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STORY

Return to the Sea

Once upon a time, in a small town by the sea, there lived an old fisherman with a moustache like a broom. Every day, the fisherman sat by the sea with a frown on his face and fished. His frown was so deep that his eyebrows disappeared into his broom-like moustache, and occasionally he fell asleep, but since you couldn’t see his eyes behind all that moustache, the only way you could tell was from his snoring, which was hard to hear over the sound of the sea.

The fisherman lived a slow, simple life, one that called to some ancient past; but he did not live in a slow, simple world. When he started fishing as a young man, other fishermen were like him: they sat on the shore and fished using rods. But over the years, they traded their rods for nets, the shore for ships, contented frowns for crowns of salt, all while the fisherman with the broom-like moustache stayed on dry land.

The ways of fishing were not the only thing that changed. Tourists came to swim and sunbathe, rich people rode their yachts out on the water, and loud aeroplanes flew overhead. And all the while, the mustachioed man stayed set in his ways. His lifestyle was unprofitable, unsustainable, lazy, yet he never cursed the sea for not giving him enough fish. Enough was what he got. And he always got enough.

When the fisherman was hungry, the butcher had spare meat, and when his roof needed mending, the builder had spare materials, and anyone who saw him wandering home would invite him in for a cup of tea and a chat, despite the fact that he hardly said a word. The townspeople saw him as an anchor, the one thing that would never change and remind them all how fragile their lives were.

The fisherman lived alone and never took a wife or a lover. Over the years, the way people spoke about him changed, too. First, he was ‘that way’, then ‘queer’, then ‘gay’, until finally, as times changed and he grew older, people came to accept that that was just how he was, and stopped commenting on it.

One crisp winter’s morning, the fisherman went out at sunrise to fish. But as he cast his rod into the water, he noticed something bubbling beneath the surface. The bubbling grew and spread, like the excretion of an underwater volcano, until finally a huge, bedraggled head emerged from the water, as solid as a mountain. The underwater man had kelp for hair, skin as blue as ice, and a beard that made the fisherman’s look like a piece of worn carpet. But the great face showed signs of stress and decay: the eyes were ridden with thick, red veins, the cheeks were covered with barnacles, and a great patch of hair was missing from his head. Still, there was no mistaking this for any other than the great god of the sea, Poseidon.

‘OLD MAN,’ boomed Poseidon. ‘FOR MANY YEARS YOU HAVE FISHED MY SEAS.’

The old man wet his lips and cleared his throat – he spoke so rarely now that his voice was no more than a whisper in the morning.

‘Must you speak so loud?’ he said. ‘I am not that deaf yet.’

‘HA!’ said Poseidon. ‘YOU SEE THE GOD BEFORE YOU THAT YOU SHOULD FEAR MOST, AND YET YOU DO NOT EVEN TREMBLE. DO YOU ACCEPT YOUR DEATH SO READILY?’

The fisherman had heard the stories, of course. No man of the sea lived without hearing them from his father, like a chipped bowl passed down generations. Those who took from the sea risked the wrath of Poseidon in equal accordance to what they took. Many a fisherman’s wife said goodbye to her husband in the morning, only to never see him again.

‘I have respected your seas more than any other,’ said the man. ‘I have not tortured your creatures, and I have only taken what I needed to survive.’

‘SO YOU THINK YOU ARE BETTER THAN THOSE WHO DRAG NETS ALONG MY DEPTHS, AND MINE MY RICHES?’

The old man was careful with his words. He knew from tales that Poseidon had a fierce temper, and his arrogance was unmatched.

‘They chose a different path. I was born into this world set in my ways. If I am to face my death, so be it.’

‘RELAX, LAND-DWELLER,’ said Poseidon. ‘I WILL NOT KILL YOU YET. I HAVE A PROPOSITION FOR YOU.’

The great god raised an iceberg hand to his face and scratched. The noise was like a saw on a metal chain. A clump of barnacles fell from Poseidon’s cheek, revealing a bloody wound beneath.

