October 8, 2025 • 47 mins
Learn English with another short story. This time it s a 300-word story by Katherine Brush, often used in literature classes, full of vivid imagery and with an emotional twist. I read the story to you, and then go through each line, explaining vocabulary and grammar. 👉 Episode page with story text and vocabulary notes https://teacherluke.co ...
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, Welcome back to Luke's English Podcast. In this episode,
I'm going to tell you a story and then use
it to help you learn English, okay, and I'm going
to do this in three sections. First, I'll just tell
the story to you and you can use that as
a sort of little listening exercise or listening test see
if you understand everything in the story, and especially things
(00:21):
like how the characters feel and exactly what happened. It's
a fairly short story, this one. I mean, it's a
very short story. Really, it's three hundred words about three
hundred words long. So it'll just take a couple of
minutes for me to read the story to you, and
then after that I will just explain what happened in
the story in my own words. And then I'll go
through the story again line by line, and I'll explain
(00:44):
vocabulary for you so you can learn various little phrases, words,
and other descriptive language from this story. Okay. So the
story that we're looking at here is called The Birthday Party,
and it was written by Catherine Brush, who was an
American newspaper columnist, a short story writer, and novelist. This
(01:08):
particular story was published in nineteen forty six, But like
all good writing, it still remains fresh today. It feels
like it could have been written yesterday. Really, so although
it was written a few decades ago, it still feels
really sort of fresh and new. So I'm going to
start in just a second. But first of all, just
(01:29):
one question for you to consider before you listen to this. Okay,
my question is about people watching. Do you know what
people watching is? This is when you're in a public place,
for example, in a restaurant, and you kind of watched
the other people around you and sort of, I don't know,
imagine what their lives are like, observing other people. I mean,
(01:51):
it's a bit nosy right to do this, to look
at other people and sort of spy on them, but
I think we all do this. So do you ever
people watch? Okay, when you're in a public place like
a restaurant or in a queue for something, so observing people,
watching their behavior, watching their interactions with each other, and
(02:11):
then imagining what kinds of people they are, what their
lives are like, what their relationships are like. It might
also include eavesdropping, which means actually listening to other people's conversations,
but not necessarily so people watching, just watching people watching,
strangers that you might see in public places. Do you
ever do this? If you're out in public, do you
(02:33):
ever discreetly watch the other people around you and try
to imagine what their lives are like? For example, if
you're in a restaurant, do you subtly while you're eating
your food, do you, subtly, without being noticed, have a
look at the other people on the other tables, try
to imagine who they are, what's going on in their lives.
(02:53):
And have you ever observed something amusing or something that
made you feel a little uncomfortable or embarrassed, Like maybe
you got an insight into someone's personal relationship or family
life and it actually made you feel an even a
little bit uncomfortable or embarrassed or awkward or even sad.
So do you ever people watch? And have you ever
(03:15):
noticed anything sort of interesting when doing that? That's just
something to think about before we start the story. And
in fact, let's now start the story. All you need
to do here is just listen. First, just listen and
try and follow the main events. How do the characters feel? Okay,
I'll explain in my own words in a moment, And
(03:36):
then we'll go through all the vocabulary and stuff and
see what we can learn. Okay, so here we go.
This is the birthday party by Catherine Brush. They were
a couple in their late thirties, and they looked unmistakably married.
They sat on the bonquette opposite us in a little
(03:58):
narrow restaurant dinner. The man had a round, self satisfied
face with glasses on it. The woman was fadingly pretty
in a big hat. There was nothing conspicuous about them,
nothing particularly noticeable, until the end of their meal, when
(04:21):
it suddenly became obvious that this was an occasion. In fact,
it was the husband's birthday, and the wife had planned
a little surprise for him. It arrived in the form
of a small but glossy birthday cake with one pink
(04:41):
candle burning in the center. The head waiter brought it
in and placed it before the husband, and meanwhile the
violin and piano orchestra played Happy Birthday to you, and
the wife beamed with shy pride over her little surprise,
(05:02):
and such few people as there were in the restaurant
tried to help out with a pattering of applause. It
became clear at once that help was needed, because the
husband was not pleased. Instead, he was hotly embarrassed and
indignant at his wife for embarrassing him. You looked at him,
(05:28):
and you saw this, and you thought, oh, now, don't
be like that. But he was like that. And as
soon as the little cake had been deposited on the
table and the orchestra had finished the birthday piece, and
the general attention had shifted from the man and the woman,
(05:50):
I saw him say something to her under his breath,
some punishing thing, quick and curt and unkind. I couldn't
bear to look at the woman then, so I stared
at my plate and waited for quite a long time,
(06:13):
not long enough, though. She was still crying when I
finally glanced over there again, crying quietly and heartbrokenly and hopelessly,
all to herself under the gay, big brim of her
best hat. So that's the story. I think that's very
(06:38):
good writing. I think that's really really well written, little story,
A perfect little portrait of these two people and a
little interaction which seems to tell you so much about
what's going on between them. And it's sad that it's
definitely sad. It's almost heartbreaking. Really really good writing, though,
(07:00):
But what happened? Okay, So the story begins. It's in
a restaurant, Okay. The writer says that she saw this couple.
They were probably in their late thirties, and they were
definitely married, she could tell just by looking at them.
And they were sitting on the They were sitting just
(07:23):
on the other side of the restaurant, just opposite them,
at a table, having dinner. She described the two of them.
She said that the man had a round face, glasses,
and he had a sort of self satisfied look on
his face. The woman was fadingly pretty, like she kind
of used to be pretty, or she's sort of her
beauty is fading or maybe getting less, you know, as
(07:49):
she gets older maybe, And they just looked like an
ordinary couple. Really, they weren't bringing too much attention to
them to themselves except for the fact that the woman
was wearing a nice big hat with a wide brim.
And the narrator of the story realizes that this is
not just an ordinary dinner, but in fact it's a
(08:11):
special occasion. In fact, it's the husband's birthday and the
wife has planned a special little surprise for him, and
she seems to be kind of a bit shy about it,
and quite proud of the fact that she's organized this
little special thing for his birthday. And what is the
special thing. It's a little birthday cake, a cute little
(08:32):
birthday cake, a red, glossy cake with a single pink
candle in the middle of it. And she's obviously asked
the head waiter of the restaurant to bring the cake over,
and the orchestra just like a couple of instruments playing
in the corner of the restaurant. They start playing Happy Birthday.
The staff come over and they're probably singing Happy Birthday,
(08:54):
and the cake is brought down. The wife seems very
sort of proud of this moment, and the people in
the restaurants all give a little clap, they all applaud
and it seems like a very sweet moment. But what
the narrator notices is that when all the people have
(09:15):
gone away and when no one's looking at them, she
notices that the husband is not happy with this at all. Now,
why why would you not be happy with that situation?
It's not really clear. I don't know either, really, because
I'd be delighted if you know, my wife had organized
a sweet little thing like that in a nice little restaurant,
(09:37):
but this man is not happy about it. In fact,
he's very embarrassed, which seems to tell you something about him,
like he's probably got quite a high opinion of himself.
He probably takes himself very seriously. And the idea that
like a little cake and people in the restaurant singing
happy birthday to him and everyone looking at him is
actually very something that he's ashamed of and something that
(10:00):
made him feel very embarrassed, and he's unhappy, and in fact,
he's angry about it, and he tried, you know that
they're trying not to show this to everyone in the restaurant,
but he's really unhappy with her. And when no one's
looking except for the narrator of the story, who notices this,
the husband says something to his wife, and it's really
(10:22):
something very nasty. He says it quietly so other people
can't hear it, but he says a nasty comment to her,
which is really sad, and she's obviously very very upset,
and she's she's heartbroken. The writer of the story can't
really bear to watch, so she looks at her plate
(10:44):
and stuff for quite a long time. But when she
does have a little look again, she sees that the
woman is still crying, and you know, under the under
the brim of her lovely, happy, big hat, she's still crying.
So it's a really sad little story, and a story
(11:05):
about observing a relationship, observing a marriage which perhaps is
not that happy, not the happiest marriage, or at least,
I don't know, it's a sensitive situation, or at least
the woman. You know, she's obviously crying because her husband's unhappy,
but also probably I imagine in a situation like that,
(11:27):
when you've planned something and it goes so wrong, it
probably makes not only makes you feel happy in that
unhappy in that moment, but I imagine she's feeling very sad
and depressed, and it makes you wonder about the state
of their marriage and whether this woman is, you know,
trapped in a sort of a loveless marriage despite the
fact that she's trying her best. You know, she's making efforts.
