Learn ENGLISH (almost) EVERY DAY #6 - L I V E - from England / FRIDAY 8th APRIL 2022

you can see today the weather is looking a little better

a little bit brighter than earlier in the week.

We have lovely fluffy clouds.

Can you see the clouds flying overhead?

Everything is looking rather nice today. Welcome.

Here we go again.

Another live stream

coming to you from the birthplace of the English language.

And I think by now we all know where it is.

It's England.

Da, da, da.

Hi, everybody.

This is Mr. Duncan in England.

How are you today?

Are you okay?

I hope so.

Are you happy?

I hope you are feeling happy.

We have a lot of reasons, I suppose.

We have a lot of reasons to be happy today.

First of all, the sun is out.

Well, here it is.

I hope the sun is shining wherever you are.

And if it isn't, I will try my best to bring

a little bit of sunshine into your day.

And the other reason why I feel

happy is because the weekend is just around the corner.

More about that in a few moments.

I feel quite lively.

I don't know why or how,

because I didn't sleep very well last night.

It took me a long time to get to sleep.

As I mentioned yesterday, Mr.

Steve is not very well.

He has a stinking cold and he has been sleeping

over. At least he did last night.

He was sleeping in front of the log fire.

That's what he did last night.

Even though I could hear in the distance, I could hear him coughing.

Now and again, I could hear him

and it did keep me awake for a while.

However, this morning I woke up and I thought I heard Mr.

Steve coughing, but then I realised it was something else.

It was actually the birds

I woke up this morning and I could hear

the distant sound of birds.

So I opened the window and I was greeted

with the most amazing sight and also sound as well.

I will show you that a little bit later.

On. I won't ruin the surprise.

I won't spoil it for you.

I do not want to take away the surprise

even though I'm sure you can guess what it is.

My name is Duncan.

For those wondering who that strange man is.

Who is that weird looking man

staring at me through my computer monitor?

Well, my name is Duncan. I like English.

You might say that I am a little bit

of an English addict, and I like to talk about English.

I use English in my day to day life

and I like to share my love of English.

And I have a feeling maybe because you are here, perhaps you are

also a fan of the English language, which you might be.

You might not. You must.

Maybe you just like watching a very strange

English man talking on your computer screen.

I don't know.

So here we are.

Yes. As I said, just around the corner

from the weekend which can only mean one thing. Yes.

It's Friday

gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme.

Deeply TBD, TBD, TBD, deeply Jupiter.

If you want to send your messages to Steve, because he's not very well.

And the other thing we are doing at the moment

we are staying in our own individual bubbles.

So I'm not going to close to Mr.

Steve

because as you know, I am supposed to be here for the whole of April.

We have 25 live streams coming up this month.

So Steve has decided to stay away from me

He wants to keep his distance

so I don't catch his cold, which I have to be honest with you.

I have to say is very considerate. It.

That shows you exactly the type of person Mr.

Steve is.

So because he does not want me to become ill

he does not want me to catch his cold,

although I suppose there is still a chance that I could get it.

Who knows?

So we are keeping our distance from each other.

In fact, Mr.

Steve is walking around the house wearing a COVID mask.

So fortunately we have quite a few masks,

a big box of clean masks.

So Steve is wearing those.

He's going around the house.

He's staying away from me,

although I think he might be doing that on purpose.

I think that was his plan all along.

I'm starting to think maybe Steve

caught the cold on purpose.

So he didn't have to or he doesn't have to stay near me.

Will Steve be here on Sunday with our to our live stream?

I don't know.

I hope he will be what I'm going to try and do.

Maybe if Mr.

Steve is still feeling unwell on Sunday,

I might set up a camera somewhere else,

maybe in the other room, or maybe

in his bed where he's lying.

I think he's actually lying down right now,

recovering from his stinky cold.

I know it isn't anything else for those wondering.

It is not anything else.

So you don't have to worry about that.

But yes, I am trying my best to stay well

and healthy during this month so I can finish what I started.

And that is, of course, my special live streams almost every day.

Almost.

So we will see.

Of course, I'm not here tomorrow.

Saturday is my day off.

I've decided that I.

I have to have at least one day when I'm not doing this.

And that particular day is Saturday.

