Life is not so exciting for me at the moment, so I need to look for thrills in the small things in life, so that’s exactly what we do today! Have you ever woken up at 2.30am and thought, “wow, still 5 more hours before I need to wake up!” If yes, then this is the pod for you! So get the headphones on, sit back, relax and just keep on ROCKIN’, baby! 👊
【RnR Vocab】
– This is a plea to everyone to please leave a review
– The research is a bit of thorough this time
– Working from home takes the edge off
– We were in the office day in day out
– Make some small talk with yourself
– I’m going to throw in a caveat
– If you wake up at 7:00, you’ve got your 8 hours, and you can crack on with the day
– Really sound financial advice
– I, on the other hand, have a cracking spreadsheet
– Outgoings
– You spent quite a chunk of your day creating pictures of us in Paint
– In the end, it paid off (using Microsoft Paint)
– I’m happy as Larry to talk to people
– Did you take out the insurance?
– When the light is amber
– That is living life on the edge
– I’m a stickler for the rules
– I was just trying to fit in, to blend in
– There was not a car in sight
– Literally got pulled over by the police
– Just got a talking to
– I’m an absolute hazard on the road here
– You had to fight fire with fire
– I was always on the front foot
– It hasn’t gone down well in the UK
– Are you doing it just for the kick?
– A taxi is going to cost nigh on £100
【RnR Grammar】
In this episode, I used some lovely 3rd conditional when I said, “If someone had said to me 10 years ago, “You’ll be working at home every day”, I would have said, “That’s a dream!”
So as we can see, we use this structure to talk about hypothetical actions in the PAST, and we used HAD + PAST PARTICIPLE to represent this. Then for the second part, we use WOULD HAVE + PAST PARTICIPLE.
🎬
00:00 Introduction and Casual Banter
01:00 Small Things to Get Excited About
02:26 The Joy of Realizing It’s Saturday
02:46 The Flexibility of Working from Home
04:30 The Thrill of Waking Up in the Middle of the Night
06:12 The Anxiety of Opening Bills
11:51 The Excitement of Unknown Calls
18:57 The Thrill of Catching a Train
22:34 Vocabulary Recap
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Boom Boom Cannon. How are you today? I’m good. Thanks, Martin. How are you? Let’s say always fantastic. Just forget all of the things I told you in our pre-podcast chat. Okay. This is why I think I have to, I need to remember every time, pretend like we’ve just started talking.
Yeah, we’ve literally been talking for an hour, but. Always fantastic, Boom Boom. Everything is perfect, okay? Um, anyways, it’s been a while since you’ve been on the show, but how do we usually start the show? With a review. Do you think we have one? Yeah.
Now I swear, we’ve been on a great run, Boom Boom. Just, I think the last time we didn’t have one was the last time you were on the show. Oh no. So unfortunately the answer to that question is no. So this is a plea to
Everyone to please leave a review. Okay. So next time Boom Boom’s on the show, we can make him happy and read a review. Okay. Um, so on to today’s show. Boom Boom. Now, as I told you in our pre-podcast chat, there’s not much, let’s say excitement in my life at the moment.
Okay. So I have to look for the small things to get excited about. Okay. So I have a list of these things, and we can just have a chat about these. If you get excited by them, if these things happen to you, et cetera, et cetera. Okay.
Is this a list of small things that you’ve written that give you, you know, joy and happiness? Or is this a list you found on the internet? So I would like to take credit for these things and say that I’m so witty and funny
That I came up with these, but the reality is on the Facebook page, Great British Problems, they put something that said, how do you get a British person excited? And then I spent about 20 minutes reading the comments and finding the funny ones. Okay.
Okay. Good. I like to know what research has gone into this. Yeah. So more than five minutes for this one. Normally it’s just five minutes research. This was a bit more thorough, a bit more complete. Um, so, okay. This one I think is one of the
Most exciting things that can happen to any human at any point in their life. Okay, so you wake up in the morning, and you think, Oh, shit, what day is it? I’ve got to go to work. And then you realise.. It’s Saturday. Yeah, that’s a great feeling.
Is this something that you get excited by as well, Boom Boom? Yeah, yeah, I’d say so. I think being able to work from home sometimes I have a bit of flexibility now. So sometimes if I wake up, it’s, you know, it’s a, it’s a Wednesday.
