On A Farm in France - Jam (Series 001, Episode 009)

'Hear English' is a blog that provides podcasts and transcripts to help people learn English, find us at http://hearenglishhere.blogspot.com/. 

Jam

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Julian was a Polish guy who worked with us during our holiday on a farm in France.  He was completely hyperactive and capricious, and he often acted more like a naughty child than an adult.  This was often annoying, but it was hard to stay angry at Julian, whatever he may have done, because he was a lot of fun and a really nice guy.  At first we thought that he was not very bright, but he was actually a fantastic artist, and was brilliant at logic problems and was the only one amongst us who was able to complete the Rubik’s Cube that we found in the cottage where we stayed.

The first thing that struck us as strange about Julian was that he always walked around with a spoon in his hand.  The second thing that we found strange was the amount, and how often, he ate, especially considering that he was in good physical shape and was, in fact, incredibly strong.  Not only would he eat more than everyone else at mealtime, he would also eat huge amounts throughout the day.

Julian wasn’t very good at cooking, and so would instead eat anything that we left lying around, even if we specifically told him not to eat it, so we had to hide everything that we didn’t want him to eat.  If we made bread for breakfast the night before, it would be gone by the morning.  If we turned away from food we were making, even just for a second, there would be less of it when we looked back.  In fact we sometimes had to physically restrain him to stop him eating our food, and because he was so strong, sometimes we couldn’t, and so we just had to watch him eat it.

When we finally started hiding our food, so that there was none lying around for him to eat, Julian was forced to cook.  The only thing he knew how to cook was pancakes, but he would make them whenever he had a spare minute, even getting up in the night to cook them.  For the first 2 days, he ate the pancakes with a small amount of jam.  When we first arrived on the farm our hosts had generously given us 30 jars of home-made jam.  After a while though Julian just ate his pancakes with nothing on them.  We presumed he must have got bored of eating jam all the time.   

On the third day of our stay at the farm I decided to make a dessert.  There were only enough ingredients to make something simple, but as I’d found a jar of chocolate spread at the back of the fridge, I decided to make tarts. I made the pastry for the tarts with no problems and I was going to fill some of the pastry cases with the chocolate spread and make the other pastry cases into jam tarts.  When I searched in the cupboard for the jam, however, I found that it had all gone and all that was left were empty jars.

I thought immediately that Julian must have eaten it all on his pancakes, but then realised that there was no way he could have eaten 30 jars in 2 days like that, because he only ever put a small amount of jam on his pancakes.

“Do you know where all the jam has gone?” I asked Julian, turning to face him.  “No” he answered, but he said it in a strange way, and with a guilty expression on his face.  He was holding something behind his back, and then I noticed he had chocolate spread on the side of his mouth.  I looked behind him and he was indeed holding the jar of chocolate spread, which, apart from a spoon sticking out of the top, was now empty. 

The idea that someone could eat chocolate spread with a spoon, directly from the jar, made me smile at first but I quickly stopped laughing and instead looked at Julian in amazement as I realised why he carried a spoon around with him all the time, and why there was no jam left.  He had been using his spoon to eat the jam, directly from the jar, and had managed to eat 30 jars of jam, in just 2 days.  It’s no wonder he was hyperactive!

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On A Farm in France - Marshmallows (Series 001, Episode 008)

'Hear English' is a blog that provides podcasts and transcripts to help people learn English, find us at http://hearenglishhere.blogspot.com/. 

Marshmallows

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I can’t believe they stole your marshmallows.  Thank you for telling me, they’re in bed now but I’ll tell them off tomorrow, and they won’t be having sweets for a while.  They’re good children usually, I’m surprised at them, stealing from a guest.  It’s not as bad as it could have been though, they managed to connect up the hosepipe and soak our last guests with water, and earlier this year we had to evacuate some guests from the holiday cottage because the children found some matches and set fire to the garden. 

