Podcast 12 - B1 level funny story - Without a Tie

Names of patterns

Story starts at 6:01

Hello. And today I'm going to tell you a story. And I'm going to bring in a little bit of interesting vocabulary for you and a grammar point as well.

Desert scene

Now, the vocabulary in this story, in the story there is a mention of different patterns. Now, what is a pattern? P-A-T-T-E-R-N, a pattern is the design or some sort of drawing on, usually, material such, for example, that we find on clothes: shirt or trousers or a dress. Now, perhaps the most common pattern would be a striped pattern. Now striped, that's S-T-R-I-P-E-D are lines which go across the material. So striped is a pattern you may find on trousers or on a striped shirt for example.

Now another pattern is checked, check and checked are little squares or maybe larger squares, all joined up and perhaps in alternate, different colors. Or maybe just black and white. And that's another common pattern checked C-H-E-C-K-E-D.

And the third pattern I'm going to talk about is polka dot pattern. P-O-L-K-A. Another word. D-O-T. Now this is a pattern that you often find on, usually, perhaps, ladies clothing, a dress or skirt. And it is made up of little circles, a pattern of different circles, maybe in different colours, with a different background for dresses and skirts or blouses, for example.

Now, the other bit of, well, I suppose it's a vocabulary as well, are the pronouns we use one and ones, which we use when we talk about an object, and we want to repeat a reference to that object. But instead of repeating the word, we use a pronoun one, or ones. So an example would be well, in the story, we're talking about ties, ties, T-I-E, one tie that you put around your neck, usually men - could be women too. But it's often worn by men as a part of formal clothing with a jacket and a shirt, a tie - T-I-E.

And perhaps you could have a striped tie, a striped tie. Now, if I mentioned that, again, I will say a striped one, instead of repeating the word tie. And in the plural, I will say ones - say, I was talking about checked ties, and I refer to that again, with checked ones. Now, the reason for this is that in English, we rarely use adjectives as nouns, as you can in many languages like French or Spanish, for example. So we have to say, one, we can't say the striped or the blue, or the checked or the green, we have to say the green ones, blue ones, striped ones, checked ones.

Past simple and past continuous

Okay, a little bit of grammar that you'll hear during the story is past simple and past continuous. And that's common when we're telling stories, because we often describe a scene with the past continuous. And then if anything interrupts that action, we use past simple. So from the story, there is an example. He was flying over the desert, when the engine of his little plane suddenly broke down. He was flying over the desert. So, he was flying is the past continuous. And suddenly his engine broke down broke down is the past simple interrupting action.

Right. So I will now start the story that it is called Montague Pilkington and the desert. And it's a story taken from my website, English Spanish link dot com. And for Spanish speakers, there is a translation of the story to on that site.

Without a Tie - funny story

Montague Pilkinson was flying over the desert one day when the engine of his little plane suddenly broke down. It made that sort of noise as engines do when they start to go wrong. (Dying engine noises.) The plane then suddenly started to drop out of the sky - nose first, down, down down it went towards the desert and crashed into the sand. Now fortunately for Montague the sand was quite soft. But the plane was a complete wreck. It was totally destroyed.

Anyway, Montague Pilkinson climbed out of his plane and looked around him. Oh, my goodness. There was nothing here but the sand and sky. He started walking in a direction he thought might go towards a town or village. But quite honestly, he didn't know where he was going. The sun was hot. It was midday. It was, my goodness, it was in the 40s! Or perhaps in the 50s! That's 40 degrees Celsius or 50 degrees Celsius.

And he had no water, no food, and no water. And water in the desert when it's that hot, is very, very important if you want to stay alive. Several hours went by, and Montague just walked and walked, trying to go in one direction. But he was by now very, very thirsty.

Then, suddenly, he thought he saw something in the distance, a shape moving. Could it be a mirage? A mirage. What is a mirage? Well, it's when you look through the heat. The air is, well, it's distorted a bit, isn't it? So you can't see very well. So we call that a mirage because perhaps what you're looking at is not really there. But this shape was getting bigger because it was coming towards him. And then he could make it out. A man on a camel. And the man and the camel were coming towards him quite quickly.

Soon, the man came up to Montague on his camel. He was a very elegant looking man wearing flowing gowns (long loose clothing). And he had a long beard. And curiously, he had a suitcase.

"Good day, my man. How are you? Perhaps you would like to buy a tie?" And he opened a suitcase and indeed, inside, were a number of ties. Montague could hardly speak. He was so thirsty and his throat was so dry.

"Give me a water. Water. Please. I'm dying. I need water."

"Ah. I don't have any water. But I have some lovely ties. I have green ones and blue ones and, and pink ones and purple ones. I have striped ones and checked ones. Or I have ties with little polka dots on them. Would you like to buy a tie?"

Montagu just couldn't understand. He couldn't believe his bad luck - he [had] actually met somebody in the desert, and he didn't have any water. And he wanted to sell him a tie.

"You silly man. Can't you see I? I need water. Just give me water."

"Oh dear," said the man. "I'm very sorry. I have no water." And he put his ties away back in a suitcase and closed it up and said goodbye and rode off into the distance. Montague trudged on, trudge is a nice word, isn't it? T-R-U-D-G-E means to walk with great difficulty, to trudge, especially when you're very tired or walking through sand, which is very soft. He trudged on.

Then suddenly, in the distance, he saw something white. Another mirage? He walked towards it. And little by little, the white thing got bigger and bigger. And then he saw, in fact, it was hotel - a beautiful hotel right in the middle of the desert. My goodness, it was such a luxurious hotel. That's just what he needed.

Oh, thank God for that, he thought and he went down on his bended knees and he said,

"Thank you, God. Thank you. Thank you for sending me this hotel." He got up and trudged on, and eventually arrived at the door of the hotel. He was really on his last legs, we say in English on his last legs. That means he was so tired, he could go no further. And he knocked at the door of the beautiful white hotel. Almost immediately, a man opened the hotel, looking very elegant in a jacket, and well, a suit, really. And a nice shirt and tie. And his hair was brylcreemed back. Brylcreemed*. That's a sort of a grease that you put in your hair to make it look smart.

"Good evening, sir. Can I help you?"

Montague said, "Just let me in. Let me in, please!"

And the man (that's the doorman, in fact). He said, "I'm sorry, sir. But you can't come in here without a tie!"

*Brylcreem is actually a make, a brand of hair cream or lotion that became so popular, it is used as a verb in colloquial English.