Sometimes I think I’m just going to work from home actually, that sort of takes the edge off. But… Yeah, so lovely vocab there takes the edge off, makes it a bit more bearable. Let’s say, yeah. When you work at home every day,
Though, like I do. Um, that kind of goes away that it was a dream. I remember if someone had said to me, you know, 10 years ago, you’ll be working at home every day. I would have said,
That’s an absolute dream. Now, I’d try to find any excuse I can to leave the house. Yeah, that’s true actually. I mean, back in, you know, back in our day when we were young, young guys around town in London, uh, it was sort of nine,
Nine to five in the office kind of day in, day out, wasn’t it? Exactly. So, um, yeah, whereas now, yeah, now I can kind of, I have the choice most days whether I, where to work from. Yeah, I even sometimes just take my computer and go to my mum’s house,
Even though no one’s there, just, just to get out of the Madhouse. Do you kind of pretend you’re in an office, like other office characters, head to the kitchen, make some small talk with yourself. That’s it. I honestly would love someone just to chat to. You know,
At the coffee machine kind of thing, like on the way to my mum’s cycling, I just like stop people and just have a chat with them just just to make me feel, How’s your weekend? I don’t know you. Stop talking to me.
Just to make me feel like a normal person again, but never mind. So a similar one though to this is when you wake up in the middle of the night. And you think, what time is it? Check your phone, because there’s nothing worse when you wake up and it’s like,
I don’t know, 6:45 and the alarm goes off at 7. But when you check your phone, and it’s still like, half past two, and you think, oh my god, four more hours of this.
Yeah, that is good. That is good. But I’m going to throw it. I’m going to kind of throw in a caveat. Sure. That’s what, that’s what we’re here for, Boom Boom. If you can’t get back to sleep. So if you wake up at that time, you’re thinking of, ah, shit,
I’m not going to get back to sleep now. Then actually what you, you haven’t slept enough. It’s if you wake up, uh, you know. You wake up at 6:30, 7, you probably, hopefully you’ve got your eight hours, and you can, uh, you can crack on with the day.
Um, always looking for the negative there, Boom Boom. No, I think that’s looking for the positive. I think, I don’t know. Okay. But then again, when, when you have two small children at home, anyway, you, you don’t sleep anyway, Boom Boom.
No, yeah, we’ve got very different, I think, experiences of sleep at the moment. Yeah, and in fact, what I often do now is so I’m awake during the night, and then are you trying to count how many hours think well if I can sleep from three till five.
I’ve already slept from one till two then that’s four hours. So that’s not too bad I can live on that. Exactly. I should be able to avoid death on four hours. And that’s what I find myself doing. But um, okay. So another really exciting, maybe not exciting,
But something where your heart starts pumping. Opening a bill. How about that, Boom Boom? What’s your feeling? I find it like remember when obviously at school, maybe this, maybe it was a different sensation for you, but opening exam results when you had the envelope,
And then you have to open the exam results. That’s the same for me. Now we’re talking opening exam results. Pretty much my favourite thing to do. So I’ve basically never left the education system. When, when you, when you know everything’s going to be A, A,
A, like for you, Boom Boom, A star or A is the choice, but.. Yeah, how exciting is that. When you get into sort of lower down the spectrum like me, and sometimes you’re thinking, is this going to be a C or a D then it, there’s a lot more worry.
Have I failed? Um, yeah, no, that’s exciting. Um, opening bills, not so much. Well, not exciting, but it’s just that relief of when you think off, thank God it’s not so bad because when you open it, sometimes I remember I got a heating bill once when I was in Sicily,
And it was $492 euros for two months. And then you’re like, you’re just, you fall to the floor, but you open it one day, and it’s like $150, and you think, Oh, thank God for that. Can pay that. I have that much.
Oh, these days. Cause I’m self-employed. I even have this with my bank balance. I actually. Sometimes go months without actually checking my bank balance because I’m too scared because I think, I don’t know what this is going to say. So it’s just really
Sound financial advice everyone. Just Don’t Check your bank account and just see how it goes. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I, I, on the other hand, I have a cracking spreadsheet that I update every month. Ingoings, outgoings. Okay. So I, I paid for a spreadsheet on the internet. Okay. Because it was like
Really fancy and had all of these buttons. And I paid, I think $25 for it for one of these basically. Like, outgoings, all the rest of it. I still haven’t actually used that spreadsheet, but I do have it saved and one day when I get organised, I’m going to use the spreadsheet,
And it’s the most beautiful spreadsheet you’ve ever seen in your life, Boom Boom. I, I’d have done you a beautiful spreadsheet for half that price, macros, formulas. Oh, you, you know how to use macros on, I can, I can check in the odd macro.