However, don't worry, I will be with you on Sunday

and of course for the rest of next week as well.

Hopefully, unless

I catch Mr.

Steve's cold, we will see what happens Hello to the live chat.

Of course, it would not be the live chat

without you being here.

Now, I'm not quite sure who was first.

I'm just trying to see if I can find out who was first.

Oh, it looks as if

I think.

Beatrice. Hello, Beatrice.

I think Beatrice was here first.

On today's live chat.

Also, we have that speaker as well,

and I think V tests

you were one of the first on today's live chat as well.

Congratulations to you all.

Because I'm feeling a little tired today.

This is going to be unusual.

A little bit different.

I haven't prepared much because I felt

quite tired and and I've been busy

taking care of Steve, making drinks

making sure he is comfortable and warm.

He was last night, as I mentioned a few

moments ago, he was in bed.

Fortunately, we have a little portable bed,

so we put the portable bed

in front of the log fire.

So we had a lovely fire

crackling away in the living room.

And Steve was in bed in front of the fire,

and apparently he had a very nice sleep.

I have a feeling that Steve might have slept better than I did last night.

I kept waking up.

However, I was greeted by something lovely this morning.

I woke up and I could hear that the distant sound of birdsong.

And then I realised that I was actually

almost involved with the Dawn Chorus.

This morning's Dawn Chorus.

Would you like to hear

would you like to hear

this morning's Dawn Chorus?

Now, I did film some of it, not much of it, but I did film

around about 2 minutes of this morning's Dawn Chorus, and here it is.

So this is actually me

hanging out of my bedroom window,

filming the site of the sunrise,

but also the sound as well.

Of all of the birds waking up,

stretching their wings

So that was the scene

this morning, this morning's sunrise and the sound of the birds.

And that was recorded at around 5 a.m.

this morning.

I woke up and I could hear the birds singing.

So I couldn't resist putting my camera outside

and filming a few moments of today's Dawn Chorus.

I hope you enjoyed that.

Very nice.

This is English life.

Almost every day. Something different today.

It is Friday.

It is the end of the week.

And I suppose I want to do something different because I've been with you all week.

We have talked about a lot of big subjects this week.

If you

missed any of my live streams, don't worry, you can watch them again.

They are all available on my YouTube channel and yes,

I will be back with you on Sunday

and all next week as well.

Unless, of course, I catch Mr.

Steve's Cold in which case I won't.

I will be lying in bed, sneezing and coughing.

Hello to the live chat.

Can I say hello? To all my lovely viewers?

And of course, I do appreciate the fact

that you give your time to me whilst I give mine to you.

Hello, also to Mohsen.

Hello, Mohsen. Nice to see you.

We also have little respect

is here today as well.

Nice to see you.

It is a beautiful morning.

It was, I think a lot of people this morning were taking

photographs of the sunrise

this morning here in the UK because it was a nice one.

And we do have a rather nice day today,

even though it's windy and cool as well,

it still doesn't feel warm.

I know a few days ago we had that amazing

period of warm weather,

so I am waiting now patiently for the warm weather.

To return.

Hello also to oh, we have Claudia.

Hello to Claudia. Claudia. Claudia.

How is your autumn going at the moment?

Is your autumn nice?

Are you taking lots of photographs?

And one of the things I love these days about having a phone.

Would you like to see my phone? Is it here?

Oh, it isn't typical.

My phone is always nearby.

I quite often carry my phone everywhere, even in the house.

I like to have it nearby.

Not because I'm expecting a phone call

because no one ever calls me.

That's one of the things about my mobile phone.

It never ring and when it does, it's

normally rubbish.

So the reason why

I keep my phone on me or nearby is so I can film things.

If I see a bird outside it or maybe an unusual animal in the garden,

then I will take hold of my camera,

my mobile phone and fill it and that's what I did this morning.

I jumped out of bed and the first thing I grabbed

was my

mobile phone and I couldn't resist filming it this morning.

So Mr. Steve is ill.

I might be falling ill as well.

At the moment I am 100% fit and healthy.

Okay.

If if I was honest with you, can I be honest with you?

Because, you know, I like to be honest with you.

If I was honest, I would say that I am about 97% Well,

because I do have a few things going on.

I'm not a young person.

