3-DAY WEEKEND LISTENING LESSON

[00:00:00] Hi everyone, my name is Sam. I help English learners immerse themselves in the English language by focusing on subjects like politics, psychology, philosophy, society and culture. 

Today I'm going to bring to you a listening exercise where I tell you about my weekend. Recently, we had a three-day weekend in the UK.

[00:00:21] For no particular reason, it was just a public holiday on a Monday, celebrating summer, I think. 

So, I'm going to tell you about my three-day weekend and what I got up to. Your job is trying to listen to me tell you about this weekend very naturally.

[00:00:40] I'm going to not hold back with my language. I'll be speaking at the same pace that I normally speak at.

[00:00:46] If you are finding it difficult to understand everything I'm saying and you would like a transcript of this video, you can join my free English learning community. A link is in the description. 

You will be given content every single week so you don't have to find it yourself to make sure that you're reading more and listening more and watching more videos in English, but you will also get all the transcripts to every single video I make. 

[00:01:11] So on Friday, my girlfriend had a medical procedure, so I spent a lot of that day looking after her. 

I went with her to the procedure, and I came back home. Then I went to the gym in the afternoon. I trained the bottom half of my body, so legs.

[00:01:26] And then I made her dinner, and we watched a film. We were just taking it easy because she needed to rest, so we chose to have a relaxing Friday. 

We watched the film Aliens, because I don't know if you know, but there is a new Alien film from the Alien franchise in the cinema at the moment. I really like the first one, it's called Alien.

[00:01:49] Some of the others, I haven't watched in a very long time, but I don't think there as good, but I realized that I haven't watched the second alien film which is called Aliens. 

It's basically the same film as the first one with more Aliens in it. So, Alien, first one - one Alien. Aliens, second one, more Aliens.

[00:02:10] I really enjoyed the film, I gave it 5 stars out of 5, so basically a great film for me. 

I thought it was really thrilling, very exciting, didn't… I kind of could guess what was going to happen because I could see the similarities between the first one and this one. 

But still, a really enjoyable film, even though it's quite old now.

[00:02:30] We didn't really plan anything too big for the weekend because we… I didn't know how my girlfriend would feel. 

She felt okay on Saturday, and we decided to go to the pride event that was happening in Manchester. 

So, this is a yearly celebration of the LGBTQ community and some of my friends who are amongst this community, I guess, were going and they were spending the entire day there and going to some event afterwards where they would get drunk, probably, definitely, I think they definitely did.

But there is a parade where there is… a lot of the streets are kind of blocked off for this parade where lots of floats go down and vehicles go down and different companies sponsor these different vehicles.

[00:03:16] And basically there's a long, it's like a marathon, I guess, but people are walking and dancing and celebrating. 

There's People watching and cheering and cheering them on and supporting them and clapping them and just enjoying their presence. So, we went to the parade in the morning. I think we… well, I think we left at around half 12.

[00:03:33] Actually, we got the train into the city center. I did go for a jog beforehand because I wanted to go for a run that day. 

I wanted to do some cardiovascular exercise, but my knee has been hurting a little bit recently, so I didn't want to go for a full-on run. The dog also needed walking. We have a small French bulldog.

[00:03:55] He's almost two, called Alfie and we needed to take him for a walk because we didn't want to take him to the pride event, or the pride parade.

Because there'd be lots of people there, there'd be lots of loud music there, so I didn't think it would be a suitable environment for him, and I don't… we didn't think it would be a great idea to bring him because people might tread on him.

Don't want that to happen, so we needed to take him out for a walk so he'd be tired and he'd be okay at home alone.

[00:04:25] So instead of taking him for a walk, I thought I would kill two birds with one stone, and I would go for a jog with Alfie, even though he is a French Bulldog, he can run. 

So, we just went on a short jog. My knee did hurt a little bit, but it wasn't too bad. I think I will be able to run on it pretty soon.

[00:04:44] We were at the pride parade for about an hour. I went with my girlfriend and her sister. We met one of my friends there and his boyfriend and his family was there as well. 

I also saw another one of my friends there and my girlfriend saw some of her friends there as well.

[00:05:02] We were about there… there for about an hour and an hour and a half. She had never been to one of these events before. 

I think I've been to one in Leeds while I was at university there. And I've also been not to a parade, but I've been, been to another pride event in Manchester. But I've been to a parade before.

[00:05:19] It's quite commercialized at this point because you just see big companies, like send… like vehicles of some of their employees who maybe are part of this community or want to show support for this community. 

So, it's a bit weird just to see, like, supermarkets and airlines, send… kind of vehicles down with their employees.

