790. Chatting in the Garden with Mum (Listener Q&A)

Leave a Reply

My mum returns to the podcast to answer some questions from listeners about books, cooking, her relationship with Luke and her granddaughter, the war in Ukraine, the song Imagine by John Lennon, family games, the time she fell off a horse & more…

Small Donate Button[DOWNLOAD]

Introduction Transcript & Notes

Hello listeners!

Welcome back to the podcast.

Today I am joined by my mum and we’re going to spend the episode chatting about this and that, and responding to some questions from LEPsters on Twitter. 

I hope you enjoy the episode everyone, Stick with us, and as usual you’ll find that the more you listen, the better it is for your English.

Hi Mum, how are you today?

Where are we?

It’s been ages since you’ve been on the podcast, with your own episode (April 2021 – 717. Gill’s Book Club). 

We were doing Gill’s Book Club (we did 3 or 4 of those) and every now and then we talk about doing another one, but we have found it a bit tricky to choose books that 

  1. Most other people probably have read
  2. That I have read too
  3. That would appeal to enough people
  4. That we remember clearly 

Plus you somehow got out of the habit of reading every day.

Anyway, it’s nice to be able to have you on the podcast again.

My aim for this is mainly to let people just listen to your voice, listen to your words and it sort of doesn’t matter too much what we talk about, as long as we just let the conversation flow and let the English happen naturally. We decided not to limit ourselves to any one specific topic here, preferring instead to cast our net quite wide in terms of things to talk about.

Yesterday evening, I Tweeted this:

It got about 26 replies.

I have a selection of questions from listeners on Twitter which we can explore. That’s probably a good starting point.

Book Recommendations

Kristýna Waicová @Elvea_Puff – Replying to @EnglishPodcast

Not a very original one but a classic: what book(s) did she enjoyed recently? I’m looking forward to listening to you two, it’s always such a treat. Please give your mum my best and as always, thanks for the podcast!

Aritz @aritz_js – Replying to @EnglishPodcast

Yes! Any books recommendations? I read The Five and A Month in the Country. Thanks.

Kam @ErkamUK – Replying to @EnglishPodcast

Could you please recommend us some books? and what do you think about Harry Potter?

Beniamino Bianco @Mire12374275 – Replying to @EnglishPodcast

Yes! What book dedicated to Winston Churchill can you recommend? Thanks from Ilario.

👇A list of books about Churchill → Skip to number 10 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/apr/11/top10s.churchill 

En-quête de culture @EmmaB2944 – Replying to @EnglishPodcast

So happy so hear for your mother ! I would like to know what is she currently reading of course. And if she thought you would become a journalist like your father ? When I listen to the Rick reports, I realise that journalism is not so far from your podcast… Many thanks !

Relationship with Luke

James Harris @JamesHarrisNow – Replying to @EnglishPodcast

No questions, but please compliment your mum on raising a fine boy.

Kam @ErkamUK

How does it feel to give birth to a famous podcaster?

Romário Alexandre @Lawter_ – Replying to @EnglishPodcast

How does it feel to know that people from many parts of the world know a little bit about your relationship with your son?

Kam @ErkamUK – Replying to @EnglishPodcast

Why did you name your son Luke?why not Dave?

Jinti Neog @JintiNeog

Why Thompson why not Rickson?

eslam @eslamaoao – Replying to @EnglishPodcast

Did you see signs of luke when he was a child that points to his currently career field?

Relationship with Granddaughter

teresa peltz @teresa_peltz – Replying to @EnglishPodcast

Yes.I’ve one maybe too personal. So you couldn’t take in account. How she feels as a Brit nanny ? Any special food for her niece as a British grandmother?

Gupse Uzun @uzun_gupse – Replying to @EnglishPodcast

So that she can see her grandchild more often, does she ever prefer that you with your family live in england?

Edier Rosa @RosaEdier Replying to @EnglishPodcast

I use both English and Portuguese when talking to my niece. I speak Portuguese, she answers in English and vice-versa. I wonder if she fears not being able to have a fluent comprehensible conversation with her granddaughter in future. That was my main motivation to study English.

Cooking

Jay Jia @JayJia1982 Replying to @EnglishPodcast

How is her cooking? What is her signature dish? Any secret family recipes?

Is it true that English people in general are not good cook? Gordon Ramsay is a great chef but he usually cook Asian food, his restaurant in London is Asian restaurant.

Luke: Ramsay has 53 restaurants (according to the list on his website, and they serve a variety of things – French fine dining, rustic English food, burgers, pizza, asian food and more…)

Other Topics

Денис Леонтьєв @xxxpdenis Replying to @EnglishPodcast

What does She think about war in Ukraine? By the way,if You like the question,like it in order to see if you have chosen it.

albee @archdeaconsnz – Replying to @EnglishPodcast

Could her tell us about some good memories about her childhood or teenage years?

