Latest / Luke's English Podcast / Parson's Pleasure by Roald Dahl (Learn English with a Short Story)

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Parson's Pleasure by Roald Dahl (Learn English with a Short Story) · Luke's English Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello listeners, Welcome back to my podcast for learners of English. Today,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: I just want to tell you another story, so just
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: listen and enjoy it and I'll use it to help
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: you learn English. So I'm going to start the story
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: today in this episode in just a moment, But first
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: let me tell you a few things about the story
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: to get you ready so you understand it a bit better. Okay,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: So today's story is about an antiques dealer, A story
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: about an antiques dealer. An antiques dealer is a person
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: who buys and sells antiques. Antiques are very old objects,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: especially items of furniture. So we're talking about old chairs, tables,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: chests of draws, paintings, maybe other decorative items. Okay, buying
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: and selling antiques is very common and very popular in
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: the UK. There's quite a big market for antique furniture
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: in the United Kingdom. What about in your country? Is
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: there a big market for antiques where you come from?
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Do people buy and sell old furniture? Can you get
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: rich doing that? And do you have any items of
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: furniture that actually might be very valuable, perhaps in your
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: home in the loft upstairs, or maybe at your parents
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: or grandparents' house or something. Have you ever thought about
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: that if you actually have any potentially valuable items that
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: you could find and sell, and who knows, maybe you
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: could become rich selling some of the things that you've
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: got in your home, or maybe all your possessions are worthless.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: I don't know your life, but who knows, maybe that
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: old chair that's been in the family for decades might
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: actually be worth a fortune. Selling antiques can be quite
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: a profitable business, but only if you can find the
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: right items, buy them for a good price, and then
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: sell them for a big profit and miss me. If
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: you are an antiques dealer, this means finding objects which
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: are old, obviously, and the older the better, well made,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: especially if they were made by well known designers or
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: furniture makers, still in good condition, and then rare, unique
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: or part of a famous collection. And you have to
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: be very lucky or perhaps very clever if you want
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: to find a real bargain, and that means a valuable
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: piece for a very good price. Okay, and dealers, and
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: that's antiques dealers, not drug dealers. Dealers will always be
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: on the lookout for valuable antiques that could be worth
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: one hundreds thousands or even millions of pounds, like, for example,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: a very precious Chipendale commode, which is a fairly well
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: known antique chest of draws built by Thomas Chippendale in
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: the eighteenth century. This is an example of like famous,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: a famous set of antiques. If you find a Chippendale commode,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: that could be worth millions of pounds. Okay, a chest
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: of draws is like the sort of thing that you
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: would have in your home with draws in it. You
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: open the draws, you can keep things in it. Most
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: of us get our chests of draws from places like IKEA, right,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: and you have to build them yourself. But if you
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: find a Chippendale commode, that one would have been made
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: by Thomas Chippendale in the eighteenth century. One of those
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: was sold for nearly four million pounds a few years ago.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: So that's that's the real target if you're an antiques
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: dealer finding something like that. Now, the story I'm going
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: to read to you is about an antiques dealer who
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: uses a particular trick to find very valuable antiques. The
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: story has a real, really good little twist at the end,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: and I think you will really enjoy it. So the
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: story is called Parsons Pleasure by Roald Dahl. Let me
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: just explain that. So a parson, that's a parson, not
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: a person. I think you know what a person is,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: but a parson this is basically another word for a
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: priest or a vicar. This is a person, usually a man,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: depending on the rules of the church. A parson normally
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: a man. These days it can be women can become
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: members of the clergy anyway. A parson is someone who
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: leads services in a local church. In England, so a
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: parson is in the Anglican church system. So similar words
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: would be a vicar, a priest, a member of the clergy,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: or a clergyman a parson, right, do you know what
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about? Parsons usually wear a black jacket and
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: a black shirt with a white collar. It's a bit
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: of a cliche of rural English life if you think
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: of sort of images of old fashioned English life in
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: the countryside, in a town somewhere in the countryside. This
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: sort of images that you imagine you would see nice
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: country lanes, farms, old country houses and maybe a parson
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: on a bicycle popping round to someone's house for tea
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: or something like that. So this story is about a
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: man who isn't a parson, but he dresses like a parson. Okay,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: he's not a parson, but he dresses like one. Now
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: why would someone do that? Why would someone pretend to
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: be a clergyman or a parson? Why would someone pretend
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: to be one? And what is the connection to the
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: antiques trade? So I'm just getting you to think about that.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: It'll prepare you for the story. We'll find out in
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: a moment. So the story was written by Roald Dahle.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Obviously all the credit for the story goes to him.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Roll Dhal is one of the UK's most popular authors.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: He wrote lots of books for children, but also lots
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: of great short stories for adults. You can find this
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: story in collections of his work published by Penguin, and
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: I highly recommend that you buy some of Roll Dhald's books.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: They are great for learning English. They're very well written,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: easy to read, clever, entertaining and full of descriptive language.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: So if you're looking for things to read in English,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: then I really recommend Roll Dahl's work, and I suggest
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: that you get a copy of this book, the one
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: that I've got, which is the Complete Short Stories by
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Roll Dahl, published by Penguin. It's actually a two volume
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: book and it contains all of his short stories. So
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: that book should be available in all good bookshops. The
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Complete Short Stories Volumes one and two. You'll find a
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: link for it in the description for this episode. The
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: story I'm reading today is included in volume two of
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: the Complete Short Stories, and I'm going to read a
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: slightly abridged version of that story. Okay, not the full story,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: just an abridged version. That means it's been edited to
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: make it slightly shorter. So this abridged version appears actually
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: in an old English course book that I used to
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: use in English lessons ages ago at the start of
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: my teaching career. So this abridged version is in this book,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: Headway Advanced by Liz and John Sows. Some of you
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: might have used it too, maybe to learn English or
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: maybe even to teach English, because I do have English
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: teachers watching this as well. So this is the first
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: edition of Headway Advance, published in the nineteen nineties, I
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: think by Oxford University Press. Now we're nearly ready to
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: start the story. I promise I'm going to read the
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: story to you twice. First, I'll read it all in
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: one go and you just have to try to follow
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: what's happening. Then i'll summarize it in my own words
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: to make sure you've understood it. I'll try to sort
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: of like retell the story again myself to make it
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: maybe a little clearer. And after that, I'll go through
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: the story again and I'll explain some of the vocabulary,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: all right, and then i'll give my comments and stuff
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: as well. The time period for this the story was
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: first published in nineteen fifty eight, so it is slightly
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: old fashioned, but not too much money as well. Money
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: is mentioned a few times in the story, as the
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: characters discuss the price of a certain piece of furniture.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Of course, money has changed its value since the story
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: was written because of inflation. So just to kind of
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: help you understand how much money is being talked about,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: you could multiply everything by about thirty let's say, so
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: one pound in nineteen fifty eight is worth about thirty
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: pounds now. That's around about thirty five US dollars or
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: thirty five euros depending on when you listen to this,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: So one pound would be thirty pounds now one thousand
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: pounds in nineteen fifty nineteen fifty eight would be thirty
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: thousand pounds now. Twenty pounds in nineteen fifty eight would
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: be can you do the maths? Six hundred pounds now
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: and twenty thousand pounds in nineteen fifty eight in today's
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: money would be about six hundred thousand pounds. That's over
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: half a million. Okay, right, so let's start now. Mister
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Boggis is the antique dealer's name. Okay, So just a
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: couple of questions to get you focused. Where is he
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: at the start? What is he doing, what's he looking for?
