Transcript:
[00:00:04.000] - Oliver (Host)
Welcome back to another episode of English and Beyond, an intermediate to advanced-level podcast for people who are learning English as a foreign language. If you find anything about this episode difficult to understand, as always, there is a transcript available at www.morethanalanguage.com.
[00:00:27.160] - Oliver (Host)
Also, before we get started, I have a quick request. If you enjoy this podcast, please share it with someone else learning English.
[00:00:35.910] - Oliver (Host)
But now, listener, let me begin the actual episode by asking you a question. Who is the most important person in your life? And a second question, perhaps linked to the first, who knows you the best? For many of us, the answer to both these questions will be your partner, your spouse. For others, it might be a best friend. But what these people - partners, friends - have in common is that these are people who we've chosen to bring into our lives, who we see as often as we can because there's something special about them that keeps us coming back for more. César, my partner is a huge presence in my life, as most spouses and best friends are. We see these special people every day. We eat with them, we socialise together, we have fun, we argue, we celebrate successes, and we mourn failures together.
[00:01:31.340] - Oliver (Host)
But a funny thing about a partner or best friend is that they've often only known you for a fraction of your life. For example, I'm almost 36 years old, and I met César when I was about 27. He's only known me for a quarter, 25% of my life. Partners only know a part of us, our present, and, hopefully, our future. But they weren't there at the beginning of our lives. They can't truly know our past. They can, of course, get little snapshots, like little pictures, into where we've come from. Every time you tell a story about your childhood, every time they sit down with your family to laugh over old photos, there are receiving little nuggets, little chunks, little bits of information that help them put together an image of your past. For most people, our past is a vital, a very important explanation of our present personality. And part of the fun of getting to know a new partner is putting together those puzzle pieces and working out the character of this person you might decide to spend the rest of your life with. So, these romantic partners join us at some later point in our lives, and if we're lucky, they stick around until the end.
[00:02:53.030] - Oliver (Host)
In contrast, your parents usually have been there from the beginning of your life, and they are a constant presence throughout without our early years. Of course, some of us may decide later in life to spend less time with our parents. After all, we never chose each other, and they can be irreconcilably different people from us. But if you're lucky enough to have a great relationship with your parents, they will have had the privilege of knowing you your entire life so far. They've seen you take your first steps in exploring the world. They've watched you stumble over life's early obstacles, both literal and metaphorical, and they've observed you grow with those challenges. But a sad reality of life, though really better than the alternative when you think about it, is that your parents' time on Earth will almost always end significantly before yours. They have witnessed your past. They're hopefully here for your present, but your future with them has a natural endpoint. I remember being a little boy and gradually realising this, and I would run to find my mum and just burst into tears that one day my parents would die and I would be left behind without them.
[00:04:05.500] - Oliver (Host)
I was a very tearful child in general, so my mum will have had a lot of practise dealing with this, but I think it is a really upsetting moment for a child to realise this fact. My mum, naturally, being the very honest person she is, confirmed that this would happen, but she did promise to do her best to delay it as long as possible. So your parents will see the first half of your life and your partners get to enjoy the second half, but neither group usually sees the full span of a person's lifetime.
[00:04:36.620] - Oliver (Host)
For some of us, though, there's a third group of people. They're there from our birth, and they've seen some of our most humiliating moments. Often, in fact, they'll have been the cause of some of those humiliations. These people help us to figure out who we are and what we want. In an ideal world, they continue to be a reassuring companion in our present and if we're really lucky, they'll be with us up to more or less the very end. If you haven't guessed, I'm talking about our siblings, our brothers and sisters.
[00:05:10.700] - Oliver (Host)
About 80% of people in the UK have siblings, and the sibling relationship relationship, therefore, varies wildly. As I've mentioned before on this podcast, I have six brothers and sisters, but I'm not equally close to all of them. That's largely because I didn't grow up with all of them. Three are much older than me. In fact, one of my brothers is so much older that his daughter, my niece, was born before I was. That means I was an uncle the very second I came into the world. But I did grow up with two of my brothers and my older sister. This episode is a tribute to my sister, really. I hope, listener, that you can relate. I barely know some of my older siblings. I don't know their likes, dislikes, hopes, or fears. But my sister, though, I know everything about her. And she knows everything about me. She's three years older than me, and when you're little, when you're young, those three years are very important. My sister was essentially my hero when I was growing up. There was no one in the world that I looked up to more. Basically, everything she did, everything she thought, was correct in my eyes from my point of view. And although she merely tolerated me, although she only endured my presence when I was little, I like to believe that become important to her as we've gotten older, too.