(11:52):
And it's also quite heartbreaking because it makes you realize that,
you know, a broken heart or unhappiness, loneliness. Sometimes these
things can be hidden. You know, they're not obvious they
can be hidden behind appearances which could otherwise be very
glamorous or very sort of smart, in this case, a
(12:17):
lovely hat and a nice special occasion in a nice restaurant.
But behind this facade there's a sort of a deep
loneliness and the sense that people in marriages can actually
be very lonely. It can be one of the loneliest things.
Not always, of course, often marriages a beautiful and happy situation,
(12:41):
but you know, in some cases it can be actually
a very sad situation. And loneliness is something that is
often most deeply felt when you're in the company of
other people, especially when you feel trapped in that situation
and when you're having to hide your feelings because other
(13:02):
people can see you. And this story like perfectly captures
all of those things in an efficient way, only in
about three hundred words, so it's really really well written.
Now let's go through the story again, and this time
I'm going to look at specific words and phrases. Right
(13:23):
this is where I'm going to teach you some vocabulary
by using the story. So here we go again, The
Birthday Party by Catherine Brush vocabulary and I've highlighted some
vocab here for us to look at. Okay, if you're
listening to the audio version of this episode, you can
find you can find the script for this I'll put
(13:44):
a link to it on the episode page, so you
can actually check the text and stuff like that. If
you're looking at the video version, you'll be able to
see the text on the screen. Another thing actually to
mention is pronunciation. So just earlier there in this episode,
I read through the story line by line. Now, what
you could do if you want to practice your pronunciation,
you could actually try to repeat those lines after me. Okay,
(14:07):
try to repeat the story after me with exactly the
same delivery. So just try and copy the way I
do it, and then maybe practice it again on your own.
Practice trying to deliver the story with the right pausing,
the right emphasis, and so on. Okay, And another exercise
you could do would be to try to retell the
(14:28):
story in your own words, right, try to try to,
you know, tell the story again but sort of spontaneously
in your own words, without actually reading it from the text.
So all of those things can be good ways to practice.
But anyway, let's have a look now at some vocabulary.
So the first line, they were a couple in their
(14:51):
late thirties, and they looked unmistakably married. So the first
thing is just this phrase in their late thirties. So
you know, you can be in your your in your thirties,
which means you're either thirty, you're between the ages of
thirty and thirty nine, So you can be in your
teens that's when you're a teenager. You can be in
your twenties, in your thirties, in your forties, in your fifties,
(15:12):
and so on. But also you can say you could
be in your early thirties, or your mid thirties, or
your late thirties, okay. In this case, the couple were
in their late thirties, okay, and they looked unmistakably married,
So it's fairly easy to understand they looked married. It
looked like they were married, So they looked married, but
(15:34):
they looked unmistakably married. Okay, they were obviously married. You
couldn't mistake them for anything else, right, So if something
is unmistakable, it just means it's really not easily confused
for something else. Like when you see it, you immediately
identify it as that thing. There's no mistaking the fact
(15:55):
that these people were married, they were unmistakably married. Right,
So unmistakable is the adjective unmistakably. In this case, it
is the adverb so unmistakably married. You know, we use
you know, you can use that for other things as well.
If if something's obvious. For example, you smell as you
(16:16):
walk past the bakery, you can smell the unmistakable smell
of fresh bread. Right, that's using the word as an
adjective unmistakable other things instead of saying they looked unmistakably married.
It could be other things. Right, For example, they they
looked unmistakably English, right, I don't know what would they
(16:37):
look like if they looked unmistakably English, just like typical
English people, or they looked unmistakably French. Okay, handwriting, handwriting,
you know stuff that's written by hand. Handwriting. You could say,
for example, this is unmistakably his handwriting. Okay, so unmistakably
(16:59):
in this case, unmiss sstakably married. So a question about
the writing or just the thought, why are they unmistakably married?
What does the writer mean here? I think she's probably
alluding to subtle behavior, right, which it's interesting that she
chose this phrase because it does tell us something about
(17:21):
this couple. So what did she mean when she said
they were unmistakably married. She's probably referring to certain behavior. Now,
when a couple are new, when they've just got together,
right when they're in the early stages of a relationship,
often you can tell that they're a brand new couple
because they sort of their body language tells you everything
you need to know, Like they can't stop looking at
(17:42):
each other, they can't stop touching each other. It's still
enjoying sort of exploring each other, exploring each other's personal space.
They get lost in a love bubble, you know, the
rest of the world disappears. But when a couple has
been together for a long time, if they're married, they're
in their late thirties, they've been married for ten years
or something like that, their body language might show this
(18:04):
and maybe they we also know that they were sitting
on the on the bench right, so they're not sitting
opposite each other. They're sitting next to each other, and well,
what kind of body language do you imagine it could
be seen here? Maybe they just weren't really there wasn't
a lot of interaction going on. Maybe maybe little moments
of interaction showed that they were very close, and they
obviously spent a lot of time together, but maybe it
(18:26):
was obvious that there wasn't Maybe there wasn't a lot
of love between them, right, and you know that sense
of mystery or attraction maybe wasn't there, or maybe there
was a sense of familiarity and closeness. I don't know,
but it's good writing because it does sort of. It
does tell you so much. Next line, they sat on
(18:49):
the bonquette opposite us in a little narrow restaurant having dinner.
So a bonkette is just a long like a long
seat which could be fitted to the wall, for example,
typical in restaurants, So a long kind of bench that's
probably attached to the wall in some way. That's the bonquette.
(19:09):
They sat opposite us in a little narrow restaurant having dinner.
So narrow is just the it's the opposite of wide.
So that this tells us that the restaurant was quite
long but narrow. So you imagine a long restaurant but
where the walls on either side are actually very close
because the restaurant is narrow, a bit like a corridor
(19:31):
or something. And this is interesting because we get that
sense of intimate space, right that the writer and this
married couple are actually probably quite close to each other.
Everyone's probably fairly close in this restaurant, which for me
emphasizes the kind of the humiliation which happens later. The
(19:53):
man's humiliation but also the wife's sadness is emphasized by
the intimacy of this restaurant. That they're sitting in this
narrow place with probably tables quite close together. Right. Okay,
so next, the man had a round self satisfied face
(20:13):
with glasses on it. The woman was fadingly pretty in
a big hat. So the man had a round face,
I mean, just round, sort of circular. Self satisfied is interesting. Now, generally,
if you describe someone as being self satisfied, it's a
negative phrase. So if someone is self satisfied, it means
(20:34):
they're rather satisfied with themselves. You know, someone who thinks
that they're someone who has a high opinion of themselves,
someone who's rather satisfied with them with themselves. So you
can imagine he's got a sort of a rather a
sort of a smug look on his face, or an
arrogant look on his face, you know, a self important,
self satisfied look on his face. In any case, it's
(20:57):
not very charming, she does. The writer doesn't paint a
very charming, attractive picture of this man, right. He seems
smug and not that attractive. Whereas the woman was fadingly
pretty in a big hat. So fading fadingly pretty. Fadingly
(21:20):
is the adverb, fading would be the adjective, And if
something is fading, it means it's gradually becoming less clear,
less bright, less colorful. So her prettiness, her attractiveness, was
fading as she was getting older, which you know, it's
often a kind of a sad thing for many people.
(21:41):
It doesn't have to be, but it can be. And
it also tells you something as well, doesn't it that
you know, there's a just a certain sadness here. Okay,
fadingly pretty, So she's still pretty, but her prettiness is fading. Now.
That doesn't happen to everyone. Some people are pretty when young,
and they stay pretty when they're old. They grow old gracefully.
(22:04):
But I don't know. Again, I'm speculating about this relationship,
but maybe there's something not quite right. In the relationship,
and the sadness that she feels is starting to show,
you know, on her face, and it's actually affecting her
beauty in a way. So she was fadingly pretty. Her
(22:24):
prettiness was fading. There was nothing conspicuous about them, nothing
particularly noticeable. So those two lines they basically mean the
same thing, because conspicuous. If something is conspicuous, it means
it's noticeable, easy to notice, eye catching. Okay, I mean,
(22:44):
the fact that she was wearing a big hat is
fairly noticeable. But maybe in those days, in what I
assume is like New York, in a nice restaurant in
New York in the nineteen forties, a woman dressed nice
in wearing a big hat was probably not uncommon, right.
