Blog Archives
Drive, Drove, driven, drivel – or “Road trip meets linguistic meandering”
Original YT playout date: 2 April 2010
Duration: 29:10
Driving from the Amber Hotel through Olesnice towards Namyslow I start to talk about why Polish language has more exotic elements in it, more aspects usually more associated with oriental languages, than Russian has. This is really developing a thesis of mine that Poland has an oriental culture.
Learners of Slavic languages will love this one, as will those of you who use my videos to go to sleep, as some have told me…
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Dangerous Parking
Original YT playout date: 27 March 2010
Duration: 2:07
How sensible is it to plonk your van down and leave it just where the traffic is coming off the level crossing? The whole situation could easily get gridlocked if two of these idiots decided to do the same thiing on either side of the crossing – and the result could be that vehicles get trapped on the tracks when the next train somes. How can someone not see that? Anyway, thankfully the drivers on the other side of the road showed more foresight, and let us pass, therefore avoiding the risk of such a gridlock on the railway track. It just goes to show the sort of people we’re sharing planet earth with.
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Collecting an Indian Takeaway from Raszyn
Original YT playout date: 14 March 2010
Duration: 7:25
Just felt like switching the thing on and talking with you while I was driving…
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Let’s get out of here
Original YT playout date: 7 November 2009
Duration: 22:53
In the third of the three videos featuring my recent drive from Warsaw to Prague and back, unexpected diversions at night force me to drive through the ancient settlement of Kozieglowy, or “the place of the goats’ heads”, a place besmirched by pagan rituals in the past and till today a major supplier of pagan Christmas trees to the rest of the country and an accident blackspot. It is like a Polish road equivalent of Haiti and the Bermuda Triangle all rolled into one. One gets the impression that the very road is haunted…
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Into and back out of Prague
Original YT playout date: 31 October 2009
Duration: 1:03:03
We continue the journey from Opole and go through Klodzko towards Prague. Can any of my viewers recognise the work of literature being played in the night drive through Klodzko – and the voice actor?
The next day we show unbroken footage of how to drive out of the centre of Prague in the direction of Wroclaw.
Don’t miss the third and final part of this epic drive where we have to brave the awful place of Kozieglowy at night.
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Road Rant between Czestochowa and Opole
Original YT playout date: 31 October 2009
Duration: 46:09
We are driving on the way to Prague from Warsaw – this is part one of three videos taken on the same drive.
Topics covered include a discussion on the origins of pilgrimages and whether they should have such a central place in many people’s view of the Christian faith, then a live look at some of the places in Poland where there is still a German minority living unresettled after the war, and a glimpse of Opole city centre, and its inspiring sculptitudes.
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Pretty Edgey – Bledlow Edge
Tuesday, April 6, 2021
Original YT playout date: 3 October 2009
Duration: 16:51
It’s plums-in-mouths time as we tour rural Oxfordshire just beyond the scarp of the Chilterns.
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Prague Vlog #8 – Driving to Prague from Warsaw
Original YT playout date: 16 August 2009
Duration: 21:58
We start off with the battle of the conflicting GPS fembots, and then get into all kinds of traffic in Upper Silesia. Very little of this one actually takes place in the Czech Republic, but you do get to see the border at Nachod.
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Musings from the road at sunset
Original YT playout date: 1 May 2009
Duration: 8:06
Featuring thoughts on applying the GoldList Method to the learning of poety, a presentation of Wordsworth’s “”Daffodils”” and whether man’s release of chemicals into the sky has affected the natural world much or not.
You might say “”why get sidetracked onto daffodils when there aren’t any there?””. Ah, but that’s precisely the *point* of the poem, isn’t it?
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It’s OK for Krapkowice!
Original YT playout date: 30 April 2009
Duration: 46:49
Riding through the countryside of the Opole region in Poland, we take a tongue-in-cheek look at the principles of taxonomy (the scientific names of animals and plants) and then visit a place with the inauspicious name of Krapkowice…
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Drizzly Drive in Wielkopolska
Original YT playout date: 24 April 2009
Duration: 21:23
Just a bit of footage from the road. We drive through Szamotuly, past the cultured gentleman clearing his nose into midair by the road crossing, and on to the old part, and then past the Bolix factory. But never mind that, there’s some nice country driving afterwards.
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