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Let’s Write a Story Together! with Alastair Budge – Transcript

Welcome to Easy Stories in English, the podcast that will take your English from OK to Good, and from Good to Great.

I am Ariel Goodbody, your host for this show. Today’s episode is something a bit different. Rather than doing an episode by myself, I sat down to work with Alastair Budge from the English Learning for Curious Minds podcast. You might remember Alastair from when I interviewed him before,  or when I voiced an episode of Pioneers of the Continuum, a short series that Alastair produced.

In this episode, Alastair and I workshop a story together. We start with a concept and brainstorm ideas to create a more interesting story. After our conversation, Alastair went away to write the story, we edited it together, and next week you’ll be able to hear the recorded version.

As part of this project Alastair also interviewed me for English Learning for Curious Minds. We talked about my creative process and writing in general, and it’s a really fun conversation. You can watch the conversation on the Leonardo English YouTube channel.

This project allowed me to play a very different role than I’m used to – I’m usually the one in full creative control. So it was exciting to act as more of an editor. You can read the transcript for this episode at EasyStoriesInEnglish.com/Together, or you can watch the video version on YouTube. Since it’s quite a conversational episode and we talk faster than we do in our usual shows, I do recommend either reading the transcript or watching the video with subtitles.

By the way, I have another live stream coming up this Friday at 18:00 UK time. I had so much fun last time and I think you’ll enjoy it, too. It’s a great place to ask questions and do some live story creation with me. You can find the stream on the Easy Stories in English YouTube channel, or you can always go to EasyStoriesInEnglish.com/Stream to find out when the next live stream is.

So, without further ado, here’s my conversation with Alastair!

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Ariel Goodbody: Hey Alastair!

Alastair Budge: Hi Ariel.

Ariel Goodbody: Are you ready to do a bit of story workshopping together?

Alastair Budge: Never ready, but let’s start.

Ariel Goodbody: Okay, so we talked a bit off camera before we started recording this and we’re going very broadly for the idea of someone who moves to London from a European country and they experience some culture shock, they experience some difficulties. So, I guess, first of all, are we naming this country or are we going to make it ambiguous?

Alastair Budge: Oh, good question. I mean, there are some universal peculiarities with the UK and with London. Some things that I’m sure people from any country would find unusual. I would imagine for the listener to really believe in the character, it’s probably easiest if we name where they’re from.

Ariel Goodbody: Mm hmm. Because we could always do the thing where it’s like, I come from Helgolandia, and we make up a fictional country that we can, you know, be like, oh, well, in my, my country we do this and we just make it very silly.

Alastair Budge: Uh yeah, I guess it depends how fantastical we want to make the story. What do you think?

Ariel Goodbody: Well, I mean, I know my preference is always to go weird and funny. I mean, I also think it’s quite a common trope or theme in these kinds of stories, right? The made up foreign country that sounds plausibly European, but isn’t real. But also, I think it would, you know, it could also be more interesting if we do it realistically.

I suppose we would have to choose a culture that we both feel pretty comfortable representing.

Alastair Budge: So I like the fantastical idea. I think if we’re choosing a culture that I have a good enough understanding of, that I kind of feel like I know what some of the main peculiarities would be. For me, that would be probably France or Italy.

They’re one of those countries that you feel like you know well enough that you would be confident writing about how it might be surprising for a French or Italian person to arrive in London.

Ariel Goodbody: For me, probably more France than Italy, but also, you know, I, Germany, I have quite a few German relatives. Um, Spain, I guess as well.

So sorry, just to clarify, do you have a preference for the fictional, the real, or do you want to do a fictional country and take cultural aspects from a real country?

Alastair Budge: Maybe let’s make it more fun, do fiction, uh, completely fictional fantastical, shall we? And maybe this country can have some elements of all those different cultures, perhaps.

Ariel Goodbody: Yeah, I would say normally my impulse my first thought would be to go really far the other direction, like choose something so different, right? Like it’s completely made up like, Oh, in my country, we greet people by hitting them on the head or something, you know, make it completely weird.

But that can sometimes be offensive. The reason I say that is because… When I’m doing stories for beginners with the comedy, you have to do quite like obvious comedy. So I tend to really exaggerate. I’m not saying we have to do that. I’m just, that’s kind of what I normally go for.

So I’ll leave the decision to you ultimately.

