Hello, welcome back to The English Like A Native Podcast with me, Anna. Today is your exclusive episode, and I'm going to be talking about a recent experience that I had while playing shop. Well, that's how I talked about it to my son, Jacob. But in fact, I was playing shop for real. So, this particular experience happened a few weeks ago. On the weekend, I planned to join a mum-to-mum market. So, this is an opportunity to sell my children's things from when they were very young, baby clothes and things to other mums, to expectant mums or mothers and fathers, or even grandparents who want to buy for very young children or babies. So, it's like a secondhand market. Now I've been there as a buyer before, but never as a seller. So, this time I was attending as a seller. So, I booked my stall in advance and over the weeks leading up to the event, I started putting aside items that I thought would work well on the market. So, the day before, I realised that I had a lot to do, and of course, leaving everything to the last minute, I started to panic. Unfortunately, I had no time to do any prep the day before, so I had to leave it till the actual day. And I was solo parenting that particular day as well. So, it was just me with the two young boys and all this stuff that I had to sort out and organise, then pack and get to the venue and unpack and set up. It was a lot more effort than I had anticipated. There was a lot more to do than I had anticipated. It was very bad planning on my part, but while the children ate their lunch, I spent about an hour and a half trying frantically to price up and organise all the items that I had. Trying to remember what we paid for things. Looking at the kind of going rate for things that I was selling, you know, like a pram, if you're selling a pram, you look on eBay and Facebook Marketplace and see how much do people normally ask for a secondhand pram. So, I tried to price up as much as I could in advance. So, I was writing out the prices and sellotaping them onto each item. I realised I wasn't going to get it all done because I had too many items. So, I decided to take a few empty boxes with me and put a big poster on the front of some of the boxes saying,"All items in here 50p.""All items in this box£1.""All shoes£2." And this was a good idea on my part, actually it worked out very well. And it saved me a little bit of time. So, the time arrived for me to pack up and load up the car. There was no more messing around regardless of how ill-prepared I was, it was time to go. So, I had to try and squeeze it all into my car with the two children and get going. Now, before I left the house, I had this sudden panic. I broke into a cold sweat because I hadn't considered the payment system. Of course, I'm not a regular vendor. I'm not a seller. So, I don't have like a card machine where I can accept payments from a debit or credit card. So, I thought,"Oh my goodness, it's going to be cash only. Of course it'll be cash only!" But I didn't have any loose change. I don't really keep much in the way of loose change. So, I had to raid my son's piggy bank. He only had£3.50 in his piggy bank. And then I had to go and search around the house for any loose change that might be languishing in the back or the bottom of drawers in old coat pockets. And I managed to scrape together a few pounds worth of loose change. And then I took a couple of notes with me that I always tend to have a couple of five-pound and ten-pound notes in the house. And so I gathered as much as I could together. And I grabbed my children's little play till. So, they've got this little cash register, a little till. And it actually, it is a calculator. So, it works well as a calculator and it has a little drawer. So, I thought I'll take that because I wanted to encourage the children to feel like this was a game because this whole experience was going to last for three hours and trying to keep my two young boys occupied for three hours in a busy public space while I was distracted and preoccupied and that was going to be tough. So, I thought, get them involved in the game, bring their little toy till along and I'll actually use that for putting the change in. It'll work well. So, I grabbed those things, threw them in the car. The till and the coins and the notes that I had, and we set off. Now when I arrived, about 50% of the sellers were already there setting up and the lady told me to take any table available. I could choose any stall that was available. So, I chose the stall that was really close to the entrance. Now this in my mind was a smart move and I was surprised that no one else had taken this stall already. I say stall, it was just a trestle table, a trestle table, which is one of those tables that folds up, the legs fold in and the whole thing folds in half. So, this trestle table was by the entrance. Now the reason this was a smart choice was because people will see your stand twice. They see it when they first come in. So, if they have a burning desire to buy an item like a pram or a car seat, then they're more likely to look for it and buy it from you than if they were halfway around. So, they see you when they come in, but they also see you when they're leaving. So, they see your stand twice, and you also get their attention first. So, I took that one, and then it was time to A, keep the kids occupied and stop them from running off, while B, creating an eye-catching display. I didn't want it to look like a messy, overwhelming table full of stuff that people would just get lost in. I wanted to make sure the items I really wanted to sell were clean and clear and the prices were clear. And I'm rushing around, getting out of breath, and feeling really stressed. I tried to set up this pen that we have, this pen, which is like six