Now Hear this.

Tag: easy reading

  • No Drama!

    In the space of five minutes today, I saw two animals that I had never seen before, and you can see them below.

    The one on the left is a cow, and the other one is a llama, originally from South America. It has a double “l” at the start, but you only pronounce one of them in English.

    Now, you’re probably asking yourself how come I’ve never seen a cow, and how I saw a cow and a llama in the middle of Auckland. Those animals don’t usually walk around the streets.

    Well, I lied, kind of. I didn’t actually see the real live animals in the flesh; I saw images of them. This is the first one I saw.

    The llama is on a sunshield. To me a llama always looks funny because of its very long neck, but I found this sunshield funny because of the words. Drama and llama rhyme, and in English “no drama” is another way to say “no problem” or “no worries”. This llama looks like it’s not having any dramas!

    So that only leaves the cow, and here’s where I saw the “cow” … on the side of a car belonging to a New Zealand dairy company. 

    Its brand animal is a cow, but that’s not why I took the picture. This car has a personalised number plate, and it’s the sound in English that a cow makes. I found that funny. 

    cow image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Cow_%28Fleckvieh_breed%29_Oeschinensee_Slaunger_2009-07-07.jpg

    llama image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ec/Llama_%28Lama_glama%29_%2819692833269%29.jpg/1600px-Llama_%28Lama_glama%29_%2819692833269%29.jpg?20210311191712

  • Go on! You know want to!

    My neighbours did their washing, and hung it out to dry. I was walking past their clothesline when I noticed one of their tea towels. It was hanging upside down, and at first, I didn’t understand it, so I stopped and had a closer look before taking this photo.

    In the middle there’s a big, tempting éclair filled with cream and jam. You might not be able to read the capital letters at the top of the tea towel (the bottom in this photo), but they say: THE FATKINS DIET.

    When people go on a diet, they try to lose weight, so they avoid things like cream and sugar, but this éclair has lots of both. If you eat too many eclairs, you’ll get fat.

    Most English speakers would think this tea towel is funny, but not because they’re laughing at being fat.

    Here’s why they might think it’s funny. There’s a famous diet calledThe Atkins Diet, named after the doctor who invented it. Someone thought it would be funny to put an F in front of his name to make Fatkins and print it on this tea towel. Ha ha!

    There are other words at the bottom of the tea towel (the top in this photo), but they’re smaller, so they might be hard to read. That’s why I’ve turned the photo upside down here. It’s strange to see the sky and the clouds and the roof at the bottom and the ground up above.

  • Walk on by

    I was on my way to the swimming pool early this morning. It was still dark. As I was walking along, I noticed something in front of me on the footpath, so I stopped to check it out. This is what I saw.

    It was a man lying on the pavement. My first thoughts were: Is he OK? Does he need help? So I had a closer look. There was no blood, no vomit, and no sign of injury. The way he was lying with his arm under his head for a pillow led me to believe he was just sleeping.

    One of his shoes was lying beside him, and the other one was still on his foot. His backpack was lying beside him, too.

    I don’t know why he was lying there, but I guessed that last night he had been at a bar and had too much to drink. He looked peaceful enough, so I decided to leave him alone and went on my way. I hope he was OK.

    There’s a song with the same title as today’s post. You can listen to it here.

  • Something to crow about

    This is an eye-catching advertisement at a bus stop. Ads want to attract your attention and make you look at them. When you look at the ad above, what’s the first thing that grabs you? I don’t know about you, and I can only speak for myself, but the first thing that caught my eye was the colourful birds near the bottom … the white cock, the brown hen and the little yellow chicks.

    Another thing that drew my attention was the 2O logo in the bottom right-hand corner. There are many different internet providers in New Zealand, and that company is one of them. This ad is trying to get you to give them your business.

    But maybe you’re asking yourself this question right now: “What have farmyard birds got to do with a telecommunications provider? What’s the link? How are they connected?”. Well, the answer is in the white words in ALL CAPS at the top of the ad.

    There’s a saying in English that goes like this: Birds of a feather flock together. Everybody knows that proverb. It means that people who believe a certain thing, or people who like a certain thing, for example football fans or music fans, usually stay together.

    In this ad, the company changes the word flock to save. The company is saying that it saves money for many people, and you should join them. You should flock to them and save money by getting good rates.

    Is it a good ad? Maybe yes, maybe no, but when you stop to look at it, or when you question what it’s about, the ad has done its work. It has successfully attracted your attention.

    SOMETHING TO CROW ABOUT

  • The Sound of Silence

    There’s a famous song by Simon and Garfunkle with the same name as today’s post. If you don’t know it, you can listen to it here.

    But why am I telling you that? Well, after my swim this morning, I was sitting in the sauna with my eyes closed, enjoying the heat and the silence.

    Then I heard the door opening as someone came in, but I didn’t open my eyes. When this person sat down next to me, I could tell by the way the bench moved that he was a big guy, but I still kept my eyes shut. 

    He didn’t speak, but now and again, I could hear a very small noise. It wasn’t all the time, just on and off. It was like a small fly was trapped behind the wall and was beating its wings trying to escape.

    The noise wasn’t loud, but it was loud enough to annoy me, and it was annoying me because I couldn’t figure out what it was. So I decided to open my eyes.