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: What kind of person is Boggis? And what happened nine
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: years ago? But mainly, can you follow the story and
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: guess what is going to happen next? Let's get started. Okay,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: here we go. Mister Boggis stopped the car just short
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: of the summit, got out and looked around. It was perfect.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: He could see for miles. Over on the right he
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: spotted a medium farmhouse. Beyond it was a larger one.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: There was a house that might be a Queen Anne,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: and there were two likely farms over on the left,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: five places in all. Then he drove to the other
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: side of the hill, where he saw six more possibles,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: five farms and one big Georgian house. He ruled out
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: the latter. It looked prosperous, and there was no point
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: in calling on the prosperous. Apart from the fact that
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: he was at this moment disguised as a clergyman, there
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: was nothing very sinister about Cyril Boggis. By trade, a
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: dealer in antique furniture with a shop in the King's Road, Chelsea.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Boggis had a chief a considerable reputation by producing unusual
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: items with astonishing regularity. When asked where he got them,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: he would wink and murmur something about a little secret.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Boggis's little secret was a result of something that happened
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: on a Sunday afternoon nearly nine years before, while he
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: was driving in the country. The car had overheated, and
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: he'd walked to a farmhouse to ask for a jug
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: of water. While he was waiting for it, he glanced
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: through the door and spotted a large oak arm chair.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: The back panel was decorated by an inlay of the
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: most delicate floral design, and the head of a duck
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: was carved on either arm good God, he thought, this
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: thing is late seventeenth century. He poked his head in further,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: there was another one on the other side of the fireplace.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Two chairs like that must be worth at least a
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: thousand pounds up in London. When the woman of the
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: house returned, Boggis asked if she would like to sell
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: her chairs. They weren't for sale, she said, but just
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: out of curiosity. How much would he give? They bargained
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: for half an hour, and in the end, of course,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Boggis got the chairs for less than a twentieth of
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: their value. Returning to London in his station wagon, Boggis
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: had an idea. If there was good stuff in one farmhouse,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: why not in others? On Sundays, why couldn't he comb
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: the countryside, the isolated places, the farm houses, the dilapidated
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: country mansions would be his target. But country folk are
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: a suspicious lot. Perhaps it would be best if he
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: didn't let them know he was a dealer. He could
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: be the telephone man, the plumber, the gas inspector. He
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: could even be a clergyman. HM Boggis ordered a large
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: quantity of superior cards on which the following legend was engraved.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: The Reverend Cyril Winnington Boggis, president of the Society for
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: the Preservation of Rare Furniture in association with the Victoria
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: and Albert Museum. From now on every Sunday, he was
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: going to be a nice old parson, traveling around on
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: a labor of love for the Society, compiling an inventory
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: of the treasures that lay hidden in country homes. The
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: scheme worked, In fact, it became a lucrative business. And
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: now it was another Sunday. Boggis parked some distance from
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: the gates of his firm house, the Queen Anne. He
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: never liked his car to be seen until a deal
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: was made. A dear old clergyman and a large station
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: wagon never seemed quite right together. But there was nothing
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: of value in the house. At the next stop, no
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: one was home. The third, a farmhouse was back in
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: the fields. It looked rambling and dirty. He didn't hold
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: out much hope for it. Three men were standing in
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: the yard when they caught sight of the small, pot
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: bellied man in his black suit and parsons collar. They
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: stopped talking and watched him suspiciously. The farm owner was
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: a stumpy man with small, shifty eyes, whose name was Rummins.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: The tall youth beside him was his son Bert. The
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: short man with broad shoulders was clawed a neighbor. And
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: what exactly might you be wanting, Rummins asked. Boggins explained
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: at some length the aims and ideals for the Society
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: for the Preservation of Rare Furniture. We don't have any,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: said Rummins. You're wasting your time. Now just a minute,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: sir Boggis said, raising a finger. The last man who
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: said that to me was an old farmer down in Sussex.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: And when he finally let me into his house, do
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: you know what? I found? A dirty looking old chair
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: in the kitchen that turned out to be worth four
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: hundred pounds. I showed him how to sell it, and
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: he bought himself a new tractor with the money. Rummins
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: shifted uneasily on his feet. Well, he said, there's no
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: harm in you taking a look. He led the way
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: into an exceedingly filthy living room, and there it was.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Boggis saw it at once and gasped. He stood staring
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: for ten seconds at least, not daring to believe what
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: he saw before him. It couldn't be true. At that point,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Boggis became aware of the three men watching him intently.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: They had seen him gasp and stare. In a flash.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Bogis staggered to the nearest chair and collapsed into it,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: breathing heavily. What's the matter, Claude asked, It's nothing. He gasped,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: I'll be all right. In a moment, I thought maybe
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: you were looking at something. Rummins said no, no, no,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Boggis said, it's just my heart. It happens every now
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: and then. I'll be all right. He must have to
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: to think, he told himself. Take it gently, Boggis, keep calm.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: These people may be ignorant, but they are not stupid.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: And if it is really true to a layman, what
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: he'd seen might not have appeared particularly impressive, covered as
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: it was with dirty white paint, but it was a
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: dealer's dream. Boggis knew that among the most coveted examples
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: of eighteenth century English furniture are three pieces known as
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: the Chippendale Commodes. A trifle unsteadily, Boggis began to move
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: around the room, examining the other furniture, one piece at
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: a time. Apart from the commode, it was a very
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: poor lot, nice oak table, he said, not old enough
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: to be of any interest. This chest of draws, Boggis
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: walked casually past the comode, worth a few pounds. I
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: dare say a crude reproduction. I'm afraid that's a strong
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: bit of furniture, Rummins said. Some nice carving on it, too,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: machine carved, Boggis replied, bending down to examine the exquisite craftsmanship,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: He began to saunter off, frowning as though in deep thought. Hm,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: you know what, he said, looking back at the commode.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: I've wanted a set of legs something like that for
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: a long time. I've got a table in my own home,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: and when I moved house, the mover's damaged the legs.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: I'm very fond of that table. I keep my Bible
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: and sermon notes on it. He paused, stroking his chin.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: These legs on your chest of drawers could be cut
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: off and fixed on my table. What you mean to
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: say is that you'd like to buy it, Rummins said, Well,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: it might be a bit too much trouble, it's not
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: worth it. How much were you thinking of offering? Rummins asked, oh,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: not much. I'm afraid you see, this is not a
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: genuine antigue. I'm not so sure, Rummins said. It's been
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: in here over twenty years. I bought it at the
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: manor house when the old squire died. Bert, where's that
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: old bill you once found at the back of one
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: of the drawers? You mean this? Bert lifted out a
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: piece of folded yellowing paper from one of the drawers
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: and carried it over to his father. You can't tell
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: me this riting ain't bloody, old, Rumins said, holding the
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: paper out to Boggis, whose arm was shaking as he
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: took it. It was brittle and it cracked slightly between
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: his fingers. The writing was in a long sloping copper
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: plate hand Edward Montague, esquire debtor to thus Chippendale, a
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: large mahogany commode table of exceeding fine wood, very rich carved,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: set upon fluted legs, two very neat shaped long drawers
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: in the middle part, and to ditto on each side,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: with rich chased brass handles and ornaments. The whole completely
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: finished in the most exquisite taste eighty seven pounds. Boggis
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: was fighting to suppress his excitement with the invoice. The
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: value had climbed even higher. What in Heaven's name, would
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: it fetch now twelve thousand pounds fourteen? Maybe fifteen or
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: even twenty. He tossed the paper contemptuously on the table
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: and said quietly, it's exactly what I thought of Victorian reproduction.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: This is simply the invoice that the seller gave to
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: his client. Listen, Parson, Roumins said, how can you be
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: so sure it's fake? You haven't even seen it underneath
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: all that paint. Has anyone got a knife, asked Boggis.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Claude produced a pocket knife. Working with apparent casualness, Boggis
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: began chipping the paint off a small area on top
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: of the commode. Take a look. It was beautiful, a
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: warm little patch of mahogany, glowing like a topaz, rich
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: and dark, with the true color of its two hundred years.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: What's wrong with it? Rummins asked, It's processed. Without the
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: slightest doubt, this would has been processed with lime. That's
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: what they use for mahogany, to give it that dark
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: aged color. Look closely. That touch of orange in among
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: the dark red brown is the sign of lime. How
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: much would you give? Rummins asked. Bogis looked at the
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Commode frowned and shrugged his shoulders. I think ten pounds
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: would be fair. Ten pounds, Rummins cried, don't be ridiculous, parson.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Look at the bill. It tells you exactly what it
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: cost eighty seven pounds. Now it's antique. It's worth double,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: if you'll pardon me, No, sir, it's not. It's a
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: second hand reproduction. But i'll tell you what. I'll go
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: as high as fifteen pounds. Make it fifty, Rummins said,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: my dear man. Boggis said softly, I only want the legs.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: The rest of it is firewood. That's all. Make it
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: thirty five. Rummins said I couldn't, sir, I couldn't. I'll
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: make you one final offer, twenty pounds. I'll take it.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Rummins snapped, Oh, dear, Boggis said, I shouldn't have started this.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: You can't back out now, Parson. A deal's a deal. Yes, yes,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: I know. Perhaps if I got my car, you gentlemen
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: would be kind enough to help me load it. Boggis
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: found it difficult not to break into a run. But
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: clergyman never run. They walk slowly, walk slowly, Boggis, keep calm, Boggis,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: there's no hurry now, the commode is yours back in
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: the farmhouse, Rummins was saying, fancy him giving me twenty
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: pounds for a loaded junk like this. You did very nicely,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: mister Rummins. Claude told him you think he'll pay you.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: We don't put it in the car until he do.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: And what if it won't go in the car, Claude asked,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: he'll just say to hell with it and drive off.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Rummins paused to consider this alarming prospect. I've got an idea,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Claude went on. He told us that it was only
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: the legs he was wanting, So all we've got to
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: do is cut them off. Then it will be sure
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: to go in the car. All we're doing is saving
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: him the trouble of cutting them off when he gets home.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: A bloody good idea, Rummins said, looking at the comode.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Within a couple of minutes, Claude and Bert had carried
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: the comode outside and Claude went to work with the saw.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: When all the legs were severed, Bert arranged them carefully
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: in a row. Claude stepped back to survey the results.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Just let me ask you one question, mister Rummins, he said, slowly,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: even now, could you put that enormous thing into a car?