Znad – @znad9821 Replying to @EnglishPodcast

Why is your son obsessed with Betels?

Alex Replying to @EnglishPodcast

Yes, why after half a century the world still doesn’t understand the meaning of the song Imagine. Tnx

Paragraph about Imagine from https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/john-lennon-imagine-real-meaning-communism/

In an interview with David Sheff for Playboy Magazine, shortly before his death in December 1980, Lennon shared that Dick Gregory had given him and Ono a Christian Prayer-book which had inspired him to write the track. “The concept of positive prayer…If you can imagine a world at peace, with no denominations of religion – not without religion but without this my God-is-bigger-than-your-God thing – then it can be true.”

The Beatle continued, “The World Church called me once and asked, “Can we use the lyrics to ‘Imagine’ and just change it to ‘Imagine one religion’?” That showed [me] they didn’t understand it at all. It would defeat the whole purpose of the song, the whole idea.”

Kristýna Waicová – @Elvea_Puff Replying to @EnglishPodcast

Does she play any word games? Or some other games? :)

Rei da Salsicha de Chicago @jam0rreu Replying to @EnglishPodcast

Ask her to talk about the horse story (You and James told us she fell off a horse when you were a kid).

The One Who Knocks @JaderLelis27 Replying to @EnglishPodcast

How does she feel about Margaret Thatcher

Sorry, we didn’t get time to answer this question! 👇

Alper @tdurdendi – Replying to @EnglishPodcast

I wonder who is her favourite British and/or non-British film director. 

Since I haven’t listened to all episodes, I apologize if she had already spoken of it.

Books & things discussed in the conversation

Pre-ending

Well then listeners, that was my mum in her own episode again, but hold on, we’re not done yet, there’s more.

As you just heard at the end, my wife and daughter just came back from the market so we thought we should stop recording and get ready to have lunch with everyone.

But then my daughter did come into the garden and she picked up the microphone, so here is a little interview with her. So you get 3 generations of the family in one episode. A cross generational podcast for you. 

So, I asked my daughter to describe what she had done at the market and before I managed to press record on my recorder, she started talking about how they had gone into the local museum in the town square, where they have various items including a large stuffed bear (a real one, stuffed – it’s quite odd and quite interesting), as well as other things, and I asked if she found the bear frightening or if she’d been traumatised by the bear, and then I asked her about the word traumatised, and she ended up describing how she’d been traumatised by a loud automatic hand dryer in a public toilet once (you know those hand dryers which you get on the wall in public toilets?), and that is where this 10 minute clip begins. 

So here we go with a bonus bit of chat with youngest member of the Thompson family.

Ending

There you go listeners.

A bit of wisdom there from the voice of the future.

  • Don’t fight.
  • You have to love each other.
  • You have to love le world.
  • Be excellent to each other.
  • Party on.
  • And sign up to LEP Premium on Acast+ for ad-free content and of course many many extra episodes in which I help you with your vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation 😅

Well, I hope you agree listeners, that that was a real treat, especially if you listened all the way until the end.

I really enjoyed that – being able to ask my mum those questions and get her responses, while sitting in the very nice surroundings of her garden, and I hope you enjoyed it too.

I must say I love making these recordings – in order to publish them for your listening pleasure and for your English listening practice (hopefully both) but also just as a record of family life – the voices of my family and my friends, stories, thoughts, memories, opinions and so on. How nice. 

I’m very grateful to my mum for this episode and generally for all my guests who contribute so much.

Send us your comments. It’s nice to read them and to get some human responses to our words.

Sorry if you weren’t able to send in a question. I put up the request on Twitter without much notice. I do that sometimes, in order to get opinions or podcast questions from my audience.

If you want to follow me on Twitter, please go ahead. @EnglishPodcast 

I’m also on Instagram but I hardly ever use it. In fact, at the moment I only use it to help me book and promote stand up comedy shows (because some of the comedy nights use Instagram to communicate with comedians), but I am there @lukesenglish

Thank you again for listening and for supporting the podcast. 

Do me a favour:

  • Like and subscribe
  • Leave a positive review on Apple Podcasts
  • Tell you friends
  • Support the show by becoming a premium lepster (and oh you’ll get all the premium content too and no ads) www.teacherluke.co.uk/premium 

I will speak to you again soon. I have loads of episode ideas and so many things I want to record, but I mustn’t overwhelm you.

Time to focus on some premium content now.

Until next time, good bye bye bye!