I’ll tell them off this time, they need to know that they aren’t allowed to behave badly, although I generally don’t like to be too hard on them, they need to be able to have fun, and anyway, boys will be boys, after all.  In fact we don’t really believe in disciplining our children, we don’t think telling them off stops them from being naughty, and when we do they get upset, and it can’t be good for them to be that sad, so we forgive them very quickly, they don’t often do anything really naughty anyway.  I didn’t realise they liked marshmallows so much though.  Maybe I will buy them a packet or two when I go shopping tomorrow.

I’m glad it was food they stole, I think its important for growing children to eat lots so that they grow up to be strong and healthy.  Maybe I won’t tell them off too much, I don’t want to put them off eating.  I’m quite proud of them really, finding the sweets on such a high shelf, and then getting a chair so they could reach them.  They’re only young and that involves quite a lot of coordination, its good to see them using their brains. 

Some of the teachers at the school think they’re a little behind the other children because they don’t perform well in tests, but this goes to show that they’re quite clever really.  The problem is they don’t go to school too often, they prefer to stay at home, and it’s difficult and tiring to make them do things that they don’t want to do, so its easier to let them stay at home. I don’t want to force them to do something they don’t want to do either, I want them to enjoy themselves. 

I try to educate them at home, but that’s difficult too, they aren’t really interested in learning and they can be disobedient, so I usually just let them play.  I work from home, so I am able to look after the kids at home instead of sending them to school, only it’s difficult to work at the same time, so I end up not getting much work done, which means we have less money, but I think its more important for the kids to be happy.

They also miss a lot of school through injuries and illness.  They’re always getting hurt playing around in dangerous places and banging into things.  I try to make them be more careful but you know what boys are like, and I don’t like to stop them having fun.  They’re ill quite often too.  I worry about their health, so I make sure I give them a lot of natural food but it’s not enough. I try to treat them with herbal remedies, I don’t really trust what the doctors say, they just do what the big companies tell them, and all these medicines are made from plants, so I think it’s best to just use the plants and herbs and simple household remedies.  If they get stomach upsets I give them bicarbonate of soda, for instance, which can also be used for wounds and burns.  I use it in small amounts to treat insect bites, and I think you can use it to treat snakebites too, although I imagine you’d have to use a larger amount. 

It’s quite good that they get ill though because it boosts their immune system.  A lot of people get their children inoculated, but we don’t really believe in that, neither do many people in this village, its better if they get used to diseases naturally, and the more they get ill, the stronger their immune systems will be.  That’s why I was so surprised when they got measles.  There was an epidemic in the village recently and almost 100 children were ill. 

One of my boys was very ill and had to be moved to the big hospital in the city and he was there for several weeks.  It was the doctor’s fault, they didn’t think it was measles, despite the fact that all the other children in the village had measles.  The doctors said it was my fault for not getting the children inoculated, but I explained that I don’t believe in inoculations, and rarely give them medicine, so they should be very healthy and you know what?  They accused me of being a bad mother.  Can you believe that?

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On A Farm in France - Chopping Wood (Series 001, Episode 007)

'Hear English' is a blog that provides podcasts and transcripts to help people learn English, find us at http://hearenglishhere.blogspot.com/. 

Chopping Wood

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On our first night staying in the cottage, whilst on a working holiday on a farm in France, we were shown where everything was by a guy called Alex.  He said he had been working on the farm for 6 months, knew how everything worked and that if we had any questions or needed any help, we could ask him.

I found it cold at night-time in the mountains, so I asked if there was any heating.  Alex showed me a wood-burning stove and explained that he didn’t use it often and warned that it had a fault which made it hard to light.  I decided that I would light it, both for warmth, and for toasting marshmallows on.  Our hosts had provided us with lots of wood in the woodshed, but we had to chop it up to use it in the stove.  Alex said he would come to the shed and show me how to cut up the wood.  I said not to bother, because I knew how, but he insisted, saying that it was quite difficult and that he would show me the best way.