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Not unless it was a van, correct, Claude cried, And
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Parsons don't have vans. All they've got is usually little
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: piddling Morris eight's or Austin seven's. Well, the legs is
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: all he wants, Rummins said. If the rest of it
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: won't go in, then he can leave it. He can't
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: complain he's got the legs. Now. You know better than that,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: mister Rummins. Claude said, patiently. You know, damn well, he's
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: going to start knocking the price if he don't get
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: every single bit of this into the car. So why
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: don't we give him his fire would now and be
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: done with it. Yeah, fair enough, Raumins said, But fetch
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: the acts. It was hard work, and it took several
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: minutes before Claude had the whole thing more or less
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: smashed to pieces. I'll tell you one thing, he said,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: straightening up and wiping his brow. That was a bloody
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: good carpet to put this job together. And I don't
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: care what the parson says. We're just in time, Rummins called.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Out here he comes. That's the end of the story. Okay,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: So did you get it. Did you get what happened?
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: Did you understand what happened at the end? I hope.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: So let me give you a summary of the story
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: in my own words, right in maybe slightly more simple English.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: So we start with Boggies. He's an antiques d you
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: know what an antiques dealer is now? And Boggis has
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: a shop in London, in Chelsea and seems to be
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: quite successful. He's got a good reputation. People know him
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: as someone who always has interesting items to sell. He's
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: got a good reputation and he sells lots of antique
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: furniture on a regular basis. He's doing well. When people
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: ask where he gets his items, he just says, oh,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: it's a little secret. So he doesn't give away how
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: he's getting all these items of antique furniture. He just
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: sort of mutters something always just a little secret of mine,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: he says. In fact, the secret is that he's cheating.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: He's tricking people. He's lying and deceiving people in order
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: to buy precious antiques at very low prices. Basically, he's
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: a swindler or a con artist. Okay, a swindler, a
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: con artist. These are names that we get to people
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: who lie or trick people, deceive people in order to
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: get profit, and sometimes commit crimes, you know. So what's
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: his trick. Well, nine years before he got this idea
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: when his car broke down in the countryside and he
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: visited a nearby farmhouse to get help. He wanted to
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: get a jug of water because the car had overheated.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: That doesn't seem to happen so much these days, does it.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: Cars don't overheat like they used to. But back in
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: the olden days, cars would overheat quite easily and you
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: had to fill them back up with water and let
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: them cool down. So anyway, he visited a nearby farmhouse
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: to get help when his car broke down, and while
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: he was there he spotted several antique chairs and was
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: able to buy them from the owner of the house,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: who had no idea of their real value. So Boggits
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: had to probably work quite hard to negotiate, but he
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: found the two chairs in this farmhouse and he bought
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: them at probably a good price. Boggets then decided that
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: there might be lots of other valuable antique items in
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: other old homes in the country. So this was his
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: plan that he could every Sunday he could go into
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: the countryside to a different place and spot houses that
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: might contain more precious items of antique furniture, and then
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: he could you know, try and buy them. But he
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: decided to lie to the owners of the houses so
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: that he could visit their homes and check if they
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: had any valuable items which he could then buy. This
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: was his way of actually getting inside people's homes in
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: order to locate any valuable items. And he created a
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: false identity for himself, pretending to work for an organization
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: associated with the Victorian, the Victoria and Albert Museum, which
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: is a famous museum in London full of you know,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: interesting old items, including some you know, priceless furniture and stuff.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: So he pretended to work for the Victoria and Albert
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Museum as part of a society for that there was
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: it the Royal Society for the Preservation of Antique Furniture
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: or something. He decided that people would not be suspicious
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: of him if he also dressed as a pastor, pastor, parson,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: parson pastor, if he was spaghetti no, not that no.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: A pastor is another synonym for a parson, vicar, clergyman, priest. Anyway,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: he decided that if he dressed as a parson, people
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: would not suspect him. People would think he was harmless
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: and they would trust him. This was his plan, and
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: this worked very well, and one day he visited a
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: farmhouse in the countryside, or one day, as we discover
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: him at the beginning of the story, he's driven to
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: the top of a hill and he's surveying the area,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: spotting houses that might contain some furniture. He spots a
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: few houses and plans to visit them. The first two
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: houses bring no results, but the third house is this farmhouse,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: and to his great surprise, he found an extremely rare
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: and valuable item of furniture, a chippendale commode. The moment
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: when he sees it is quite interesting because he can
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: hardly contain his surprise, and he has to sit down,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: and the farmers, the people in the house notice something
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: and they are you all right, And he brushes it
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: off and says, oh, it's my heart. It happens. Sometimes
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: I'll be okay in a minute. But in fact he's
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: just stunned at having seen a chippendale commode. As I
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: said at the beginning of the episode, these days, one
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: of these items could be sold for hundreds of thousands
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: of pounds, even millions of pounds. For example, the one
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: that I mentioned earlier was sold at Sotherby's in London
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: in twenty ten for three point seven million pounds. That's
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: how much a Chippendale comode can be sold for today.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's a lot. That's a lot of money. Now,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: Boggis couldn't believe his eyes when he saw it. It
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: was there in the farmhouse. The farmhouse was quite messy,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: dirty old place, and in fact the Chippendale comode was
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: just in the corner of the room, covered in white paint.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: Someone had painted it white. But he couldn't believe his
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: eyes when he saw it. And then he used all
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: his clever tricks to persuade the owner to sell it
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: to him for a very low price. He made the owner,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: mister Rummins, believe that he didn't really need it. He
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: made him believe that it wasn't really worth very much
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: and that he could easily just leave without paying the
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: guy some As far as mister Rummins is concerned, getting
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: twenty pounds, ten pounds, fifteen, twenty, you know, fifty pounds,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: that's all good. That's all better than nothing as far
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: as Rummins is concerned. So Boggis told the owner that
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: the Chest of Draws was basically a worthless copy, and
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: he only wanted it for the legs, which he would
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: use to repair a table in his home. The rest,
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: he said, could be used as firewood. After some negotiation,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: the owner agreed to sell it for twenty pounds, thinking
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: he was getting a good price. In reality, it was
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: only a tiny fraction of the real value of the
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: Chest of Draws, and Boggis was secretly delighted and went
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: to his car right The car, by the way, is
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: also an important part of this, because Boggis actually drives
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: a station wagon. Station wagon is basically a kind of
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: an Estate eight car, or a car that you could use,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: a car that's got a lot of storage in the back,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: the sort of car that an antique stealer might drive
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: because it would allow him to put lots of furniture
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: in the back. These days that would be a van, really,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: but in the nineteen fifties, a what was it called
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: a station wagon, the sort of car with a lot
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: of space in the back that you could use to
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: transport furniture around. So Boggis parked his car away from
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: the house because he didn't want people to see his
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: car because they because it would spoil the illusion that
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: he was a parson, because Parsons don't drive station wagons,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: they drive little cars. So he kind of hid his
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: genuine car around the corner. So he went off to
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: get the car, and he was delighted. He could hardly
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: believe his luck. But while he was gone, the farmers
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: decided that they should make sure Boggis could fit the
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: chest of drawers into the car because they thought that
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: he's a parson. Therefore he would have a small Parsons
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: car like a Morris Minor, which is an old fashioned
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: small English car, a bit like a Mini or something
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: like that. Okay, so they thought, oh, there's no way
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: that they can get this into his car, so they
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: decided that they would They would do something so that
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: he wouldn't try to lower the price any further. Right,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Boggis had told them that he only needed it for
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: the legs, so they decided to cut the legs off,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: which they did with a saw. What a total tragedy.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: This is an original Chippendale commode and they're just going
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: at it with a saw cutting the legs off. Then,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: assuming that Boggis would have a small car, as I said,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: they thought it would be best to smash up the
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: rest of the table with an axe, just smash it
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: to bits, just to be sure it would fit in
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: the car. After all, Boggis said himself that it was
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: only good for firewood. So not only did they cut
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: the legs off this incredibly precious item, but they also
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: smashed it to pieces with an axe. And we can
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: only imagine how horrified Boggis was when he returned with
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: his car to see the smashed remains of his precious
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: Chippendale commode. Who knows what the shock and the bitter
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: irony of it might have done to him. So what
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: do you think happened? Listeners? What do you think happened next?
