Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna and you're listening to Week 45, Day 2 of Your English Five a Day. In this series, I'm focusing on improving your English listening skills and increasing your vocabulary, as well as keeping you company while you do whatever it is that you're currently doing. So let's get started with today's list. We begin with the verb to scale. To scale. Now I'm talking about something like a wall. To scale a wall. Scale we spell S C A L E, scale, scale. If you scale a wall, then you are climbing it. You're going up it. And this is often used within the sport of climbing, of course. You may have to scale a wall in order to regain entry to your house if you've managed to lock yourself out. Something that I did not so long ago. The door shuts behind you when you realise,"Oh no, I don't have a key." The only way into your home is through an open window on the first floor,"Ahh, okay, now I'm going to have to scale a wall to try and climb up to that top window." I'm always very impressed when I watch the cats and the foxes in my garden scale the fence. Cats in particular, the foxes can jump quite high when they want to, but the cats, they scale a fence with no problem whatsoever. And the fence is so high compared to their tiny little bodies. And yet they just so gracefully and elegantly scale it. It's very impressive. Did you watch the climbing during the Olympics? They were fantastic, weren't they? They could scale the wall with ease. Yeah, when I go climbing, I don't look that graceful. Here's another example,"As an experienced climber, Jeremy was confident he could scale the sheer cliff face with very little effort." Okay, next on the list is the idiom to not have a clue, to not have a clue. Have a clue, C L U E. If you don't have a clue, if you do not have a clue, then you don't have any idea about the answer to a question or how to do something or what a situation is. So, for example, if we are walking through town and one of the routes that we normally take is blocked off. There's police tape up across the street and there's a policeman there saying,"Sorry, you can't come through here." And you say to me,"Anna, what's going on?" And I don't know, then I could say,"I don't have a clue." I don't have a clue. Not a clue. I don't have a clue. Or if we are sitting in my living room and my mother comes in, and you know my mother very well, but she's very rude and abrupt in her manner. And you say to me,"Anna, what's wrong with your mum?""I've not got a clue." I don't have a clue. I don't have a clue. I'm just saying I don't know. Here's another example,"I've been in my job for a month, and I still don't have a clue what I'm doing!" Next on the list is the noun fair cop. We spell this fair, F A I R. Cop, C O P. Fair cop. Fair cop is used in a humorous way when someone has been caught doing something wrong and they are happy to admit it. So for example, if I say to you,"You have eaten all of my son's birthday cake." And you look at me and say,"How do you know?" And I say,"Well, you've got the chocolate cake all over your face and all over your hands. It was obviously you." You can't deny it, so instead, you admit it. You say to me that it's fair by using the phrase fair cop."Ah, fair cop, fair cop, you're right. I did eat your son's birthday cake. I'm very sorry. I'll go to the shop right away and buy him an even bigger cake." So it was a fair cop. It was a fair cop. I caught you. You've done something wrong and you have to admit it. Okay, so here's another example,"'Fair cop', said the thief, as the police officer handcuffed him." Next on the list is the adjective insidious, insidious. We spell this I N S I D I O U S, insidious, insidious. If something is described as insidious, then it's a change or a problem that spreads gradually without being noticed and it causes serious harm. So it's a change or a problem that spreads gradually and it's not noticed, and it's normally causing a great deal of harm. Here's an example sentence,"Cancer is an insidious disease that often strikes without warning." As I mentioned this particular word, I'm reminded of a horror film that came out... I was going to say not long ago, but probably it was a long time ago now. Did anyone watch that particular horror movie? My memory is a bit rusty. I feel like I did watch it. Can't fully remember what it was about. Anyway, insidious. Not a nice word. Not a nice thing. Let's move on. The last word on our list today is a verb and it is berate, berate. We spell this B E R A T E, berate. To berate someone is to speak angrily to them because they've done something wrong. You can use this in a formal setting to describe someone being publicly criticised for a long time and in a way that shows that you strongly disapprove of what they've done. So, for example, let's imagine that I work for an IT security company and I share some very sensitive information with a friend, someone who I think is harmless. But in fact, my friend is actually working for a hacker and he sells the information to the hacker and my sharing of information leads to most of our clients being hacked. When my boss finds out, he will berate me. So he will probably publicly criticise me in front of the entire