‘I, TOO, GROW OLD. WE THOUGHT IT WOULD BE LACK OF BELIEF THAT KILLED US, BUT MANY THINGS THRIVE WHILE NO-ONE BELIEVES IN THEM. INSTEAD, YOU HUMANS HAVE BECOME LIKE GODS, AND BROUGHT US GODS TO OUR KNEES.’

The fisherman thought back on what he’d seen in his life. He did not claim to be a man of the world, and he had never travelled beyond these shores, but even he could not ignore the changes taking place around him. Rivers that were once clearer than the sky ran thick with oil, children that once laughed heartily and tripped his steps grew round and rotten-mouthed from imported sweets, and each day the sea offered fewer fish for him to catch.

‘What is it you need?’ said the old man.

A wind blew, casting a tangle of kelp over the god’s face. From beneath the shadows, his eyes frothed like storm-borne waves.

‘IT IS MUCH TO ASK.’

The old man smiled. ‘I owe you everything, Father of the Ocean.’

---

The people of the town noticed the fisherman’s absence, of course. But none knew his name. They had all called him Old Bushy, after his moustache. In the weeks following Old Bushy’s disappearance, the changes in the sea were remarkable.

The trawlers and pleasure cruisers, which once sailed unmolested, met with storm after storm. Swimmers were ordered to stay away, but a few foolhardy were dragged to their deaths. What had once been the town’s friend now became a brooding enemy.

But those who lived off the ocean redoubled their efforts. They built stronger ships, devised systems to predict the currents, fought bitterly against every storm. Eventually, after several months of drawn-out conflict, the sea seemed to give up, and returned to its previous calm. Every now and then, a fisherman would be taken as tribute, but that had always been the contract, and these days it was very much in the humans’ favour.

Still, something had shifted in the waters. The tides pulled with a bit more vigour, the sun did not pierce past the water’s surface, and the fish became slipperier. Whispers passed around town.

On a clear night with a full moon, they say, if you sit out by the sea, you might see something beneath the water. At first, you’ll mistake it for a bed of seaweed, but look closer, and you might recognise a pair of eyebrows and a moustache, pressed together into a frown…

He watches and he waits. One day, his day will come, and we will all return to the sea.

THE END

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TRANSCRIPT

What hides beneath the surface of the ocean? Sunken ships, forgotten treasures, or even gods themselves? Find out in today’s story.

[intro]

Hello, my Lovely learners and welcome to Easy Stories in English, the podcast that will take your English from Okay to Good and from Good to Great. I am Ariel Goodbody, your host for this show. Today’s intermediate level story is called Return to the Sea. As always, you can find the transcript and PDF at EasyStoriesInEnglish.com and you can find the link to that in the description.

So I just want to start by apologizing if I sound a bit hoarse today. Hoarse, H-O-A-R-S-E, is when your throat is dry and you can’t talk very quickly. I may sound a bit hoarse today because I had a rather exciting evening last night. I went down to the house of a local artist who did a naked picture of me.

That’s right. I did some still life modelling. Now, I would love to show you the picture, but unfortunately I am naked in said picture, so it probably wouldn’t be very appropriate. But it was a charcoal drawing. And I stupidly suggested that I do a yoga pose while doing the drawing. So the pose I did was happy baby pose, which is when you lie on your back and you have your legs bent and you are holding onto your feet with your hands.

So as I’m sure you can imagine, it’s quite an uncomfortable pose to be holding for a long time. This was my first time doing life modelling, so I didn’t quite realize what I was getting myself into, but I also felt very happy that after months of practicing yoga, I was able to hold a pose for that long, even though my legs hurt quite a lot today as a result.

So, where does the hoarseness come in? Well, after we finished the drawing, we were relaxing in this guy’s house. He has amazing decorations and he has this whole room full of Moroccan tiles and lamps. So we were sitting in this Moroccan room and we may have smoked a few cigarettes. Oops. 

Um, since quitting sugar, I was, I have been craving tobacco. I’ve been wanting to smoke. So when being offered cigarettes in such a perfect circumstance, it was hard to say no. So yes, I smoked a few cigarettes and I got to bed quite late, so please forgive me for my horse throat. Although, you know, I always find on podcasts when people say, oh, I’m Ill, or my throat is sore, you usually can’t really hear it, or at least I wouldn’t have noticed if they didn’t say so. Maybe the only reason I am bringing this up is because I want to show off about the fact that I got a naked picture drawn of me. Maybe that’s just what I wanted to talk about. 

