Transcript of Bitesize Ep 11 Transcript

Charlie:
Hi, I'm Charlie Baxter, the host of the British English podcast. This is a bitesize episode to continue giving you your weekly listening practise. Being a short one, we will get into it straight away. But as always, remember, there is a free worksheet to accompany this episode to help you improve your English. Check it out in the show notes below or at the British English podcast dot com. For this episode, we're going back to Charlie's Pub, this is the second episode that I've done in Charlie's pub, the first one was bitesize episode 2, A British conversation in Charlie's pub, scene one. So this is now scene two. So you might want to go and have a listen to that episode before you listen to this one. And as I said in that episode, I like to spice things up for both you as the learner and me as the host. And when I go out with friends and have a conversation around a table with them, I often wish I could record this conversation because it's it's so rich in native expressions but what holds me back is I don't want them to feel uncomfortable and the conversation becoming awkward and two I don't want to subject you to the atmosphere, which is really loud, and the acoustics would be shockingly poor.

Charlie:
So I've gone ahead and created my own little conversation between a bunch of characters in the sound booth for your listening pleasure. As I said in scene one, this will be quite a bit harder for you to understand, as there are a number of accents in in one conversation, some poorly delivered, because I did two of them. But the aim is to give you a variety of dialects in one conversation and some dialogue to give you native expressions in context. Again, if you do find this difficult, I have a five step method to improve your listening skills, particularly with podcasts in an ebook available for you to download for free. So go ahead and grab that over on the British English podcast Dotcom, or it's in the show notes. So take it steady. Remember, there are transcripts available for premium podcast listeners, but that is entirely up to you. I hope you enjoy the show and I welcome you again to Charlie's Pub for scene two. Here we go.

Chris:
Oh.

Emily:
Oi, what are you doing walking to the pub in this weather!?

Chris:
Hey, oh, I just didn't want to be over the limit on the way home, you know?

Emily:
Fair enough. Just for you to text me back to ask for a lift. You're drenched through!

Chris:
I know! I should have grabbed a brolly.

Emily:
Did you see we both text you in the group chat about some kind of accident on the way home?

Chris:
You both text. No, I didn't see, I, I, I don't have my phone on me.

Emily:
That's weird, your phone's normally glued to your hip, especially after buying that god awful military-grade case for it.

Chris:
Yeah. Yeah. It died on me at lunch so I just left it charging at work.

Emily:
Ok, well I would have offered you but we're here now so I'll park up and come in.

Chris:
Yeah. I'll order some drinks. God knows I need one. Shall I get us a couple of G & T's?

Emily:
Yeah, sounds good. I'll see you in there.

Barman:
You all right mate? Get caught in the rain?

Chris:
Yes, it's bloody pissing it down out there.

Barman:
Well, come on in and dry off then. Can I get you anything?

Chris:
Thanks two gin and tonics please and make mine a double, would you?

Barman:
Sure thing. You hear about the incident this evening? It's all over the news.

Chris:
I, uh, I, uh

Emily:
Oh, thanks, Chris. I'm sorry to bother you, but you don't have any cucumber, do you?

Barman:
Sorry, love. Just, uh, just lemon.

Emily:
Oh, OK. No worries.

Chris:
I forgot about your cucumber obsession. You heard from Mike.

Emily:
No, I haven't. I reckon he just got caught in the traffic after me. It was weird. When I went past, there was a white van on its side and two or three police cars pulled into the hard shoulder.

Chris:
That doesn't sound good.

Emily:
Yeah, but why that many police, surely they'd need an ambulance if it was serious. Chris, you all right? You look like a deer caught in the headlights.

Chris:
Well, just horrible to hear about the crash. You know, I hope no one got seriously hurt.

Emily:
Well, you know, these things happen, don't they? Anyway, did you hear back from Mike about his DNA test results with his ex's baby?

Chris:
Um, I think he told me about it last night. But Emily, I've got I've got to tell you something.

Emily:
How can you forget something like that?

Chris:
I'm serious Em. Listen to me,

Emily:
Ok, okay! But I just need a quick smoke. Let's go out to the smoking area and you can tell me what's up.

Emily:
So go on then, what's got you so worked up?

Chris:
So, you know, I told you that I left my phone at work.

Emily:
Yeah,

Chris:
Well, I was actually lying.

Emily:
So!?

Chris:
I umm. I dropped my phone on the walk home from work.

Emily:
Oh, I forgot you're still walking home from work. That's annoying though. Lucky you got that case though. You got insurance on it, right?

Chris:
No idea. But but Emily,

Mike:
There you muppets are. I were looking for you both. Got another corker to tell ya.

Emily:
Oh, hello. Chris was just about to tell me something

Mike:
Oh that can wait when you hear this. You know that accident on the way home from work.

Chris & Emily:
Yes!