[00:05:40] It just seems like they're using it for advertising. And you do question how much these companies actually genuinely care about these events. I think they're just doing it for social acceptance and advertising essentially. 

So, there is a commercial aspect to it, which I don't particularly like, but it's nice to see people celebrate being themselves.

[00:06:01] And obviously I support this community. So, I was quite happy to show my support there as well.

[00:06:06] We got home in the afternoon and took it quite easy. We were just resting and relaxing, thinking what we're… working out, what we wanted to do the rest of the day. 

We had the idea of going for some food, and there was a very small pizza restaurant or shop that was close to our house before, and it upgraded its venue to a much bigger venue.

[00:06:28] There was a food hall there, and the food hall closed down, and this pizza shop or restaurant took over. And we were yet to visit the new venue, so we thought we would walk there about six o'clock and try and walk in and get a table. 

But they were fully booked, so they turned us away, even though we were loyal customers to the old venue, which we did say, but that didn't work.

[00:06:52] They were fully booked. They couldn't squeeze us in on a small table, which was a little bit annoying. The staff were a little bit patronizing as well. So didn't really enjoy that, but I'll still go back because they do sell good pizza.

[00:07:04] Instead, my girlfriend, and her sister ordered a Indian take away, but I'm trying to save a little bit of money, and I'm trying to eat healthy. So, I cooked some food, and we watched another film. 

We watched Predator! Because the Alien franchise and the Predator franchise actually do link up at some stage and there is an Alien versus Predator.

[00:07:25] I don't think this film is actually particularly good, I haven't seen it in a long time. But I haven't seen the film Predator before and neither had my Girlfriend or her sister. 

So, we watched it, has Arnold Schwarzenegger in. Pretty fun film, not as good as the Alien film in my opinion.

[00:07:41] It's still quite fun. It has very similar themes in it. So, it wasn't too surprising. You could guess what's going to happen again, but still fun to watch. I do recommend.

[00:07:51] On the Sunday I woke up quite early because I had a few things to do, needed to get the house ready. 

We were leaving Manchester that day and we were going to drive to my parents’ house because my parents are away in Sweden, because my sister lives there. 

[00:08:04] They were away visiting her. I have the dentist in my hometown on the Tuesday as well. So, I needed to go. So, I thought, why not spend the bank holiday weekend there? 

But we stopped off in the Peak District, which is near Sheffield in the North of England to meet some of my girlfriends, friends from university that are getting married next year, and they invited me to the wedding and I've never met them.

[00:08:28] So I thought it was a good idea that we meet them before. Well, I didn't think it was, they thought it was, and my girlfriend just wanted to meet them anyway. 

So, we decided to meet up with them in the Peak District and go for a nice countryside walk there. So, the four of us include, well, not including the dog, five of us went for a walk there.

[00:08:45] It was quite nice. Then we drove to my hometown, and we took it easy. We actually stopped off at a pub after the walk and we had a Sunday roast, which is traditional Sunday food in the UK. And that was pretty big. 

I had three different types of meats on my plate, and I think it was 1,700 calories. So, it's quite a lot of food.

[00:09:07] We ate that about 3 o'clock, so I wasn't too hungry for the rest of the day. So, ate no more food that day. Did have a little bit of red wine in the evening though.

[00:09:16] So, quite a lot of driving on the Sunday, but luckily my girlfriend was driving, so no problem.

[00:09:23] So we were in my hometown on the Monday, and we wanted to make the most of the day. So, we woke up quite early for a day off and we went on a big long walk about nine kilometers in the countryside up some big hills.

[00:09:36] The French bulldog Alfie was a little bit tired because his legs are quite small, and he can't breathe too well because he's a French bulldog. 

So, he was quite hot by the time he got to the top of the hill, but he managed very well for his size and condition. 

We came home, we were deliberating if we should go to another pub and eat some more food, but we thought we'd save some money, and we had a full English breakfast.

[00:10:00] Instead, we went to the supermarket, bought all the ingredients and made it ourselves. We relaxed the rest of the day. We finished watching Troy, which we started the night before. I've not seen that film before. 

So, we finished watching that film on the Monday. My girlfriend did a bit of reading in the garden, also played on her Nintendo Switch, while I did a little bit of work that I needed to do.

[00:10:24] Hmm. Then we cooked a spaghetti Bolognese which took quite a long time, but it was delicious. And we just chilled for the rest of the evening. 

We were going to finish a film that we started ages ago called Princess Mononoke. It's a Studio Ghibli film. It's like animated film but we didn't end up watching that and we did a bit of reading in bed.