And as we all know, if you are approaching a certain period

in your life, you do get the occasional

ache and pain.

You might get very strange things happening to your body.

Things start going wrong.

Not always serious.

We often think of illness as you get

older is always being something serious or life-Threatening.

But I do have one or two things, one or two strange little ailments

that are annoying but not life threatening.

One of them is my ear.

Now, I've never mentioned this before.

But because it's Friday and we're doing things differently,

this ear has been giving me a lot of trouble over the last two or three years.

And I don't know why.

Sometimes it's okay, but other times it's really painful.

In fact, it got so bad

a couple of years ago during the COVID pandemic,

I actually went to hospital to have a scan.

They put me in one of those big machines that makes a lot of noise.

So I had to stick my head inside one of these machines,

and it made the most dreadful noise.

Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.

So they did a scan of my head so they could have a close look inside my ear.

And they discovered

nothing.

Nothing was there.

Nothing abnormal.

But then I went for a hearing test

and they discovered this is really worrying.

I don't know why I'm smiling.

They discovered that I've lost some of my hearing

in this year.

But the irony is

also over the past couple of years, I've developed something called tinnitus.

Have you ever heard of that? Tinnitus?

Tinnitus is a little thing

you can get with your ears, and sometimes it can stay for a few moments.

And sometimes it can stay for a very long time.

And that means you have a noise or a

sound in your ear that that isn't coming from anywhere.

It is just being produced somehow by the nerves in your ear.

So quite often I can hear a very high

pitched noise.

It's almost it's almost like white noise,

but it's really annoying at night.

So sometimes when I'm lying in bed, I can hear the sound.

This year

and it won't go away.

It's there for ages, and sometimes it's really hard to get to sleep because of this noise.

This sound, but it's nothing serious.

I think it's just part of old age.

And the strange thing is my mother

also for many years had tinnitus as well.

Or tonight us some people pronounce it as.

So it isn't anything serious.

It won't kill me.

But it is annoying,

especially at night when you're trying to get to sleep.

And during the day I can't really hear it

because there are other sounds around me.

But at night when everything is quiet and peaceful, I can hear it.

And it's like a very high pitched sound, very annoying.

And it's only in one ear, this ear.

And I don't know why it has been causing me

a lot of problems, but nothing serious.

But apparently now I have lost a little bit of my hearing.

The high frequencies in this ear have actually

disappeared.

This ear is amazing.

It's it's so sensitive and incredible.

But this ear

it's starting to conk out.

It is starting to go kaput, unfortunately, which I think is very strange.

So I did I had all these exams, all of these examinations.

They they had a close look.

They even did a hearing test which took ages.

But the result was.

I'm sorry, Mr.

Duncan, you have lost some of your hearing in one of your ears.

And it's very annoying, to be honest.

Christine.

It says during an examination of the ears they found in one ear, the enlarged bone

that might close the ear cavity

they say that it is a problem

with people who go swimming. Yes.

Ironically,

I don't swim.

I'm afraid of water.

I don't like swimming. I don't like going into the water.

I don't mind being on a boat.

Being on a boat is okay. That's fine.

No problem.

But being in the water, swimming, I can't do that.

I'm always afraid that my head will go under and my ears will fill

full of water.

But I don't know.

This is something I think it's connected to age.

It's our old friend, old age.

So all of the all the doctors all the specialists, they had no idea.

They they still don't know. They said it's unexplained.

That's literally what they put when they sent me

the report on

all of the tests that they did, they say, we can't find anything.

There's nothing there

which makes you feel quite stupid, really,

because you've had all of those tests and they can't find anything.

I suppose really.

I should be glad that they didn't find anything.

So nothing serious, nothing growing inside my head, nothing like that.

But it would appear that there is something there.

Swimmers do suffer quite often from ear problems.

One of the worst things, apparently

one of the worst things that can happen to your ear is

when your eardrum, the small piece of skin

that is responsible for processing the vibrations

from the sounds that go into your ears,

it can burst, it can actually rip

or perforate

and apparently it's quite painful, very uncomfortable.

And one of the problems with that is that afterwards,

you can actually have hearing loss as well because

the eardrum will heal.

So it will repair itself.