Mike:
You know, my brother just started that journo job, right?

Chris:
Yes. He was telling me about it last week.

Mike:
So he was in the area when he got the call to go report on it. And he just text me saying, "Jammy, old bill nicked that local Mandy dealer".

Emily:
Well, that's good. Although it's making me want to ask if you boys are still doing that stuff.

Chris:
I haven't touched ecstasy since my last year of Trinity.

Mike:
Yeah, well, never mind that stuff. Don't you want to know how he was getting away with it all these years?

Emily:
Well, I know there was a white van involved, and I also think I saw them trying to clean up some chemicals that spilt across the road.

Mike:
Those chemicals you saw was paint. The van was branded as a painting and decorating thingamajiggy. And when the pigs turned up, the driver was frantically trying to pick up the tins of paint. They then sat him down and and took over and found these bags of drugs in the tins of paint.

Emily:
[Gasp] No way! I wonder if that's who Stephie got her gear from a couple of weeks back. She got really sick from that.

Mike:
I heard they'd been trying to crack on to this guy for over a year.

Emily:
So do we know what caused him to crash?

Mike:
Well, that's the really odd thing about it. The tyre marks showed that he just suddenly veered off to the right with fuck all cars around him.

Chris:
Where was this crash exactly?

Emily:
Near Junction Ten, wasn't it?

Mike:
Yeah, I'd say it was around just before the exit. You know, where that that public footbridge goes overhead.

Chris:
Oh, I'm just going to go to the toilet one second.

Mike:
What's wrong with them?

Emily:
I'm not sure. I think he's just annoyed because he lost his phone on the walk home tonight.

Mike:
Uh, that's why he didn't pick up. I had a missed call from him earlier, so I tried him back a couple of times while I was stuck in the traffic on the way home. Oh, it's me brother.

Emily:
Got an update?

Mike:
Wow. Seems like the van crashed because something cracked its windscreen. He goes on to say that they think somebody deliberately threw something at the van from the footbridge above.

Emily:
[Gasp] Wait wasn't Chris just...

Chris:
Alright, guys, I think I need to tell you something.

Mike:
Hang on mate. You can tell us something but before you do mate, care to explain why you're ringing me?

Charlie:
Oh, leaving you on a cliff-hanger there, aren't I? Did Chris caused the accident? Did he do it on purpose as well? The plot could thicken there. And is he going to be in trouble with the police or if he did do anything, is he a hero for saving his local area from that drug dealer? I don't know. You can be the judge of that or make sure that you subscribe to the podcast so that you can find out when scene three is coming along.

Charlie:
But that is the second scene in Charlie's pub complete. I'd like to know what you thought of it. I'll probably try and make the next one more light-hearted as that got a bit dramatic pretty quickly. But yeah, just wanted to grab your attention.

Charlie:
Now, just like in scene one, I imagine you found Mike harder to understand than the others. So Mike was played by me, obviously, and was meant to be from the east end of London. The female voice is played by my girlfriend, Stacey, who has a fairly neutral Southern accent. And then Chris, the posh guy, was also played by me and he had an accent that some label as Queen's English or received pronunciation R.P for short or even nowadays conservative R.P. Now, I didn't really intend for this when starting to plan this episode, but I really think using the transcripts would be helpful for you with this episode. So all you need to do is become a premium podcast member and you will get access to all full length episodes, full transcripts, extended glossaries and flashcards. So I imagine there are quite a few phrases that you were confused by because they were so colloquial and that is where the transcripts would come into play. You can slow it down, you can repeat it. You can obviously see the language and then you can check it in the glossary that I have available further down the page.

Charlie:
So that's available on the premium podcast. And then the academy is the next level up if you wanted to dive deeper with the season based podcast episodes. So head over to the British English podcast Dotcom to sign up or get a free sample of the academy to try out for yourself. And if you do join, you'll also get access to weekly speaking classes.

Charlie:
I really don't want you to feel discouraged if you couldn't keep up with the conversation. There were deliberately loads of colloquial phrases. So take it slow. Get that five step method to improving your listening, especially with podcasts, that ebook that I made that's available for free in the show notes or again over on the website. But yeah see it as a challenge. One that you want to overcome. Because if you can come away understanding most of this conversation, even with the use of the transcripts, that would be really impressive. And lastly, as I mentioned at the beginning, all these episodes have a free worksheet to help you better understand a bunch of the phrases. You can find it in the show notes or visit the British English podcast Dotcom. And as always, you can get in contact with me through Instagram on the British English podcast. Oh, and if you aren't on my weekly newsletter, you're missing out on the weekly email lesson that I send out with the new episodes and what my week has been like with a bunch of vocabulary in context. But anyway, enough about that. I'll be back here next week with a full length episode covering British culture and British English. I've been Charlie Baxter. You've been a great student. Well done. And bye for now.