But other than that, it seems that there wasn't anything
(23:07):
particularly noticeable about this couple. There was nothing conspicuous, So conspicuous, noticeable,
easy to notice, eye catching, right, those are all synonyms
nothing particularly noticeable. So they were just a fairly ordinary couple,
I suppose, for this kind of restaurant, and that nothing
(23:29):
obvious about them, nothing noticeable until the end of their meal,
when it suddenly became obvious that this was an occasion.
So an occasion could be a special occasion, like a
particular event, a birthday and anniversary, a reason to celebrate,
so that an occasion. So it became obvious that this
(23:49):
was an occasion. It was actually a special moment. In fact,
it was the husband's birthday and the wife had planned
a little surprise for him. So I just wanted to
highlight the use of past perfect here. The wife had
planned a little surprise for him, so past perfect had planned.
That's used because it shows that the wife planned this
(24:10):
before the other events of the story. Right, Okay, it
just shows us that the planning part happened before all
the rest of the events. So past perfect is there
to you. Is used there to just to show us
that the planning happened before. Now, if we didn't, if
the writer hadn't used past perfect, if she'd said it
(24:32):
was the husband's birthday and the wife planned a little
surprise for him, now, that could mean that she planned
the surprise right there at the table. Right, it was
the husband's birthday and the wife planned a surprise. That
could mean that she planned it there, you see, But
we want to show that the planning happened before those
(24:53):
events in the restaurant. So that's why past perfect is used.
And so the surprise in the form of a small
but glossy birthday cake with one pink candle burning in
the center. So it arrived in this case, the surprise
arrived in the form of a cake. So in the
(25:13):
form of here, this means that this is how the
surprise was Actually, this is how the surprise happened. This
is how the surprise manifested. I mean, what was the surprise?
How did the surprise take shape? It arrived in the
form of this birthday cake. So the birthday cake was
the surprise. Right, Quite a nice phrase, like, you know,
(25:39):
you could use that in different situations. The gift came
in the form of a beautifully wrapped package. For example,
their support that the support from my friends came in
the form of encouraging words. The solution to the problem
arrived in the form of innovative new technology. Help arrived
(26:00):
in the form of my wife who came to rescue
me from an awkward conversation. Okay, In this case, the
surprise arrived in the form of a birthday cake, a
small but glossy birthday cake. So the birthday cake is small,
but glossy. So glossy this adjective just means shiny and smooth,
(26:22):
so that, for example, the light reflects off the top
of it. So this means it's one of those quite smart,
quite fancy cakes that you see in sort of good
quality cake shops. So it's got a kind of cover
of I don't know what the cover would be, like
a glazed cover on the top of the cake, which
means it's shiny, right, a glossy cake. So it's a
(26:47):
fairly fancy cake, even though it's small, and it's got
one pink candle. I mean, the pink candle is a
detail in interesting detail. Is this part of the reason
why the hus and seems to be embarrassed? Is it
because of the way the cake looks. It's a little
bit ridiculous or a little bit funny, or even a
(27:10):
little bit sad. Just one single birthday, one single candle
in the middle of this small cake. I mean, the
little pink candle might make him feel a bit ridiculous,
especially if he is full of himself and self satisfied
and smug and arrogance, and he thinks he's a very
important person, you know, and then I'm an important person
in you know, in society, and then this cake arrives,
(27:33):
this little cake with one pink candle. I mean, it's
a lovely, sweet gesture, and you know, we just want
him to be touched by this, but in fact, no,
he's that's not the way this guy works. Instead, he's
embarrassed by this. What we want is for him to
I mean, he could feel embarrassed, like that's okay, but
(27:56):
you'd want him to feel embarrassed and then to kind
of blush, you know, to go red in the and
then maybe to kiss his wife and say thank you
to her and tell her how much he loves her,
you know, because she made the effort to get this
cake for him. But he doesn't do that. He doesn't. Instead,
he's just angry and embarrassed by it, which is just
really sad. The head waiter brought it in and placed
(28:20):
it before the husband, and meanwhile the violin and piano
orchestra played Happy Birthday to you. So the head waiter,
this is like the most important waiter in the restaurant,
the person who's in charge of all the other waiters.
So this probably this means that the wife probably asked
the restaurant to make a special effort here, which again
shows us how much care she put into this. That
(28:42):
she actually spoke to the head waiter and everything. And
it was the head waiter who brought the cake. So
they're taking it, you know, fairly seriously. He placed it
before the husband. He placed it. So this is the
sort of thing a good waiter would do. Waiters don't
just put the plate on the table. They play meaning
they put it down very carefully, exactly in the right spot.
(29:04):
So the waiter, the head waiter, came in and he
placed the cake down in front of him, and meanwhile,
the orchestra played Happy Birthday, right, So meanwhile just means
at the same time. Okay, you could replace the word
meanwhile with the phrase at the same time. So the
headwaiter brought the cake and at the same time the
(29:26):
orchestra played Happy Birthday, Happy birthday to you, oh God,
and the wife beamed with shy pride over her little surprise.
She beamed with pride. So to beam in this case
(29:49):
this means that her face glowed. Her face sort of
glowed with pride right now. To beam means that light
comes out. For example, a torch if You've got a
torch which you use to you to see in the dark.
(30:10):
You turn the torch on a flashlight they call it
in American English a torch. When the light comes out
the end of the torch, it beams out, Similarly the
headlights of your car. The light beams out of your headlights.
A lighthouse, the light beams out. So in this case,
her face beamed with pride, right with shy pride, Okay,
(30:37):
pride to feel proud. She's happy, she's satisfied with what
she's done. She's put a lot of effort into this.
She's hoping this is going to go well. She's really
trying hard, and when the cake comes in, her face
beamed with shy pride. I've mentioned a torch and a flashlight.
Torch in British English and flashlight in American English. There
(30:58):
is only a couple of moments in the story where
it's obviously American English. For example, the spelling of the
word center the birthday cake with one pink candle burning
in the center c e nt r in American English,
c e ntre in British English. But it's otherwise. It's
This is just an example of how for the most part,
(31:20):
this story just shows how American English and British English
are just like identical, because there aren't really many other
differences that I can notice. So the the wife beamed
with shy pride over her little surprise, and such few
people as there were in the restaurant, meaning you know,
the even the small number of people in the restaurant
(31:42):
try to help out with a pattering of applause. So
applause is when people clap. Right at the end of
a theater play or at the end of a music concert,
people applaud and there is applause. Right, a pattering of
applause means like a little bit of applause, like just
(32:02):
a few people kind of clapping a little bit in
the background, okay, right, the sound of a few people clapping.
It became clear at once that help was needed because
the husband was not pleased. So it became clear, meaning
it became obvious. It became clear at once at once,
(32:23):
meaning immediately, So it became obvious immediately, It became clear
at once that help was needed. It's interesting that the
writer has used was needed, which is passive voice, because
needed by who? Right, She doesn't actually say it directly,
(32:44):
but we know that we're talking about the wife, that
the wife needed help, and you know, the writer is
the narrator obviously sees that the woman is helpless in
this situation. She's in trouble, but nobody can help her
without making it worse. It became clear that help was
needed by not mentioning, by not saying it directly, it
(33:07):
somehow makes it a bit more powerful. It became clear
at once that the wife needed help. It's a bit
too direct, but saying it became clear at once that
help was needed somehow is a bit more discreet. By
not putting the wife right into the middle of the sentence,
you know, it makes it a little bit more impersonal. Anyway,
(33:29):
it became clear at once that help was needed by
the wife because the husband was not pleased. Instead, he
was hotly embarrassed. So we know embarrassed, but hotly embarrassed.
Now that's not a very common collocation. We don't often
say hotly embarrassed. But it's good use of language because
(33:49):
it does tell us about how the husband felt. And
he wasn't just embarrassed, but he was angry and embarrassed
right and embarrassed and anger and you can imagine that
his face was bright red, and uh, you know, we
associate heat in emotion. We associate heat and being hot
(34:09):
with anger and strong emotions. So he was hotly embarrassed
suggests that he was like really embarrassed and also angry,
and he was indignant, So indignant means angry, annoyed, frustrated,
which is a pity that that was his reaction. You
(34:31):
looked at him and you saw this and you thought, oh, now,
don't be like that. Don't be like that, don't be
that way. Okay, don't be don't be angry, don't be
like that. But he was like that. And as soon
as the little cake had been deposited on the table,
(34:51):
and the orchestra had finished the birthday piece, and the
general attention had shifted from the man and the woman.
So as soon as the birthday cake had been deposit
So deposited, it's fairly. It just means put on the table.
