Stories for English: Recent Episodes
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In this podcast we look at how literature and stories can supplement lessons and help English teachers and students to further their command of English in a more pleasurable and entertaining way… This podcast is for English teachers and students and teachers at large everywhere… whatever you may be teaching… or contemplating to teach…
Stories for English is helping teachers teach... and students learn…
Listening to Farhad you’d think he was a native… he had gone native so fast… you couldn’t tell him out… and he doesn’t seem to miss his native Iran to the point of thinking of settling down here…. Making the city his home and since you’d think he was born raised in Paris… he is naturally good-looking and his swarthy exotic looks make him the centre of attention the minute he walks into a room… every girl’s and a few men’s dream…
The heads just turn on him…
Fahrad is in love… like him Anna seems to have collected all the good looks and good lucks charms of her native Italy… her language is so perfectly tailored you’d never think she wasn’t one of us… moving and shaking about the city like she was a typical parisienne… she is naturally beautiful and her swarthy exotic looks make her the centre of attention the minute she walks into a room… every man’s and a few girls’ dream…
The heads just turn on her…
But their heads don’t turn… and they only have eyes for each other…
Farhad won’t admit to it but he is in love… Anna is waiting… she has been waiting from minute one… she’s waiting for long now… for so long… maybe too long… she’s wishing… wishing and hoping… hoping he’d propose… hoping he’d be the one… hoping she’d be the one… hoping… hoping and hoping… like only a woman can… like Moses she supposes…
And so everybody seemed to think…
Fedelma was born into a working class family yet from a very young age she somehow knew it wouldn’t last.
Every penny she got Fedelma saved from an early age from her earliest days… She would proudly listen to it clickety-click down through the piggy’s back of her piggy bank. One… Five… Ten… Fifteen… Fifty… pence… Working her way up to her first pound…
Given the simple condition of her surrounding she didn’t study very hard nor very long and didn’t even make it to O Levels… Still Fedelma was one of those flowers that soar out of nowhere in a bed of roses to eventually tower over them all unchallenged. Nobody expected them to and nobody ever seems to know nor understand how… How much strength, how much hard work has gone into that…
Fedelma didn’t stop at a nine-to-five.
She landed a cleaning job at sixteen and stuck to it, clang to it as though to dear life.
Fedelma had got her first solid gold independence token with this first hard-earned wage.
Mimi fights on both sides of her asynchronous life… what’s right is not what’s left… and what’s left is not right…
Her love is here but she is there… her love goes there but she’s here… she’s here and there and everywhere but she’s nowhere where you’d expect her…
Sharing… parting a life that seems to be parting ways the best way of departing…
She’s here when she should be there and she’s there when she’d need to be here…
I’ve tried advising her but she won’t heed the warning…
Her love is waiting… her heart is wailing… Can’t he ? Shouldn’t he ? Will he ? be all those things she wants him to be… when all he’s trying to be… all he wants to be is himself with her… the lover in him… her lover… her love… hers… why can’t he be hers ? Why can’t she be his ?
He loved watching The Tudors… wouldn’t have missed them for the world…
‘Yeah…’ I reflected ‘All those sex scenes…’ a poor single man’s porn if you ask me more than history or even adventure… how that programme had made primetime showing was beyond me… and I was no prude… if prudent… but if he was indeed single he was far from poor…
‘Yeah…’ he retorted ‘And the story… and the colours… the costumes…’
‘Yeah…’ I retaliated ‘And all those sex scenes…’
‘Yeah…’ he agreed ‘And all the sex…’
He couldn’t help it but he had to talk about it… all the time… The Tudors every time… every call… every meeting… he would talk about them… we were rehearsing old lines now… the series had long ended showing that he was still talking about them… he would go on… and on… keep talking about them…
The Girl Who Kissed Sharks
Cristina didn’t seem like much to look at… a pretty petite woman… keeping herself much to herself… not letting on… not kissing and telling…
I remember… I tried to kiss her once… or twice… I remembered… a little girl…
It was years before I saw Cristina again… there in front of me… for the world to see… on my TV screen… in full sheen… pictured under water… just when I was beginning to remember the shy girl in the middle of the school yard… frightened of her own kind… and she was there… swimming with sharks ! Better than swimming she was… dancing… stroking them and they were coming to her for more… for her… and more sharks were coming… and then before anyone had a chance to let out a word she was kissing the shark that was there under her stroke… like purring like a kitten…
Fancy that !
Marilyn’s Bag
Marilyn had a bag… only little did she know it…
How many women know how many bags they have ? No more than those who know what they have in their bags… they have so many…. And yet so few… there’s always another bag… and another… and another… another one… and another on… there’s always a prettier bag… there’s always a bigger bag… there’s always a better bag…
What’s a girl’s best bag ? The next bag !
But that one had a Marilyn bag… Marilyn’s bag… Marilyn…
There she was smudged printed painted on that bag… and I raised my gaze my stare to look at the girl… and the woman… looked at me and she looked like Marilyn… only like Marilyn looked when she had her good looks…
Impatient
Yesterday, visiting the relief doctor for my usual GP when his iPhone rings… right under my eyes…
A home number comes up, and slightly disturbed, he mumbles a lame excuse and takes the call…
‘No… I’m listening…
Yes… it was a good idea to call…
I see… you’re still running a high temperature with a light fever... you’ll need to keep taking the medication… and the antibiotics…
I’ll come round tomorrow around 4 or 5… after my home visits…’
A Hymn To Her
They kissed… and for a moment the heart shaped of the heads… that vision of their faces stood still… looked like a still… a picture… a pretty painting… the kind you see on the cover of those romance novels in stations’ stationery and confectionary shelves… books women read men never look at…
Tropolitsa Girls
In answer to the poem and song by Irene PAPAS Saranta Pallikaria set to music by Vangelis…
The girls of Tropolitsa
In the prime of life
Dressed and head dressed
Their tanned skin golden brown in the sun
One fine summer morning
The girls of Tropolitsa sing
The girls of Tropolitsa
In the prime of life
Dressed and head dressed
Their tanned skin golden brown in the sun
One fine summer morning
The girls of Tropolitsa sing
For the women of Lebadia
Forty Braves
Inspired by the poem and song by Irene PAPPAS Saranta Pallikaria… set to music by Vangelis…
Forty brave centurions from Lebadia
In the prime of their life
Boots and uniforms on
Muscles and armour shining in the sun
One fine summer day
Marching on to raid Tropolitsa
Stories for English podcast is a podcast for both teachers and students of English as much as for people who merely like to read a good story and be entertained…
In this podcast we will look at how literature promotes learning and furthers the command of English while giving endless reading pleasure…
In this episode we look at introducing me and my work… and how it belongs in the study and furthering of English for both teachers and students… and how to introduce stories in the lesson…