📕 Part 1: Childhood Activities

This episode's vocabulary

Hide and seek (noun) – a children's game in which one player hides and the others try to find them. → Example: We used to play hide and seek in the park after school.

Wander about (phrasal verb) – to walk around a place in a casual way, without a clear purpose. → Example: We spent the afternoon just wandering about the old part of the town.

Get up to no good (idiom) – to do something mischievous or bad. → Example: The children were too quiet, so I went to check they weren't getting up to no good.

Can't be bothered with (someone/something) (idiom) – to not want to make the effort to do something or deal with someone. → Example: I can't be bothered with cooking tonight, let's just order a pizza.

Loathe (verb) – to hate someone or something very much. → Example: I used to loathe exercise, but now I go to the gym three times a week.

Wouldn't be caught dead (idiom) – used to say you would never do something because it would be too embarrassing. → Example: I wouldn't be caught dead wearing an outfit like that.

At a measured pace (phrase) – at a slow and careful speed. → Example: He explained the complex theory at a measured pace so everyone could understand.

Sorely tempted (phrase) – to feel a very strong desire to do something. → Example: I was sorely tempted to eat the whole cake by myself.

Chore (noun) – a job or piece of work that is often boring or unpleasant but needs to be done regularly. → Example: For him, cooking is a chore, not a pleasure.

Home brewing (noun) – the brewing of beer, wine, or other alcoholic beverages at home for personal, non-commercial purposes. → Example: My uncle has taken up home brewing as a hobby.

Fond of (adjective phrase) – having a liking or affection for someone or something. → Example: She is very fond of chocolate.

Questions and Answers

Maria: What were your favorite activities when you were a child?

Rory: I can't really remember to be honest. It was quite a while ago. But I suppose it must have been the usual things like hide and seek, or going for walks and wandering about with my friends and probably getting up to no good. If reading counts, I did a lot of that when I was younger too.

Maria: Did you prefer to do activities alone or with a group of people?

Rory: I suppose it would have depended on the kind of activity to be honest and my mood. If it were a more active thing, like going out or playing video games, then I'd have done that with people but you can't really read a book together, can you? Especially if you don't have a lot of energy and can't be bothered with people.

Maria: Are there any differences between the activities you liked when you were a child and activities you like now?

Rory: Oh, definitely. I'm a lot more active than I used to be. I used to loathe exercise. And now I do it all the time, well, for example, I do things like yoga now which I wouldn't have been caught dead doing as a child. I still like reading though, just at a more measured pace than before.

Maria: What are your favorite activities now?

Rory: Apart from reading and exercise, I'm not sure really. I like going climbing and I like doing yoga, but I see that as closer to exercise. I've obviously not changed too much over the years, aside from that.

Discussion

Maria: So, dear listener, do you remember what you did when you were a child?

Rory: Or are you an old man like me and you cannot remember anything?

Maria: Yeah, and actually, there is a good joke about childhood and remembering at the end of the episode, dear listener. A nice one, I promise. And Rory, how old is a child? So are we talking two years old, one year old?

Rory: I don't know. I think a childhood as far as I'm aware is defined as between zero and eighteen years old. And so you're not legally responsible for certain things until you're eighteen or sixteen, in my country anyway.

Maria: Oh okay, so I can speak about things that I did when I was fifteen, fourteen, as a child?

Rory: I think so, yeah. Like I say, at least this is according to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the definition covers everyone up until their eighteenth birthday.

Maria: So dear listener, you can say I can't really remember. Okay? To be honest with you, I can't really remember. Don't say to my mind or as far as I'm concerned. No, no, no, no, no. Just say to be honest, I don't really remember. Or to be honest with you, I really enjoyed playing with Lego. Hide and seek is a really popular activity or used to be super popular. Hide and seek, a children's game in which a person or a group of people hide and another person has to find them. Play hide and seek. I played hide and seek outside or you can play hide and seek at home.

Rory: Or when you're a child, you could play hide and seek. You maybe don't do it now that you're an adult. Although, oh why not?