It's slightly formal, slightly impersonal language, right, just deposited on
the table. It sounds I don't know, it just sounds
(35:15):
slightly transactional language, like you know, normally we'd say money
is deposited into a bank account, right, so it's kind
of slightly cold transactional language. As soon as the cake
had been deposited on the table, we start to get
a sort of sense of an emotional detachment or something.
Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it was
interesting the use of the word deposited just means put
(35:37):
on the table, delivered. And the orchestra had finished the
birthday piece, and the general attention had shifted from the
man and the woman. So attention shifted. It had shifted
as soon as right, as soon as and then pass perfect,
meaning as soon as when all these things had been completed,
the man said something. So once all those he waited
(35:58):
for all those things to be done right, So once
they were done and finished, that's when he chose to
say what he said. So the general attention had shifted
from the man and the woman shifted just means moved right,
moved away. So everyone was looking at the couple when
the cake arrived, But then people's attention shifted away from them.
(36:19):
It moved away from them. And when all of those
things had happened, I saw him say something to her
under his breath, some punishing thing, quick and curt and unkind.
So I saw him say something to her under his breath.
So to say something under your breath means to say
(36:40):
something in a very quiet voice, in a whisper so
that other people can't hear. Like if you say something
under your breath, if you're trying to whisper, so other
people can't hear you. Right, So to whisper, to say
something to your breath, some punishing thing, punishing, So a
(37:07):
comment that was designed to punish her, to make her
feel bad, because in his mind, the thing that she'd
done was not good, And so he says something nasty
to her as a sort of punishment, a punishing comment,
a comment that's going to make her feel bad. We
(37:28):
don't know what it is, right, We don't know what
he said to her. We can only imagine what he
said to her, right, But I mean it's probably something like,
you know, how dare you embarrass me like this in public?
You know, some stupid cake or something that's you know,
going to really hurt, some punishing thing. Quick and curt
(37:49):
and unkind so quick meaning just a few words, Kurt, kurt.
This adjectives mean. This adjective means brief, right with a
few only, like a short thing to say, but rudely
brief right, rude because it's so short and unkind, unkind
(38:10):
meaning cruel, So it would be something like how dare you?
Or how stupid of you? Something like that, And then
the writer continues, I couldn't bear to look at the woman, then,
so I stared at my plate and waited for quite
a long time. I couldn't bear to look, right, can't bear,
(38:31):
couldn't bear. Now, if you can't bear to do something,
it just means you can't stand doing it. You just can't.
It's too painful, too uncomfortable to do it, for example,
looking at the couple, because this poor woman is so
upset and the man is so angry and so unreasonable
and mean, and it's just she couldn't bear to look.
(38:54):
So we say can't bear to do something, We say
can't stand doing something, And we also can say it
can't bring myself to do something. I just couldn't. I
couldn't bear to look. I couldn't bring myself to look.
I can't stand seeing things like that. And the story continues,
(39:18):
not long enough though, so she because she looked at
her plate and waited for quite a long time. But
not long enough though, Notice the use of the word
though at the end. I've mentioned this before, but though
at the end like that, it's like saying but right,
But we normally put butt in between two contrasting things.
(39:42):
So I looked at my plate for a long time,
but not long enough. But we can use though at
the end, right, I looked at my plate for a
long time, not long enough though. So it does the
same job as saying but in the middle, but we
just put it at the end. It's very common in
spoken English. So not long enough though, because she was
(40:02):
still crying when I finally glanced over there again, So
when I glanced to glance is just to look quickly.
So she was looking at her plate, and she had
a quick look, So just glanced looked quickly because she
was still crying when she glanced over at them, crying
(40:23):
quietly and heartbrokenly and hopelessly all to herself under the
gay big brim of her best hat. So this is
really heartbreaking, Like the really heartbreaking part right, It does
tell you the way in which she's crying that she's
just feels so sad and lonely at this point, And
(40:44):
it's from a language point of view, there's adverbs here, right,
How was she crying? She was crying quietly. She was
crying heartbrokenly. She was crying hopelessly. She was crying all
to herself, and she was crying under the gay big
brim of her best hat. So crying quietly, I think
we understand that crying heartbrokenly because she felt heartbroken because
(41:09):
of the behavior, the actions, the reaction of this husband,
this horrible husband, crying hopelessly. Where Yeah, I suppose even
when she's tried really hard to do something cute and
special on his birthday, the way he reacted was just
(41:31):
like so far away from what she hoped that that
kind of can break someone's hope. Right, So she's crying
with a deep sense of hopelessness all to herself. So
she was doing it all by herself, meaning on her own,
but also crying to herself, not crying to anyone else.
(41:54):
So you got crying all by herself, which means she
was crying on her own but all to herself, means
that she was the only audience of her crying, like
the husband didn't even really care or wasn't even giving
her attention to the fact, giving attention to the fact
that she was crying, So she was just all on
her own, crying to herself. She was the only witness,
(42:16):
the only audience to her crying, right the husband apparently
doesn't care and doing this under the gay, big brim
of her best hat. So this is a particularly sad
image because of the contrast between this lovely, otherwise exuberant
hat and the actual feeling of the woman underneath it. It
(42:40):
should have been a happy, care free occasion, but she's
just heartbroken, So that emphasizes the sadness the contrast between
the two things. But the gay big brim of her hat.
So the brim, the brim is the bit that goes
around the edge of the hat, the widest part that's
the edge of the hat, the brim of the hat. Okay,
if it's a baseball cap, the baseball cap has a
(43:02):
brim at the front, and you can slide it around
the back if you want. You can bend the brim
of the hat. If it's a you know, another type
of hat, the brim goes all the way round. In
this case, it was a big brim and the gay
big brim of her hat. So I mean this shows
I guess the age of the story because we don't
(43:25):
normally use the word gay like that these days, because
it used to just mean happy, care free. Happy. These days,
obviously it means something else. But in those days, it
just meant care free and happy. So that's why the
word gay is being used here. Her happy, care free,
exuberant hat that she was wearing, she was crying all
(43:46):
by herself, all to herself, underneath the brim of this,
of this, of this hat. And that's the end of
the story. Okay, h what do you think of that?
I'd like to know your comments. Feel free to leave
your comments in the comments section. What do you think
of the situation? So you know, what do you think
(44:08):
the husband said, any idea what he might have said?
How do you think the woman felt in that moment
the wife? Have you ever witnessed something you know when
people watching? What did you think of the story? Other things? Remember,
you could practice repeating that story after me. Just go
(44:31):
back to the beginning of the episode, to the moment
where I told the story line by line. You could
just practice reading through it again and again. And as
I said before, you should try perhaps retelling the story
in your own words too. And another exercise you could
do Another little speaking challenge that you could do would
be to remember a time when you saw some people
(44:54):
doing something when you people watched and you saw something happen.
Could you describe that? Do you think you could make
that to a story? It would be a good exercise
for your English practice practice practice, practice, practice practice. The
five p's Okay, that's the end of this episode. If
you like my story episodes, obviously, I've done a few
of these now, which you can find in my episode
(45:16):
archive Learn English with a short Story. But I've got
others as well. I've done about ten story episodes in
my premium podcast, and so you can subscribe to the
Premium podcast. You can add all the premium episodes to
a podcast app on your phone, and when you do that,
you can listen to the episodes. You can also access
(45:37):
links in the show notes for each episode, links for
PDFs and video versions. And I've done yeah, about ten
story episodes. Most of those stories in the premium section
are true stories about my own life that I've written myself,
including stories of my childhood, like stuff that's sort of funny,
stuff that happened to me. And I do a similar
thing to what I do in these learning with the
(46:00):
short story episodes tell you the story and then break
it down for vocabulary, and then give you various of
grammar vocabulary practice exercises, memory exercises to help you remember
the vocabulary, and then dedicated pronunciation episodes to help you
practice repeating after me. That's what you can find in
those storytime episodes in my premium subscription. Yeah, okay. The
(46:26):
way it works as you sign up, and when you've
signed up, you can just really easily add your premium
subscription to a podcast app on your phone, and then
it gives you the full list of all of my episodes,
all of my free episodes with no advertising, and also
all my premium episodes in there too, and then you
can just listen to the normal episodes, listen to the
premium episodes, and then find the notes in the show notes,
(46:49):
that's where you find links for video versions and PDFs. Okay,
So if you want to do that, you can just
you know, be my guest of course teacher Luke dot
co dot uk slash premium in or just click the
link in the description to find out about Luke's English
podcast Premium. Okay, great, have a lovely day, afternoon morning
evening night. Wherever you are in the world, whatever you're doing,
(47:12):
I hope that you are having a nice time out
there in podcast land. Thank you for listening to this episode.
