L: Because you go to Oxford street and everyone in London has had the same idea as you: “So I’ll go to Oxford street and do my Christmas shopping and that will be fine” and of course the streets are totally crowded and you’re kind of like “bumping into people” and stuff like that.
J: And that kind of represents the worst thing about London. People say “What’s the best thing?”, “What’s the worst thing about London?”. The worst thing is just the sheer volume of people that live here, the number of people who live here. When those people all turn out at once you got very big crowd, it’s very hard to move, it’s get very irritating. You kind of get angry, you get stressed and so does everyone else and it’s not a very nice experience.
L: You get angry.
J: You get angry, you get stressed.
L: You get stressed out, you get frustrated.
J: You might say “I’m stressed, I hate shopping”
L: It is like “Oh, get out…”
J: “Christmas shopping is such a pain, all these idiots in my way.”
L: Yeah. Get out of the way. You wouldn’t… obviously wouldn’t say that.
J: You’re saying that to yourself under your breath, because we are English. You know, we don’t say what we mean, obviously.
L: In English basically what you say is “Oh, sorry”.
J: You say “Sorry!”, which means get the hell out of my way.
L: I was actually… this thing about “sorry”. I was in The Body Shop the other day trying to buy some gifts and I clumsily knocked over like a little wooden sign. They had a wooden sign which said like “25% off at Christmas” “up to 25% off”. And I picked up a bottle with my elbow and knocked sign and I, you know, tried to catch it and it dropped on the floor, I was like “Oh dear” and the member of staff behind me went “Oh sorry”. Why’s she saying sorry?
J: That’s English for you. If you want to know the English psyche, that’s it in a nutshell.
L: I knocked this sign of the shelf and the woman behind me said: “Sorry”.
J: What she really means is “Excuse me, get out of my way, I’ll pick up that sign that you’ve knocked over but you’re clumsy idiot”.
L: Yeah, exactly.
J: That what “sorry” means in that instance. Sometimes when we say “sorry” it’s actually means “sorry”.
L: I think it was like “Sorry, you’re an idiot”.
J: “I’m sorry you were born this way.”
L: “I’m sorry you’re such an idiot.”
J: Yeah. “I’m sorry you’re in my shop”.
(laugh)
J: We’re getting deep into the English psyche here, aren’t we?
L: “Christmas shopping”. “Christmas cards”. They quite a big deal here.
J: They’ve gone out fashion a little bit. They used to be… well, people used to have Christmas lists, not list. Christmas card lists, which would be everyone you know, you send them all a Christmas card and it’s a way of staying in touch with people you don’t see very often. But I’d say the younger generation use them the much less than the older generation. I think they’re slowly going out of fashion. Do you know that as a phrase?
L: That’s a good phrase. “Going out of fashion”. Yeah.
J: These are all sort of useful little stock phrases.
L: Yeah, they’re going out of fashion.
J: Like “Luke’s haircut for instance”.

(laugh)
L: Thanks a lot. At least I’ve got hair.
J: Ouch.
L: So they’re going out of fashion. Yeah. They’re not as trendy as they used to be.
J: Oh. Don’t know about trendy. No one says trendy.
L: All right.
J: I say the word trendy has gone out of fashion.
L: Alright. Bloody hell.
J: They’re not trendy. It’s just falling out of favour.
L: I’m just… yeah “fall out of favour” it’s more common than trendy. (sarcastic)
J: Alright. We agreed with “going out of fashion” anyway, you can say that.
L: This is what… to be honest this is what it’s like when my brother and I get together we do just argue with each other…
J: …in a friendly way.
L: We… sometimes we punch each other in a friendly way.
J: Yeah.
L: We don’t actually. We don’t punch each other.
J: Not recently.
L: Not anymore. So, okay, Christmas cards. So our parents, they send Christmas cards.
J: They still send lots of… Have you sent any this year?
L: No, I haven’t sent any…
J: Neither do I, that’s what I mean. I more likely to write on someone’s facebook page “Have a wicked Christmas, lol”.
(laugh)
J: Than I am to…
L: Lol, lol…
J: No one actually says that. That’s an ironic use of the Internet abbreviation.
L: (Luke spells) l o l.
J: Laugh out loud.
L: Yeah.
J: It just sounds funny. People say it in a jokey way “lol”.
L: If you look on the Internet… if you look on Youtube.
J: They know about “lol”.
L: Yeah, everyone knows about “lol”.
J: But you’re not suppose to say it.
L: Not everyone knows about “lol”. Honestly, not everyone knows that. I often teach that to students at school. I say “Do you know lol?” and most of them like “Yeah, we know lol”, but then there is always a few people who go like “No, what is lol? I don’t know what lol is.”
J: (in foreign student’s accent) “What is this lol, which you talk?”
L: Yeah. And then I say “Lol, it means laugh out loud” unless you’re of course our mum in which it means “Lots of love”, which is lovely, isn’t it? But sometimes she writes… “Lol” used to mean “Lots of love”. Right?
J: I don’t know, if it ever meant that.