Maria: Can you imagine a group of 30-year-olds? Six 30-year-olds or six 35 or 40-year-olds like, yeah, yeah, let's play hide and seek. That would be awesome actually.

Rory: I'm yeah, I was going to say, I'm sorely tempted to do this.

Maria: I know. Just running around, looking for each other. Wow. And you played in teams.

Rory: If we have a holiday Maria, if we go on holiday together can we play hide and seek?

Maria: Totally, let's do that. Yeah, I can get my brother, his girlfriend. Then I can get some strange people.

Rory: Just people we don't know want to play hide and seek?

Maria: Because the usual situation is you get bored just sitting there where you are. And even if it's a great place to hide, you just have to stay there for several hours. And what do people do? They just get out and then they get caught.

Rory: Yeah, they have to wait for everybody or they could join the seekers.

Maria: Yes, seekers. Hide and seek, you hide and then you seek people, you have to find them, look for them. Yeah, seek. Seekers are people who have to find you. So, I went for walks, or I went wandering about with my friends. So to wander about, to just walk somewhere.

Rory: But with no end goal in mind.

Maria: Yeah, just I wandered about the neighborhood. I wandered about with my friends. I just went for walks with no purpose in particular. I did reading. So reading was my favorite activity.

Rory: What a very boring child.

Maria: I know, Rory, you didn't say anything, I went climbing, I destroyed people's toys.

Rory: Oh, that's rude. Or and mean and cruel, in fact. That wouldn't be a favorite childhood activity, unless you're a sociopath. Other things that people could talk about if they were a more active child could be going to the park and climbing on climbing frames. That's quite a popular thing.

Maria: What about crafts and art?

Rory: I don't know anything about that because I am the least creative person on the planet.

Maria: Yeah, but as a child, didn't you do some crafts, creating, I don't know.

Rory: Yes, if I was forced to at school. I wouldn't say that was my favorite thing to do. Favorite means I liked it.

Maria: Yeah, dear listener, you can say, oh, I did crafts or I made crafts.

Rory: Well, it would be I did craft and I made things.

Maria: Yes, you can say I built houses.

Rory: Toy houses.

Maria: Toy houses, yeah.

Rory: It used to be really popular. It's probably not popular now, but kids used to make ashtrays for their parents in school and I just think that's really funny because it's so wildly inappropriate.

Maria: Yeah, or I did a lot of drawing, I drew when I was a child. I played board games. Yeah, or just I played outside with my friends.

Rory: Important to point out though, you play with people, you do it together. Play on a climbing frame because you're on it, it's the position.

Maria: Now I'm reading this website and it has seven childhood activities and one of them is napping without guilt. So napping is to have a nap, to just to sleep for a while in the middle of the day, to nap. So napping without feeling guilty.

Rory: Oh, I think that adults do that now.

Maria: For example, you've eaten something sweet and then you feel, oh, I shouldn't have done it, no, I'm bad. So you feel guilt, this feeling of worry and unhappiness, but you nap without feeling guilty. I did those activities alone, on my own, or with my friends. And I played video games alone, or on my own. Or sometimes I would play video games with my friends. And sometimes I couldn't be bothered with people. So I can't be bothered with people. So just I want to do something alone. To be bothered, to kind of...

Rory: Well, to not want to do something basically. It's a more advanced way of saying I didn't want to do something. Or I don't have the energy to do it.

Maria: You can say that now I'm a lot more active than I used to be. So about the past, you use used to. Oh I used to be passive, I didn't do anything, but now I'm more active, or I'm a lot more active, I'm much more active, I'm far more active. To say that I'm super active now, but I used to be quite passive. So when you talk about the past, make sure you use this used to. About activities you did in the past but not anymore. I used to play football but now I don't. Or I used to be quite passive. Now I'm far more active. Yeah.

Rory: Well, we talk about the grammar. If you are old like me and you're not so sure about things, you might have to say, it must have been and it would have depended on because we are deducing logically what would be the case. Advanced grammar.