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: So the story ended with Rummins and the other guys going, oh,
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: I think we did a good job there removing the
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: legs and laid them out nice and carefully on the
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: floor for Boggis. And then they smashed up the rest
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: of the commode and left it in pieces, and they
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: were like, ah, I think we've done well here and
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: look here he comes now, So what happens next is
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: left up to our imagination. So what do you think
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: happened next? What was Boggis's reaction to the smashed furniture?
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: What do you think? I think he would have been shocked, right,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: He would have been absolutely devastated, but he wouldn't have
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: been able to show it. He wouldn't have been able
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: to show how shocked he was, which of course would
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: have made it so much worse for him. He would
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: have had to try to contain his reaction because, after all,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: he told Rummins he just wanted the legs and the
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: rest was firewood. He told him it was a worse,
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: worthless pile of wood basically, so they would expect him
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: to be glad that they cut up the commode for him.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: But of course he'd be devastated, but he couldn't show
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: it because then they would know the truth. Then the
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: mask would slip. So who knows all this the pressure
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: of trying to maintain his front, to maintain the image
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: of the parson who just wanted some legs and some firewood,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: The pressure of that, plus the sheer devastation of seeing
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: this furniture destroyed, and the fact that he wasn't going
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: to get his fortune. All this might be too much
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: for him, especially if it's really true that he has
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: a weak heart. So I don't know, who knows what
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: could have happened. Maybe he would have collapsed or something
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: in shock, and his greed might have been his fatal flaw.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: In the end, a floor is like an imperfection in
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: someone's character. Okay, So here are some thoughts and comments
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: before I go through the story again, and maybe just
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: highlights some bits of language. So this is a story
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: about the dangers of greed, selfishness, dishonesty, fraud, and arrogance.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: Fraud is a crime essentially, and it involves deception and profit.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: So if you lie and you gain profit as a result,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: that's a kind of fraud. For example, if you pretend
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: to be someone that you're not, or if you maybe
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: if you are an art dealer and you create a
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: fake painting, So you make a painting that looks exactly
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: like a van Goff or a Picasso or something, and
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: it's not a genuine Picasso, and then you sell it
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: as if it is and you get loads of money.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: That's a kind of fraud as well. And other kinds
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: of fraud would be, for example, writing your accounts wrong,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: so false accounting, for example, declaring that you got only
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: a certain amount of income so you don't have to
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: pay tax, or other forms of corruption like financial crime.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: So that's all fraud as well. So Boggi's got what
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: he deserved, didn't he. Ultimately, the precious commode is destroyed
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: because of Boggis's greed. In order to get the lowest
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: price possible, Boggis convinces Rummins that he only wants the legs.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: But this wasn't necessary. This chest of draws is worth
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: over half a million pounds in today's money. Boggis could
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: have offered Rummins of five percent. Boggis could have offered
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: Rummins five percent of that price, and Rummins would definitely
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: still have accepted. Right, what's five percent of half a million?
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know really, but Boggis's greed led him to
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: try to get the lowest possible price. He's trying to
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: negotiate down to zero point zero zero one percent of
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: the actual value of the property of the property, of
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: the actual value of the furniture. That's how much. That's
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: just ridiculous. He could easily have given Boggis. He could
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: easily have given rummins five percent, not zero point zero
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: zero one percent, and he would still Rummins would definitely
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: have accepted that. And you know, he didn't need to
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: do that, He didn't need to try and get it
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: for such a ridiculously low price. He could have given
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: him a fair price and he still would have made
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: ninety five percent profit. Right, But Bogis was greedy. He
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: wanted the absolutely lowest price possible. As a result, through
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: an ironic chain of events, the table was destroyed table
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: chest of draws, let's call it a chest. Bogist Boggis
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: survives the story, probably, although we don't know. Maybe he
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: has a heart attack or something at the end. But
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: let's say he survives the story and can probably carry
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: on doing his work and can even continue his nasty
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: tricks unless he gets discovered. But he will never ever
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: forget what happened, because a he missed the opportunity to
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: make his name and make his fortune, and b he
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: caused the destruction of an incredibly valuable item of our
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: antique furniture. And he'll have this on his conscience, right
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: this is he'll think about this. He'll never be able
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: to forget this. It'll be on his conscience for the
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: rest of his life, and he won't be able to
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: tell anyone about it because he would have to reveal
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: his devious methods. If he told people what happened, everyone
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: would know that he was a liar, a cheat, and
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: a con man. And so yeah, as I said before,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: Bogis chose to hide his station wagon car in order
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: to convince people he was a real clergyman. And it
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: worked a little bit too well, didn't it. The commode
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: would have fitted in boggis cart Boggis's car, it would
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: have gone in the back, but the farmers assumed that
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: he had a small car because they thought he was
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: a parson. So if Boggis had just gone in and
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: negotiated fairly, without lying, without pretending to be a parson,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: he probably would still have got the commode, albeit at
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: a higher price, and they wouldn't have removed the legs
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: or smashed it to pieces. Now, Boggis is certainly very clever,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: and his deception is quite brilliant. In fact, his whole
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: performance of like ignoring the commode and then going back
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: to it and the whole thing is quite brilliant. But
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: he goes too far, and he pays the price. It's
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: a good story. Let's read the story again and look
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: at some of the vocabulary. I've been going for about
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: fifty minutes. I'll do some of the vocab. I'm not
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: suggesting I'm going to do the entire story, but let's go.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: Let's have a look at what we can do. Mister
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Boggis stopped the car just short of the summit, got
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: out and looked around. So the summit means the top
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: of a hill. Could also be the top of a mountain,
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: but this is in England, in the Home Counties, probably
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: Berkshire or something, so there are no mountains there, so
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: it would have been the top of a hill where
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: you could have a good view. So the summit means
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: the top, in this case, the top of a hill.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: He got out and looked around. It was perfect. He
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: could see for miles. Over on the right he spotted
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: a medium farmhouse. To spot something is to see something
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: and identify it. Right, Okay, medium farmhouse over there beyond it,
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: meaning here's the farmhouse. In a bit further away beyond
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: it was a larger one, another farmhouse. There was a
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: house that might be a Queen Anne. So a Queen
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Anne is a house from a particular period in English history. Okay,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: particular type of house built in a certain period, certain style.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: There was a Queen Anne, and there were light. There
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: were two likely farms on the left. Likely this means
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: it probably is it's likely to be a farm. Means
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: it's it probably is a farm. Okay, So he's not
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: sure exactly what those buildings are, but they are likely
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: to be farms. So these are two likely farms over
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: on the left, probably farms. Five places in all. Then
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: he drove to the other side of the hill, where
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: he saw six more possibles, six more possible targets, five farms,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: and one big Georgian house. Again, a Georgian house that's
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: from the Georgian period in English history, a certain style.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: Georgian houses are normally quite large, quite grand looking houses.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: And he said, and the book says he ruled out
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: the latter. The latter. When you're listing things, the latter
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: is the last in the last item in the list.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: So we've got five farms and one big Georgian house.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: He ruled out the latter. So the latter means the
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: Georgian house the last thing in the list of things