I, I remember once in a job interview saying that I could use macros on Excel. So if people aren’t familiar with these, in fact, I can’t really explain it. I don’t know what they are. It’s a really complicated thing on Microsoft Excel. And I specifically said. In the job interview,
He specifically asked me, so you know how to use macros? And I said, yeah, yeah, sure. And then about three months later, he said to me, you know, how to use macros, don’t you? And I said, uh, I’ve kind of forgotten from now, from when we did the interview.
It’s been a long three months. Three months is enough time to forget how to work macros in Excel. The systems really changed. Actually, I’ve done an update. And, oh. Oh, oh no. The one I use at home is totally different to this. What, what version of Excel is this?
I mean, if I remember correctly from the times we were both doing office jobs in London, the application you spent the most time on was Microsoft Paint. Oh, well that, that was. Did you put out your CV?
That was when I was actually at work. I can, if anyone needs someone to draw some stupid pictures in Microsoft paint, look no further. Okay. I am your man. There’s one day I remember a few emails going around where I think you spent quite
A chunk of your day just creating, um, kind of the various, uh, us lads in our friendship group, uh, creating each one of us one by one in paint, and then sending it around on email to everyone else. Yeah. It’s strange that I’m not working there anymore,
Isn’t it? It’s really weird that my career in banking didn’t really work, considering I was spending all day drawing stupid pictures on Microsoft Paint. Again, some more, maybe I’ve given some financial advice of don’t check your bank account. Um, maybe some career advice.
If you’re looking to make a career in any office job, really, probably not a good idea to spend the whole day on Microsoft paint. Having said that, you do now for Rock n’ Roll English, use those Microsoft paint skills, don’t you?
I actually do. So in the end, it paid off. Exactly. Okay. Yeah, there’s some more career advice. You never know where these things will take you. So just do what you enjoy. Yeah, just do what you want rather than what you’re getting paid to do. And who knows,
Maybe one day actually will be what you do get paid to do. Exactly. Okay. So some real sound career advice there as well. Um, so, okay, here’s one, Boom Boom, something again that could get your heart pumping. Getting a call from an unknown number. What are you,
Are you one of those people that are excited by this or think, you know, it’s an unknown number? I’m not answering that. Yeah, just don’t answer. Don’t answer. Unknown number. No. See, for me again. I just enjoy small talk with people these days. So I’m, I’m happy as Larry to talk to people.
I mentioned on a podcast recently how I ended up having a chat with someone about life insurance for a long time. And, and that was a great chat. Um, but any, anyone that’s willing to talk to me these days. So they phoned to sell you life insurance.
Oh, actually, I think I clicked on a link, and then they phoned immediately, but normally I would try and end the call immediately, but, in the past anyway. But I was just so happy to talk to another human that Did you take out the life insurance in the end or… Didn’t.
No. Probably less enjoyable for the person on the other end of the phone then maybe. I even said, look, I’ve got no interest in buying this, I just want to have a chat. Again, how was your weekend? Let’s not talk about my life, let’s talk about your life.
Let’s just get to know each other, come on. Take it one step at a time On this unknown number thing, when I moved back to the UK and got a UK number. I called Corporal Comer on a Sunday from a number obviously that he didn’t have saved in his phone.
And uh. He answered the phone with obviously Corporal Coma’s name being Lee. And he said, Lee speaking, and I immediately just said, you’re a wanker Comer. I didn’t know people actually kind of answered phones that way in real life. That’s, that’s what I thought when if I get a call from Unknown number,
My hello is a bit different. It will be more of a hello, but that’s like, I don’t know you. Hello. Yeah. I think I’d, it would be more of a, for me, it would be: Hello? What the fuck are you doing, calling me?
I mean, I’m not even answering. So, definitely no way would I go for Russell speaking. Exactly. So I had no choice but to call him a wanker. Did Corporal Comer also put on his deep voice that he likes to put on when he’s ordering at bars or speaking to school teachers?
He did used to do that when we were like 15. I’m not sure he still does that. But it’s great to think that he does. I think he does. I think he does. Yeah, his voice may have actually broken now as well. So when your voice breaks
It’s when you get an adult voice, let’s say, uh, but okay. So this one, maybe not, you’re maybe not the best person to ask for this, uh, Boom Boom for your limited driving experience, but maybe you’ve been in a car, the light is amber.
So between. Obviously, well, green, and it’s going to red, it’s amber, when you put your foot on that pedal to go through it, my God, Boom Boom, that is, that is living life on the edge, living life
To its absolute full. There’s no better feeling of like, I made it, but then there’s the worry of, or was that red? Am I going to get a speeding, uh, like speeding ticket? Whatever you call it. Yeah. I mean, I can relate from doing that on my bike. On your bike. Wow.
