Unexpected Road Trip with James

Hello, welcome back to the podcast everyone, Ihope you’re all doing well and having a nice summer or winter depending onwhich hemisphere you are currently residing in.

I am currently in the middle of a very busyteaching schedule – teaching classes all day every day this week and next week,and of course in the evenings I’m looking after my daughter and dealing withall the usual aspects of life in general. So, I have not had a lot of time towork on podcast episodes. That’s why there’s been a delay and that mightcontinue for a few more weeks, we’ll see. But here’s a new episode!

There are actually loads of things I’d like totalk about, including the fact that England are now World Cup winners – yes, wewon the World Cup for the first time ever, so it finally came home! I’m nottalking about football of course, nope – I’m talking about cricket (yes, thatstill counts! It’s still a big deal because let me remind you that it is theworld’s second most popular spectator sport.) Yes, England are the champions ofthe world. Those of you who come from cricket-playing countries will knowexactly what I’m talking about. Everyone else will probably be confused. Anddon’t you dare compare it to baseball. Anyway, England won the cricket indramatic fashion, beating New Zealand in an incredibly close game which wentright down to the wire. I’m not going to talk about it in this episodeactually, but I did want to mention it because of course I am very proud andI’ve had plenty of requests from listeners in places like India and Pakistanwho want me to talk about it. I’ll see if I can cover it in an upcomingepisode. If you can’t wait and you want some cricket chat on the podcast, youcould always listen to episode 473 in the archive which is a conversation withmy dad all about cricket.

But anyway, this episode is all about anunexpected road trip that I went on with my brother recently.

Last week, I was on holiday with my family. Wetravelled to England and actually I did manage to record two episodes while Iwas there. This is the first one and it was completely unplanned and recordedon my brother’s phone during various parts of a long and quite frustrating daythat we spent near the end of the holiday.

In fact, this episode is a sort of road tripdiary, recorded on the road with James.

In this episode you will be able to hear…
Exactly what happened when I got a flat tyre while driving back from theholiday. A tyre is the rubber part of the wheel of a car or bike, in this casecar – the black rubber part of the wheel which is full of air. So I got a flattyre, which is where the tyre (or inner tube inside the tyre) gets puncturedand all the air comes out. In fact I got two flat tyres in the same week, whichI think is really unlucky. Anyway, the second one caused my brother and me toend up having to go on an unexpected journey through the lanes and roads ofDevon, Dorset, Somerset, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire. Onthe way we recorded a series of rambling conversations covering the details ofour trip and lots of other topics, and that is what you’re going to listen to.

So why don’t you join us on our accidental roadtrip and listen to us rambling on about…

The specific problem with the car, what happened and how it could be repaired

Different words and expressions for feeling angry (because I was very angry with the situation, certainly at the beginning, although you can’t really hear it in my voice because I’m so cool, calm and collected)

The dangers of drinking strong coffee and the phenomenon of “coffee rage”

The film Robocop and the 2014 Robocop Reboot (a very random tangent)

How and why cars might pull each other at nightclubs

Going insane while waiting to be rescued by roadside assistance

Different types of pub, including how to pick the right pub for a drink in England

The taste of beer, and different types of beer that you can get

A close encounter with a famous TV comedian at a motorway service station somewhere near Bristol

Fascinating details of the sandwiches that we bought to help sustain us on our adventure

The topic of going vegan or at least just eating less meat, and why eating meat is said to be bad for the environment

How to actually spell and pronounce the names of some English cities and counties on our trip, including Gloucester, Gloucestershire, Worcester, Worcestershire, Warwick and Warwickshire.

All that and more, coming up in this veryrambling episode, spontaneously recorded on James’ mobile phone.

Listen on to find out all the details and tohear the voices of some other members of my family at the end, and by the waythere is some strong language (swearing), the sound quality might not be up tothe usual high standard because it was recorded on a mobile phone (but I thinkit’s ok) and also there is a lot of slightly mad rambly nonsense coming up –but I think you’ve probably come to expect that sort of thing from this podcasthaven’t you?
YES WE HAVE LUKE – LET’S START!

OK here we go…