On the way to the shed, Alex showed me around the farm, and told me about our other chores, such as watering the plants in the greenhouse and feeding the chickens, and showed me the most efficient way to do these tasks.  I had the feeling that he knew how to do his job really well and that I could learn a lot from him and I looked forward to working with him on the farm.

The woodshed was hardly a shed at all, one of the walls had fallen down, and the roof was full of holes.  I wondered how the wood stayed dry.  When we got inside, Alex said that there was an art to chopping logs, and that you had to do it in the correct way, otherwise it could take ages to do a job that should only take a minute or two, and it could be dangerous.  I had thought chopping wood was simple, you just hit it with an axe, and it fell into 2 pieces, so I wondered what special trick he had for making it easier.  Alex explained that you had to hit the log right in the centre to split the log, otherwise the axe would get stuck.  I didn’t understand, because I had never had this problem before. 

With that, he picked up his axe and brought it down on the log, but he was right, the log didn’t split, and then I understood why.  He wasn’t actually using an axe, he was using a pickaxe, and the point was of course just making a hole in the log, instead of splitting it in two. 

Once I had finished laughing, I found a real axe, which was much more efficient, and soon we had a large pile of wood which we took back to the house and used to try and make our fire.  Alex was right though, it was very difficult to light the fire in the stove, and it took several attempts to get it going, but the stove wasn’t faulty, the problem was that all the wood was soaking wet, the woodshed, as I’d feared, actually didn’t keep the wood dry at all.

I asked Alex if he had been chopping wood with a pickaxe, and using wet wood every time that he wanted a fire and he admitted that he didn’t light the stove often because it took so long to chop up the wood, and because he had difficulty lighting the stove, and that all winter he had been freezing cold.

My first impression, that I could learn a lot from Alex, was very wrong, it seemed.



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On A Farm in France - The Fair (Series 001, Episode 006)

'Hear English' is a blog that provides podcasts and transcripts to help people learn English, find us at http://hearenglishhere.blogspot.com/. 

The Fair

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During our working holiday on a farm in France, we spent one weekend selling the goods from the farm at a fair.  Vincent, our boss, was supposed to pack the van the night before so that we could set off early on Friday, but, instead, he had stayed up late drinking and smoking pot, so we had to pack the van in the morning and we ended up leaving very late.

The van itself was roadworthy, but the windows were held up with cardboard, the seats were held together with string and the lights were operated by a switch made from the extension lead for a lawnmower.  Vincent hadn’t brought a map, so we ended up getting lost, and late for the fair.  Vincent got stressed and his driving got worse, he went through red lights without noticing, went down one-way streets the wrong way, and cut up other drivers.  We got to the fair very late, and couldn’t get in straight away because Vincent had forgotten his pass, so it took a while to convince security to let us in.  We set up the stall, but it started to rain and everyone left, so we left too, without selling anything at all.

On the Saturday, Vincent ran the stall by himself.  At lunchtime though, things got very busy and he needed our help, but he wouldn’t let us help without first showing us what to do, and he was too busy to show us what to do, so we couldn’t help, and the queue got longer and longer.  Eventually, though, he had to go to the toilet, and he told us to look after the stall until he returned.  We had managed to serve everyone in the queue by the time that Vincent had got back.  Serving customers was very easy, the only reason that there had been a long queue, we realised, was because Vincent was really inefficient.

Vincent was very easily distracted from his work, even when things were really busy. He kept trying to swap our products for beer from the people on the stall next to us, without noticing that this annoyed them, and that they didn’t like us anyway, because we had much more custom than them, despite our incompetence.  Vincent drank this beer whilst working, and in front of the customers.  I told him the customers were upset about this, expecting him to stop, but instead he put the bottle under the table and kept kneeling down to drink from it, but because the table was small, the customers could still see.  Luckily they found it so funny that they were laughing too much to be upset anymore.  He couldn’t take his drink though, and so kept tripping over the wires and boxes around the stall.  When people he knew came by, he’d stop working to have a cigar with them, which he continued smoking whilst serving people food. 