I will speak to you again soon in the next one,
but for now, it's just time to say goodbye, bye
bye bo bo Boe.
Hello, Welcome back to Luke's English Podcast. In this episode,
I'm going to tell you a story and then use
it to help you learn English, okay, and I'm going
to do this in three sections. First, I'll just tell
the story to you and you can use that as
a sort of little listening exercise or listening test see
if you understand everything in the story, and especially things
(00:21):
like how the characters feel and exactly what happened. It's
a fairly short story, this one. I mean, it's a
very short story. Really, it's three hundred words about three
hundred words long. So it'll just take a couple of
minutes for me to read the story to you, and
then after that I will just explain what happened in
the story in my own words. And then I'll go
through the story again line by line, and I'll explain
(00:44):
vocabulary for you so you can learn various little phrases, words,
and other descriptive language from this story. Okay. So the
story that we're looking at here is called The Birthday Party,
and it was written by Catherine Brush, who was an
American newspaper columnist, a short story writer, and novelist. This
(01:08):
particular story was published in nineteen forty six, But like
all good writing, it still remains fresh today. It feels
like it could have been written yesterday. Really, so although
it was written a few decades ago, it still feels
really sort of fresh and new. So I'm going to
start in just a second. But first of all, just
(01:29):
one question for you to consider before you listen to this. Okay,
my question is about people watching. Do you know what
people watching is? This is when you're in a public place,
for example, in a restaurant, and you kind of watched
the other people around you and sort of, I don't know,
imagine what their lives are like, observing other people. I mean,
(01:51):
it's a bit nosy right to do this, to look
at other people and sort of spy on them, but
I think we all do this. So do you ever
people watch? Okay, when you're in a public place like
a restaurant or in a queue for something, so observing people,
watching their behavior, watching their interactions with each other, and
(02:11):
then imagining what kinds of people they are, what their
lives are like, what their relationships are like. It might
also include eavesdropping, which means actually listening to other people's conversations,
but not necessarily so people watching, just watching people watching,
strangers that you might see in public places. Do you
ever do this? If you're out in public, do you
(02:33):
ever discreetly watch the other people around you and try
to imagine what their lives are like? For example, if
you're in a restaurant, do you subtly while you're eating
your food, do you, subtly, without being noticed, have a
look at the other people on the other tables, try
to imagine who they are, what's going on in their lives.
(02:53):
And have you ever observed something amusing or something that
made you feel a little uncomfortable or embarrassed, Like maybe
you got an insight into someone's personal relationship or family
life and it actually made you feel an even a
little bit uncomfortable or embarrassed or awkward or even sad.
So do you ever people watch? And have you ever
(03:15):
noticed anything sort of interesting when doing that? That's just
something to think about before we start the story. And
in fact, let's now start the story. All you need
to do here is just listen. First, just listen and
try and follow the main events. How do the characters feel? Okay,
I'll explain in my own words in a moment, And
(03:36):
then we'll go through all the vocabulary and stuff and
see what we can learn. Okay, so here we go.
This is the birthday party by Catherine Brush. They were
a couple in their late thirties, and they looked unmistakably married.
They sat on the bonquette opposite us in a little
(03:58):
narrow restaurant dinner. The man had a round, self satisfied
face with glasses on it. The woman was fadingly pretty
in a big hat. There was nothing conspicuous about them,
nothing particularly noticeable, until the end of their meal, when
(04:21):
it suddenly became obvious that this was an occasion. In fact,
it was the husband's birthday, and the wife had planned
a little surprise for him. It arrived in the form
of a small but glossy birthday cake with one pink
(04:41):
candle burning in the center. The head waiter brought it
in and placed it before the husband, and meanwhile the
violin and piano orchestra played Happy Birthday to you, and
the wife beamed with shy pride over her little surprise,
(05:02):
and such few people as there were in the restaurant
tried to help out with a pattering of applause. It
became clear at once that help was needed, because the
husband was not pleased. Instead, he was hotly embarrassed and
indignant at his wife for embarrassing him. You looked at him,
(05:28):
and you saw this, and you thought, oh, now, don't
be like that. But he was like that. And as
soon as the little cake had been deposited on the
table and the orchestra had finished the birthday piece, and
the general attention had shifted from the man and the woman,
(05:50):
I saw him say something to her under his breath,
some punishing thing, quick and curt and unkind. I couldn't
bear to look at the woman then, so I stared
at my plate and waited for quite a long time,
(06:13):
not long enough, though. She was still crying when I
finally glanced over there again, crying quietly and heartbrokenly and hopelessly,
all to herself under the gay, big brim of her
best hat. So that's the story. I think that's very
(06:38):
good writing. I think that's really really well written, little story,
A perfect little portrait of these two people and a
little interaction which seems to tell you so much about
what's going on between them. And it's sad that it's
definitely sad. It's almost heartbreaking. Really really good writing, though,
(07:00):
But what happened? Okay, So the story begins. It's in
a restaurant, Okay. The writer says that she saw this couple.
They were probably in their late thirties, and they were
definitely married, she could tell just by looking at them.
And they were sitting on the They were sitting just
(07:23):
on the other side of the restaurant, just opposite them,
at a table, having dinner. She described the two of them.
She said that the man had a round face, glasses,
and he had a sort of self satisfied look on
his face. The woman was fadingly pretty, like she kind
of used to be pretty, or she's sort of her
beauty is fading or maybe getting less, you know, as
(07:49):
she gets older maybe, And they just looked like an
ordinary couple. Really, they weren't bringing too much attention to
them to themselves except for the fact that the woman
was wearing a nice big hat with a wide brim.
And the narrator of the story realizes that this is
not just an ordinary dinner, but in fact it's a
(08:11):
special occasion. In fact, it's the husband's birthday and the
wife has planned a special little surprise for him, and
she seems to be kind of a bit shy about it,
and quite proud of the fact that she's organized this
little special thing for his birthday. And what is the
special thing. It's a little birthday cake, a cute little
(08:32):
birthday cake, a red, glossy cake with a single pink
candle in the middle of it. And she's obviously asked
the head waiter of the restaurant to bring the cake over,
and the orchestra just like a couple of instruments playing
in the corner of the restaurant. They start playing Happy Birthday.
The staff come over and they're probably singing Happy Birthday,
(08:54):
and the cake is brought down. The wife seems very
sort of proud of this moment, and the people in
the restaurants all give a little clap, they all applaud
and it seems like a very sweet moment. But what
the narrator notices is that when all the people have
(09:15):
gone away and when no one's looking at them, she
notices that the husband is not happy with this at all. Now,
why why would you not be happy with that situation?
It's not really clear. I don't know either, really, because
I'd be delighted if you know, my wife had organized
a sweet little thing like that in a nice little restaurant,
(09:37):
but this man is not happy about it. In fact,
he's very embarrassed, which seems to tell you something about him,
like he's probably got quite a high opinion of himself.
He probably takes himself very seriously. And the idea that
like a little cake and people in the restaurant singing
happy birthday to him and everyone looking at him is
actually very something that he's ashamed of and something that
(10:00):
made him feel very embarrassed, and he's unhappy, and in fact,
he's angry about it, and he tried, you know that
they're trying not to show this to everyone in the restaurant,
but he's really unhappy with her. And when no one's
looking except for the narrator of the story, who notices this,
the husband says something to his wife, and it's really
(10:22):
something very nasty. He says it quietly so other people
can't hear it, but he says a nasty comment to her,
which is really sad, and she's obviously very very upset,
and she's she's heartbroken. The writer of the story can't
really bear to watch, so she looks at her plate
(10:44):
and stuff for quite a long time. But when she
does have a little look again, she sees that the
woman is still crying, and you know, under the under
the brim of her lovely, happy, big hat, she's still crying.
So it's a really sad little story, and a story
(11:05):
about observing a relationship, observing a marriage which perhaps is
not that happy, not the happiest marriage, or at least,
I don't know, it's a sensitive situation, or at least
the woman. You know, she's obviously crying because her husband's unhappy,
but also probably I imagine in a situation like that,
(11:27):
when you've planned something and it goes so wrong, it
probably makes not only makes you feel happy in that
unhappy in that moment, but I imagine she's feeling very sad
and depressed, and it makes you wonder about the state
of their marriage and whether this woman is, you know,
trapped in a sort of a loveless marriage despite the
fact that she's trying her best. You know, she's making efforts.
