Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna and you're listening to Week 47 Day 5 of Your English Five a Day. This series brings you a healthy daily dose of English vocabulary. It will also improve your listening skills and I'll keep you company, tickling your eardrums for the next 15 or so minutes. So sit back, relax, unless you're walking to work therefore, sitting back will not help, and, uh, don't relax too much if you're driving. Focus on the road. But let's get going with today's session. We start with a phrase. In fact, we are phrase-heavy today. We start with the phrase to my shame, to my shame. To, T O. My, M Y. Shame, S H A M E. To my shame. This phrase means that you feel ashamed because and then you share what you feel ashamed of. For example, I might say,"To my shame, I never buy clothes for my three-year-old. I just give him my eldest son's cast-offs." So, I save all the clothes from my five-year-old as he grows bigger and bigger and then pass them on to my three-year-old. So, to my shame, I never buy brand-new clothes for my youngest son. In fact, I don't think that's something to be ashamed of. I'm saving the environment by not wasting clothes. But that's how it works. Here's another example,"To my shame, I never went to see my grandmother when she was in hospital." The next phrase on the list is to make matters worse. To make matters worse. Four words, to, T O. Make, M A K E. Matters, M A T T E R S. Worse, W O R S E. To make matters worse. We use this when we are about to say that something has made a bad or a difficult situation worse. For example, let's say that I'm about to go to a birthday party that I've organised, and I'm wearing my best dress, my hair's all done, my makeup's done, and I run to the cake shop to pick up the cake that I'd ordered, and when I arrive, they say,"I'm terribly sorry, there's been a big problem with our oven, your cake is not ready." Now, after that, as I'm walking away from the cake shop, very upset, the heavens open and it starts raining very heavily. My hair is ruined. My makeup is now streaming down my face, and my dress is soaking wet. So I could say,"I went to the cake shop to pick up the cake, but the cake wasn't ready. And to make matters worse, then the heavens opened up and completely drenched me." So we always use this after saying something bad happened and then we use the phrase to make matters worse, we then say an additional bad thing that made the whole thing even worse than it was before. Here's another example,"She's under a lot of stress at work. To make matters worse, she's having trouble getting to sleep at night." Next, we have the idiom to lose track of somebody, or to lose track of something, or you could say to keep track of somebody or something. So to lose or keep track of something or someone. Now, lose, L O S E. Track, T R A C K. Of, O F somebody or something. So if you lose track of something, it means that you don't have the information about what's happening. Or you don't have the information about where it now is. So let's imagine I've lent you a book and I ask you after a few weeks,"How are you getting on with that book?" And you say,"Oh, I lent it to my friend just for a few days." And then a week later you say,"Oh, sorry, my friend said she's lent it to her mum. I'll get it back for you." And then I forget to ask and weeks and weeks and weeks go by and someone else comes and says,"Anna, you mentioned a book you wanted to pass on to me." And I say,"Yeah, I gave it to a friend, and she gave it to her friend and she gave it to her mum. And I'm, to be honest, I've lost track of it. I don't know where it is. I'll go and find out what's happened to it" So I've lost track of it. Or you might lose track of someone. So, we all do it as we get older. We try to stay in touch with our friends from school or from our childhood, but life happens. We sometimes move into different cities or countries, we make new friends, we have very busy and full lives and we might forget to keep in touch. We might forget to update our friends about where we are. And so later down the line, many years down the line, you might realise,"Oh, I haven't kept up with that person. I've lost track of them. I don't know where they're living now. I don't know what they're doing now. They might be married. They might have kids. I have no idea." This is sometimes what Facebook is very good for. It helps you to keep track of those friends and colleagues who you no longer have contact with, but you are interested to know what happens to them. And when you see that something wonderful happens, you give them a little thumbs up or a little love heart. When bad things happen, then you write a message of support. Maybe you get in touch with them again and say,"I'm so sorry to hear about what happened." So we try to keep track of people and we try to keep track of things that are important. We try to stay in touch, remember where they are. And follow what's happening. But, inevitably, we do lose track of certain things. And we do lose track of certain people. Here's one last example,"Her desk is such a mess that she can't keep track of all her work." Okay, next on the list is the verb rekindle, rekindle. We spell this R E K I N D L E. Rekindle, rekindle. To rekindle is to make a feeling or a relationship become active again. If you've been married for a very long time or you've been in the same romantic relationship for a long time, you may now take one another for granted. Maybe all the romance has died away and you now sit in silence at the end of the day, watching the television, not communicating. Maybe you no longer hold hands as you walk down the street. Maybe you go to sleep and forget to give each other a kiss goodnight. And you might start to feel a bit lonely and a bit sad about that. So one thing you could do