    I looked at the big guy next to me, and he was wearing waterproof headphones like the ones below in the sauna. I don’t know what he was listening to, though. It wasn’t music, so maybe it was a podcast.

    Life today is very noisy: traffic, people having conversations face to face or on the phone, TV, radio, advertisements, muzak in supermarkets and lifts, the list goes on. Nowadays, it’s very hard to find silence unless you actually go looking for it.

    Personally speaking, I like the silence in the sauna, but that’s just me. It calms me and helps me clear my mind. But if other people want to be different, that’s OK. The noise wasn’t a big deal, so live and let live is what I say.

  • It’s a small world!

    This is the small pool where I swim in the Tepid Baths in central Auckland. I usually just swim silently, keeping myself to myself, but this morning, I didn’t.

    In this pool, as you can see, there are only four lanes. When I got to the end of my lane, I stopped for a rest. There was a woman in the lane next to me, and she was talking to a woman in the lane next to her. I didn’t know the woman next to me, but I know the other woman. She’s Japanese, and she swims there regularly.

    I didn’t hear what the woman in the lane next to me said, but the music in her voice sounded familiar. We all started swimming again, and later I talked to this woman when she was also having a rest at the end of her lane. I said, “Excuse me, are you Irish?” because I thought she had an Irish accent.

    She looked at me and said, “No, I’m French,” and then she added, “but my husband is Irish!” I asked her which part of Ireland he came from. It was Kerry, in the south-west of Ireland, so I told her I was from Belfast in the north-east of Ireland, opposite ends of the country.

    I said earlier that there are four swimming lanes in the pool, so the Japanese and French women made two, and me from Ireland made three, but there was another woman in the fourth lane. I know her because she’s also a regular, and she’s from Scotland. Four different nationalities in the one swimming pool at the same time.

    https://www.ireland-information.com/images/map-of-ireland-big.jpg

    Ireland, where I come from, is a small island with just over 7 million people. 

    The world is a big place and it has over 8 billion people, but as the swimming pool proves, it’s still a small world.

    Ireland map: https://www.ireland-information.com/images/map-of-ireland-big.jpg

    World map: https://pixabay.com/photos/earth-globe-planet-world-space-11015/

  • When? ……… Then.

    It’s Wednesday morning, and I’ve just come back from an early swim. I like the swimming pool I go to for three main reasons:

    1. It’s within easy walking distance of my home.

    2. It’s not usually busy when I go.

    3. The staff are always very friendly.

    When I was leaving the building, I said goodbye to the lady at reception, and she said it back to me. But as I was walking home, I was thinking to myself what else we could have said instead of simply saying the word goodbye. And this is what I thought:

    Me: See you Friday.

    Her: OK then.

    Or we could also have said this:

    Me: See you Friday.

    Her: OK then.

    Me: Right, see you then, then.

    And just in case you’re wondering, that wasn’t a mistake. There are two thens in the last sentence.

    Then is a very simple and very common word, but it can have two different meanings.

    One meaning refers to a time, for example a particular day (Friday), or a part of a day (tomorrow morning or this evening), and the other meaning is a word we use to end a conversation and to show that you agree, for example, a teacher might say at the end of the class “That’s it for today then”.

    So in “Right, see you then, then“, the first then refers to Friday, and the second then shows that it’s a date.

  • Say Cheese!

    As I was walking past a cafe, I saw this in the window. There are three wooden boxes with some cutlery in them. You can’t see what kind of cutlery because they’re pointing down, but looking at the handles, I think there are two knives in the box on the left, the middle box probably has forks, and there are spoons in the other box.

    There are some paper napkins in the middle box. You use a napkin to wipe your mouth or your fingers when you’re eating, or you can use it to mop up any liquid that you might spill. There are words on the napkin that say the same thing.

    But there’s another word on the napkin that is cut off. You can only see the top half of the capital letters. The bottom half is hidden by the cutlery box. Can you guess what the word is?

    Here’s the first clue: the café wants you to have a good time and be happy when you visit them, so it wants you to do this. If you need a second clue, look at the title of this post … it’s what people say before they take a photo. And if you’re still not sure, follow this link.

  • Just Do It!

    If someone gives you an order, or tells you what to do, and you do what they tell you, then you obey them. If you don’t do it, you disobey them, and if you do that, then you are disobedient. Sometimes children, especially young ones, can be disobedient, but adults usually aren’t. Now look at this picture.

    I saw this while walking home from the supermarket this morning. It’s a pink flamingo scooter lying on its side. You can see some words in capital letters on the underside of the deck (that’s the flat part of the scooter where you stand when riding one). Before today, I didn’t know that there was anything written there, but you live and learn.

    These words ask the rider to park the scooter in an upright position so that the next rider can easily hop on. However, it looks like the last rider of this scooter was disobedient.

    BTW, this scooter company uses the colour pink since that bird is pink because of the food it eats. Take a look at the words below. They all end in the letter o. In English, if there’s more than one, we add either “s” or “es” to make the word plural. Only some of the words in the photo add “es”. Which ones?

    Screenshot

    Later on, I saw another upended scooter from another company, but this time, there was no writing on the underside of the deck.