Alastair Budge: Let me come back to you with an idea then. As you were saying that, I was thinking about somewhere that we both know, I would imagine nothing about, at least there are no people who live there. Uh, if there was someone who came from Antarctica.

Ariel Goodbody: Hmm, I love that.

Alastair Budge: A small community had been discovered right at the South Pole, no one had ever found out about it before. And one person had been sent as a representative of that place to London, perhaps we’re telling their story of the strangeness of this city.

Ariel Goodbody: Is the South Pole, does it have penguins or is that just the North Pole? Or is it the other way around? I always forget.

Alastair Budge: Penguins just at the South Pole. In fact, there’s also penguins in Africa, I believe, cause I, I went to, um. I went to a zoo just outside Oxford and there were penguins there and I thought, that’s a slightly strange place. And the person who was giving a talk was talking about all these other places that penguins existed, including I think parts of Africa. If I’ve got that wrong, I’m going to sound so stupid, but yeah, penguins generally at the South Pole, polar bears at the North Pole.

Ariel Goodbody: But I think Antarctica is a great choice because we’re not going to offend anyone and then also we can like, oh, we can have all this silly cultural stuff like, oh, well, you know, we live with penguins or whatever, you know, go a bit silly.

Alastair Budge: We could also, it could be another fun element to add to it: Antarctica is claimed by something like 12 different countries, I think. So maybe you can have a fun thing where you’re right at the South Pole. And I don’t know, this person’s recounting how their brother and sister are from Chile, but they’re from Argentina and they’ve got a sister who’s from Norway or something like that, because they’re a kilometre away from each other. Maybe that’s an unnecessary detail to add, but…

Ariel Goodbody: I think these are all really good ideas to brainstorm. I think we can kind of pick from them as we’re going through. Yeah. And actually what we just went through is a perfect example of… With writing often, not always, but often your first idea is not your best idea, right? Like, I think often when people have the first idea for a story, we play it safe.

And then you can always stretch it to the limit. And then if there’s a problem, you find an interesting solution. I’m really, really excited with this idea. They’re coming to the UK.

So I think maybe let’s brainstorm, like, what is weird about London and the UK for foreigners. I can think of lots of things.

Alastair Budge: I’m trying to think of the kind of two, the two kind of levels of weirdness we can have, because we can either have, we can either focus on the fact that anything about any kind of non-Antarctican civilization will be strange for someone who has only ever experienced life in Antarctica, which presumably is very odd, or whether we focus on the fact that there are unique things about London and about British culture that are strange.

I think if we’re making it completely fantastical and funny and almost like this person has come from another planet, has no idea about what life is like in a kind of a developed city, then you could always almost have more fun just talking about how completely different it is from the cold of Antarctica. And perhaps we can add, a kind of secondary level is some of the more British cultural elements that might be weird as well.

Ariel Goodbody: When you said that, I thought like, Ooh, can we invert this? Maybe they’re like staying with a family or, you know, they have some people who are showing them around and these people have thought like, Oh, I’m going to show them all of the unique British things. Like we’re going to eat pickled onions, and we’re gonna go Morris dancing. They’re very weird British things.

But maybe the, this Antarctican sees them and it’s like, no, that’s, that’s normal, you know, like that, you know, we have that in my country, but then it’s the normal things, like you ride on buses, like what’s a bus that they find really weird. So it’s like inverting the expectation.

Alastair Budge: And you could, maybe you could also have, I don’t know, you could make fun of the fact that people in the UK go out wearing very little clothes. A lot of, especially a lot of Europeans, think that when it’s cold, people in the UK just don’t wear enough clothes. There’s people going out on nights out, wearing just T-shirts or women wearing just little skirts.

Clearly this person from Antarctica, I imagine would think that’s very strange because they go out wearing, I don’t know, huge furs or maybe they also do that. Maybe they also go out wearing nothing and they enjoy the cold.

Ariel Goodbody: When you were saying that I got a sudden image of someone going clubbing where they’re just wearing a big black puffer jacket and maybe they look like a penguin. So maybe this person sees some girls outside the club is like, Oh, they’re penguins.

Alastair Budge: Yeah, yeah.

Ariel Goodbody: So stupid.

Alastair Budge: And you could also have, I think it’s in, yeah, in Mary Poppins, when Mary Poppins and what’s he called? Bert. The chimney sweep, they go, they hop into the magical land and they go to the fairground and he puts his trousers down to his ankles and pretends to be a penguin.

