STORYTIME My father gave me the most amazing gift.
hello everyone and welcome back to
english Lucy today I’m going to tell
you a story the story’s going to teach
you the true meaning of the term prized
possession prized possession and it’s
going to be fantastic listening practice
because I’m telling you from the heart
you’ve got subtitles as well i always
recommend that you watch it once without
subtitles and then once again with
subtitles to see how much you managed to
understand so what is a prized
possession a prized possession is the
possession that is very important to you
it’s something that you treasure more
than anything else so I have a couple of
prized possessions in my life and I
thought the story behind them would be
really nice to use as listening practice
so I’ve got a couple I’ve already
spoken to you about this ring here if and
if you haven’t seen the Q&A that i did
when i reached 100,000 subscribers then
you can click on the card up here in that
Q&A I tell you amongst many other things
the beautiful story behind the ring that
I’ve got my finger today and but today
i’m going to be talking to you about
another prized possession which is this
book here and you can see on the front it
says well you might not be able to see
what it says it started with leaf and
I’m going to tell you about how this
book came to be
I grew up in the countryside in the
reason or county of bedfordshire which
is in central England slightly north of
London and as I grew up in a tiny village I
had to use my imagination quite a lot
so i used to play pretend games on my
own
quite a lot and one day I found a leaf so
it really did all start with a leaf and
it was a nice that had a tiny squiggle
on it and it must have been eaten by
caterpillar or something or an insect
but I looked at this leaf and I knew exactly
what it was I looked at this leaf and I knew a fairy
had written me a letter and because they
don’t have paper in fairy land they must have
written it on a leaf
I must have been about six and a half
years old and and I took it upon
myself to reply to the letter because that’s polite
isn’t it so I responded to the fairy
saying quite clearly next time you write
to me can you write with bigger
handwriting please and what’s the point
of writing to me if I can’t read it and I
left my response to the leaf message
right where I found it which was on a
window sill outside my house so I got
into my bedroom one day and I dropped
the message out of the window I got up in the
morning raced outside and would you
believe it
there was a response there was a tiny
little letter with very tiny writing
but slightly bigger than before because
to fit on a leaf it was pretty small and
it was a gorgeous letter saying Hi Lucy
sorry we forgot that we had to write in
english to you we speak fairy language and the
letter was signed from Nina which was a
fairy that lived in my garden and
communication between Nina and i continued
for two years yes i would write a letter
to Nina the fairy almost every night
sometimes I went a while without writing
and
and I’d apologize and she would
always reply
my letters would get a bit wet
and she would say that she had to put some
magic on it and and clarify my writing I
wasn’t really that bothered if it landed in a
puddle and got wet because fairies are magic
they can just magic it away. Little did I know
that it was actually my dad responding
to all of these fairy letters
poor daddy he was working so hard and
such long hours at that time he would
come home late from work every night it
would be raining and my mum would say
you’ll never guess what
And he’d go ‘what?’ There’s another fairy letter so he’d have
to get on his computer and decipher my
six-year-old writing and write a response and on my 21st birthday I
received this which I didn’t really know
what it was when i said so it i just
read the title it started with a leaf by
Lucy aged six-and-a-half with help from
Nina and Aspion the garden fairies Aspion
was Nina’s friend and I didn’t know
this but my dad had saved all of my
letters and all of his responses dated
them and put them in this amazing book
ready for when I turned 21 and this it’s
just beautiful because the letters were
written over the duration of two years
so you can see my handwriting in the
beginning all messy and all over the
place and my handwriting in the end beautiful
and neat quite neat so I’m going to read you
some except some parts and pages from
this book that I find really really
funny
this is written on the 22nd of
February 2001 Dear Nina, we have found
out that you’ve been doing my letters on
the computer
What do fairies eat? love lucy and the
reason this is funny
is because at that age I had started
to use my dad’s computer to play games and
to such a internet I think I had a
neopet or something and then I had been
looking at his documents and I saw a
letter I saw a word document
called fairy letter and I opened it and it was
one of the letters that the fairies had
written to me so I ran into my
dad’s room and I said Daddy you will
never guess what he was thinking ohdear
she’s going to find out that it’s me but
no I said the fairies have been using
your computer
my dad had to pretend to be all shocked
and cross like god they really shouldn’t do that
I can’t believe it but yes I find that
one very funny and another thing that
perhaps isn’t so funny is this I don’t know if you
can see it and I made my fairy a birthday
present and it was a tiny duvet and
a pillow for her to use in the winter and my dad said
oh god it was so sweet when we opened it
you had sewn it
you’d sewn it by hand and I had to tell
them i hope you didn’t put that anywhere
near your face
and my dad said why so I told my dad
yes it was very sweet of me but do you know
what I stuffed the duvet with and I’d
actually found a dead rabbit in the
garden which had obviously been attacked
by a cat or something and I collected
all of this dead rabbit’s fur and I used that
to make the duvet and the pillow case my
dad had been like treasuring it putting
it near his face thinking it was so sweet when really it had
a dead rabbit inside of it oh yeah that
was particularly funny. This is from the 14th of
February 2001 Dear Nina, can fairies
tell the future so how long what I live
for
happy valentines day love lucy PS it’s
my brother’s birthday soon
this one is from the sixth of June 2001
Dear Nina I’m sorry I haven’t written
to you for such a long time
guess what there’s only four more days
till my birthday
if I ever had a wish with I can’t i
would wish to speak to animals yours
sincerely (oh very posh) Lucy PS Daniel has
lost his tooth
could you give it to him or give it to
me to give to him
And the fairies replied the very next day Dear
Lucy
thank you for your letter what a long
time it has been since we last heard from you
I can hardly believe that you are nearly
seven years old we can remember when you
were first born
it’s a good job that your orange hair
changed color that was because i was
born with orange hair we can speak to
animals but I don’t think humans can if
you could what would you say to them we
were sorry to hear about DanieI’s tooth
would ask Jessebel the tooth ferry to
look out for it
do you ever have funny dreams love Nina
so yes
I think that explains why this is one of
my prized possessions
it was an amazing gift to receive and it
just goes to show the money just can’t
buy the best presents
it’s all about the thought and the time
that goes into them
my dad must have spent hours putting
this together and hours writing all the
letters so very very special i think my
dad has a fan club on this channel now
so it’s probably will help you love him
even more as much as i do he’s a
great man
so yes thats it for todays lesson I have
got a few more prized possessions
so if you like this video and you want
to hear about more special objects and
the story behind them and have them
subtitled and use them as listening
practice and let me know in the comments
and if you hate it you can tell me aswell
right that it for your lesson today i hope
you have a lovely day
remember if you want to take your listening
practice a step further
don’t forget to sign up to audible.com
for your 30-day free trial where you can
get a free audiobook and you can listen
and practice the link to that is in
the description box
don’t forget to connect with me on all
of my social media especially my
facebook because every sunday at four
thirty GMT I host a free live
pronunciation lesson
take care of yourselves and have a
lovely day I’ll see you soon for another
lesson
mwah!