Show 358 Thursday 26 April

Watch today’s show at YouTube or BlipTV.

Hi, I’m Sarah. Welcome to The Daily English Show.
I have a great scoop to share with you today.
The Watchman has spoken!
Back in Show 336 I talked about The Watchman.
He is watchman55 on YouTube.
On his videos there is a website address.
So I checked his site and on his site I found an email address ... so I thought I’d send him an email.
I wrote and said I thought his videos were brilliant and I asked if he was going to make any more. Because his last video was posted 6 months ago.
And he replied. I was pretty surprised because I wasn’t expecting a reply.
This is his email.

Dearest Sarah,

The Watchman bows his head in appreciation of your kind words. Brilliant, eh? Hmmmm, this is a high standard to live up to, and perhaps that is what keeps The Watchman from making more. For what is there to be gained once one has achieved brilliance?In truth, it is time and the daily rigors of life that have combined to leave The Watchman little opening for much digital creating.
This certainly won't always be the case, but since there are no measured consequences levied upon said "creator" for lack of output, new material will only come when the urge hits and time allows.
Do keep your eyes open, however, for you never know when The Watchman will return.

*twhs

Hmmm so it still doesn’t solve the mystery of who the watchman actually is. But he’s a good writer that’s for sure.
In the videos his accent sounds kind of British. Except that he says /tu:b/ instead of /tju:b/.
And in this email he spells rigor without a u.
And he says eh.
So, I think he might be from Canada.

A couple of words you might not know.
Firstly: rigour/rigor
The rigours of sth means the difficulties and unpleasant conditions of something.
So the watchman says he can’t make any videos because of time and the daily rigors of life.
Basically, he’s too busy.
And he says: new material will only come when the urge hits and time allows.
An urge is a strong desire or impulse.
So he will make a new video when time allows – when he has time and when the urge hits – so when he gets a desire or when he feels like it.
I will definitely be keeping my eyes open.

STICK NEWS

Kia ora in Stick News today China is planning an online marriage list designed to tackle bigamy.

Bigamy is the crime of marrying someone when you are still legally married to somebody else. In recent years there has been a rise in bigamy in China.
To tackle this problem China is planning an online marriage list.
By 2010 people will be able to check a nationwide registry of marriage details – including the date, place and names of every marriage.

And that was Stick News for Thursday the 26th of April.
Kia Ora.

the snow report

It snowed briefly today.

conversations with sarah
#223 What happened to him?

Step 1: Repeat Sam’s lines.
Step 2: Read Sam’s lines and talk to Sarah.

Sam Why do people get married to two people at the same time?

Sarah I don’t know. It’s pretty weird. I was looking up bigamy in Wikipedia and I found this bizarre story about this guy called Arthur Worthington. He was born in America and then he moved to New Zealand.

Sam Did he marry two women at the same time?

Sarah Yeah. It sounds like he married a lot of women. And he set up this weird religion too.

Sam What kind of religion?

Sarah Like a cult I guess. It was called “Temple of Truth”.

Sam What happened to him?

Sarah Well he ran away to Australia ... then came back to New Zealand. Then went back to Australia and ended up in prison there. And then went to America and got sent to prison there too.

Sam Was this recently?

Sarah No, it was a while ago. It says he died in prison about 1917 or something.

Links

Today's news.

Arthur Worthington

music

artist: Jampy
album: Rain
track: Little Swing
from: Napoli, Italy
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site