Anyway, I’m hoping to do further collaborations with this artist, some of which I’m sure will not be naked. I’m actually hoping to get a portrait done so I can take it with me to China so I can have a picture of myself in my room because who wouldn’t want a picture of Ariel Goodbody in their bedroom? Okay. Hmm. 

Without further ado, let’s get into the story. So as is the new norm on the podcast, I will go through the story once and explain the meanings of difficult words and phrases, and then I will go through it again without interruptions as a performance. Listen and enjoy!

Return to the Sea

Once upon a time in a small town by the sea, they lived an old fisherman with a moustache like a broom. 

So a fisherman is someone who catches fish for their job. A moustache is the kind of beard I have. A moustache is a beard over your lip. And a broom is a long tool you use to clean. So a broom has a long handle. And it has sticks that come out at the end. You use a broom to sweep the floor to move dirt and dust on the floor. These days, people often use a hoover or a vacuum cleaner instead of a broom, but in the past, brooms were very common and witches ride on broomsticks. So the moustache of this fisherman is thick and wiry like the end of a broom.

Every day, the fisherman sat by the sea with a frown on his face and fished. 

So a frown is when you push your eyebrows together because you are confused or annoyed, or sad. 

His frown was so deep that his eyebrows disappeared into his broom like moustache, and occasionally he fell asleep, but since you couldn’t see his eyes behind all that moustache, the only way you could tell was from his snoring.

So the only way you knew that he was asleep was from his snoring. Snoring is [snores], and I can tell you most people snore, or at least most men snore after a certain age. I know because I’ve shared a bed with many an old man. I mean, it’s, it’s not a lie, okay? 

The only way you could tell was from his snoring, which was hard to hear over the sound of the sea. 

The fishermen lived a slow, simple life. One that called to some ancient past, but he did not live in a slow, simple world. When he started fishing as a young man, other fishermen were like him. They sat on the shore and fished using rods. 

So the shore is the side of the sea. Yeah. Dry land. A rod is a long stick that you use for fishing. So fishing rods have a line or a rope on them, and they have a hook at the end. You put bait food on the hook and you throw the line into the water. You cast your rod into the water.

But over the years, they traded their rods for nets. 

So they changed, they stopped using, rods, and they started using nets instead.

The shore for ships. 

So they started working on ships instead of the shore.

Contented frowns for crowns of salt. 

So contented means happy. And a frown is that expression with your eyebrows. So obviously this is a contradiction, right? A contented frown, a happy frown. Um, I’m just being a bit poetic here. Crowns of salt. So a crown is like, uh, a circle on your head. So if you are out fishing on the sea on a ship, you’re going to get lots of salt on you and it maybe forms a crown on your head.

All while the fishermen with the broom like moustache stayed on dry land. 

Let me read that sentence again. 

But over the years, they traded their rods for nets, the shore for ships, contented frowns for crowns of salts, all while the fishermen with the broom-like moustache stayed on dry land. The ways of fishing were not the only thing that changed. Tourists came to swim and sunbathe, rich people rode their yachts out on the water. 

A yacht, Y-A-C-H-T, is a kind of boat. Um, I can’t tell you exactly what a yacht is. I just know a yacht is a boat that rich people usually use like a small sailing boat. 

And loud airplanes flew overhead and all the while the mustachioed man stayed set in his ways.

Mustachioed means having a moustache. When you are set in your ways, you are very specific about how you like things and you don’t change. Yeah, you are stubborn. 

His lifestyle was unprofitable, unsustainable, lazy. Yet he never cursed the sea for not giving him enough fish. 

When you curse something, you say, like for example, maybe I curse the sky. I am like, oh, you stupid sky. You always rain on me. I curse you. Yeah. It’s kind of like insulting. So he never complained to the sea. 

Enough was what he got, and he always got enough. 

So this is again, me being a bit poetic. Basically, he always got enough fish, so he had no reason to complain to the sea.