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: that was just mentioned. The former is the previous one,
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: and the latter is the one mentioned after. See all right,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: So for example, if so, if I say, would you
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: like the English tea or the Japanese tea, and he said, oh,
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: I'll choose the latter, that means the Japanese tea, the
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: English tea or the Japanese tea. I'll choose the former.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: That's the English tea, although it's fairly formal language, so
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: we don't normally use it for choosing tea. But they go,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: that's what that means. So he ruled out the latter.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: If you rule something out, it's kind of like you
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: cross it out of your list. You cross it off
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: your list, so it's not included in your consideration or
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: in your plans anymore. You rule it out. Why did
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: he rule it out? Because it looked prosperous. Prosperous basically
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: is another way of saying rich, wealthy. So this George
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: and House looked prosperous. It looked like it was owned
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: by rich, wealthy people, and there was no point point
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: in calling on the prosperous, So there was no reason
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: to call on rich people. So why why not? Why
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: would he not visit rich people's houses. I suppose it's
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: because what Boggis is looking for is kind of probably
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: poor houses or modest houses, houses that probably don't really
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: houses that are owned by people who probably don't really
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: know the value of antique items, the sorts of places
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: where some valuable items may have just ended up somehow
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: just ended up there without the owners really knowing the
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: true value. So Boggis is targeting poor and less educated people,
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: which again is which again is pretty pretty mean, pretty
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: which again is pretty despicable behavior by Boggis, targeting people
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: who you know, who don't know any better. Apart from
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: the fact that he was at this moment disguised as
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: a clergyman, there was nothing very sinister about Cyril Boggis.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: So there was nothing very sinister, I mean, he seemed
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: to be a fairly harmless looking person really, except for
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: the fact he was disguised. Other than that, there wasn't
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: really anything very scary or dangerous about him. By trade,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: a dealer in antique furniture with a shop in the
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: King's Road, Chelsea, Boggis had achieved a considerable reputation by
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: producing unusual items with astonishing regularity, astonishing means like surprising,
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: like wow. People are kind of saying, this is astonishing, Boggis,
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: where do you get these items? What's your secret? And
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: Boggis says, oh, just never you mind. And for some
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: reason in our culture we point and tap out nose. Ah,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: just my little secret. You tap your nose like that
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: when you are mentioned, when you're talking about a little
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: secret that you've got. Ah, never you mind. M M,
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: A little wink uh, A little secret of mine. Now,
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: Boggis's little secret was the result of what. Boggis's little
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: secret was a result of something that happened on a
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: Sunday afternoon nearly nine years before. This is how he
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: first got the idea. While he was driving in the
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: country side of the country. The car had overheated, and
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: he'd walked to a farmhouse to ask for a jug
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: of water. Okay, can I sorry to bother you, Sorry
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: to trouble you. My car is overheated on the road,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: and I was wondering if I might trouble you for
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: a jug of water to help the car cool down. Oh, yes, certainly, so, yes,
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: just hold on a second, something like that. While he
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: was waiting for it, he glanced through the door. He
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: just had a quick look through the door, being a
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: bit nosy, and spotted a large oak armchair. Huh okay.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: Oak is a kind of wood, very common in England.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: It's good for making furnish, a good solid wood. The
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: back panel was decorated by an inlay of the most
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: delicate floral design. So the back panel of the chair,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: the bit that you would rest your back on, was
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: decorated by an inlay. This is another piece of wood
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: that was probably added of the most delicate floral design.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: So a design with flowers on it, very delicately made,
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: probably with a lot of skill. And the head of
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: a duck was carved on either arm. Good God, he thought,
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: which is a sort of slightly old fashioned expression of surprise.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: Good God, this thing is late seventeenth century. So he
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: instantly identified that this item was late seventeenth century. That's
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: sixteen ninety something, sixteen eighty something. Yeah, valuable. He poked
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: his head in further. So he put his head in
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: the doorway a little further and looked further into the room,
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: and there was another one on the other side of
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: the fireplace. Yeah. Two two chairs like that must be
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: worth at least one thousand pounds up in London, so
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: that would be about thirty thousand pounds by today's money.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: Not bad buy yourself a car, pretty good one. When
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: the woman of the house returned, Boggis asked if she
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: would like to sell her chairs, right? Would you be
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: interested in selling those two chairs? And she said they
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: weren't for sale, but just out of curiosity. How much
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: would he give? Sorry, they're not for sale, but just
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: out of curiosity? How much would you offer for them?
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: They bargained for half an hour. To bargain means to
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: negotiate the price. They bargain for half an hour, and
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: in the end, of course, Boggis got the chairs for
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: less than a twentieth of their value. So whatever that is,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: thirty thousand divided by twenty, it was less than that,
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: so he got them. He got them for a real bargain,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: because apparently he's clever. Right now, returning to London in
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: his station wagon, Boggis had an idea. If there was
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: good stuff in one farmhouse, why not in others? On Sundays,
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: why couldn't he comb the countryside? To comb the countryside, Yeah,
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: to comb, it's the same word as the thing you'd
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: you know, use to make your hair look all neat
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: and tidy or not maybe in my case, but comb
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: your hair. It's kind of thin with teeth, not a brush,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: but comb to comb the countryside. In this case, to
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: comb the countryside is to search the countryside very very carefully. Okay,
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: all right. The isolated places, the farmhouses, the dilapidated country mansions.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: Dilapidated means it's kind of old, worn down, damaged now
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: because time and use has made it old and damaged.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: So if something is if a house is dilapidated, it
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: needs a lot of work to make it look nice again. Okay,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: So the isolated places, the farmhouses, the dilapidated country mansions
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: would be his target. But country folk country people are
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: a suspicious lot. It's like, hmm, they don't trust people
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: very easily. Perhaps it would be best if he didn't
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: let them know he was a dealer. Yeah, that sounds logical.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: He could be the telephone man, the plumber. Plumber is
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: the person who comes to fix the pipes, the water
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: pipes in your house, in your bathroom or kitchen. He
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: could be the telephone man, the plumber, the gas inspector.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: He could even be a clergyman. Hmm, So then Boggis
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: ordered a large quantity of superior cards. So these are like,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: you know, cards with little messages engraved on them, sort
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: of business cards with a following legend engraved. A legend
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: is basically a you know, sort of words that would
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: be printed on a card. Right. The Reverend Cyril Winnington
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: Boggis reverend is again another whoops, another word referring to
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: a clergyman. The Reverend Civil Winnington Boggis is a good
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: name President of the Society for the prevent for the
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: Preservation of Rare Furniture. Not President of the Society for
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: the Prevention of Rare Furniture. But that's kind of what
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: he became at the end of the story when he
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: inadvertently prevented this rare bit of furniture from existing, didn't
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: he He had it destroyed unintentionally in association with the Victoria
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: and Albert Museum. So a complete lie. He is not
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: president of this society. The society doesn't exist. From now
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: on every Sunday, he was going to be a nice
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: old person traveling around on a labor of love. A
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: labor of love is work that you do because you
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: love it. Because you're you're trying to achieve something just
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: because you love it. It's something you're passionate about, something
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: you work on just because you're passionate about it and
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: you love it. It's a labor of love for the society. Compiling,
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: making a listing, compiling an inventory. It's a list of
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: things of the treasures that lay hidden in country homes.