Can you picture that?

Ariel Goodbody: They, they, like, he’s waddling around?

Alastair Budge: Yeah. And they’re, they’re following the penguins. Maybe there’s something similar we could do with that, or this person could find themselves at some kind of formal event and see what uh, lots of British people wearing coattails, and think they look a bit like penguins.

Ariel Goodbody: Maybe in their culture, the penguins are either, like, very respected figures, like the penguins are royalty, or maybe they’re, like, the enemies of the people, and every time they see a penguin, they’re like, I have to fight them!

Alastair Budge: Cause of course you have penguins, you have emperor penguins. Do you have king penguins as well? I think there are king penguins too. But you have, you know, various different degrees of penguins, and perhaps this person could find it funny that I dunno you’ve got a king, we have, you know, we have tens of thousands of kings. They’re our penguins.

Ariel Goodbody: See, this is what’s so fun about brainstorming a story with other people, is like you just get so many ideas.

Alastair Budge: I feel like, especially if the audience for this story will be mainly non-British people. Then, you know, we have to poke fun at the royal family because it is a very unusual thing. Imagine, you know, someone coming from the other side of the world and being told that there’s this one family where the most senior person wears a crown and they get carried around on a gold chair.

I mean, that is just strange. So that’s an easy subject to poke fun at.

Ariel Goodbody: Is our Antarctican going to meet the king? Do you think?

I’m not a royalist by any means, so I would probably give a very offensive portrayal of the king, but I don’t know if that’s comfortable for you.

Alastair Budge: Uh, yeah, that’s completely comfortable for me. That could tie in nicely if we’re thinking, if we want to include the sort of, the meeting of a person in like penguin tails. I imagine the King’s butler or servants on the way might be dressed in that kind of way. Maybe we could also talk about fish and chips because I imagine someone living in the Antarctic eats lots of fish, but probably doesn’t, probably has never had mushy peas and mushy peas might look a little bit like, I don’t know, penguin poo or something like that. So.

Ariel Goodbody: Right. Well, maybe they see all these vegetables and they’re like, oh, green food, it must be rotten and they won’t eat any of it or something.

Alastair Budge: Yeah, I like that. Yeah. Perhaps there’s something to do with the seasons and when it’s night and day, cause clearly in Antarctica, it’s unusual, or maybe that’s just a, that’s a distraction that doesn’t really have anything to do with the UK.

Ariel Goodbody: Well, it raises a good question of the time frame of the story, because I’m guessing it’s gonna, it’s not gonna be over a whole year, I mean, if it happens in summer, they could be like, oh my god, it’s so hot, like, why is this country so hot? I’m melting all the time or something.

Alastair Budge: Yeah, I imagine we could do, maybe this is even just a few days of this person. If we want to really convey these kind of experiences this person goes through in detail, I guess we have to have it taking place in a week or something like that, a few days.

Ariel Goodbody: So I can think of a few ways to structure it. One is that they move because they’re like, Oh, um, you know, the economy, the Antarctican economy has really taken a downturn recently. Uh, I guess maybe salmon prices have shot up or something. We can come up with some joke for why the economy is doing so badly. So they’ve moved to the UK for economic opportunities, but they find the culture so weird that they’re like, I’m going home.

Or another option is they’ve been sent as some kind of ambassador to Antarctica. And they’re there to like open diplomatic relationships with the British crown and the parliament. Maybe they start off with a huge level of respect and then after their visit they come home and they’re like, they’re weak, we can send in the penguin armies and destroy them any day now.

Alastair Budge: I like the kind of, uh, Antarctican economy is in trouble, but I guess that might be difficult to reconcile with the fact that this person didn’t know about the outside world before. Maybe, I don’t know if I’m getting too caught up in this, but this idea of Antarctica being artificially divided into all these different countries. The UK, I believe, still claims part of it.

So maybe this person could find out somehow that they are actually a British citizen and that they have a right to claim a British passport. Therefore they’re here. This person wants to free Antarctica from the British and they’ve come to try and speak to the King.

Ariel Goodbody: Oh, I like that. Yeah, almost kind of like a Pocahontas story.

Alastair Budge: Yeah, and is it this person that we’re thinking this person is a human?