Maria: I used to hate exercises or I used to loathe exercises.

Rory: That's a nice synonym to hate.

Maria: I really disliked exercises like sports or I used to loathe exercises. And loathe, C2.

Rory: Yes, that's what I like to hear.

Maria: Normally people say I hate sports or I hate swimming but you can say I loathe. The pronunciation is crazy, I loathe, loathe. Rory, how do you say it?

Rory: Loathe.

Maria: Or here, I used to loathe.

Rory: Yeah, I loathe doing homework.

Maria: Oh again, we are talking about the past, so what did you do as a child? I used to loathe exercise. Or I used to loathe school. Now I enjoy climbing, yoga, I enjoy reading, I enjoy exercise. I've changed or I haven't changed much over the years. So over the years, during the years, and present perfect. I've changed much, I haven't changed much. Oh my activities haven't changed much. Yeah, let's Google adult activities.

Rory: Let's not Google adult activities.

Maria: No, no, no, we are googling. Top adult activities, okay? Oh, there we go.

Rory: Oh wow, I wonder what's going to come from this.

Maria: What are good activities for adults? The first link on Google. Okay. So, okay, adult hobbies. Okay, they are called adult hobbies. For relaxation and personal growth. Sometimes homemade.com. Okay, there we go. It should be a list creative.

Rory: Oh yeah, this is a list.

Maria: Painting, drawing, sculpting.

Rory: Ooh, sculpting, very, very fancy.

Maria: When you make sculptures. Creative writing, writing a novel. Rory, you are fond of this. Playing a musical instrument. Pottery or ceramics. So you use your hands. You get them dirty and you create something. Jewelry making, there we go. Candle making, actually, that's very trendy now, candles. To make candles. Origami. Scrapbooking. What was scrapbooking?

Rory: It's when you take pieces of things or photographs and put them in a collection together. Although, why you would do that instead of just putting things in a photo album, I don't know.

Maria: Gardening, bird watching. Dear listener, what are your favorite activities?

Rory: Isn't gardening more of a chore?

Maria: Yeah, the gardening would be more of a chore. Some people enjoy creating a garden oasis. Oasis in a desert, oasis. So yeah, dear listener, you can say, oh now I enjoy bird watching and gardening and rock collecting. Rock collecting.

Rory: Rock collecting?

Maria: Yeah, beekeeping, there we go. I keep bees.

Rory: Feel free to lie. Okay, all of these seem very middle-class hobbies to be honest with you. If you are just a normal person and you like to read books, then talk to the examiner about that.

Maria: Oh, there we go, home brewing. I enjoy home brewing. So I make beer and wine and kombucha at home.

Rory: What? That's nice.

Maria: And dear listener, you become interesting to the examiner, the examiner, oh really, you seriously make beer at home? Oh wow.

Rory: The examiner will be like, can you make me some wine?

Maria: Yeah, yeah, could you just get in touch later. Yeah, so fifty-five activities from sometimes homemade.com. Thank you very much.

Rory: Which of them do you do, Maria?

Maria: Do you make your own wine?

Rory: You keep your own bees?

Maria: Not yet, I will. I'll google it today. Oh, I do dancing, dancing, you see. I do traveling sometimes, and meditation, there we go.

Rory: Oh, very nice, very fancy.

Maria: So dear listener, here's the joke. Childhood is like getting drunk. Everyone remembers what you did except you. Rory, could you please explain the joke?

Rory: Well, apparently when if people get drunk and do something embarrassing, they don't remember it, but obviously everybody else talks to them about it. So it would be the same about childhood. You never really remember what you did, but all your parents and everyone, they tell you what you did.

Maria: very funny. Thank you very much for listening. We'll be back to you in our next episode.

Rory: Oh, what are we talking about?

Maria: It's a mystery.

Rory: Do you need a detective to solve your mystery?

Maria: We're gonna talk about brewing, home brewing.

Rory: No, we are absolutely not. Thank you for listening. Bye.

Maria: Bye.