We had sold so much on Saturday that we had run out of cold drinks and because he was making so much money from them, Vincent said he was going to wake up early on Sunday, drive home and re-stock the van.  However, instead of driving home, he slept in.  He was quite worried about how much money he had lost, but much more worried about how angry his wife would be if she found out, and he swore us both to secrecy.

On one side of the stall we sold cakes and hot drinks from an unstable old table.  The kettle was also old and sometimes would stop working.  The cakes were delicious, but difficult to eat without getting chocolate everywhere, so we served them on napkins, which we kept on a plate next to the kettle.  On the Sunday Vincent ran out of napkins, so he was trying to think of where he could get new ones from.  At that point Vincent sent my girlfriend and me to get lunch and we found a supermarket, where we found lunch, and also some napkins for the stall.  We got back to the stall to find Vincent gone, so we put the napkins on their plate and were soon very busy manning the stall. 

10 minutes later Vincent returned, looking very pleased with himself, and triumphantly smoking another cigar.

“I managed to find someone with kitchen towel…” he said taking a roll of it out of a bag.  He was trying to tear off individual sheets from the roll of kitchen towel but found he couldn’t do so at the same time as holding his cigar, so he put his cigar down.

“…I’ve been round all the other stall holders and none of them had napkins,” he said, shaking his head, “I can’t believe how unprofessional everyone else here is.”

A large flame suddenly leapt up from the tabletop.  Vincent had put his cigar down next to the napkins we’d bought and they’d all caught fire and the flame was huge. 

I passed Vincent a metal bowl to put over the flame to put it out but he used it as a fan to try and blow it out, which made the flame bigger and created a cloud of smoke.  Panicking, Vincent brought his hand down hard on the burning napkins, making the old table shake dangerously.  This did seem to be putting the fire out, so he did it again and again, but as his hand came down one last time to put out the last embers, the table collapsed.  The cakes fell into the mud, the ash from the burnt napkins blew into the customers’ faces and the kettle tipped over, covering me with what I thought would be boiling water.

Luckily the kettle had stopped working some time before, and the water was cold.  The fire was out, and we didn’t have to worry about the napkins anymore either, because all the cakes had been destroyed.  A couple of customers who got splashed were very angry, but at that moment a procession of burlesque women dressed as ostriches came past throwing feathers in the air, and the customers calmed down very quickly.  It’s apparently hard to have an argument with someone when you’re covered in feathers and a half naked woman on stilts is tickling you on the nose with a feather duster. 

The customers seemed to take pity on us, and we managed to make quite a lot of money that afternoon.  Vincent was quite shaken, and so stopped drinking and by the evening was even sober enough to drive us home.

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On a Farm in France - Toilet Humour (Series 001, Episode 005)

Hear English provides English listening resources for free.  This is our first series of blogs and webcasts that provide audio clips and written scripts to go with them.  You can see the webcasts, transcripts and the rest of our blog at http://hearenglishhere.blogspot.com/. 

Toilet Humour

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Welcome to Hear English.  This is the fifth part of a series about our adventures on a farm in France.  I have called this piece ‘Toilet Humour’. 

On our way to the farm, because it was a long way, we decided to break the journey up in Toulouse, so I found the cheapest hotel that I could, and phoned up to book a room.  The receptionist spoke better English than I did French, so we spoke in English and I booked a room for two. 

“There are two rooms available, you have a choice…” she explained.  “…you can either have a room with a shower in it, or a room with a toilet in it.”

I laughed a bit at this because, in English, saying ‘a room with a toilet in it’ makes it sound like there is actually a toilet in the room, rather than attached to it in a separate bathroom.  Instead, we tend to say things like ‘a room with an en suite toilet’, ‘a room with a separate toilet’ or ‘a room with your own toilet’.  I didn’t laugh much though because it was an understandable mistake to make, and I didn’t point out the receptionist’s error, as it wasn’t serious, and in the end I chose the room with the toilet.

