Your English Five a Day #41.2

E344: 🎙️ Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast! I'm Anna, and you're listening to Week 41, Day 2 of Your English Five a Day. Here, we are working on expanding your vocabulary while improving your English listening skills, by focusing on five items of vocabulary every day of the working week, from Monday through to Friday.

🐺 We start off today's list with the noun "power cut". Then, we delve into the idiom "not think straight", which is followed by the verb "abound". After that, we take a look at another verb, "huddle", and we finish with a final verb, "howl".

🔌 After some quick pronunciation practice and a recap to test your memory, we visit Sally and her kids in today's story, where they are experiencing a power cut during a winter storm. As the wind howls outside, they huddle together by candlelight and rediscover the joys of storytelling and board games, reconnecting in a way they hadn’t in a long time.

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Transcript

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Hello, and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna and you're listening to Week 41, Day 2 of Your English Five a Day. This is a series that is dedicated to increasing your active vocabulary and improving your overall English. I do hope that you'll stay for the next 15 to 18 minutes and enjoy today's episode. Without further ado, let's start today's list with the noun power cut, power cut. We spell this P O W E R, power. Cut, C U T a power cut. A power cut is an interruption to the supply of power of electricity. A power cut. Now, power cut is something that I've experienced quite rarely in my life, but I'm always prepared for one. It's funny really, I have experienced a few minutes of power outage probably three times in my life, mostly back in the'80s and'90s, not so much these days. Occasionally the lights will flicker, but it's rare to get an outage. It does happen sometimes in the local area. It hasn't happened to me, touch wood, since I've lived in this house, but if there's a really bad storm, then sometimes it can affect the power lines and an area will go down for a few hours while they repair the lines. Now, I'm always prepared for a power outage, for a power cut, with a box full of candles, and I always make sure I've got a torch that has batteries that are fully charged. So, if there were a power cut, then I would at least have light, especially if it happens at nighttime. Have you experienced a power cut? What's the longest you've been without power? Here's another example,"The latest winter storm caused power cuts in thousands of homes." Okay, next on the list is the idiom to not think straight, to not think straight. We often say we can't think straight so I would say,"I can't think straight." In case you're mishearing me, let me spell it out for you. Not, N O T. Think, T H I N K. Straight, S T R A I G H T not think straight. Now this means that you're unable to think, you're unable to use your mind in an effective way. Usually, because you're being distracted by something. Maybe you are incredibly stressed or something in particular is playing on your mind. Maybe you have a deadline coming up and you know that you're not going to meet it. And it's really bugging you. And you're not able to think straight because of this thing. Maybe someone said something to you this morning that was unexpected and has really upset you. And now you can't think straight and focus on your daily tasks because all this is going on in your head. Sometimes it's hard to think straight when there's a lot of noise around you. If you work in a noisy office or in a noisy environment, there's lots of people talking, or maybe there's an alarm going on. Maybe there's been a power cut and now the power's come back on. All the alarms are going off and it's really hard for you to think straight. I struggle to think straight when my children are crying or nagging. There's something about a child crying, particularly my own, that completely messes up my brain. I am unable to be logical because my mum brain kicks in that says,"Protect the child at all costs." And that means I just can't think straight. I'm just focused on the child crying and I have to try and fix whatever the problem is. So I find it hard to focus when my children are upset. I just can't think straight when I can hear their cries. What interrupts your ability to think straight? Next on the list is the verb abound, abound. We spell this A B O U N D abound, abound. Abound means to exist in large numbers or in huge quantities, it suggests an abundance or an overflowing state. So, it's not just having a lot, it's having more than enough. Here's an example sentence,"In the garden in the springtime, flowers and their delicate fragrances abound." In my garden, in the springtime, it's the flies and the slugs and the snails that abound. We have a real problem with wildlife, with bugs and everything that's a bit of a pest to the gardener abound in my garden. We've just let go now, we've just decided not to worry about it, just let them do their thing. The only thing I don't like is the flies. The flies, they come into the house and you end up with a kitchen full of flies, which is never nice. It's very unhygienic. So, I don't like having flies abound in my garden, but I don't mind so much the snails and the slugs and the caterpillars. All those things can do what they like. Even the pigeons that come and eat all my blueberries they're welcome. They are very welcome. I would like some of my blueberries, to be honest, but I'd rather have birds and butterflies and bees and things like that in the garden. Okay, let's move on to the next verb. This is huddle, huddle. We spell this H U D D L E, huddle. To huddle is to come close together in a group. And it's usually because it's cold, but in a sporting event, like a team sport event, often the team will huddle when they want to