company, perhaps even the media and the clients, and use me as an example of why we have such strong security measures and why sharing and leaking sensitive information is not allowed. He will berate me. Here's another example,"Arriving late for the meeting, Jenna was berated by her manager for not respecting the schedule." Have you ever been berated? I can't say that I ever have. I'm actually a bit of a goody two shoes. I follow the rules. I do as I'm told. I turn up on time. So, I don't think I've been berated in the workplace. Anyway, that's our five for today. So, let's do a quick recap. We started with the verb to scale. And this is to do with climbing or ascending something like a wall. Then we had the idiom not have a clue, which means you don't have an idea about the answer or about how to do something or what a situation is, you just don't know. We had the noun fair cop, which is used when someone's done something wrong and they're happy to admit it. Fair cop. Then we had the adjective insidious, which is when something spreads gradually without being noticed and causes serious harm. Then we had the verb berate, which is to speak angrily to someone because they've done something wrong, and it's usually quite a big telling off or public criticism. Okay, so let's do this now for pronunciation purposes. Please repeat after me. To scale. To scale. Not have a clue. Not have a clue. Fair cop. Fair cop. Insidious. Insidious.. Berate. Berate. Fantastic. Okay. Can I just test your memory? Just for a moment. It doesn't matter if you don't get any of them right. This is just for fun. What's the idiom that I'd use to say that I don't know? I do not have a clue. I do not have a clue. And if I have a problem that has been spreading gradually without being detected, and it's causing a great deal of harm in my community, what adjective could I use to describe this problem? Insidious. Yes, this insidious problem has been causing a great deal of harm in my community and it's gone completely undetected. I did not have a clue about it. But when we find the perpetrator, the person that's behind this problem, and we arrest them, and they are happy to admit that they've done something wrong. What might they say? What noun might they use? Fair cop. Fair cop. Yeah, I was doing bad things in the community. Yep, fair cop. And if the policewoman handling the problem found that her partner knew about this criminal. And the criminal activity for months and months and months, but hadn't told anybody. She's going to speak very angrily to that person for a long time for doing the wrong thing and not reporting this criminal activity. What is she doing? This angry speaking. What is she doing? Berating. Yes, she's berating her partner for allowing this insidious problem to go on for so long. She didn't have a clue about it. And finally, if the criminal escapes our detention and manages to climb a wall, a very tall wall, a 10-foot wall, without any problem whatsoever. What verb could I use instead of climb? Scale. Yes, the criminal scaled a 10-foot wall, it was unbelievable. Okay, so there we go, that's our five. Let's listen out for them once again in today's storytime. A day in the life of a not so clever criminal I've been in the game long enough to know when plans go awry. But let me tell you about one particularly insidious night. I recently decided to sneak into an old warehouse, thinking it would be an easy score. I had no idea what awaited me inside. That evening, I gathered my tools: a flashlight and a crowbar. As I approached the warehouse, the moon illuminated the cracked walls. I decided to scale the wall on the side, thinking I was quite the mastermind. After all, it's just like climbing a tree, right? When I finally reached the top, I was feeling like a king. Little did I know that trouble was just around the corner. Once inside, everything was quiet. I started my search, but soon realised I didn't have a clue what I was looking for. Suddenly, I heard a noise behind me a couple of security guards. They must have heard the creaking of the door! I panicked and hid behind some old boxes, praying they wouldn't find me, but I couldn't just sit there forever. When one of the guards saw me, he didn't just berate me; he laughed!"Look at this guy! Did you really think you could pull this off?" he said. It was a fair cop. And I knew I was caught. Instead of trying to run I decided to face the music. What else could I do? The guards took me out, shaking their heads. I realised that crime isn't as glamorous as movies make it seem. Sometimes, you think you have a clever idea, but it ends up being nothing but trouble. Now, I'm sitting in my apartment thinking twice before planning my next big score. It's better to stay out of trouble than to learn the hard way, shall we say. And that brings us to the end of today's episode. I do hope you found today useful. If you did, it would mean a lot to me if you just take a moment to leave a like. Or if you're listening via another streaming platform, leaving a rating or review, this way, other people can find the podcast too. Thank you so much for your time and I look forward to tickling your eardrums again tomorrow. Until then, take very good care and goodbye.