But quite often afterwards, you can find that there might be some hearing loss,

Beatrice says, I used to swim for a long time and I loved it, but now I miss it.

Maybe next spring I could go back.

Oh, interesting. Yes,

Mr. Steve does not

have COVID.

It is not coronavirus.

He has taken the test we have a few tests in the house.

So Mr.

Steve did take a COVID test last night and it is negative.

So he doesn't have that, although there are many people at the moment

suffering from colds and fever

because the weather keeps changing when the temperature goes up and then drops again,

a lot of people do often become sick, they become unwell.

So that can happen

it is interesting.

And of course, you may have noticed

that I wear glasses as well.

I don't know what's what's going on with my senses.

So I have to wear glasses, as you've noticed.

And now I have problems with one of my ears.

I might have to eventually have one of those little devices

maybe in my ear, a little hearing device.

Maybe if it gets any worse, the good news is at the moment it hasn't got any worse.

So it's still the same. It hasn't changed.

I still have the ringing noise and sometimes it's rather painful, but that's it.

So it's it's not causing my life to be miserable,

but I think we all have little things, don't we?

Especially as we get older, we all have little ailments.

I like that word ailment.

An ailment is something that is making you feel unwell

or maybe a problem with your body that is causing you

to suffer for a long period.

Of time, an ailment, something that is making you feel unwell,

or maybe something that is wrong

with your health so it's nothing serious.

I'm not worried about it,

although it can be a little bit annoying at night.

And that's the only thing really apart from the occasional ache

and pain in the morning, you know, you wake up in the morning,

you stretch and everything's a bit ooh, ooh, ooh.

It can take a long time

to get up and about in the morning, I think. So.

Can I say hello to Paolo?

Hello, Paolo. Nice to see you back as well.

Claudia has a problem with her fridge, right?

What has happened?

Oh, no. Oh,

do you know the worst thing

about having a broken refrigerator

is that quite often you don't notice.

You might not even realise, especially if you go away somewhere.

You might go away and come back.

And perhaps your your refrigerator

or your deep freeze has stopped working

and all of that lovely food inside.

It's been, has been spoilt.

It's like my worst nightmare.

Imagine that coming back from your holiday and finding out that your, your deep freeze is broken

and all of the food inside has been spoilt, it's all,

it all has to be thrown away.

I don't like the sound of that.

Vitus.

Hello, Vitus. Thank you. Yes.

Sometimes Mr.

Steve shout it's in my ear.

And interestingly enough, it is this ear, you see.

So this ear

is also very sensitive to sound.

So if if a if a sudden noise

or sound goes into this ear,

it does cause a little bit of pain.

Very strange.

I have no idea why, but I think a lot of people do suffer

with ear problems as they get older.

So at the moment, it isn't anything serious.

So don't worry.

But I do get a strange I do get a strange ringing noise sometimes,

and I think it might be the phone, but it isn't.

It's just my ear being a pain in the neck

we'll have a quick break and then I will come back.

Let's have a look at something fun.

Let's have a look at something nice, shall we?

To be honest,

I feel like I need to be cheered up because poor Mr.

Steve is being unwell, and I think we need something

maybe to lift our spirits on this Friday afternoon.

It really does feel as if spring is in the air,

especially when you see scenes like that.

I hope you enjoyed that.

Some sights of the daffodils in the garden

thank you very much for joining me today.

I know it's Friday, but we can still have a little chat.

I hope you will have a good weekend as well.

Some very interesting messages coming through after talking about

my slight problem with my ear

Hello, Sue and Sue went check Latt,

who says working as a deejay and

using the headset or headphones for a long time

may cause serious problems

or serious problems with your hearing.

That is true. You are right.

I'm taking that off.

It's it's falling off my hat.

Yes. You can get problems with your hearing,

especially if you listen to loud music quite often or if you go to discos.

I remember many years ago when I used to go to discos to have a little dance.

Do they still call them discos?

I don't think they do now, do they?

I think they're in nightclubs or people just say clubs.

Are you going clubbing this weekend?

See, I used to go to the disco

but these days, the young,

the youngsters, they all go to the club.

They go clubbing.

But yes, I remember afterwards,

the next morning when I woke up after going to the disco the night before,

I often found that I couldn't hear very well

everything seemed as if it was far away.