I shouldn’t have laughed at the receptionist at all though, because her English was, in fact, perfect.  When we got to our room, to our surprise and amusement, we found, at the end of the bed and very much in the room, rather than attached to it, a gleaming, white, fully functioning toilet.  I couldn’t complain either, because the receptionist had told me exactly what I should have expected, and I just hadn’t believed her.

I should explain that the title I gave to this story is a pun, or play on words, of the phrase: ‘toilet humour’.  This story is a funny story about a toilet, and could be described as ‘toilet humour’, however ‘toilet humour’ means something else, it is a common phrase used to describe jokes about bodily functions and going to the toilet.

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On a Farm in France - Scrounging Hippies (Series 001, Episode 004)

Welcome to 'Hear English', we provide English listening resources for free.  This is our first series of blogs and webcasts which provide an audio clip and a written script to go with it.  You can see the webcasts, transcripts and the rest of our blog at http://hearenglishhere.blogspot.com/.


My girlfriend and I recently spent a three week working holiday on a remote farm in the mountains of France.  We had some weird experiences, met lots of strange people and had some bizarre conversations, which we have turned into a series of podcasts for Hear English, aimed at intermediate and advanced level learners of English.  This is our fourth story in the series and is a monologue based on our conversations with one of the guys who was working with us on the farm, called Alex, and it's about scrounging hippies (the transcript is available at http://hearenglishhere.blogspot.com/).

Scrounging Hippies – a Monologue

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Good evening, how’s it going?  Have you been watering the plants in the greenhouse?  Cheers man, that’s one less thing to do.  Do you want a fag?  Yeah, I shouldn’t smoke, I know its unhealthy, but I don’t care, you’ve got to enjoy life, and that’s what I’m here for anyway, to take some time out of work to relax and think about what I want to do.  Not that I had a real job before, I did a course in engineering but it was hard, man, so I did eco-tourism instead but yeah I wanted to take some time off to relax and think about what I want to do with life.  And you can’t relax without a spliff and some beers right?

If you worry about dying the whole time, you don’t spend any time living.  Someone famous said that, I can’t remember who, but it’s a good quote.  People won’t leave you alone though, everyone’s always going on at me, don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t take drugs, and they’re right in a way but you know, it's my body, I can do what I want with it, and I’m not in that bad shape, there are people who are worse.

I mean I don’t smoke that much, I’m not addicted, I’ve only had a couple of fags today…well maybe more than a couple, actually today’s not been a good day, I had to go to the job centre, and that always puts me on edge so I smoked a fair bit today, and then I had a couple of spliffs to wind down with after.

Ah, now the job centre was a waste of time, we had to mess around doing an employment workshop.  I have to go or they won’t give me my social security, and it's only a morning really so not too bad.  They don’t teach you anything you don’t know already though, I mean, if I wanted a job I’d get one, you know, I just want to take some time out and re-assess my life you know? 

The workshop is a waste of time for everyone out here though.  You see, everyone around here has done the same job their whole life, the problem is that everyone’s dying off and there are loads of job vacancies, but the only people who move here are hippies who don’t want to work.  So at the workshops the guys who take them know they’re wasting their time, but they have to run them, and the hippies think they’re wasting their time but they have to go, and afterwards no-one takes any jobs.  The whole thing is ridiculous, they should make it so they have to work, I can’t believe they pay those scrounging hippies just to lie around taking drugs and …

…Yeah, yeah I know what you’re gonna say, that I fit that mould pretty well myself, but, like, for me its temporary, but they’re gonna do this all their lives, you shouldn’t give people money just to spend on drugs.  Yeah well after that I felt like I deserved something nice so I cracked open a couple of beers and relaxed with a spliff…oh come on, man, its not the same, yeah technically it’s a drug but hardly, man, it's not like what everyone else is taking, it's not a class A, and it's better for you than beer for a start, yeah you should remember that beer’s a drug too before you start pointing fingers. 