When the fisherman was hungry, the butcher had spare meat.

The butcher is the person who prepares meat for a job, like a person who sells meat. 

And when his roof needed mending, when his roof needed fixing, the builder had spare materials, and anyone who saw him wandering home would invite him in for a cup of tea and a chat, despite the fact that he hardly said a word. The townspeople saw him as an anchor. 

So an anchor is this big, heavy metal thing that ships have. When a ship arrives somewhere, they drop the anchor into the water and the anchor holds the ship in place so that the ship doesn’t move around in the wind. 

The townspeople saw him as an anchor, the one thing that would never change and remind them all how fragile their lives were.

So fragile. Easy to break. Easy to die.

The fisherman lived alone and never took a wife or a lover. Over the years, the way people spoke about him changed too. First he was ‘that way’, then ‘queer’, then ‘gay’, until finally as times changed and he grew, older people came to accept that that was just how he was and stopped commenting on it.

So this is referring to how in the past if a man didn’t have girlfriends or wives, people would think he was gay. But in my parents’ generation or before that they wouldn’t explicitly say it, they would just say, oh, he’s different. He’s that way. Right. And then this language has changed over time. 

One crisp winter’s morning.

So crisp is when the air is really cold and it’s like, it like bites you ’cause it’s so cold.

One crisp winter’s morning, the fishermen went out at sunrise to fish. But as he cast his rod into the water, he noticed something bubbling beneath the surface. The bubbling grew and spread like the excretion of an underwater volcano. 

Uh, that was an excretion. That’s actually a perfect example of an excretion. An excretion is when you let something out, so you know if an underwater volcano erupts, it will let out all of this bubbles and foam. If I let out an excretion, it may be a burp like I just did. 

Until finally a huge bedraggled head emerged from the water.

So a big bedraggled head. Bedraggled is when your hair is like all wet and messy and is kind of sticking together.

Emerged from the water, came out of the water, as solid as a mountain. The underwater man had kelp for hair.

Kelp is a kind of seaweed.

Skin as blue as ice and a beard that made the fisherman’s look like a piece of worn carpet. 

So carpet, when you walk over it many, many, many times, it wears out, it breaks down and it doesn’t look very good. So his moustache looked like a worn carpet compared to this underwater man’s. 

But the great face showed signs of stress and decay. 

Decay is when something is dying, falling apart, breaking. 

The eyes were ridden with thick red veins ridden like covered. 

So veins are the parts of your body that blood flows through, and when someone is very tired or stressed, they have red blood vessels, I guess technically, but we can say veins, in their eyes. 

The cheeks were covered with barnacles. 

So barnacles are a little sea animal. They’re not really alive. I don’t think they’re, they look a bit like rocks and they stick to the side of rocks on the beach. Um, you can eat barnacles. You have to break them off the rock, and then you can cook them. So they’re like, kind of like oysters or clams, but a lot smaller and quite ugly. 

The cheeks were covered with barnacles and a great patch of hair was missing from his head. Still, there was no mistaking this for any other than the great god of the sea, Poseidon.

So there was no way you wouldn’t know that this was the god of the sea, Poseidon. And if you don’t know, Poseidon is an ancient Greek god, the god of the ocean. 

Old man, boomed Poseidon. For many years you have fished my seas. 

The old man wet his lips.

So when your lips are dry, you can put your tongue over them to wet them. 

The old man wet his lips and cleared his throat. He spoke so rarely now that his voice was no more than a whisper in the morning.

Must you speak so loud? he said. I am not that deaf yet. 

Deaf, D-E-A-F, is when you cannot hear. So when people get older, they gradually turn deaf. My mum is a bit deaf. Um, she has a hearing aid, a device that helps her hear. 

Ha! said Poseidon. You see the god before you that you should fear most, and yet you do not even tremble.

So he should be afraid of Poseidon, but he doesn’t tremble. He doesn’t shake. He’s not afraid. 

Do you accept your death so readily? 

So readily means easily, without complaining. 

The fisherman had heard the stories. Of course, no man of the sea lived without hearing them from his father, like a chipped bowl passed down generations.