Ariel Goodbody: So I was just thinking as you were saying, like, if this society has been hidden, I guess it could be like the indigenous societies in the Amazon where they’ve just remained separate from, like I guess our society, or it could be something really silly. Like there’s a secret underground world that the penguins have built. And every now and then, the researchers who come to Antarctica, they drop a baby down a glacier and the baby gets raised by penguins or something. So they know they have these parents who were these, um, glaciologists from the UK who came to Antarctica and they’re going to find their parents. That’s another possibility.

Alastair Budge: Yeah. Maybe I’m trying to think if there’s a way we can include, like, the expedition to the South Pole where there was the Norwegians, uh, Amundsen who won and the Brits who didn’t make it there and supposedly died. But I think they haven’t one of the bodies hasn’t been found or something.

Ariel Goodbody: So clearly you know a lot about the actual real history, which I don’t, which is cool. So I think it makes sense to follow the history in some degree because you’re interested in it. But I think that makes it very high concept, right? Like it’s kind of a complex concept. So for the jokes to work, you have to kind of set that foundation of knowledge, because otherwise people aren’t going to, it’s not going to be very funny because it’s like most people don’t know all this stuff.

But I think the only problem with that is that could make the story quite complicated, and that’s going to make it longer and kind of more challenging on a language level.

Alastair Budge: You’re right. Okay. So maybe we strip back that stuff, and kind of lean more into the fantastical element so that it’s more universal.

Ariel Goodbody: Well, the thing is really, I mean, I’m torn because it’s clear, it’s really exciting because I’m really lazy when it comes to research. So it’s really nice to have someone who knows all this stuff and I’m like, Oh, it could potentially make a really interesting story and give it some kind of, um, depth in terms of themes and stuff.

But then, then it’s kind of ballooning in complexity. Yeah, I think for this scope, maybe we keep it smaller. Well, maybe you’ll be inspired to write a novel afterwards.

Alastair Budge: Okay, excellent.

So the things that we know, we know for sure that we want to include: someone from Antarctica, who is a human, we’ll figure out exactly why they’re there and how cut off they are from the outside world afterwards. They’re coming to the UK. There is some kind of meeting with the king. We probably want to have a couple more cultural strange things. Yeah, something around food. I think the idea about the vegetables is a really nice inclusion. People know that fish and chips is a food that is associated with, with, with Britain.

A thing that seems to surprise lots of foreigners, nonstop, not just Europeans, coming to the UK is, flat beer, like ale with no fizz. So maybe you could have some kind of, some joke that this person goes to a pub and orders a pint of ale and kind of spits it out onto the floor because they don’t think it’s fizzy.

Ariel Goodbody: Yeah. And they could be like, Oh, well in Antarctica, we make alcohol from rotten fish heads. So like it just, you know, it just needs a bit of a, it needs a bit of a tangy taste, you know.

Alastair Budge: Should we find something that is just completely the same that might seem very strange to a European, let’s say, or to a non-Brit about the UK, but actually it’s completely the same in Antarctica?

Ariel Goodbody: I’m trying to think of what that would be. I mean it could always be like norms around politeness, right? Because I know a lot of people be like, Oh, British people are so polite. Or complaining about the weather, maybe.

Alastair Budge: Complaining about, yeah, that’s good.

Ariel Goodbody: Yeah, and they’re like, yeah, it’s so annoying when you’re like, wrestling with a polar bear, and then a blizzard happens, and you get trapped in the wilderness. Ugh, happens to me all the time.

Alastair Budge: Yeah. Do we want to include any kind of language element or like, are we just assuming that this person from Antarctica speaks English perfectly?

Ariel Goodbody: We could be really, really cheesy, and like, on the flight he’s listening to our podcasts.

Alastair Budge: I feel like that goes in the category of just far too self-promotional.

Ariel Goodbody: Maybe some of the penguins visit from Africa that speak very good English, and they teach the other penguins and this person English, I don’t know.

Alastair Budge: I don’t want to, as you say, don’t want to try and make this too complicated and require too much background knowledge. But, maybe you could, you could say something like, ah no there was an Englishman, some Englishmen who came here in 1917 and they left a phrase book.

And so for someone who does know the story, they’re like, Oh, wow, that’s this people. And if you don’t know the story, it doesn’t matter because that’s okay.

Ariel Goodbody: But if that happened, I think they would have to speak like a really old-fashioned English. They would be like, how do you do, sir?

Alastair Budge: Yeah. Very good. Yeah. I like that.

Ariel Goodbody: Which might be difficult for learners if they’re less used to that old-fashioned English. But if we explain it, I think it could be quite funny.