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: The scheme, the plan worked. In fact, it became a
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: lucrative business. If a business is lucrative, it means that
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: it makes lots of money profitable. And now it was
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: another Sunday. Bogg Is parked some distance from the gates
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: of his first house, the Queen Anne. He never liked
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: his car to be seen until a deal was made.
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: A dear old clergyman and a large station wagon never
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: seemed quite right together. But there was nothing of value
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: in the house. So the first house, the Queen hanned
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: nothing of value in there. The next stop, no one
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: was home. The third farmhouse. The third place, a farmhouse
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: was back in the fields, so he had to walk
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: through the fields to get to the house. It looked
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: rambling and dirty. Rambling means that well, a bit like
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: you can be rambling when you speak, meaning you just
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: kind of go on and on. In the same way
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: a house can be rambling. One room leads to another room,
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: and it's all a bit disorganized. It looked rambling and dirty.
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: He didn't hold out much hope for it. If you
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: hold out hope for something, it means you think, oh, there,
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: I think there might be something here. But in this
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: case he's like, no, I don't think there'll be much here. No,
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: I don't hold out much hope for this place. Three
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: men were standing in the yard, that's the space at
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: the back of the house. When they caught sight of
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: the small, pot bellied man in his black suit and
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: parsons collar. They stopped talking. Pot bellied. If you've got
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: a pot belly, it means you've got a round belly,
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: like a fat stomach. Okay, around pot belly. Maybe you'd
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: get one from drinking too much beer. Pot belly. So
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: this is a description of Boggis. He was small, he
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: had a pot belly. And when they saw this man,
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: this small pot bellied man in his black suit and
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: parsons collar, they stopped talking and watched him suspiciously, which
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: country folk can do sometimes. The farm owner was a
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: stumpy man. So that's short with small shifty eyes. If
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: you have shifty eyes, it means your eyes move around,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: maybe suspiciously. What do you want? Eh hm hm. The
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: tall youth as a young person beside him was his
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: son Bert. The short man with broad shoulders was clawed.
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: A neighbor broad means wide. And what exactly might you
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: be wanting? Rummans asked, So he speaks a bit like
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of country person, a farmer. What might
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: you be wanting? Maybe I should push the acts in
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: a bit more. And what exactly might you be wanting?
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: Roumans asked. Boggs explained at some length the aims and
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: ideals of the Society for the Preservation of Rare Furniture.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: He probably put on a bit of an act. Well.
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: I work for the profer the Society, the Royal Society
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: for the Preservation of Rare Furniture. Here my card. It's
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: a labor of love, you see. I travel the length
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: and breadth of the country searching for rare items which
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: can be logged in an inventory at the Victorian Albert
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: Museum in London. And in fact, if we find any
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: special items, sometimes we may be placed to even make
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: an offer to make sure that the furniture is well
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: kept right, and Rummin said, we don't have any You're
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: wasting your time from unfriendly now just a minute's Boggi
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: Is said, raising a finger. The last man who said
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: that to me was an old farmer down in Sussex.
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: Sussex is one of the home counties, one of the
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: counties near London. And when he finally let me into
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: his house, do you know what? I found a dirty
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: looking old chair in the kitchen that turned out to
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: be worth four hundred pounds. I showed him how to
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: sell it and he bought himself a new tractor with
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: the money. He bought himself a new tractor, which is
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: you know, Boggis knows who he's talking to that this
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: is the sort of thing that Rummins would be interested in.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: Of course, a new tractor would be very important for him.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: Rummins shifted uneasily on his feet, so he sort of shifted,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: meaning he shifted his weight, maybe moved his weight from
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: his left foot to his right foot. Well, he said
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: that there's no harm, and you taking a look, there's
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: no harm. It couldn't hurt if you just took a look.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: That's not going to hurt. There's no harm in that.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: He led the way, meaning like follow me, I'll lead
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: the way. He led the way into an exceedingly like
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: extremely filthy meaning dirty living room. Okay, and there it was.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: Boggis saw it at once and gasped, that's to gasp.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: He stood staring for ten seconds, at least, not daring
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: to believe what he saw before him. If you don't
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: dare to believe it, it's just like I. He can't
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: believe it. In fact, he won't believe it. He won't
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: even dare. He's not quite confident enough to even believe
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: that he can see what is before him. It couldn't
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: be true. At that point, Boggis became aware of the
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: three men watching him intently. They're watching him intently. They're
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: watching him, studying him very carefully. They'd seen him gasp
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: and stare in a flash, meaning very quickly. Boggis staggered
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: to the nearest chair and collapsed into it, breathing heavily.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: What's the matter, Claude asked, Oh, it's nothing. He gasped,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: I'll be all right in a minute. I thought maybe
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: you were looking at something. Romans said, no, no, Boggis said,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: it's just my heart. It happens every now and then.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: I'll be all right, every now and then, meaning sometimes
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: all right, he must have time to think, he told himself.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: Take it gently, Boggis, keep calm. These people may be ignorant,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: meaning uneducated, but they are not stupid. And if it
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: is really true, So to a layman what he had
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: seen might not have appeared particularly impressive. A layman is
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: a normal person who doesn't have specialist knowledge. Okay, So
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: if you're in the world of science, you have specialists
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: who understand about certain you know, chemistry or physics or
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: biology or whatever. But I'm not a specialist, so I'm
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: just a layman. Right. Also in law, you've got lawyers
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: who understand all the legal terms. They understand the law
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: and everything. And then ordinary people who haven't studied law,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: we are just laymen or lay people. So a lay
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: person is someone who doesn't have specialist knowledge in a
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: certain area, just an ordinary person. So to a layman,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: what he'd seen might not have appeared particularly impressive, covered
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: as it was with dirty white paint. So someone had
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: painted this thing, which I suppose is not the end
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: of the world, because you can remove paint from furniture.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: Apparently so to a layman it looked unimpressive, but it
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: was a dealer's dream. Boggis knew that among the most
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: coveted examples of eighteenth century English furniture are three pieces
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: known as the Chipendale commodes. If something's coveted, it means
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: it's desired, then everyone wants to have it. Okay, Among
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: the most coveted examples of eighteenth century English furniture are
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: three pieces, only three, the chip and Commodes. Maybe there
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: are more chip and Dell comodes than three. Maybe this
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: is the fourth. I don't know. A trifle unsteadily if
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: you are If you say a trifle something, it means
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: a little bit slightly old fashioned language, a trifle unsteadily
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: meaning a little unsteadily. If you're unsteady, you're not steady.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: For example, if you do something unsteadily, it means maybe
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: your legs are a bit wobbly and you might fall again.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: Because remember, Boggis is still recovering from the shock of
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: seeing this thing, So he moves around the room a
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: little unsteadily, you know, trying to regain his composure. Boggis
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: began to move around the room, examining the other furniture
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: one piece at a time. Apart from the commode, it
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: was a very poor lot, so the rest of it
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: was not worth anything. Really nice oak table, he said,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: not old enough to be of any interest. This chest
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: of draws. Boggis walked casually past the commode, worth a
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: few pounds. I dare say, I dare say, is like saying,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: I suppose a crude reproduction. I'm afraid if something is crude,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: like in this case a piece of furniture, if it's crude,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: if it's if the design or the work is crude,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: it means it's done kind of badly by someone who
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: didn't really know what they were doing. If I made
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: a table, it would be a very crude table. It'd
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: just be like, right piece of wood legs, bang bang
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: bang there there it is, and the table's unsteady, wobbles
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: my crude carpentry skills. A crude reproduction, I'm afraid. So
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: he's saying that this one is not an original. It's
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: just someone's attempt to copy that style, and they've done
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: it very badly, very crudely. That's a strong bit of furniture,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: rummins said. Some nice carving on it too. Carving is
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: when the wood is kind of cut into different shapes.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: With a chisel, you would carve wood into different shapes,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: so you can carve a carve some designs on a
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: piece of furniture. Okay, nice carving, said Rummins. Machine carved,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: Boggis replied, bending down to examine the exquisite craftsmanship. Exquisite
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: means wonderful, excellent, mm hmm. He began to saunter off.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: If you saunter if you kind of walk in a
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: casual kind of way. He began to saunter off, frowning
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: as if in deep thought. You know what, he said,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: looking back at the commode. So this is all part
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: of his act. He's pretending not to care about it. No,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: saunter off and then turn back. Oh, you know, he said,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: looking back at the commode. I've wanted a set of
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: legs something like that for a long time. I've got
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: a table in my own home, and when I moved house,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: the mover's damaged the legs. I'm very fond of that table.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: He's fond of the table he has at home, and
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: he likes it a lot. He's you know, he feels
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: attached to it. He likes it, he's fond of it.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: So he's got a table at home, and the legs
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: have been damaged by some movers, some people who moved
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: the furniture when he moved to a new house. So
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: his nice table he's got at home needs a new
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: set of legs. He said, I keep my Bible and
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: sermon notes on that table. He paused, stroking his chin.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: These legs on your chest of drawers could be cut
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: off and fixed onto my table. And Rummins has been
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: caught by this trick, right, Rummins is, it's it's clever
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: because h. Boggis is essentially encouraging Rummans to take initiative
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: to Now Rummins wants Boggis to buy it. Right Rummans is,
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: like Boggis is not concerned. But Rummins now spots an
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: opportunity to actually sell this thing and get some money
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: maybe that you could sell, you know, buy you could
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: buy something useful with it that money. And so Rummins says,
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: what you mean to say is that you'd like to
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: buy it. Well, it might be worth it might be
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: a bit too much. Trouble now, it's not worth it.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: How much were you thinking of offering how much were
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: you thinking of offering, Rummans asked, not much. I'm afraid
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: you see, this is not a genuine antique. It's not
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: genuine means, it's not it's not real. It's a it's
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: a fake antique. I'm not so sure, Rummins said, it's
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: been in here over twenty years. I bought it at
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: the manor house when the old squire died. So the
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: house would be the house owned by the maybe the
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: aristocrat or the sort of the the the lord of
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: that area would own the manor house. The rich person
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: of the area, the old squire. That's probably when the
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: owner of the house, the owner of the land when
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: he died. So Rummins bought it from the manor house.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: The manor house would be like downtown Abbey or something
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: like that. I bought it from the manor house when
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: the old squire died. But where's that old one, old bill?