I bet you do a heap of unhealthy things that I don’t.  You eat meat right, that’s not great for you, and bad for the environment, and you drink cow’s milk too?  Oh right you don’t think that’s unhealthy?  I don’t have all the facts, like, but that’s something I learned up here.  And if you’re not eating organic food then you’re basically eating chemicals, and that’s really bad for your health, and really bad for the soil, the environment…  The stuff they spray on crops, and put in food, its disgusting man, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, it’s all made from petrol, so you can’t really have a go at me. 

And I hardly eat any of that stuff anymore, most of my vegetables are organic now, and the milk, that’s organic.  Although I shouldn’t be eating that at all but I like chocolate milk in the mornings, it’s a French thing.  And I hardly eat any meat.  Not that I wouldn’t eat meat, but just less.  I mean would I have an organic salad over a non-organic burger?  No way man, I want that burger but generally, you know I’m eating less meat.  And the beer’s organic here, although usually I’ll drink anything, and the fags, they’re not organic.  The weed is though, I can vouch for that, its all home-grown natural.  And don’t give me that disdainful look, you’re not an innocent party.  Too right man, what do you think those seedlings you’ve been watering in the greenhouse were?  Oregano?

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On a Farm in France - Donkeys (Series 001, Episode 003)

Welcome to 'Hear English', we provide English listening resources for free.  You can see our blog at http://hearenglishhere.blogspot.com/.  This is our first series of blogs and webcasts which provide an audio clip and a written script to go with it (these can all be found on our blog).  They follow our adventures on a 3 week working holiday on a farm in France.  This third episode for intermediate level listeners is about donkeys.  

Donkeys

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“Have you been to see my donkeys yet? The three smaller ones are lovely, but the larger one, he’s a bit mad.”

“We walked past their field yesterday and we stopped to stroke them for a bit, but we didn’t realise they were yours.”

“Yes, they came with the house, and I thought I’d keep them, I’m really glad I did because they’re worth their weight in gold, even though they can sometimes make a racket.”

“Everyone I know with donkeys just keeps them as pets, I’ve never met anyone who makes money out of them, is their milk valuable?”

“Very, some people just sell it to drink, it’s very expensive but also very good for people with allergies, and it’s a healthy alternative to cow’s milk, because did you know that cow’s milk is very bad for you.”

“Cow’s milk is bad for you?  What does it do?”

“Its awful for you, it’s high in fat, and low in iron and protein, and it causes anaemia, cramp, osteoporosis, heart disease, gastrointestinal bleeding, non-hodgkin’s lymphoma, baby colic…”

“Baby colic?  But that’s a childhood disease.  Is cow’s milk really bad for healthy people drinking a sensible amount for their age, as part of an otherwise healthy diet and lifestyle?  It surely can’t give me colic, can it?”

“Um, I’m not sure, all I know is that it’s really, really bad for you, really bad, and donkey’s milk is better, but it’s expensive.  You can also make it into soap, it’s meant to be very good for the skin; people like the idea of bathing in it like Cleopatra.  You can also do donkey trekking, you can make a lot of money from that.”

“So do you make a lot of money from the milk, the soap and the donkey trekking?”

“No, we don’t milk the donkeys, and we’re not insured for donkey trekking.”

“Oh…um, then how are they ‘worth their weight in gold’?”

“They keep the grass in their field short, and stop the weeds from taking over.”

“I see, and why do you need the grass short, what do you use the field for?”

“Nothing, its just for the donkeys.”

“Right…”

“But it means that we don’t have to cut it, and we don’t have to look after the donkeys at all, they feed themselves off the grass, and can drink straight from the stream.”

“When we walked past we saw that the donkeys couldn’t get to the one stream because there was an electric fence in the way and we wondered what they drank, is there another stream that we didn’t see?”

“No there’s no other stream.  That is odd though, I wonder, if they can’t get to the stream, what on earth have they been drinking?”

Click above to listen.  You can get the .mp4 here, and the .mp3 here (opens in new window).