gates and they all attach together and it makes a playpen. You put the crawler or the toddler into this playpen and keep them safe. But I'd never set it up before because I was the mum holding the baby. I had babe in arms, so my partner was the one who knew how to put it together and take it apart. And I was obviously solo parenting, so I had no clue. My partner wasn't there to help me with the technicalities of putting this thing together. Anyway, I got half of it up and then I gave up. And then we were overwhelmed with people. The people came flooding in because they opened the doors and all these people were on a hunt for a bargain. There with their money, burning a hole in their pocket, ready to pick up some real bargains. All the expectant mothers and fathers, the grandparents, some childminders, all looking for things, very specific things. Many of them already had in mind exactly what they wanted or what they needed. And as I hoped, they all swarmed around my stall scanning for what I had to offer. And before I knew it, people were interacting with me, asking,"How much for this?""Will you take this much for this?" So, they started haggling with me, which I was ready for. I didn't expect them to barter down the prices as much as they did because the prices were already like crazy cheap. Like I really knocked down prices I was offering, but you know, everyone wants a bargain and if you don't ask, you don't get. So, people were haggling,"Will you take this much for it?" And I honestly just wanted to get rid of everything because I didn't want to have to reload the car but also because I've been trying to sell many of these items for a long time online and with little success and this stuff just sits in my spare room gathering dust and I'd rather it go to a good home. I'd rather someone get use out of these items. And so I was like,"Sure, I'll take whatever. I'll give me, just give me whatever you think, fine." And I was agreeing to all the offers, left, right, and centre. And before you know it, my stall was looking pretty barren, which was great. Strangely enough, I didn't use the little calculator on the that we brought along with us. I had to do a lot of mental arithmetic and my sons were as good as gold. They didn't moan, they didn't run off, they didn't wander off with strangers, or do what I expected them to do, which was to go to all the other stalls and pick up toys and start asking if we can buy all these other toys. And that's what I was most worried about, that they'd ask to buy some horrendous big plastic noisy toy from someone else that was all battered and broken. Then having a meltdown if I said no, I didn't want that to happen. I was really worried that would happen, but it didn't. Thank goodness. For which I did reward them, of course. We had a nice family evening movie night with ice cream. And I did actually buy them a game from the event. That we could play together as a family, an educational game. Of course, it's a spelling game. But my children don't know the difference. A game is a game whether it's educational or not. So, everyone was happy in the end. And so that was my experience of being a seller on a market. I haven't done it for a very, very long time. The last time I did something like that was when I was a teenager doing a car boot sale with my mum. Car boot sales are very popular here in this country. I don't know if you have them in your country, but people love going to a car boot sale where all these cars just drive onto a field or into a car park and people sell out of the boot of their car. They just sell their things, what they have lying around their house. And lots of people turn up looking for a bargain or looking for antiques sometimes. So, yeah, we all had a good time. The thing that was disappointing was because I was so busy from the moment I arrived to the moment we packed up and left, I had no time to breathe or get a cuppa. I really needed a cup of tea and they were providing free tea and coffee, but I didn't get time to have a drink. It was probably for the best. If I had a cuppa in hand, I wouldn't have been able to manage all the things I was doing and probably would have knocked the tea over and spoiled some garments. So, yes, it was all good. And I only came home with one box full of stuff and, and the den, the baby den system that I couldn't put together. So, I'm going to have to try and sell that online. Right, so that's today's little episode. Let me now talk to you about some of the vocabulary that I used. You might have heard a number of phrasal verbs used. I used the phrasal verb price up. To price something up or to price many things up is the act of putting prices on things or displaying prices alongside items. So, I need to price up my lot. To pack up is quite straightforward, I think. It's the process of packing things into a box. Or putting things away. So, that's another phrasal verb, to put away, to pack up. You might even use pack away to mean the same thing. So, at the end of a day in my house, we try to pack away the toys. The toys are normally packed into set boxes where they live and they go into their shelves where they live. And so if they've had the magnet tiles out or the stickle bricks or the blocks or the paints, when we finished, we pack up or we pack away. Pack up can be used in different ways as well, but for today, that's the context. It means just to finish and put everything back where it came from. I also used the phrasal verb load up. To load up. We often use this with reference to loading something. So, you might load up a car, you might load up a person if someone is carrying things for you, and they've already got something in their hands, but they feel they can take more. They might say,"Hey, can you load me up with a few more boxes? I