Alastair Budge: Yeah. Maybe you could have it, if we’re also thinking that after this workshop, we’ll go away and write the story and then we’ll also perform it, maybe one of us is the host, the other person is the character.

Do you think that could be a fun structure so that there’s kind of two characters, I guess? There’s the British character, and there’s the Antarctican character. Or were you thinking that it’s a whole story where we say like, Oh, and then this person did this rather than telling it in the first person?

Ariel Goodbody: I generally avoid first person narratives at lower levels because it tends to be more complex language because it’s more like introspection and personal thoughts. I guess we haven’t decided language level. I’d also say in this, if you’re doing this kind of silly comedy, third person works really well because it’s just like a kind of typical format.

So the way we could always do it is, if we did it in third person, one of us narrates the story and then we do different voices for different characters. But actually that’s a good question of, do you want to aim at a particular language level or what are you feeling?

Alastair Budge: I don’t know. I know when I did my interview of you, you said you always have a level in mind when writing it. I think the hardest bit for me seems to be kind of coming up with the idea for the story and working out what should happen, rather than the level. I’m happy to go for whatever level that you feel. I’m not sure if already when, kind of, workshopping these ideas, you’re thinking that’s great for the beginner level or an intermediate or advanced or…

Ariel Goodbody: I would say probably it’s going to be like intermediate above just in terms of the complexity of the story and some of the vocabulary we’re bringing in. But yeah, because otherwise if you’re doing beginner you might even have to explain what penguin means and then at that point you’re just explaining so many words.

Alastair Budge: Okay. Yeah. So I think I probably works, um, kind of intermediate to advanced.

Ariel Goodbody: So if we did first person, I mean, it could work if we’re doing this slightly higher level.

First person comedy tends to be funny because there’s a mismatch between how the character sees themself and how the audience sees them, like dramatic irony. And I feel like that’s not quite the kind of humour we’re going for here.

Alastair Budge: Yeah, no, I see what you mean. Okay. It sounds good. So I’m just looking at my notes. We need to finalise the reason that they are going to meet the king. I think maybe there does need to be some kind of diplomatic or official reason that they are going to try and meet the King.

Maybe it’s to free Antarctica. Maybe it’s to return the phrasebook. Maybe it’s to go and do something that they had, someone’s been waiting 100 years to do.

Ariel Goodbody: Maybe they’ve found out there are penguins trapped in London Zoo and they want them to free the penguins.

Alastair Budge: Yeah, that’s probably, that’s a good one, especially at a kind of intermediate level, I think, because that’s something that anyone can understand.

Ariel Goodbody: Which idea interests you the most?

Alastair Budge: Do you know, I like this idea that we’re kind of involving the penguins a lot because people clearly know penguins equals Antarctica. People know what a penguin is. Penguins look quite funny. I think you can make the nice parallel between kind of emperor penguin. Oh, we have, we have emperor penguins that we worship. You clearly have a king that you worship. And it’s nice to see that there’s the man who serves him also dresses up as a penguin.

So he goes to see the king. He wants to talk to the king about this penguin who’s trapped at London Zoo, try to bring him back, and maybe the king insists that while he’s here in London he spends, I don’t know, 24 hours or something, understanding everything that the country has to offer.

So, he’s taken around and he’s taken to have a traditional dish of fish and chips, and peas, and then he remarks about the peas. Maybe he’s talking about how they also eat fish in Antarctica, and they also eat it off old newspapers. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe there’s a lot of complaining about the weather.

I like this idea that he’s speaking English from the early 20th century because of this phrase book. How do you want to kind of wrap things up? Does he go back with the penguin?

Ariel Goodbody: Just before that: so we’ve got like, a lot of that is food and drink, right, there’s like fish and chips, the pub, so it’d be good to have like one or two things that are very much based around behaviour, I guess. So maybe something about queuing. You know how penguins huddle up for warmth? Yeah, yeah. So he’s like trying to make them all huddle up and they’re like, what are you doing?

Alastair Budge: Yeah. Maybe he sees people queuing and maybe that it could be something also about hatching eggs. I dunno, cause penguins are –

Ariel Goodbody: The March of the Penguins, right, they all like go on that long march.

Alastair Budge: Yeah,exactly.

Ariel Goodbody: He thinks they’re all going to give birth or something.

Alastair Budge: March of the Penguins. Yeah.