discuss tactics. So, a football team might huddle together before they begin to have a little pep talk from their coach or the captain might give a little talk to his team and say,"Come on now team, we're going to focus on their defence. Remember the plan. This is what we're going to do. We could do it. One, two, three, go." So, they huddle. Here's an example sentence,"The hikers huddled around the campfire trying to keep warm." When I think about huddling in the sense of like hugging quite tightly, particularly for warmth, I'm reminded of a documentary about wildlife, that was of course voiced by David Attenborough, that followed the penguins. And there's this huge group of penguins in the darkest, coldest part of the winter time, and they're all trying to keep warm and they all come together in this huge huddle. And they keep moving so that the penguins on the outside manage to come in and get to be in the warmth of the inside. But it's absolutely dire. It's so cold. Those poor penguins. But, a huddle and a cuddle is always nice. Alright, last on the list is the verb howl, howl. We spell this H O W L howl, howl. Now, to howl, this is something a wolf does, it's also something a child does if they are crying really loudly, they might howl. And we also say that the wind howls. If the wind is making a really loud noise because it's blowing in a strong way, we'd say the wind howls. So, here's an example sentence,"The wind was howling in the trees.""The howling wind made the child howl with fear." And the wolf would howl at the moon following the storm. Alright, that's our five for today. Let's do a quick recap. We started with the noun power cut, which is an interruption in the supply of electricity; something that I haven't experienced, lucky for me, many times in my life. Then we had the idiom, to not think straight. Normally you say,"I can't think straight." And it means you're unable to use your mind in an effective way, usually due to distraction. Then we had the verb abound, which means to exist in large numbers, usually in an abundant way. We had the verb huddle, which is to come close together in a group, maybe because it's cold or maybe because you need to have a private conversation with a group. And last on the list was the verb howl. Howl, which is the noise made by a wolf or a crying child or the wind. Okay, so let's now do this for pronunciation. Please repeat after me. Power cut. Power cut. Not think straight. Not think straight. Abound. Abound. Huddle. Huddle. Howl. Howl. Very good. Okay, let me test your memory now. What is the noise that the wind makes when it blows really hard and makes lots and lots of noise? It howls. And if you guys are making so much noise that I can't use my mind effectively, what idiom would I use? I'd say,"I can... not think straight. I cannot think straight. Please be quiet." And then if once you finally quiet down and I'm getting to work, suddenly the electricity stops. There's an interruption. What is this? What would I call this interruption in electricity? A power cut."Oh no, there's been a power cut." And then I go to the library where there is electricity and resources in large numbers. Actually, there are so many books, I don't even know where to start. The electricity is more than enough. There's so much electricity, they even have a generator, so they'll never suffer from a power cut. What verb would I use to describe what's happening here with these books? They exist in large numbers. They exist... in abundance. They... abound. Yes, very good. And then I see over at the other side of the library, a group of students are all close together in a group. They're having a very private conversation. It looks like they're scheming. What are they doing? What's this coming together closely? Huddling. Yes, they are huddling. They are huddling in the corner. I think they're up to no good. Very good. Okay, so let's listen out for these items once again in today's storytime. Sally couldn't think straight. The wind was howling outside, making a loud noise. She had no electricity and was on her own with two kids. The powerful winter storm had caused a power cut in Sally's town. It was 7 pm and completely dark, inside and outside. Sally took a deep breath and turned on the torch on her phone."Now," she thought,"where did I put the candles and torches?" She opened a kitchen drawer. Somehow, she had thought to put them all in the same place for moments like these. Sally lit some candles and she and the kids huddled around the kitchen table."I don't know how long it will be until the power comes back on. So in the meantime, we need to only use our devices for emergencies, like making calls," Sally explained to her kids."So, what are we going to do all evening in the dark?" asked her son. Ideas abound when you can't go on the internet, as Sally and her kids discovered. Wrapped in blankets and with torches under their chins, they told each other stories. Some were scary. Others were about family or town legends. The last time they'd done this was on a camping trip with the kids when they were younger, and it brought back good memories. Then, the kids remembered that they had a box of board games. They spent so much time on their phones or computers that they hardly ever played Scrabble or cards. The family played a game of Monopoly, surrounded by candles. They had so much fun that they almost forgot about the storm and power cut. After the game, Sally blew out the candles and she and the kids went to bed. Although she hoped the power would come back on the next day, they had a lot of fun that night. Instead of spending their evening on screens as usual, the family connected with one another. Sally hoped they would have more evenings like that in the future, without more power cuts, of course. And that brings us to the end of today's episode. I do hope you enjoyed it and I really hope you'll come back again tomorrow. So until then, take very good care and goodbye.