Oh yeah. Yeah. If you do, you know, I hit that, hit that amber light on my, on my two wheels. Then, uh, Well, I think this is the difference. I mean, I just pay absolutely zero attention to traffic lights on a bike for me. It doesn’t count if you’re on a bike.
I think, I think, yeah, I see where you’re coming from. Um, but yeah, I’m, you know, I’m a stickler for the rules, you know that? Yeah. Um, so obviously, I mean, I, I was on my bike mostly in Italy. And I must admit their bicycles, not many people go with the traffic light.
So I was just, just doing what I was just trying to fit in, I suppose to blend in. But I do remember being on my bike in London once and looking around, this was on a Sunday, there was not a car in sight. I’m waiting at this traffic light thinking,
This is a fucking joke. What am I doing? So I just then started going and honestly, within two seconds, woah woah [making a siren sound] Really? Literally got pulled over by the police. Oh, that’s bad luck. But this police car, I don’t know where it came from because I looked around,
There was no one there. I go through the red light and then immediately, but just in the end, just to talking to, as they say. Yeah, it’s like, I mean, I, I do remember my cycling experience with you in Palermo. And,
Um, yeah, that was very different in terms of people paying attention to the rules of the road compared to me cycling here in Sweden. I do actually remember you saying at some point, something about rules. And I was like,
Fuck the rules, man. Fuck the rulebook. Just follow me. I, as well, still have this problem now. I don’t really use my bike so much luckily because I’m an absolute hazard. Because in, I noticed when I was in Italy in Sicily especially. That, to have success on the road,
You had to fight fire with fire. So, I had to, I had to be aggressive. So I was very aggressive. I was always, we say on the front foot, like I’m going to, I’m going now. And
I’ve tried to do that a bit in the UK, and it’s, has not gone down very well. I had quite a few people shout at me, lots of cars hitting their horns. A few, a few times fingers pointed in my direction, generally middle one. Yeah. It’s the worst one.
Of all the fingers, it’s the worst one, isn’t it? Thumb’s good. Little… not so much. Uh, yeah, exactly. So, um, so there’s some more advice for people. Okay. So probably is actually a good idea to pay attention to the rules of the road. If you’re, if you’re on a road on any,
Any form of transport, uh, bike or otherwise. Um, so here’s another one for you. Boom Boom, which again is just such a thrill when this happens, there’s a train, you have to get the train, you’re running, you jump on the train, and then you think, Oh my God, is this the right one?
So you, you say to someone. This train’s for London, right? And there’s just that one second when they, before they respond, and then you think, Oh my God, Oh my God. Oh God. Thank God. Yes, it is. Now I can sit down and relax. Have you ever had that Boom Boom?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I’d like to say most of the time I think I probably know what train I’m, I’m getting on because I’m, you know, I’m a public transport guy, but, um, I think I do as well. I’m just looking for that reassurance. Looking for that buzz.
Yeah. Are you like just running onto trains? Just keeping your fingers crossed for the right destination. Just for, just for the kick. Just, just to see where I end up. Oh Coventry! At the same time, though, the only happened to me once of falling asleep on a train due to alcohol.
And, obviously, you’re on the last train, so you miss your stop, and I remember I actually just woke up just as I was leaving this, my stop Chelmsford. And the train’s already moving at this point, and you’re thinking, Oh my God, where, where is this going to end? Yeah, that’s horrible.
That’s a horrible feeling. And then, well, what were we talking? Uh, well, where would you end up? Well, I, could you, could you’ve got, cause you can get all the way out to like Norwich, can’t you? You can, but luckily that wasn’t the next stop. And, but I still thought a taxi back
At this time is going to cost me like sort of nigh on like a hundred pounds. Um. But luckily, someone else had done the same as me. And I then, he then called his girlfriend because that was, I didn’t even have any battery on my phone, and I thought,
I’m, I’m, I’m someone’s going to murder me because I’m going to have to walk home. Um, and I ended up getting a lift with him and his girlfriend. I don’t think they were particularly happy that I was in the car, but he kind of said, I said,
Where are you going? He said Chelmsford. And I kind of said, well, that’s brilliant. You can give me a lift. It wasn’t, can you give me a lift? It was more, that’s brilliant. I’ll jump in with you. Right. So he was, they were driving. No, he called his girlfriend to come. Right.
