In this episode, I talk about the storm of a bad day.
I talk about the weight we carry when we expect every day to be OK all the time, the quiet damage of beating ourselves up, and the small things that can ease the load a bit.
This is a lookback on why it’s alright to feel low sometimes, how to share the struggle, and the simple truth that tomorrow always gives you another chance.

✨ Get this episode’s transcript: https://www.patreon.com/posts/its-ok-to-have-137403297

🧠 Today We Learn:
Vocabulary: Emotions & Mood, Thinking & Honesty
Grammar: Subjunctive for Hypothetical Advice / Desire to express advice, importance, or desire, often after verbs like 'suggest', 'insist', or adjectives like 'vital', Contrastive Focus with 'do' to give strong emphasis or stressing truth, Bare Conditionals to drop 'if' and invert the subject and auxiliary, often for formal or dramatic effect.

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In this episode, a smell hangs in the air that catches you mid-step, cuts through the day, and takes you somewhere you weren’t expecting.
I walk through these moments: petrol on a cold service station forecourt, the sea before you see it, the green breath of the ground after rain, and the warm weight of a scent you can’t quite name.
This is a slow wander through memory, the way certain smells outlast the years, and the quiet joy of letting them hold you for a while.
Linguistically, it features adjectival post-position, nominalised clauses as subjects, and resumptive modifiers - structures that add texture, depth, and rhythm to advanced storytelling.
If you’ve ever been pulled somewhere far away by nothing more than the air around you, this one’s for you.

✨ Get this episode’s transcript: https://www.patreon.com/posts/my-favourite-17-136764083

🧠 Today We Learn:
Vocabulary: Smells & Senses, Memory & Emotion Triggers, Movement & Smell Actions
Grammar: Adjectival Post-Position to sound more poetic, rhythmic, or descriptive, Nominalised Clauses as Subjects to make an abstract idea the main focus of the sentence, Resumptive Modifiers to repeats a noun (or pronoun) and add extra detail or commentary after it.

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In this episode, we’re back home on Sunday in the late afternoon.
There’s the smell of roast potatoes in the air, gravy bubbling on the stove, steam on the windows, someone shouting for more Yorkshire puddings from the other room.
I talk through these memories of the British Sunday roast: a meal woven into our national story.
This episode is a warm plate of tradition, comfort, and class history from medieval feasts to factory families to vegan gravy in a French bar on a rainy day.
If you’ve ever missed the taste of a meal from home, this one’s for you!

🧠 Today We Learn:
Vocabulary: Food & Cooking, Home, Comfort & Family Life, Informal & Colloquial Expressions, Sensory Language
Grammar: Left dislocation for emphasis or clarity by placing the topic at the start of the sentence, followed by a pronoun that refers back to it, Ellipsis in coordinate clauses to avoid repetition and create more natural, flowing speech by omitting repeated words in joined clauses, Negative question tags to seek agreement or confirmation in a conversational, often rhetorical way, Inferred conditionals to suggest a conditional idea without using the word if, creating a more subtle or idiomatic tone.

✨ Get this episode’s transcript: https://www.patreon.com/posts/136038150

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In this episode, we’re in the kitchen.
There’s steam on the window. Rain outside. The clink of a spoon against a mug.
We follow the journey of tea, from ancient leaves in China to builder’s brews on British scaffolding.
It’s a story of empire, class, comfort, and quiet ritual. Of arguments over milk, sugar, and whether a proper cuppa needs a teapot.
I walk you through the history, the culture, and the method - not the fancy stuff, but the real stuff.
If you’ve ever wondered why Brits care so much about tea… this one’s for you.

🧠 Today We Learn:
Vocabulary: Tea & Food, Home & Everyday Life, British Idioms & Everyday Speech
Grammar: Mixed Conditionals to talk about an unreal past and its effect on the present, Right Dislocation / Displacement to add emphasis or make speech feel more natural and conversational.