Ariel Goodbody: I’m just gonna check Emperor penguins are the ones with like the big yellow –

Alastair Budge: Yes, I think they’ve got maybe even some yellow kind of V –

Ariel Goodbody: Oh no, I’m getting confused! There’s one that has this big kind of… Yeah, like these ones.

Alastair Budge: Okay. Yeah. I’m not sure

Ariel Goodbody: Because I’m just thinking it looks a bit like Boris Johnson. There’s something about this that just reminds me of Boris Johnson.

Alastair Budge: I guess we’d have to, if we’re not including any kind of visual aids, we’d have to rely on some quite advanced penguin knowledge.

Ariel Goodbody: True. So apparently this is called a macaroni penguin, which is a very funny name.

Alastair Budge: Can you just check that there are king penguins as well?

Ariel Goodbody: Yes, they look similar to emperor penguins actually.

Alastair Budge: Maybe the character, when he’s talking to the King, he can say, Oh, it’s interesting that your Kings are, your country is ruled by a king and ours, in fact, the King answers to the Emperor. Something like that.

Ariel Goodbody: Yeah, or like, oh interesting, so you’re a kingdom, but have you ever had an empire? And the king’s aide is like, don’t talk about it, don’t talk about it.

Alastair Budge: Yeah. What other cultural things can we try and include?

Ariel Goodbody: Because he’s speaking this very old-fashioned 1917 phrasebook. Maybe he thinks like British people, you know, when I learned English from my phrasebook, I was told that everyone was very polite and that there were gentlemen and ladies. And when I came to the UK, you know, where’s the culture gone? Everyone is so rude.

You know, it’s kind of a conservative idea, but you do hear people, like Americans, for example, who are like, Oh, the UK used to be so proud and British, and now everything is changing, you know, so it could be something like that. Maybe someone says like, Oh, you alright, mate? And he’s like, I am not –

Alastair Budge: Yeah, I beg your pardon.

Ariel Goodbody: Yeah, I beg your pardon. Exactly.

Alastair Budge: You alright, mate? Yeah. And then maybe he can say, excuse me, do you mean, are you okay, my good fellow? Or something like that.

Ariel Goodbody: And he’s like, trying to shake hands and say, how do you do?

Alastair Budge: And he’s, I don’t know, he’s wearing a, maybe he’s even wearing a top hat or something like that. We’ve almost got the reason to go and meet, go to the UK. He’s meeting the King, need to flesh out exactly why he’s doing that.

We’ve got some cultural scenarios that can be unusual for him. Do you think that’s enough for the short story and then we find a reason to end it, does he go back with the penguin or stay in the UK or what do you think?

Ariel Goodbody: If I was writing it based on that, the ending would very much depend on the tone that the story takes, and I wouldn’t really know that until I started writing, I think.

Alastair Budge: Should we leave this as a surprise for anyone listening?

Ariel Goodbody: Uh, why not? Well, also, you know, because you’re going to write the first draft and then we’re going to look at it together, but you’re right. I think let’s leave the ending and open for the audience.

Alastair Budge: An open book. Okay. Excellent. All right. I think we have lots of really good stuff that we can start putting together. Thank you.

Ariel Goodbody: Yeah. I have to say, it’s so lovely to brainstorm a story and then know that I don’t have to write the first draft. It’s like, Oh, I get to do the fun part and then you have to do the hard part, but obviously we’re going to work on it together. So I’m really excited.

Alastair Budge: Well, I think we’ve, uh, it’s really interesting to see how much we develop this just in the course of 40 minutes or so going from, Hmm, could this be a French person coming over to work in the UK? Actually, no, it’s someone from Antarctica coming over to meet the king and they might be speaking in old English and blah, blah, blah.

That’s it. It’s fun. Fingers crossed. Well, thank you, Ariel. I’m going to open up a Google Doc now and get started.

Bye.

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Unfortunately, my video cut off at the end there – I did actually say goodbye to Alastair! Listen out for our story, A Visitor from Chilly Bottom, next week, and make sure to go over and listen to my interview with Alastair on the Leonardo English YouTube channel.

And just a reminder that there’s a live stream this Friday as well at 18:00 British Summer Time! You can set a reminder for the stream at EasyStoriesInEnglish.com/Stream.

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider writing a positive review for the podcast on Apple Podcasts, or like and subscribe if you’re on YouTube. Otherwise, see you soon!