(11:52):
And it's also quite heartbreaking because it makes you realize that,
you know, a broken heart or unhappiness, loneliness. Sometimes these
things can be hidden. You know, they're not obvious they
can be hidden behind appearances which could otherwise be very
glamorous or very sort of smart, in this case, a
(12:17):
lovely hat and a nice special occasion in a nice restaurant.
But behind this facade there's a sort of a deep
loneliness and the sense that people in marriages can actually
be very lonely. It can be one of the loneliest things.
Not always, of course, often marriages a beautiful and happy situation,
(12:41):
but you know, in some cases it can be actually
a very sad situation. And loneliness is something that is
often most deeply felt when you're in the company of
other people, especially when you feel trapped in that situation
and when you're having to hide your feelings because other
(13:02):
people can see you. And this story like perfectly captures
all of those things in an efficient way, only in
about three hundred words, so it's really really well written.
Now let's go through the story again, and this time
I'm going to look at specific words and phrases. Right
(13:23):
this is where I'm going to teach you some vocabulary
by using the story. So here we go again, The
Birthday Party by Catherine Brush vocabulary and I've highlighted some
vocab here for us to look at. Okay, if you're
listening to the audio version of this episode, you can
find you can find the script for this I'll put
(13:44):
a link to it on the episode page, so you
can actually check the text and stuff like that. If
you're looking at the video version, you'll be able to
see the text on the screen. Another thing actually to
mention is pronunciation. So just earlier there in this episode,
I read through the story line by line. Now, what
you could do if you want to practice your pronunciation,
you could actually try to repeat those lines after me. Okay,
(14:07):
try to repeat the story after me with exactly the
same delivery. So just try and copy the way I
do it, and then maybe practice it again on your own.
Practice trying to deliver the story with the right pausing,
the right emphasis, and so on. Okay, And another exercise
you could do would be to try to retell the
(14:28):
story in your own words, right, try to try to,
you know, tell the story again but sort of spontaneously
in your own words, without actually reading it from the text.
So all of those things can be good ways to practice.
But anyway, let's have a look now at some vocabulary.
So the first line, they were a couple in their
(14:51):
late thirties, and they looked unmistakably married. So the first
thing is just this phrase in their late thirties. So
you know, you can be in your your in your thirties,
which means you're either thirty, you're between the ages of
thirty and thirty nine, So you can be in your
teens that's when you're a teenager. You can be in
your twenties, in your thirties, in your forties, in your fifties,
(15:12):
and so on. But also you can say you could
be in your early thirties, or your mid thirties, or
your late thirties, okay. In this case, the couple were
in their late thirties, okay, and they looked unmistakably married,
So it's fairly easy to understand they looked married. It
looked like they were married, So they looked married, but
(15:34):
they looked unmistakably married. Okay, they were obviously married. You
couldn't mistake them for anything else, right, So if something
is unmistakable, it just means it's really not easily confused
for something else. Like when you see it, you immediately
identify it as that thing. There's no mistaking the fact
(15:55):
that these people were married, they were unmistakably married. Right,
So unmistakable is the adjective unmistakably. In this case, it
is the adverb so unmistakably married. You know, we use
you know, you can use that for other things as well.
If if something's obvious. For example, you smell as you
(16:16):
walk past the bakery, you can smell the unmistakable smell
of fresh bread. Right, that's using the word as an
adjective unmistakable other things instead of saying they looked unmistakably married.
It could be other things. Right, For example, they they
looked unmistakably English, right, I don't know what would they
(16:37):
look like if they looked unmistakably English, just like typical
English people, or they looked unmistakably French. Okay, handwriting, handwriting,
you know stuff that's written by hand. Handwriting. You could say,
for example, this is unmistakably his handwriting. Okay, so unmistakably
(16:59):
in this case, unmiss sstakably married. So a question about
the writing or just the thought, why are they unmistakably married?
What does the writer mean here? I think she's probably
alluding to subtle behavior, right, which it's interesting that she
chose this phrase because it does tell us something about
(17:21):
this couple. So what did she mean when she said
they were unmistakably married. She's probably referring to certain behavior. Now,
when a couple are new, when they've just got together,
right when they're in the early stages of a relationship,
often you can tell that they're a brand new couple
because they sort of their body language tells you everything
you need to know, Like they can't stop looking at
(17:42):
each other, they can't stop touching each other. It's still
enjoying sort of exploring each other, exploring each other's personal space.
They get lost in a love bubble, you know, the
rest of the world disappears. But when a couple has
been together for a long time, if they're married, they're
in their late thirties, they've been married for ten years
or something like that, their body language might show this
(18:04):
and maybe they we also know that they were sitting
on the on the bench right, so they're not sitting
opposite each other. They're sitting next to each other, and well,
what kind of body language do you imagine it could
be seen here? Maybe they just weren't really there wasn't
a lot of interaction going on. Maybe maybe little moments
of interaction showed that they were very close, and they
obviously spent a lot of time together, but maybe it
(18:26):
was obvious that there wasn't Maybe there wasn't a lot
of love between them, right, and you know that sense
of mystery or attraction maybe wasn't there, or maybe there
was a sense of familiarity and closeness. I don't know,
but it's good writing because it does sort of. It
does tell you so much. Next line, they sat on
(18:49):
the bonquette opposite us in a little narrow restaurant having dinner.
So a bonkette is just a long like a long
seat which could be fitted to the wall, for example,
typical in restaurants, So a long kind of bench that's
probably attached to the wall in some way. That's the bonquette.
(19:09):
They sat opposite us in a little narrow restaurant having dinner.
So narrow is just the it's the opposite of wide.
So that this tells us that the restaurant was quite
long but narrow. So you imagine a long restaurant but
where the walls on either side are actually very close
because the restaurant is narrow, a bit like a corridor
(19:31):
or something. And this is interesting because we get that
sense of intimate space, right that the writer and this
married couple are actually probably quite close to each other.
Everyone's probably fairly close in this restaurant, which for me
emphasizes the kind of the humiliation which happens later. The
(19:53):
man's humiliation but also the wife's sadness is emphasized by
the intimacy of this restaurant. That they're sitting in this
narrow place with probably tables quite close together. Right. Okay,
so next, the man had a round self satisfied face
(20:13):
with glasses on it. The woman was fadingly pretty in
a big hat. So the man had a round face,
I mean, just round, sort of circular. Self satisfied is interesting. Now, generally,
if you describe someone as being self satisfied, it's a
negative phrase. So if someone is self satisfied, it means
(20:34):
they're rather satisfied with themselves. You know, someone who thinks
that they're someone who has a high opinion of themselves,
someone who's rather satisfied with them with themselves. So you
can imagine he's got a sort of a rather a
sort of a smug look on his face, or an
arrogant look on his face, you know, a self important,
self satisfied look on his face. In any case, it's
(20:57):
not very charming, she does. The writer doesn't paint a
very charming, attractive picture of this man, right. He seems
smug and not that attractive. Whereas the woman was fadingly
pretty in a big hat. So fading fadingly pretty. Fadingly
(21:20):
is the adverb, fading would be the adjective, And if
something is fading, it means it's gradually becoming less clear,
less bright, less colorful. So her prettiness, her attractiveness, was
fading as she was getting older, which you know, it's
often a kind of a sad thing for many people.
(21:41):
It doesn't have to be, but it can be. And
it also tells you something as well, doesn't it that
you know, there's a just a certain sadness here. Okay,
fadingly pretty, So she's still pretty, but her prettiness is fading. Now.
That doesn't happen to everyone. Some people are pretty when young,
and they stay pretty when they're old. They grow old gracefully.
(22:04):
But I don't know. Again, I'm speculating about this relationship,
but maybe there's something not quite right. In the relationship,
and the sadness that she feels is starting to show,
you know, on her face, and it's actually affecting her
beauty in a way. So she was fadingly pretty. Her
(22:24):
prettiness was fading. There was nothing conspicuous about them, nothing
particularly noticeable. So those two lines they basically mean the
same thing, because conspicuous. If something is conspicuous, it means
it's noticeable, easy to notice, eye catching. Okay, I mean,
(22:44):
the fact that she was wearing a big hat is
fairly noticeable. But maybe in those days, in what I
assume is like New York, in a nice restaurant in
New York in the nineteen forties, a woman dressed nice
in wearing a big hat was probably not uncommon, right.
But other than that, it seems that there wasn't anything
(23:07):
particularly noticeable about this couple. There was nothing conspicuous, So conspicuous, noticeable,
easy to notice, eye catching, right, those are all synonyms
nothing particularly noticeable. So they were just a fairly ordinary couple,
I suppose, for this kind of restaurant, and that nothing
(23:29):
obvious about them, nothing noticeable until the end of their meal,
when it suddenly became obvious that this was an occasion.