think I can carry a few more." So, you load more boxes on top of what they already have. You load them up or you load up the car. Okay. Often we use this with things that are moving. So, I wouldn't use load up a house if I was filling a house with things. I would fill up a house, but I would load up a van if I'm moving house. I would load up the car if I need to take lots of things out with me. I'd load up a person if I'm giving them lots of things to carry. You might load up the horse if your horse is carrying or your donkey is carrying. If you have a donkey carrying! You also might load up your wraps, sandwiches, or nachos if you fill something, although you don't fill nachos, you layer on top all the stuff, the cheese and the chilli and all that stuff, but we do load it up because we're piling it on top and you load up a wrap with all the fillings that you're going to put into it. You could load up your plate. It does suggest that there's a great quantity when you use load up. You could also use plate up in that respect. To plate up is what you do in the kitchens when you work in professional kitchens, in a restaurant or a cafe. The chef might say,"Can you help me plate up?" Which means can you help me put the food on the plate? And then we can take it out to the customers. I also used the phrase squeeze in. To squeeze in is just when you're trying to put things into a space that's a bit too small. So, if there are two people already in the back of a car, and there's just enough space for me to fit, I might open the door and say,"Sorry, can I squeeze in?" Meaning I want to get in and it's going to be a bit tight. I'm going to squeeze in. So, I had to squeeze everything into the car. It was a bit of a squeeze. It was a bit tight. I talked about loose change when I spoke about money. So, loose change is something that's becoming quite rare these days. Money is either paper money, which are the bills, the slips of paper that represent£10 or£5 or£20 or£50 or£100. And then when you pay with that money and there's some left over, you might be given coins and the coins can be referred to as loose change, loose change. So, when someone gives you some money to buy something and it's not the exact amount, so for example, I sold something that was£4 and the person gave me a ten-pound note. So, their change, what I owed them, their change was£6. And I said,"I'm sorry, I don't have any£5 notes. I'm going to have to give it you in loose change. Is that okay?" Here's some loose change. Very sorry about that. Most people were fine with it. Okay, I also talked about having an eye-catching display. If something is described as eye-catching then it looks good or it looks good enough to catch your eye so it stops your eye from moving away from it. You look across to it and you stop and you look because it's eye-catching. So, I wanted to make an eye-catching display. So, when people walked past my stall, they would stop and go,"Oh, I just saw something interesting. Let me take a closer look." I said people came flooding in to the event. To flood in is when lots of people come in very fast, just like a flood. So, the people came flooding in and I said, they were all on a hunt for a bargain. Now we actually have a term, bargain hunters. Bargain hunters are people who go out searching for a good deal. They want a bargain. So, a bargain hunter is someone who is on the hunt for a bargain. I talked about expectant mothers and expectant fathers, expectant mother or father is the term given to someone who is expecting a baby. So, an expectant mother would be pregnant and an expectant father is a man who's waiting for his baby to be born. I said they swarmed around my stall. To swarm. Swarm is often used when describing how bees behave, when they all flock together and they move around together. Now you don't want to be attracting the attention of a swarm of bees. You don't want bees to swarm around you. That could be quite painful, potentially devastating. But if you are are trying to sell things, you do want people swarming around your stall. So, it's to move as a group with intention around something. I mentioned having to do mental arithmetic, mental arithmetic. This is when you do sums in your head without a calculator. So, you add up or you subtract or multiply or divide in your head without the use of a device to help you. And I talked about people haggling or bartering down the price. To haggle is when you kind of discuss and negotiate a price. So, I might say,"Hi there, are you interested in buying this pram, it's£90." And the person looking at it might say,"Hmm, would you take£50 for it?" And I said,"Oh, no, no, I can't take£50 for it, but I'll take£80." And they might say,"Oh,£80 is a bit much. What about£70? Will you go down to 70?" And I said,"I tell you what, if you pay£80, I'll throw in a pair of shoes." And he went,"Oh, that's good. How about 75 with a pair of shoes?" And I was like,"Okay." So, we've just haggled there. It's a negotiation of price or what you're willing to give for something. I also described the prices on my stand as knocked down prices. So, if something is knocked down, then it has been severely reduced. So, the prices were very cheap compared to what you would expect. And I said, I wanted to get rid of everything. That's another phrasal verb, to get rid of. And I said, I wanted to send stuff to a good home. And that's a common phrase,"I just want it to have a good home.""He's off to a good home.""She's off to a good home." If you're talking about animals or objects."I'm really sad to be selling my bike, but it's going off to a good home." The little girl who I'm giving it to will be thrilled and will use it every day. So, there we go. I hope you found today useful. Until tomorrow, take very good care and goodbye.