It almost seemed as if my fingers were in my ears.

So, yes, you're right.

You have to take care of your hearing.

But of course, when you're young, when you're young, you think you will live forever

and you never think of the consequences of anything

because your brain is still growing, it's still developing.

And quite often you will do things that may

or may not seem reckless.

It is something that can happen.

But yes, I did. I used to go to nightclubs.

I used to go to the disco to have a little dance and Mr.

Steve and myself, we used to go to the nightclubs and have a little groove,

a little pop pop.

Do people still say that?

Do people still say pop?

If you have a bop b o p

it means you have a dance, you have a little bop

Oh, hello.

100, Dobby.

Very nice to see you here.

Today.

Claudia is going to get her refrigerator fixed,

so I hope

I hope you will be doing that.

And I hope you get the refrigerator that you've always dreamt of.

Mr. Duncan, yesterday, I was watching your very first video on YouTube,

and I enjoyed it as usual.

There are many old videos on my YouTube channel.

Some of them are a little bit embarrassing.

Some of them were filmed when I was still in China,

and the quality is awful.

Because the image is very blurry and very fuzzy.

But yes,

there are lots of old videos.

Some of my early videos that I made way,

way back in the distance

Christina says when I was at a nightclub

and I was under the amplifiers or maybe under the speakers,

and the next day I could not hear and then I could not hear properly

for four days.

Fortunately, when you're young,

your body is very good at repairing itself and the damage is not so serious.

But as you get older, those things can have

a delayed effect.

Things that you do when you're young can have

some sort of effect as you get older.

So maybe my problem may be the problem that I have with this ear

is connected to to my days.

When I used to go to the nightclub And of course, I did radio as well.

I used to work in radio, and I used to quite often wear headphones

for a long period of time,

and I would often have them loud.

So maybe I am answering my own question.

Maybe this is it. Maybe this is my diagnosis.

The reason why I'm losing my hearing and this year is because of all the discos

that I went to as a young person.

Hello, Mr. Duncan.

Some teachers have hearing problems after they get retired or they become retired

and I think it's because of their speaking or when they speak loudly all the time.

That also is a very good point.

One of the things I've noticed besides my ear,

I've also noticed that my voice quite often has problems,

and I think that's because I've used it a lot during my life.

So I've spent many, many years talking for long periods of time

and I think this happens with actors or singers.

If you use your voice in your work or in your job

for a long period of time and frequently,

then I think later on you can

find that maybe you get problems with your with your voice

maybe you are more susceptible

to getting infections or problems.

So I do sometimes have really bad throat

problems, but I think that's connected

to the fact that I use my voice quite a lot.

So I think it's like any part of your body,

any part of your body, if you use it too much

you might damage it.

It might break it might stop working

It might fall off.

So there is a warning I will be going in a few moments

is a short one today because the weekend is coming and I have to go and take care of Mr.

Steve because he's not very well.

He has a cold. He's not even at work.

He hasn't gone to work.

Although to be honest, his work is upstairs.

So he doesn't have to go very far these days.

But no, he's not even at work.

I always know it's serious whenever Steve

takes a day off work because he's sick,

I always know that it's really serious because Steve normally doesn't

take days off work when he's feeling unwell.

Beatrice, I had the same problem

when I went to see a show with David Bowie

and also Brian Brian Adams.

Were they together?

I can't imagine Brian Adams and David Bowie performing together.

That would be quite interesting.

I want to see that.

I really want to see that

Guadeloupe.

Hello, Guadeloupe. Nice to see you here.

I haven't seen you for a while.

I am a teacher and sometimes I can't understand what my students say.

I have not thought

it might be my hearing all my ears.

It comes on very slowly.

So the problems that I'm having at the moment with my ear

has been has been going on for a long time, maybe two or maybe three years.

So this is something that I've noticed, but it hasn't been serious.

It hasn't been bothering me. But then

I think it was in early 20, 20,

I started to notice that sometimes it was very painful

and I couldn't hear properly.

And then there was this very high sound,

like a buzzing, like a ringing in my ear.

So that's when I went to the hospital and had all these tests, but they said, there's nothing wrong.

Everything's all right, nothing serious, nothing.

Nothing horrible.

It's just perhaps your age.