So an occasion could be a special occasion, like a
particular event, a birthday and anniversary, a reason to celebrate,
so that an occasion. So it became obvious that this
(23:49):
was an occasion. It was actually a special moment. In fact,
it was the husband's birthday and the wife had planned
a little surprise for him. So I just wanted to
highlight the use of past perfect here. The wife had
planned a little surprise for him, so past perfect had planned.
That's used because it shows that the wife planned this
(24:10):
before the other events of the story. Right, Okay, it
just shows us that the planning part happened before all
the rest of the events. So past perfect is there
to you. Is used there to just to show us
that the planning happened before. Now, if we didn't, if
the writer hadn't used past perfect, if she'd said it
(24:32):
was the husband's birthday and the wife planned a little
surprise for him, now, that could mean that she planned
the surprise right there at the table. Right, it was
the husband's birthday and the wife planned a surprise. That
could mean that she planned it there, you see, But
we want to show that the planning happened before those
(24:53):
events in the restaurant. So that's why past perfect is used.
And so the surprise in the form of a small
but glossy birthday cake with one pink candle burning in
the center. So it arrived in this case, the surprise
arrived in the form of a cake. So in the
(25:13):
form of here, this means that this is how the
surprise was Actually, this is how the surprise happened. This
is how the surprise manifested. I mean, what was the surprise?
How did the surprise take shape? It arrived in the
form of this birthday cake. So the birthday cake was
the surprise. Right, Quite a nice phrase, like, you know,
(25:39):
you could use that in different situations. The gift came
in the form of a beautifully wrapped package. For example,
their support that the support from my friends came in
the form of encouraging words. The solution to the problem
arrived in the form of innovative new technology. Help arrived
(26:00):
in the form of my wife who came to rescue
me from an awkward conversation. Okay, In this case, the
surprise arrived in the form of a birthday cake, a
small but glossy birthday cake. So the birthday cake is small,
but glossy. So glossy this adjective just means shiny and smooth,
(26:22):
so that, for example, the light reflects off the top
of it. So this means it's one of those quite smart,
quite fancy cakes that you see in sort of good
quality cake shops. So it's got a kind of cover
of I don't know what the cover would be, like
a glazed cover on the top of the cake, which
means it's shiny, right, a glossy cake. So it's a
(26:47):
fairly fancy cake, even though it's small, and it's got
one pink candle. I mean, the pink candle is a
detail in interesting detail. Is this part of the reason
why the hus and seems to be embarrassed? Is it
because of the way the cake looks. It's a little
bit ridiculous or a little bit funny, or even a
(27:10):
little bit sad. Just one single birthday, one single candle
in the middle of this small cake. I mean, the
little pink candle might make him feel a bit ridiculous,
especially if he is full of himself and self satisfied
and smug and arrogance, and he thinks he's a very
important person, you know, and then I'm an important person
in you know, in society, and then this cake arrives,
(27:33):
this little cake with one pink candle. I mean, it's
a lovely, sweet gesture, and you know, we just want
him to be touched by this, but in fact, no,
he's that's not the way this guy works. Instead, he's
embarrassed by this. What we want is for him to
I mean, he could feel embarrassed, like that's okay, but
(27:56):
you'd want him to feel embarrassed and then to kind
of blush, you know, to go red in the and
then maybe to kiss his wife and say thank you
to her and tell her how much he loves her,
you know, because she made the effort to get this
cake for him. But he doesn't do that. He doesn't. Instead,
he's just angry and embarrassed by it, which is just
really sad. The head waiter brought it in and placed
(28:20):
it before the husband, and meanwhile the violin and piano
orchestra played Happy Birthday to you. So the head waiter,
this is like the most important waiter in the restaurant,
the person who's in charge of all the other waiters.
So this probably this means that the wife probably asked
the restaurant to make a special effort here, which again
shows us how much care she put into this. That
(28:42):
she actually spoke to the head waiter and everything. And
it was the head waiter who brought the cake. So
they're taking it, you know, fairly seriously. He placed it
before the husband. He placed it. So this is the
sort of thing a good waiter would do. Waiters don't
just put the plate on the table. They play meaning
they put it down very carefully, exactly in the right spot.
(29:04):
So the waiter, the head waiter, came in and he
placed the cake down in front of him, and meanwhile,
the orchestra played Happy Birthday, right, So meanwhile just means
at the same time. Okay, you could replace the word
meanwhile with the phrase at the same time. So the
headwaiter brought the cake and at the same time the
(29:26):
orchestra played Happy Birthday, Happy birthday to you, oh God,
and the wife beamed with shy pride over her little surprise.
She beamed with pride. So to beam in this case
(29:49):
this means that her face glowed. Her face sort of
glowed with pride right now. To beam means that light
comes out. For example, a torch if You've got a
torch which you use to you to see in the dark.
(30:10):
You turn the torch on a flashlight they call it
in American English a torch. When the light comes out
the end of the torch, it beams out, Similarly the
headlights of your car. The light beams out of your headlights.
A lighthouse, the light beams out. So in this case,
her face beamed with pride, right with shy pride, Okay,
(30:37):
pride to feel proud. She's happy, she's satisfied with what
she's done. She's put a lot of effort into this.
She's hoping this is going to go well. She's really
trying hard, and when the cake comes in, her face
beamed with shy pride. I've mentioned a torch and a flashlight.
Torch in British English and flashlight in American English. There
(30:58):
is only a couple of moments in the story where
it's obviously American English. For example, the spelling of the
word center the birthday cake with one pink candle burning
in the center c e nt r in American English,
c e ntre in British English. But it's otherwise. It's
This is just an example of how for the most part,
(31:20):
this story just shows how American English and British English
are just like identical, because there aren't really many other
differences that I can notice. So the the wife beamed
with shy pride over her little surprise, and such few
people as there were in the restaurant, meaning you know,
the even the small number of people in the restaurant
(31:42):
try to help out with a pattering of applause. So
applause is when people clap. Right at the end of
a theater play or at the end of a music concert,
people applaud and there is applause. Right, a pattering of
applause means like a little bit of applause, like just
(32:02):
a few people kind of clapping a little bit in
the background, okay, right, the sound of a few people clapping.
It became clear at once that help was needed because
the husband was not pleased. So it became clear, meaning
it became obvious. It became clear at once at once,
(32:23):
meaning immediately, So it became obvious immediately, It became clear
at once that help was needed. It's interesting that the
writer has used was needed, which is passive voice, because
needed by who? Right, She doesn't actually say it directly,
(32:44):
but we know that we're talking about the wife, that
the wife needed help, and you know, the writer is
the narrator obviously sees that the woman is helpless in
this situation. She's in trouble, but nobody can help her
without making it worse. It became clear that help was
needed by not mentioning, by not saying it directly, it
(33:07):
somehow makes it a bit more powerful. It became clear
at once that the wife needed help. It's a bit
too direct, but saying it became clear at once that
help was needed somehow is a bit more discreet. By
not putting the wife right into the middle of the sentence,
you know, it makes it a little bit more impersonal. Anyway,
(33:29):
it became clear at once that help was needed by
the wife because the husband was not pleased. Instead, he
was hotly embarrassed. So we know embarrassed, but hotly embarrassed.
Now that's not a very common collocation. We don't often
say hotly embarrassed. But it's good use of language because
(33:49):
it does tell us about how the husband felt. And
he wasn't just embarrassed, but he was angry and embarrassed
right and embarrassed and anger and you can imagine that
his face was bright red, and uh, you know, we
associate heat in emotion. We associate heat and being hot
(34:09):
with anger and strong emotions. So he was hotly embarrassed
suggests that he was like really embarrassed and also angry,
and he was indignant, So indignant means angry, annoyed, frustrated,
which is a pity that that was his reaction. You
(34:31):
looked at him and you saw this and you thought, oh, now,
don't be like that. Don't be like that, don't be
that way. Okay, don't be don't be angry, don't be
like that. But he was like that. And as soon
as the little cake had been deposited on the table,
(34:51):
and the orchestra had finished the birthday piece, and the
general attention had shifted from the man and the woman.
So as soon as the birthday cake had been deposit
So deposited, it's fairly. It just means put on the table.
It's slightly formal, slightly impersonal language, right, just deposited on
the table. It sounds I don't know, it just sounds
(35:15):
slightly transactional language, like you know, normally we'd say money
is deposited into a bank account, right, so it's kind
of slightly cold transactional language. As soon as the cake
had been deposited on the table, we start to get
a sort of sense of an emotional detachment or something.
Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it was
interesting the use of the word deposited just means put
(35:37):
on the table, delivered. And the orchestra had finished the
birthday piece, and the general attention had shifted from the
man and the woman. So attention shifted. It had shifted
as soon as right, as soon as and then pass perfect,
meaning as soon as when all these things had been completed,
the man said something. So once all those he waited
(35:58):
for all those things to be done right, So once
they were done and finished, that's when he chose to
say what he said. So the general attention had shifted
from the man and the woman shifted just means moved right,
moved away. So everyone was looking at the couple when
the cake arrived, But then people's attention shifted away from them.
(36:19):
It moved away from them. And when all of those
things had happened, I saw him say something to her
under his breath, some punishing thing, quick and curt and unkind.
So I saw him say something to her under his breath.
So to say something under your breath means to say
(36:40):
something in a very quiet voice, in a whisper so
that other people can't hear. Like if you say something
under your breath, if you're trying to whisper, so other
people can't hear you. Right, So to whisper, to say
something to your breath, some punishing thing, punishing, So a
(37:07):
comment that was designed to punish her, to make her
feel bad, because in his mind, the thing that she'd
done was not good, And so he says something nasty
to her as a sort of punishment, a punishing comment,
a comment that's going to make her feel bad. We
(37:28):
don't know what it is, right, We don't know what
he said to her. We can only imagine what he
said to her, right, But I mean it's probably something like,
you know, how dare you embarrass me like this in public?
You know, some stupid cake or something that's you know,
going to really hurt, some punishing thing. Quick and curt
(37:49):
and unkind so quick meaning just a few words, Kurt, kurt.
This adjectives mean. This adjective means brief, right with a
few only, like a short thing to say, but rudely
brief right, rude because it's so short and unkind, unkind
(38:10):
meaning cruel, So it would be something like how dare you?
Or how stupid of you? Something like that, And then
the writer continues, I couldn't bear to look at the woman, then,
so I stared at my plate and waited for quite
a long time. I couldn't bear to look, right, can't bear,
(38:31):
couldn't bear. Now, if you can't bear to do something,
it just means you can't stand doing it. You just can't.
It's too painful, too uncomfortable to do it, for example,
looking at the couple, because this poor woman is so
upset and the man is so angry and so unreasonable
and mean, and it's just she couldn't bear to look.
(38:54):
So we say can't bear to do something, We say
can't stand doing something, And we also can say it
can't bring myself to do something. I just couldn't. I
couldn't bear to look. I couldn't bring myself to look.
I can't stand seeing things like that. And the story continues,
(39:18):
not long enough though, so she because she looked at
her plate and waited for quite a long time. But
not long enough though, Notice the use of the word
though at the end. I've mentioned this before, but though
at the end like that, it's like saying but right,
But we normally put butt in between two contrasting things.
(39:42):
So I looked at my plate for a long time,
but not long enough. But we can use though at
the end, right, I looked at my plate for a
long time, not long enough though. So it does the
same job as saying but in the middle, but we
just put it at the end. It's very common in
spoken English. So not long enough though, because she was
(40:02):
still crying when I finally glanced over there again, So
when I glanced to glance is just to look quickly.
So she was looking at her plate, and she had
a quick look, So just glanced looked quickly because she
was still crying when she glanced over at them, crying
(40:23):
quietly and heartbrokenly and hopelessly all to herself under the
gay big brim of her best hat. So this is
really heartbreaking, Like the really heartbreaking part right, It does
tell you the way in which she's crying that she's
just feels so sad and lonely at this point, And
(40:44):
it's from a language point of view, there's adverbs here, right,
How was she crying? She was crying quietly. She was
crying heartbrokenly. She was crying hopelessly. She was crying all
to herself, and she was crying under the gay big
brim of her best hat. So crying quietly, I think
we understand that crying heartbrokenly because she felt heartbroken because
(41:09):
of the behavior, the actions, the reaction of this husband,
this horrible husband, crying hopelessly. Where Yeah, I suppose even
when she's tried really hard to do something cute and
special on his birthday, the way he reacted was just
(41:31):
like so far away from what she hoped that that
kind of can break someone's hope. Right, So she's crying
with a deep sense of hopelessness all to herself. So
she was doing it all by herself, meaning on her own,
but also crying to herself, not crying to anyone else.
(41:54):
So you got crying all by herself, which means she
was crying on her own but all to herself, means
that she was the only audience of her crying, like
the husband didn't even really care or wasn't even giving
her attention to the fact, giving attention to the fact
that she was crying, So she was just all on
her own, crying to herself. She was the only witness,
(42:16):
the only audience to her crying, right the husband apparently
doesn't care and doing this under the gay, big brim
of her best hat. So this is a particularly sad
image because of the contrast between this lovely, otherwise exuberant
hat and the actual feeling of the woman underneath it. It
(42:40):
should have been a happy, care free occasion, but she's
just heartbroken, So that emphasizes the sadness the contrast between
the two things. But the gay big brim of her hat.
So the brim, the brim is the bit that goes
around the edge of the hat, the widest part that's
the edge of the hat, the brim of the hat. Okay,
if it's a baseball cap, the baseball cap has a
(43:02):
brim at the front, and you can slide it around
the back if you want. You can bend the brim
of the hat. If it's a you know, another type
of hat, the brim goes all the way round. In
this case, it was a big brim and the gay
big brim of her hat. So I mean this shows
I guess the age of the story because we don't
(43:25):
normally use the word gay like that these days, because
it used to just mean happy, care free. Happy. These days,
obviously it means something else. But in those days, it
just meant care free and happy. So that's why the
word gay is being used here. Her happy, care free,
exuberant hat that she was wearing, she was crying all
(43:46):
by herself, all to herself, underneath the brim of this,
of this, of this hat. And that's the end of
the story. Okay, h what do you think of that?
I'd like to know your comments. Feel free to leave
your comments in the comments section. What do you think
of the situation? So you know, what do you think
(44:08):
the husband said, any idea what he might have said?
How do you think the woman felt in that moment
the wife? Have you ever witnessed something you know when
people watching? What did you think of the story? Other things? Remember,
you could practice repeating that story after me. Just go
(44:31):
back to the beginning of the episode, to the moment
where I told the story line by line. You could
just practice reading through it again and again. And as
I said before, you should try perhaps retelling the story
in your own words too. And another exercise you could
do Another little speaking challenge that you could do would
be to remember a time when you saw some people
(44:54):
doing something when you people watched and you saw something happen.
Could you describe that? Do you think you could make
that to a story? It would be a good exercise
for your English practice practice practice, practice, practice practice. The
five p's Okay, that's the end of this episode. If
you like my story episodes, obviously, I've done a few
of these now, which you can find in my episode
(45:16):
archive Learn English with a short Story. But I've got
others as well. I've done about ten story episodes in
my premium podcast, and so you can subscribe to the
Premium podcast. You can add all the premium episodes to
a podcast app on your phone, and when you do that,
you can listen to the episodes. You can also access
(45:37):
links in the show notes for each episode, links for
PDFs and video versions. And I've done yeah, about ten
story episodes. Most of those stories in the premium section
are true stories about my own life that I've written myself,
including stories of my childhood, like stuff that's sort of funny,
stuff that happened to me. And I do a similar
thing to what I do in these learning with the
(46:00):
short story episodes tell you the story and then break
it down for vocabulary, and then give you various of
grammar vocabulary practice exercises, memory exercises to help you remember
the vocabulary, and then dedicated pronunciation episodes to help you
practice repeating after me. That's what you can find in
those storytime episodes in my premium subscription. Yeah, okay. The
(46:26):
way it works as you sign up, and when you've
signed up, you can just really easily add your premium
subscription to a podcast app on your phone, and then
it gives you the full list of all of my episodes,
all of my free episodes with no advertising, and also
all my premium episodes in there too, and then you
can just listen to the normal episodes, listen to the
premium episodes, and then find the notes in the show notes,
(46:49):
that's where you find links for video versions and PDFs. Okay,
So if you want to do that, you can just
you know, be my guest of course teacher Luke dot
co dot uk slash premium in or just click the
link in the description to find out about Luke's English
podcast Premium. Okay, great, have a lovely day, afternoon morning
evening night. Wherever you are in the world, whatever you're doing,
(47:12):
I hope that you are having a nice time out
there in podcast land. Thank you for listening to this episode.
I will speak to you again soon in the next one,
but for now, it's just time to say goodbye, bye
bye bo bo Boe.
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