Talking about your childhood 🧒🧸👶 Real Easy English

Hello, and welcome

to Real Easy English, the podcast

where we have real conversations in easy English to help you learn. I'm Neil. And I'm Beth. You can find a video

of this podcast and find a worksheet to help you learn

on our website bbclearningenglish.com. Hello, Beth, how are you? I'm very well, thank you.

How are you, Neil? I'm very happy.

The sun is shining today. It is. It's a beautiful day. What are we talking about? Today we're talking

about our childhoods. So we'll talk about life, how it was, What, what our lives were like

when we were children. How interesting.

Let's get started. So, Neil, what do you remember most

about your childhood? Well, it was such a long time ago, but I can remember things, obviously,

quite clearly. I lived in a different country

when I was a child. Where did you live? I lived in Canada

until I was ten years old. So I can remember,

very hot, humid summers, but very long

and very cold and snowy winters. So you always, like, made snowmen,

I guess, and had snowball fights? Yes. We always had a white Christmas,

which is great. And I don't think I've ever had

a white Christmas in England. Not in the south of England. Well, I moved house, or my family moved house,

when I was ten, so I feel like

a slightly similar thing where all of my childhood memories

really are in this house and playing with my friends that lived in that

village and went to my primary school when I lived in that house.

Having friends over for tea. That's a lot of, yeah,

strong memories of of my childhood. And what kind of things did you do

when you were a child? What kind of hobbies and interests

did you have? Well, my friends

and I used to always put on shows. We would do gymnastics shows

in the garden. We'd say, 'Mum, Dad, come and watch

my gymnastics show with my friend'. We used to do singing concerts. We wrote our own songs. Once, my friend and I recorded

onto a tape. Do you remember tapes? Of course I remember tapes. We recorded our own song onto a tape, and we sent it to a recording studio

in the hope that they would sign us. Is it a good song? It's great. I think we need to hear it. Maybe at the end of the show. What about you? What sort of hobbies

did you have when you were a child? I just remember playing outside a lot

with my friends and having adventures and

also doing lots and lots of sport. So I always liked football and cricket

and I played when I was in Canada. I played ice hockey. That's cool.

Can you still ice skate? I'm OK. I'd say

I'm better than most British people. Because you grow up in Canada skating. Yeah. But I'm not brilliant. How do you think the world

has changed since you were a child? The world is really different

from when I was a child. Because when I was growing up, we didn't

have the internet or mobile phones. And I think

they've made such a difference to the way people communicate

with each other. And it drives me mad sometimes, because

my son will try to arrange to go out with his friends, just to go

to the park, in a group chat, and then nothing ever happens. And I just say, 'just go there'. Yeah. It's a hundred metres down the road. Knock the door. But

I don't think that happens any more. No, I think for me, like, something that's really changed is,

like I was saying about tapes, like the idea of playing a tape

or putting a CD in a CD player. Like, brings back amazing memories. I used to have a CD

that I would play, and then I'd sing really loudly, and I would imagine that then

suddenly the band would be in the garden and they would,

and they'd be there singing with me. But I think those physical music devices

even like having a video or a DVD, like, they bring back loads

of memories for me. Let's recap the language we heard

in our conversation about childhood, starting with 'childhood', which is the

period of time when you are a child. We had 'memory'. A memory is something

that you can remember from the past. We can say

that something 'brings back memories', which just means that it reminds you

of something that happened in the past. And when we talk about things

in the past, we often use the past simple. For example, I said that I

played in the street with my friends. And we also heard 'used to' and 'would',

which is used when we talk about things that happened a number

of times in the past. So, for example,

I used to play ice hockey. It means: I played ice hockey a lot,

and now I don't any more. And that's it for this episode

of Real Easy English. Why not test what you've learnt

with the worksheet Thanks for joining us, and goodbye. Bye.