You have worn

you have used your ear too much

and it's starting to wear out

but at least it's not affecting me too much.

So I can still do this.

I can still speak and I can still hear with my other ear.

And the hearing loss is only slight.

So really, I don't notice it that much.

But you can have these little things that that come on

and sometimes they can be temporary.

Sometimes they only last for a short time,

or sometimes they can last for many, many years.

It's all right.

Anyway, it doesn't change my day.

I'm still as happy as ever.

I think when you go somewhere noisy, maybe

you should put something in your ears.

Maybe your fingers

or maybe some earplugs.

Christina is going to see the Rolling Stones in concert

all I can say, Christina, make sure you have something to put in your ears

just in case Mick Jagger decides to sing

extra loud.

I can never remember

the other members

of the Rolling Stones.

I can only ever remember Mick Jagger.

And yet I can see them.

I can see the other members.

There's there's the guy that plays the guitar

and he looks like he's about 200 years old.

Is it? Is it?

Let's see if I can remember.

I I want to say Keith.

Is it Keith?

Keith Richards. Am I right?

Did I dream it

or did Keith Richards once appear

in Pirates of the Caribbean?

Did did I imagine that?

I feel as if I might have imagined that.

Did Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones once appear

in Pirates of the Caribbean?

I don't know why

sometimes these things pop in my head.

I'm sure you will tell me

hello, Oussama.

I had the same issue with my left ear.

I took a hot shower, and then I it got better

until it had gone.

Oh, okay, then.

Well, that's that's something that can happen.

Maybe if you go out into the cold on a cold day, it can affect your hearing.

You can also get an ear infection,

which is one of the worst things you can get in there.

You do not want an ear infection.

An ear infection is really bad.

So what

did did was it Ronnie Wood or Keith Richards,

who appeared in Pirates of the Caribbean

or am I just losing my mind?

I seem to remember it

very strange.

Thank you very much for your company.

I will be going a few moments.

I have to go because I have to take care of Mr.

Steve I am Florence Nightingale today because I am looking after Mr.

Steve

Tomic.

Hello, Tomic.

Keith Richards. Oh, it was.

Yes, Keith Richards.

Was I right there?

But did, did he actually appear in one of the Pirates

of the Caribbean movies or did I did I imagine that

it seems like a dream

that I might have had at some point?

Oh, oh, apparently, yes.

Christina says yes. I think it was.

Oh, okay then.

So apparently Keith Richards did appear

in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

So now we know.

I'm so glad that that answer has been put to bed

thank you very much for the company.

I'm going to see if Mr.

Steve needs a cup of tea or maybe he needs his

brow wiped.

Maybe there is sweat running down his face, and maybe I have to.

I have to attend to Mr.

Steve, just like Florence Nightingale.

Thank you very much for your company.

I hope you will enjoy your weekend have a good weekend.

I'm having tomorrow off.

I'm not quite sure what I'm doing tomorrow because we're not.

We I don't know if Mr.

Steve is going to be well, so I don't think we're going into town tomorrow.

I don't think it's happening, unfortunately.

So. So we won't be going into town

unless, of course, Mr.

Steve has a sudden recovery

and I don't even know if Mr.

Steve is going to be with us on Sunday.

So he might not be here on Sunday either,

but I hope he will be

Tolmach says with his face,

he could appear in every type of movie

are you talking about Keith Richards?

Horror Thriller

and all sorts of things?

Yes, I suppose so.

He does look a bit scary sometimes.

But then I suppose all of us come from time to time.

We can all look a little bit scary sometimes, especially first thing in the morning.

Thank you. Christina.

Thank you.

So, Ed, thank you, veterans.

I will see you on Sunday.

2 p.m.

UK time is when I'm back with you and hopefully Mr.

Steve will be here as well. I'm going

to attend

to a very poorly man

right now.

Thank you, Sandra.

Thanks a lot for your company.

I am going now. Enjoy the rest of your day.

I'm going to leave you with some lovely nature shots

to get you in the mood for the weekend.

And I hope you have a good saturday.

Wherever you are watching in the world.

Enjoy the rest of your week and also enjoy the weekend

and see you on Sunday.

And of course, until then, you know what's coming next.

Yes, you do...

ta ta for now.