is try to rekindle your relationship, rekindle that spark that you once had. So you try to set the fire going again, bring back the passion. But that's just to do with relationships. You can rekindle an interest. If you have a keen interest in something, but you've kind of forgotten about it, which we do as we get older, we go from having many hobbies to focusing on one or two things that seem either related to our work or available to us at the time. For example, I used to love trampolining. I don't have much opportunity to do trampolining these days. I used to love roller skating, but there's nowhere near me where roller skating is really an option. Maybe one day I'll rekindle my interest in roller skating. Okay, here's another example,"The extreme weather rekindled interest in the climate crisis among the general public." Okay, last on the list is the idiom in touch with someone. You heard me use this earlier. To be in touch with someone. Two words. In touch. In, I N. Touch, T O U C H. In touch. To be in touch with someone. It's about communicating with them regularly or seeing them regularly. You are in touch. For example, I am not in touch with all the members of my family. Some of them I've lost touch with, but I am in touch with my mum, and I am in touch with my grandmother, and I'd like to be in touch with more people from my family and more of my network of friends, but it's just very hard. Life is so busy, it's hard to keep in touch with, with everyone. Here's another example,"The interviewer said he would be in touch with me in the next week to let me know if I've got the job." Okay, so that's our five for today. Let's do a quick recap. We started with the phrase to my shame. To my shame is the phrase that means that you feel ashamed because of something. Next, we had the phrase to make matters worse. This is used to say that something made a bad situation worse. Then we had the idiom to lose track of someone or something or to keep track of someone or something. And this is to have or not have information about what's happening or where something is. Then we had the verb rekindle which is to bring back the feeling of interest or love or friendship that was once active but now is no longer active so it needs to be activated. And then we had the idiom in touch which is all about seeing someone or communicating with them. If you are generally in touch with them, then you're communicating regularly. Or if you say to someone,"I'll be in touch." It means I will connect and communicate with you at some point. Okay, let's do this for pronunciation purposes. Please repeat after me. To my shame. To my shame. To make matters worse. To make matters worse. To lose track of someone. To keep track of something. Rekindle. Rekindle. In touch. In touch. Fantastic. Okay. If I'm about to tell you that because of something I feel ashamed, what phrase could I use? To my shame. Yes. Very good. To my shame. And if my relationship has gone a bit stale, it's a bit boring, we're not very romantic. What do I need to do to bring back those feelings of romance and passion? I need to rekindle that relationship, don't I? And if I was following my weight in a spreadsheet, I was keeping a record of my weight, but now I've forgotten to follow it. I haven't been recording it lately. What idiom could I use to say that I don't know what's happening with my weight now? I've lost track of my weight. I don't know how heavy I am. And then if I want to tell you that something bad happened, but then something even worse happened, something that made the whole situation much worse, what phrase could I use? To make matters worse. Very good. And finally, if I want to use an idiom that suggests communicating with someone, what idiom would I use? In touch. Very good. Okay, let's listen out for these five items once again in today's storytime. To my shame, I've lost track of so many friends over the years. Old friends from school, former colleagues, people I used to play sports or volunteer with. To make matters worse, it's easy nowadays to keep track of people with social media. Even if you haven't seen them for years, you can just click'like' on a photo they've posted and feel like you're still in touch. Even so, you can still lose track of people, even on these sites. So what's my excuse for not staying in contact with old friends? Well, life gets busy. It's not like when you're at school and you see your friends every day, whether you like it or not! We're adults now, we have to go out to work and earn a living. We don't have as much free time. We go home to our separate apartments or houses. Some of us live alone, some of us have families. But no matter our living situation, the reality is the same there isn't as much time for friends. So what's the solution? I don't know. It's so embarrassing to get back in touch when it's been so long. People move on. Why would they want to talk to me if they haven't spoken to me for so long? Why am I the one contacting them? It's hard to be the one to take the first step. In some cases, I lost track of certain people deliberately. I didn't want to stay in touch with them. One or both of us changed so we don't have any shared interests. It's a choice. But for others, it happened by accident, as our lives got busier, and our friendships became less important. So, starting tomorrow, I'm going to be the one to make an effort. I'm going to get back in touch with old friends. Maybe we can rekindle the relationship, maybe we can't. But at least that way I'll know how they're doing. And that brings me to the end of today's episode. Don't forget that all this vocabulary is available in the database that you can download for free. And if you're listening on YouTube, I would really appreciate a little like. Otherwise, take very good care, have an amazing weekend, and goodbye.