So basically the stories of the god Poseidon are passed down from father to son in these fishing families like a chipped bowl, so like an old bowl that has chips, uh, parts that have broken off. 

Those who took from the sea risked the wrath of Poseidon in equal accordance to what they took.

Wrath, W-R-A-T-H is anger. So if they, people who take from the sea, people who fish, risk facing Poseidon’s anger in equal accordance, in the same amount. So if they take this much fish, they’re risking facing this much wrath from Poseidon. 

Many a fisherman’s wife said goodbye to her husband in the morning only to never see him again.

So many wives of fishermen say goodbye to their husband, and then my husband goes out and dies because of Poseidon’s wrath.

I have respected your seas more than any other, said the man. I have not tortured your creatures, and I have only taken what I needed to survive.

Torture, T-O-R-T-U-R-E, means to deliberately hurt someone or something. Um, people often use torture to get information out of spies and prisoners. Um, so in this case he’s saying, you know, I haven’t made sea creatures suffer for no reason. 

So you think you are better than those who drag nets along my depths and mine my riches?

So drag nets, to pull nets, and depths are deep places, and the people who mine the riches are maybe drilling oil out of the sea.

The old man was careful with his words. He knew from tales, he knew from stories, that Poseidon had a fierce temper, a very strong anger, and his arrogance was unmatched. 

Arrogance is when you think, oh my God, I’m amazing. I’m the best person. And unmatched means no one is better than you. So no one is more arrogant than Poseidon, so he has to be careful what he says.

They chose a different path. I was born into this world set in my ways. If I am to face my death, so be it. 

So if I’m going to die, that’s fine.

Relax, land-dweller, said Poseidon. 

So to dwell means to stay in a place. So a land-dweller is someone who lives on land and not in the sea. 

I will not kill you yet. I have a proposition for you. 

A proposition is a proposal, like an idea. 

The great god raised an iceberg hand to his face and scratched. 

So an iceberg is like a big mountain of ice that you find in the sea. So an iceberg hand would be a very big hand. Um, the ship, the Titanic, sank because it hit an iceberg.

The noise was like a saw on a metal chain. 

So a saw is a long tool, um, a long piece of metal that you move backwards and forwards to cut something. So you saw a log, a piece of wood, and if you saw a metal chain, it makes a horrible like noise. 

A clump of barnacles fell from Poseidon’s cheek, so a group of barnacles fell from his cheek, revealing a bloody wound beneath.

So a wound is when you are hurt, an injury. So under the barnacles, there are these wounds. Ugh, it’s a bit gross. Who wrote this? Oh wait, I did. 

I too grow old. We thought it would be lack of belief that killed us. 

So ‘we’ here is referring to the gods, and they thought that they would die because people stopped believing in them.

But many things thrive while no one believes in them. 

Many things thrive, many things are very successful, while no one believes in them. 

Instead, you humans have become like gods and brought us gods to our knees. 

So the humans have brought the gods to their knees. They have humbled them, they have lowered to their position.

The fisherman thought back on what he’d seen in his life. He did not claim to be a man of the world and he had never traveled beyond these shores, but even he could not ignore the changes taking place around him. Rivers that were once clearer than the sky ran thick with oil, children that once laughed heartily and tripped his steps grew round and rotten mouthed from imported sweets. 

So this part, um, I kind of heard that in some places in the Amazon, in Brazil, there are these boats that come down and sell food to these local Amazonian tribes. And they’re selling this, you know, Western ultra processed food. So you have these kids who live in these tribes, but they’re getting really fat and their teeth are rotting because, um, they don’t have proper dental care. 

So these are children that once laughed heartily like, ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, and tripped his steps. So they would trip him up, they would make him fall over, and now they’ve grown round and rotten mouthed from imported sweets, and each day the sea offered fewer fish for him to catch. 

What is it you need? said the old man.

A wind blew casting a tangle of kelp over the god’s face. So throwing, um, a piece of kelp, yeah, a piece of his hair over his face.

From beneath the shadows, his eyes frothed like storm-borne waves. 

So froth is like bubble. It’s like the surface of coffee or beer is frothy, so his eyes frothed like storm-borne waves, like waves carried on a storm. 