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: Where's that old bill you once found at the back
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: of one of the drawers. Now, if you're an antique stealer,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: having an original bill, like a proof of purchase or
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: a proof of manufacture or something like that, a piece
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: of paper which marks the history of that item, that
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: again adds more value to the proper, to the the property, no,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: to the item. Property would be a house or something,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: but we're talking about furniture, okay, So that would add
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: more value to the furniture. If there's actually a bill
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: and there is one for this chipperdalka mode and Bert says,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: what you mean this? And he lifted out a piece
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: of folded yellowing paper. Right, piece of sort of yellowing,
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: so the paper is going yellow, which means it's old.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: He lifted it out from one of the drawers and
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: carried it to his father. You can't tell me this
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: writing ain't bloody old. Ain't is basically sort of colloquial English.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: It's not strictly correct, but people say it a lot,
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: and you see it in song lyrics and stuff like that.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: Don't you ain't means isn't haven't aren't right. You can't
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: tell me this writing isn't bloody old. You can't tell
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: me this writing ain't bloody old, Rumin said, holding the
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: paper out to Boggis. And Boggis is again, he can't
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: believe his eyes that there's actual a real bill of
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: sale that goes along with this thing, an original one,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: and Boggis. His arm is shaking as he takes it
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: um and it was brittle, So if paper is brittle,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: it means it's very old and it breaks easily, so
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: it's definitely the original bill. It was brittle. It cracked
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: slightly between his fingers, so it's old. It's the original one.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: The writing was in long sloping copper plate hand This
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: means the handwriting, So the note is written in handwriting
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: in a sloping style. So that's a very old fashioned
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: style of handwriting. And probably Boggis would identify it and
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: would know that this comes from the eighteenth century, and
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: the note is written in sort of fairly old fashioned language.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: Edward Montague esquire debtor to Thos Chippendale, Thos, very old fashioned.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: We wouldn't say that these days. You know, this is
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: clearly original, maybe from the eighteenth century. A large mahogany
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: commode table of exceeding fine wood, very rich carved. The
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: spelling of carved ar VD not ed c r v
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: D so not ed not v ed, which again shows
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: that this is from centuries ago, set upon fluted legs,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: two very neat shaped long drawers. Anyway, so the note
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: is original. Boggis was fighting to suppress his excitement. Trying
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: to suppress excitement is keep it down. So he's obviously, whoa,
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: this is the real thing, but he has to, okay,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: keep suppressed the excitement. With the invoice, the value had
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: climbed even higher. What in Heaven's name would it fetch now?
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: Fetch meaning get? Meaning? What amount of money would it
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: get if he sold it now? Maybe twelve thousand pounds, fourteen,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: maybe fifteen, or even twenty thousand pounds, remember twenty thousand pounds,
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: That would be six hundred thousand pounds in today's money.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: It'd probably be worth a lot more as well, because
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: no doubt a Chippendale commode in twenty twenty three would
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: be worth even more than that. I mean, as we know,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: one got sold in twenty ten for nearly four million,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: so it wouldn't be surprised if if it went for
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: about five million or something now. Anyway, he tossed the
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: paper contemptuously on the table. If you have contempt for something,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: it means you you don't give it any respect at all.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: You think it's worthless. He tossed the note contemptuously on
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: the table. Nah, it's exactly what I thought of Victorian reproduction. Okay,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: so the Victorians, Okay, people who are around during the
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: reign of Queen Victoria the end of the nineteenth century,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: they did a lot of reproductions, a lot of copying.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: They copied things like furniture and architecture from previous periods,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: and sometimes they did it kind of badly as well.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: Right in that sort of modern period, a lot of
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: stuff would have been copied and done quite quickly, maybe
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: using machines, and as a result, those copies would have
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: been worthless. So ah, just no, it's a Victorian reproduction.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: This is simply the invoice that the seller gave to
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: his client. Listen, Parson Romyin said, how can you be
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: so sure it's fake? You haven't seen it underneath all
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: that paint. Has anyone got a knife, asked Boggis. Claude
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: produced a pocket knife and Boggis with apparent casualness. So
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: again he's pretending to be all casual, like he doesn't care.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: He chipped off paint from a small area on top
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: of the commode. Ah, take a look, but it was beautiful.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: The original wood underneath was beautiful, a warm little patch
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: of mahogany, a very valuable hard wood, glowing like a topaz,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: rich and dark, with the true color of its two
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: hundred years. Oh, what's wrong with it? Rummins asked, It's
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: process He's lying, of course, without the slightest doubt. This
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: wood has been processed with lime. Now, I don't really
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: know what that means, either would be processed. I suppose
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: if wood is processed with lime, it means it's people
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: have someone's used lime on the wood to protect the
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: wood or something, maybe to make cheap wood look like
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: more expensive woods. You rub lime into it or something.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but he said, no, it's been processed
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: with lime. Lime. That's not lime the fruit, but that's lime,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: a kind of mineral like chalk okay, an alkaline mineral.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: How much would you give in rummins accent? How much
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: would you give? Rummins asked. Boggis looked at the commode,
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: frowned with his you know, made an expression with his
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: eyes to make it look like he was thinking seriously,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: and shrugged his shoulders, like lifted his shoulders up and down. Huh.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: I think ten pounds would be fair. Okay, so it's
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: a very unbelievably low offer. It's about three hundred pounds,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: though by today's standards ten pounds. Rummins cried, So Rummins
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: is not a fool. Okay, he's negotiating. He knows it's
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: worth more than that, but he's got no idea of
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: its real value. Ten pounds. Rummins cried, don't be a
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: ridiculous parson. Look at the bill. It tells you exactly
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: what it cost eighty seven pounds. Now it's antique, it's
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: worth double. So Boggis has got Rummins exactly where he
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: wants him. Where Boggis is trying to negotiate for something
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: like one hundred and eighty pounds when this thing is
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: worth what was it sixty I can't remember twenty thousand.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: So Boggis has got him where he wants him. The
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: margins here that are being negotiated are all wonderful for Boggis,
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: and this is just cruel what he's doing. It's just
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: spirited and greedy to try and negotiate from that point
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: all the way down to twenty pounds, which is what
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: he gets it for. Originally, he could have just said, okay, fine.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: He could have paid Rummins, you know, one hundred and
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: eighty pounds, and Rummins would have been very happy with
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: that right, one hundred and eighty pounds in today's money.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but Rumman's gound have used that right.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: But no he's not. Boggis isn't satisfied with that. He
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: wants to push it as far as he can go,
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: which is really not not fair at all. And Boggis said,
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: if you'll pardon me, sir, it's not it's a second
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: hand reproduction. But I'll tell you what. I'll go as
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: high as fifteen pounds, make it fifty, Rummens said, my
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: dear man, Boggis said softly, I only want the legs.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: The rest of it is firewood, that's all. Make it
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: thirty five. Rummins said, I couldn't, sir, I couldn't. What
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: a performance. I'll make you one final offer, twenty pounds.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: I'll take it. Rummins snapped, Oh, dear Boggis, I shouldn't
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: have started this. You can't back out now, pass and
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: a deal's a deal. So Rummins is all in here. Yes, yes,
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: I know. Perhaps if I got my car, you gentlemen
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: would be kind enough to help me load it. To
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: load the car would be to load the load the
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: furniture onto the car. Boggis found it difficult not to
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: break into a run, so he's walking back to the
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: car quickly, finding it difficult not to start running to
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: the car to break into a run. Walk slowly, Boggis,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: keep calm, there's no hurry now. The commode is yours.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: Back in the farmhouse, Rummins was saying, fancy him giving
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: me twenty pounds for a load of junk like this?