✨ Get this episode’s transcript: https://www.patreon.com/posts/135320912

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In this episode, we’re riding home on a wonky second-hand bike - it folds in half, squeaks on corners, and makes you feel slightly ridiculous.
This is a story about bad bike rental schemes, stolen wheels, and the quiet pride of holding your own against Lycra-clad cyclists on carbon frames.
It’s also about learning to live with things that wobble, fix what’s broken, and find freedom in the awkward.
Linguistically, it’s packed with UK slang, casual phrasal verbs, and metaphors born from movement: folding, snapping, setting up, sticking it in the boot.
If you’ve ever been proud of your own bicycle, then this one’s for you!

🧠 Today We Learn:
Vocabulary: Everyday Action Phrasal Verbs, Bike & Transport, British Slang & Informal English, Idiomatic Expressions
Grammar: Compressed noun phrases (to pack multiple ideas into tight, efficient units), Relative clauses with prepositions at the end (to make speech sound more natural and conversational), Ellipsis and substitution for cohesion (to avoid repetition and keep the flow natural).

✨ Get this episode’s transcript: https://www.patreon.com/posts/134435865

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In this episode, we’re getting behind the wheel.
First time. Wrong side. Wrong hand on the gearstick?
This is a story about learning to trust yourself when everything feels backwards.
New roads, new rules, and calming down after fifteen minutes of full-blown panic.
I talk through riding scooters, driving vans, motorway freedom, near-misses in Spain, and the then learning to just get on with it.
Linguistically, it features participle clauses, fronted adverbials, and conditional reflection; all perfect for learners pushing into natural, advanced English.
If you've ever felt out of your depth but carried on anyway, this one's for you.

🧠 Today We Learn:
Vocabulary: Driving & Vehicles, British Slang & Informal Speech.
Grammar: Participle Clauses to show cause, time, or detail more elegantly by condensing full sentences, Fronted Adverbials to shift focus or set the scene by placing time, place, or contrast at the start of a sentence, Mixed and Implied Conditionals to reflect on imagined or uncertain outcomes in a natural, conversational way.

✨ Get this episode’s transcript: https://www.patreon.com/posts/133332785

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In this episode, we’re on a sofa. Sweating.It’s the middle of the night in the middle of summer. That strange, half-conscious hour where sleep slips through your fingers and the world feels slightly unreal.
I talk through these fragments: the taste of cold, the war between heat and comfort, the stillness of city nights, and the slow, heavy rituals of insomnia.
This episode is a quiet meditation on restlessness, overheated thoughts, and how seasons shape our state of mind.
Linguistically, it features participle clauses, passive voice for poetic effect, and the occasional Old English alliterative pulse for rhythm and weight.
If you’ve ever stared at the ceiling at 5AM, half-asleep, half-somewhere else — this one’s for you.

🧠 What You’ll Learn:
Vocabulary: Phrasal Verbs, Emotional & Mental States, Spatial & Sensory Language
Grammar: Participle Clauses to add flow, variety, and descriptive power by showing cause, time, or detail within one sentence, Alliterative Rhythm to create a punchy, poetic sound through repeated consonants, echoing the war-drum cadence of Old English storytelling, Cadence and Pacing to control the mood, tension, and emotional rise and fall of the piece through sentence length, punctuation, and strategic silence.

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In this episode, we leave behind the city and step into the salt-stung stillness of the beach - a place that pulls people from miles around to do nothing, and feel everything.
We move through the day slowly: the ritual of getting ready, the laughter, the freezing water, the sand you can’t quite get rid of.
But also the quiet - the kind that only comes after a swim, when your body is sun-warm and your mind is still.
I share memories of British seaside trips from my childhood, and how my relationship with the beach has changed now that I live closer to it.
There’s music in the background, jellyfish in the shallows, and even a night-time storm in autumn, where the sky lights up and the sea growls back.
This episode is a meditation on rest, stillness, and sensory joy - told through clever modifiers, rich nominalisation, and inversion for emotional weight.
If you’ve ever felt the peace of lying on a towel with nothing to do but exist — this one’s for you.