It is much to ask. 

So it’s a big thing to ask.

The old man smiled. I owe you everything, father of the ocean. 

The people of the town noticed the fisherman’s absence, of course. So they noticed that the fisherman was gone. But none knew his name. They had all called him Old Bushy after his moustache. 

So if someone has a very thick beard, we say it’s a bushy beard, like a bush.

In the weeks following Old Bushy’s disappearance, the changes in the sea were remarkable. So they were very noticeable. 

The trawlers and pleasure cruisers, which once sailed unmolested, met with storm after storm. 

So a trawler is a kind of fishing boat that drags nets along the sea floor. Pleasure cruisers are big boats that people go on cruises on, so they’re like party boats. And these sailed unmolested. They sailed without being attacked or interfered with, but now they met with storm after storm. 

Swimmers were ordered to stay away, but a few foolhardy were dragged to their deaths. 

So foolhardy means you don’t care about risks. You’re just gonna jump into a dangerous situation. And these swimmers were pulled to their deaths. They were dragged to their deaths. 

What had once been the town’s friend now became a brooding enemy. 

So brooding is like thinking and frowning and being grumpy. So the sea was a friend before and now it’s become a brooding enemy. 

But those who lived off the ocean redoubled their efforts. 

Redouble your efforts means to make even more of an effort after failing.

They built stronger ships, devised systems to predict the currents. 

So devised systems. They created systems to predict, to guess the currents. Currents are the way that the water in the sea moves.

Fought bitterly against every storm. So they really fought hard against every storm. Eventually, after several months of drawn out conflict, so after several months of a long, difficult battle, the sea seemed to give up and returned to its previous calm.

Every now and then a fisherman would be taken as tribute, so taken as a sacrifice, so to restore the balance. But that had always been the contract. That had always been the deal, the agreement, and these days it was very much in the humans’ favor. So now much fewer humans die in the sea than before. 

Still, something had shifted in the waters, something had moved, changed in the waters. The tides pulled with a bit more vigor.

The tide is the edge of the sea. So you have high tide and low tide. The moon controls the tides, so they pulled with a bit more vigor. They pulled with a bit more energy. 

The sun did not pierce past the water’s surface. The sun did not break through the top of the sea, and the fish became slippery.

Slippery means like hard to pick up. 

Whispers, whispers, passed around town. On a clear night with a full moon, they say, if you sit out by the sea, you might see something beneath the water. At first, you’ll mistake it for a bed of seaweed, but look closer, and you might recognize a pair of eyebrows and a moustache pressed together into a frown.

He watches and he waits. One day, his day will come and we will all return to the sea.

THE END

Okay, so now let’s do the story again, but with no interruptions. Please listen and enjoy.

Jump back to the story

---

Well, thank you for listening to that story. To be perfectly honest, it’s another story that I am not really sure where it came from. I guess I do like writing stories about nature and climate change.

But when I was writing this story, I was like, where is this set? Like where does this happen? I guess the only place I’ve been that really matches this description is Greece, and I think I’ve only been to Greece like one time. I went to a little island called Paxos with my parents, which was absolutely beautiful. Um, but I don’t think this kind of traditional, this kind of traditional fishing life really happens there or anywhere to be honest, because truthfully, I don’t think you can survive just fishing with a rod. I think pretty much all professional fishermen use boats, but hey, there we go.

You know, I used to think fishing was horrible and gross and like I used to really judge people who fished. I mean, I also judged people who hunted for sport, right? Um, I certainly don’t think I could do it myself, although my feelings have softened on it somewhat. 

You know, I am a vegetarian. Um, I’ve been vegan in the past, but I’m not super dogmatic about vegetarianism. Like I’m not super hard line. I’m not set in my ways, let’s say. What I like to say to people is, I eat meat socially. So people talk about drinking socially or smoking socially, right? You only do it when you are with other people, and that’s usually the case for me. Um, I might eat meat on like Easter and Christmas, uh, if it’s a special occasion, if there’s no other good vegetarian options, and also if the food is going to be wasted, like if someone’s eaten a half of a plate of food and there’s meat, I will happily eat the rest because I hate wasting food, right? My value of avoiding waste comes above my value of not eating meat. 