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: If you say fancy that or fancy something happening, it's like, well,
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: who would have expected that to happen? Ah, what a surprise.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: It's amazing, isn't it. Fancy him giving me twenty bounds
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: for a load of junk like this. You did very nicely,
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: mister Rummins. Claude told him you think he'll pay you,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: So they're convinced that they've done a really good job
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: here in the negotiation, which is quite sweet. We don't
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: put it in the car till he do. No, we
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: don't put it in the car till he do, meaning
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: we don't put it in the car until he pays us.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: And what if it won't go in the car, Claude asks, asked,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: he'll just say to hell with it and drive off.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: So they're concerns that Boggis is not going to follow
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: through on the deal. They want to make sure that
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: he'll be able to get it in the car so
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: that they'll get their money. Rummans pause to consider this
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: alarming prospect. Worrying alarming means worrying a prospect is a
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: potential thing that could happen. Hmm, I got an idea.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: Claude went on. He told us that it was only
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: the legs he was wanting, right, it's only the legs
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: he wants. But in this case, he told us it
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: was only the legs he was wanting. So all we
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: got to do is cut him off, and then it
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: will be sure to go in the car. All we're
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: doing is saving him the trouble of cutting them off
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: when he gets home. A bloody good idea, Rumin said,
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: looking at the comode. Within a couple of minutes, Claude
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: and Bert had carried the comode outside and Claude went
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: to work with the saw. So a saw is something
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: you'd use to cut wood. When all the legs were severed,
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: meaning cut off, Bert arranged them carefully in a row. Right.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: Claude stepped back to survey the results. Survey. I mean,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: look at the results from above. Just let me ask
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: you one question, mister Rummins, he said, slowly, even now,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: could you put that enormous thing into a car? Not
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: unless it was a van? Correct, Claude cried, And Parsons
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: don't have vans. All they've got usually is piddling little
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: Morris eight's or Austin seven's. So these are both types
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: of car, old English cars that are small. Piddling means
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: small and not very powerful. So, oh dear, the worm
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: has turned and Boggis's act, his act of deception, is
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: now working against him in the most satisfying way in
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: this story. Oh well, you know we wouldn't be able
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: to get that into his car. He's probably got a
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: small car, right, The legs is all he wants, Rummins said.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: If the rest of it won't go in, then he
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: can leave it. He can't complain he's got the legs. Yeah,
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: fair enough, enough, that's true. He did say he only
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: wanted the legs. Now, now you know better than that,
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: mister Rummins, Claude said, patiently, you know, damn well, he's
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: going to start knocking the price if he don't get
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: every single bit of this into the car. So why
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: don't we give him his firewood now and be done
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: with it? File We firewood, of course, is wood that
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: you would use to burn on the fire. So he's
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: so Claude is kind of being cautious and saying, look,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: you know, I think that if he can't get that
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: in the car, then he's going to try and reduce
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: the price. If it's just the legs, right, So why
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: don't we give him the firewood so he can't complain
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: fair enough, Rummin said Bert. Fetch the axe. An axe
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: is a large tool that you would use to chop
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: up woods. You chop a tree down with an axe,
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: You swing it and thongk chop chop right, he chop
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: something up with an axe and you can you can
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: break something to pieces with an axe. Fetch the axe,
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: meaning get the axe. It was hard work and it
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: took several minutes. Hard work because this is this is
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: an incredible piece of craftsmanship, a really, really really well
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: made chest of drawers. Not just some think something from
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: Ikea which you could kind of smash to pieces with
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: your feet and hands. This is a this is a
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: virtually priceless item of furniture. So it was very hard work.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: It took them several minutes, but they had the whole
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: thing more or less smash to pieces. I'll tell you
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: one thing, he said, straightening up, wiping his brow. If
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: you wipe your brow, it means you wipe the front
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: of your head after you've been doing heavy work or
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: doing exercise. I'll tell you one thing. That was a
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: bloody good carpenter put this job together. And I don't
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: care what the parson says. Yeah, it was a bloody
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: good carpenter. It was Thomas Chippendale himself. Carpenter is someone
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: who builds things out of wood. I'll tell you what.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: It was, a bloody good carpenter put this job together.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: I don't care what the parson says, because the parson
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: has led them to believe it's a crude copy made
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: in the maid's You know, only a few decades before
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: a we're just in time, Rummins called out Here he comes,
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: And this is where we imagine the parson rushing back
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: over with the money and the car and to discover
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: his precious Chippendale commode reduced to pieces smashed up, and
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: then these three guys looking very proud of themselves. We'll
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: put that in the car for you now if you want. So,
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: there you go. That's Parson's Pleasure by Roald Dahl. Good story,
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: isn't it. You can let me know what you think
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: in the comments section. That's the end of the episode.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to say at the end here that
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: this story was actually turned into an episode of a
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: TV show. So they made a TV series called Tales
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: of the Unexpected. It was a very popular TV series
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: and each episode was an adaptation of one of Roll
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: Dahl's stories. Okay, and so there is an episode of
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: Tales of the Unexpected for Parsons Pleasure, and it's definitely
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: worth a watch. It's really good. I mean it was
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: made in the eighties probably, so it looks kind of
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: old fashioned, but it's still really good and you can
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: find it on YouTube. I highly recommend it. I'll add
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: it to the page for this episode on my website.
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: You can actually see Roll Dahal the author himself. He
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: introduces the episode. You see him sitting in a nice
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: leather armchair and he introduces the episode. And the acting
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: in the performance is excellent, particularly by Sir John Gielgood
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: who plays Boggis. Now Sir John Gielgood is one of
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: the most famous names in British acting ever, one of
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: the UK's most famous and highly respected actors both on
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: stage and on film. A proper stage actor with an
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: excellent reputation, so we get to enjoy the wonderful acting
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: of Sir John Gielgood as Boggis, and also the other
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: actors are excellent too, the farmers and stuff. It's really
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: really well done, so I highly recommend that you watch
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: that TV version of this story as well. You'll find
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: the video on the page for this episode on my website. Okay,
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: but that's it for this episode. Thank you so much
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: for listening, thank you for watching, and I will speak
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: to you very soon in another episode of my podcast.
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: But for now, it's time to say goodbye bye bye
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: bye bye bye bye bye bo