🧠 What You’ll Learn:
Vocabulary: Nature & Environment, Travel & Experience, Sensory & Emotional Language, Storytelling & Description Tools, British Slang Terms
Grammar: Clever Modifiers to intensify feeling, Nominalisation to express feelings, concepts, and actions as compact weighty nouns, Inversion for Emphasis to spotlight key ideas and add dramatic effect.

✨ Get the transcript (with highlighted vocabulary) and flashcard pack for this episode:
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💡 Do you love my English lessons? Want to support my work? 😊
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🤯 Too difficult?
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The beginner’s version on Beginner’s English with James
The intermediate version on Slow English with James.

In this episode, we’re slowing down to look into the quiet theatre of daily life: the commute.
What begins as a simple ride to work becomes a moment of inward-looking and introspection as we lay out the odd, silent intimacy of sharing space with strangers.
From fluorescent-lit train carriages to the grey underground tunnels lines, we talk about how the mundane can sometimes hide unexpected beauty — in glances, habits, and the imagined lives of those around us.
I share the thoughts that run through my mind on my own ride — the characters I’ve come up with, the quiet empathy I feel, and the thought that behind every unread book or tired gaze is a life as full as my own.
If you've ever found yourself people-watching on the bus, wondering what someone’s going home to, or feeling oddly connected to someone you’ve never spoken to… this episode is for you.

🧠 What You’ll Learn:
Vocabulary: Travel & Transport, Describing Boredom & Repetition, Observing Human Behaviour, Work & Daily Life, Speculation & Imagination
Grammar: Participle Clauses (to reduce sentence length and add a flowing, lyrical rhythm), Advanced Use of Past Modals (to add emotional nuance, uncertainty, and reflective speculation for poetic storytelling)

✨ Get the transcript (with highlighted vocabulary) and flashcard pack for this episode:
Join my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/people-on-train-129988843

💡 Do you love my English lessons? Want to support my work? 😊
Buy me a cup of tea ☕ https://ko-fi.com/jamesbradleyenglish
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🤯 Too difficult?
Don’t worry. Listen to:
The beginner’s version on Beginner’s English with James
The intermediate version on Slow English with James.

In today’s episode, we’re looking into one of the more complex feelings we can feel as human beings - bittersweetness.
I’ll show you how this feeling mixes joy and sadness, using the metaphor of taste to help make sense of it all, just as the word itself does.
We’ll look at moments of personal change and the emotional weight that comes with saying goodbye to people and places we love, even when we’re excited for what’s next.
From leaving my hometown to watching close friends go their own way, I’ll share how these experiences shaped me, and why they’re both painful and beautiful at the same time.
If you’ve ever found yourself looking back on a memory that stings and warms your heart at once, this episode is for you.

🧠 What You’ll Learn:
Vocabulary: Everyday spoken expressions / idioms, Emotions & feelings, Thinking & decisions, Travel & lifestyle change, People & relationships
Grammar: Inversion for Emphasis (“Only then did I realise that…” instead of “I only realised then that..”), Using Past Perfect for Narratives to describe events that happened before another past event (“I had already seen my friends leave when I made my decision to leave myself.”)

✨ Get the transcript (with highlighted vocabulary) and flashcard pack for this episode:
Join my Patreon for €3 a month: https://www.patreon.com/posts/126735578

💡 Do you love my English lessons? Want to support my work? 😊
Buy me a cup of tea ☕ https://ko-fi.com/jamesbradleyenglish
Join my Patreon for €3 a month: https://www.patreon.com/JamesBradleyEnglish

📲Instagram,TikTok,YouTube: @jamesbradleyenglish

🤯 Too difficult?
Don’t worry. Listen to:
The beginner’s version on Beginner’s English with James
The intermediate version on Slow English with James.