And I guess my main reasons for not eating meat are environmental, but it’s also dietary. I find my digestion is a lot better when I don’t eat meat. And to be honest, it was best when I was vegan, but it’s a lot of effort to be vegan when you’re eating out because most places just have one vegan option. 

I do know that when I go to China, I will almost certainly have to start eating meat because vegetarianism isn’t really a thing in China, or at least there’s traditional Buddhist veganism, which you know, you can find these Buddhist restaurants in temples and places like that. It’s a similar situation in Japan, but I think that food tends to be quite expensive and not particularly common. 

However, I will persevere. I will just try and order as many vegetables as I can and I can always cook vegetarian at home. 

Anyway, right now as I’m recording this, it’s the first day after finishing my last job. So I was working at a language school in Central London, but I finished working there for various reasons. 

I, I won’t go into too much detail. I actually talked about it a bit on my, uh, email newsletter. Um, but I’m doing some other work in May. I’m like working at another school. And then I’ve just got June and July to sort out, and then in August I’m going to China. 

So it’s kind of a weird moment for me because I’ve had six months of this very regimented, strict routine of getting up every morning going into Central London with all the commuters right on these very busy trains, packed in, walking the same way every day. Routine, routine, routine. And now suddenly that routine is gone and, uh, it feels a bit strange. I’m kind of like adrift. I’m kind of floating around. I don’t really know what’s happening, but it’s good to have a change of routine. It’s, uh, healthy, I think. I hope. Hmm. Yeah, we’ll see. I think it’s good. 

Uh, certainly it will be good to let the creative juices flow, to let the creativity kind of move in different, different directions. Froth, perhaps, perhaps my creativity will froth and bubble. Perhaps it will be like the excretion of an underwater volcano. Oh, so many possibilities. I’m really making my creativity sound like quite a disgusting gas or liquid, aren’t I? But there we go. Nobody said art was going to be pretty, did they? Making art is an ugly affair. It’s difficult, it’s challenging, it’s raw. 

Hmm. Okay. Perhaps being drawn by this artist last night has put me in a very artistic mood because I’m talking like a slightly deranged villain or something like that.

Um. Well, while I’m in this mood, I might as well talk a bit longer. Uh, it’s my birthday coming up soon. Although as you listen to this episode, my birthday will have already happened. Oh, the magic of recording devices on the internet! But I’m very excited for my birthday. I’m doing a big picnic and I’m going clubbing, and I haven’t been clubbing in a very long time, like probably over a year. Almost certainly over a year. So I’m cautiously optimistic. 

It’s a techno club and I’ve never really done techno, but my MO right now, my modus operandi, my goal at the moment is to try and do as many things as I can before I go to China, specifically things that are easier to do here in London than in China.

Obviously I can go clubbing in China, but there are certain experiences I haven’t yet had here that I just, I just want to absorb and do while I have the time. And then, you know, it’s like a new chapter of my life when I go to China. Uh, getting drawn by this artist was one such experience. So, um, yeah, so I’m going clubbing and I guess I’ll let you know how it went in a future episode, maybe even next week’s episode. Ooh, we’ll have to wait and see. I have a feeling though, there may be some content that’s not suitable to share on the podcast. Hmm. Yes. We’ll have to, we’ll have to think about that one. 

Anyway, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Easy Stories in English. I am having a sale on all of my online one-to-one classes. If you book classes in June and July, because as I said, those are the months where I’m looking for work, you get 50% off. That’s right, half off, just for these two months. 

So go to EasyStoriesInEnglish.com/Classes and you can book a 60 minute class for just 30 American dollars, a 45 minute class for $22.50 or a 30 minute class for $15.

I wanna make it clear, you can book these before June, but the classes need to happen in June or July. You’ll find all the details on that webpage, EasyStoriesInEnglish.com/Classes. So if you’ve been thinking of doing a class for a while, but you’ve not had the money for it, this is a perfect opportunity to try classes with me at a very favorable price and to really boost your English this summer. Why not make this the summer of learning English? It’s your opportunity. 

Alright, lovely learners and future students. I’ll see you soon.