So at two o’clock in the morning or whatever it was. They definitely, because when you first said that, I thought it was like a, let’s split the taxi kind of situation. So, okay. Everyone’s a winner. Oh no. In that case, they’ve got absolutely no advantage on you being in that car.
Well, they had great conversation with me, Boom Boom. So… Yeah, I can imagine. I think when we got out, when I got out, I think as well, I wasn’t even like, you know, just drop me anywhere. I was like, well, if you can just drop me like as close to
My house as possible, that, that would be great. I kind of got out of the car. I was like, well, do you want to exchange numbers? Should we, should we meet up? Do this again? Okay. So this conversation is going to continue in the members area RnR English
Family. If you would like to be a part of it, go to the website: _*rocknrollenglish.com *_ Click become a member. And there are more than 1,000 episodes for you to listen to. Apologies again for stopping the conversation like that.
It’s just much less time consuming for me. And now time is a very valuable resource for me. Okay, so let’s have a look at some of the vocabulary. I also find it difficult to stop conversations now, so I just talk about the vocabulary at the end. So I said,
This is _*a plea to everyone,*_ to please leave a review. So _*a plea*_ basically to say, please do it. I’m begging you. And yes, I am. Please do leave a review. We had the word _*thorough*_ again. One of my favourite words. When I said the
Research was a bit more _*thorough*_, a bit more complete. Boom Boom said. Working from home _*takes the edge off*_ a bit, so if something _*takes the edge off*_, it makes it less intense, let’s say, and he said back in the day, we were working in the office _*day in,
Day out*_, so that means every day, but has a kind of boring thing to it. So when you do it _*day in, day out*_, it’s kind of like, oh, for fuck’s sake, _*day in, day out*_. I’m going to London on the train. Bloody hell. So Boom Boom also threw in a bit
Of a _*caveat*_ when talking about waking up at two o’clock in the morning. So a _*caveat*_ is like a warning. Let’s say some beautiful vocabulary is when boom boom said, if you wake up at seven o’clock, you’ve had your eight hours sleep and you can _*crack on with the day*_.
Lovely vocabulary. So when you _*crack on with something*_, it’s you do it. Let’s do this. So another example would be, OK, anyway, let’s crack on with this job that we’re doing. Stop talking. Let’s get to work. We also had some sound financial advice. So sound advice. Very good advice. Boom Boom spoke
About his cracking spreadsheet, a really good spreadsheet that has the Income and outgoing. So things you spend. He also said when we worked in offices in London, I spent _*chunk of my day*_ creating pictures in Microsoft paint. So _*a large chunk of your day*_, a large amount of
The day. And we said, but it _*paid off*_, so it brought good results in the end, because now in the RnR family, I make presentations, very stupid presentations in that kind of stupid drawing way, because stupid drawings are more memorable and it helps you remember vocabulary.
I also mentioned I’m _*happy as Larry*_ to talk to people, so I’m really happy. Boom Boom asked me if I _*took out the insurance*_. So when you get insurance, you _*take out insurance*_. We spoke about the _*amber light*_ as well. So in England, you have the red light,
The green light. The one in the middle is amber. We don’t say orange, we call it amber. And I spoke about going through that light. The amber one is _*living life on the edge*_ in a dangerous way, but Boom Boom said he is a _*stickler for*_
The rule. So if you are _*stickler for*_ something, you insist on that behaviour. So Boom Boom insists that we must follow the rules. And I said, sometimes in Italy, I didn’t because I was trying to _*fit in*_, to _*blend in*_, to be like everyone else.
I mentioned how in London, when I _*got pulled over*_ by the police, when the police stop you. There wasn’t a car _*in sight*_, a lovely term, there were no cars, there wasn’t a car in sight. And then I _*got a talking to*_, so when you _*get a talking to*_,
It’s like the teacher telling you off, or your mother, or your father, you get a talking to. I also mentioned how I am a _*hazard*_ on the road, so someone who is dangerous, basically. But I had to _*fight fire with fire*_. So give what you get. I
Also mentioned how on my bike I was also always _*on the front foot*_. So when you are _*on the front foot*_, you are attacking, let’s say. No defending, you attack. That’s what I did on my bike, but I said it hasn’t really _*gone down well*_ in the UK, hasn’t
Really been accepted. So remember, all of this vocabulary is on the website rocknrollenglish.com I will see you all very soon people. In the meantime, just keep on rocking baby. Thanks so much for listening to Rock n’ Roll English. For more great content and to stay up to date, visit _*rocknrollenglish.com*_ and _*facebook.com/rocknrollenglish*_.
We’ll catch you next time.