[00:06:34.720] - Oliver (Host)
But how can I describe this older sister? There are many things I can tell you about her, but firstly, you won't be able to verify it, and secondly, you won't really care. For this episode, I'm going to give her a name, Jeanne, in tribute to a particular actress that she looks like. I can't use her real name because it's virtually unique. Anyone would be able to find her within about two minutes. So Jeanne has always been a hard worker, but she's never really complained about it. I always felt like I had to drag myself through the trials and tribulations, the difficulties, of academic and working life, but my sister just puts her head down and gets on with it. That's a phrase that means she just carries out a task without complaining about it too much. She's a kind person, but she's not incredibly touchy-feely: she's not someone you would just go to for a hug, but instead, you'd go to her for some good, solid advice. She's very beautiful, but in a pretty effortless way. She's also incredibly busy. Since she became a working mother, especially, I think every conversation I've had with her in the last six years has been one where she's been multitasking.
[00:07:48.940] - Oliver (Host)
She's talked to me while preparing meals, while she's doing the weekly shop, while she's walking to pick up her kids from nursery. I think, in fact, she gets very little time to herself nowadays. But instead of spending too much time talking about her personality in particular, I want to talk about sibling dynamics while using her as an example. I've said already that these people, our siblings, stay with us our whole lives, and they can have a huge impact on us. I thought I'd identify four ways in which my sister has impacted me. And in true sibling style, my aim is not to make her look particularly good in most of these stories.
[00:08:29.280] - Oliver (Host)
Firstly, in English, there's a phrase: your reputation precedes you. It means people have heard about you and formed an opinion before they've even met you. In my case, my older sister's reputation preceded me. As a young teenager, everyone at my boys' school knew who I was because of her. Partially, this was because she was very attractive, yes, but more importantly, because she was intimidating. Her feisty, her lively personality personality made the boys both fascinated by her and more than a little bit scared.
[00:09:07.530] - Oliver (Host)
This didn't end at my school, though. I remember my first school disco when I was 12. The boys from my school stood awkwardly on one side of the gym, the girls from my sister's school on the other, both groups avoiding eye contact like their lives depended on it. Then suddenly, there was a burst of excitement, and a group of girls made a beeline for me, meaning that they moved directly directly towards me. 'Oh my God, are you Jeanne's little brother?' they asked. The moment I said yes, I was surrounded, and the request to dance didn't stop all night. Ironically, I was easily the most popular boy there. But there are some very psychologically odd things happening in that story, if you think about it, since these girls had no interest in me, but rather in me being my big sister's little brother. But the first sibling truth I've come up with is that their reputation becomes your reputation.
[00:10:05.040] - Oliver (Host)
The second truth about siblings is that you naively trust them, often when you really shouldn't. When I was little, I trusted my sister implicitly. I trusted her completely and without question. I remember being teased at school for not being into football; apparently, that made me not masculine enough or too girly. Naturally, I turned to the person I trusted most for advice, my very feminine older sister. Her solution? A makeover of questionable effectiveness. She dressed me in a full Kappa tracksuit from head to toe and gave me a runway-style lesson on how to walk with masculine confidence. The result? I looked more like Barbie's Ken than Conan the Barbarian, which was not exactly the outcome I was hoping for.
[00:10:53.360] - Oliver (Host)
The third truth. I learned all about competitiveness and fair play from my sister. As I mentioned I trusted her completely, even when she was being downright deceitful. She was notoriously manipulative whenever we played games. Take Monopoly, for example. During intense property negotiations, she would often pretend to be broke, showing me her meagre pile of cash and begging for mercy. She'd insist she couldn't possibly afford to build houses, let alone hotels. Feeling sorry for her, I'd agree to sell her a property to complete a set. But the moment the deal was done, she'd suddenly whip out a hidden stash of £500 notes, counting them with wicked delight. Then, without hesitation, she'd start building hotels on Mayfair and Park Lane. My brotherly generosity never saved me from bankruptcy. In fact, it guaranteed it.
[00:11:52.560] - Oliver (Host)
And the final thing about your older sibling that I've learned is that they will always be your biggest competition. I discussed in a previous episode the importance for me of applying to the University of Oxford, but one thing I hadn't mentioned in that episode was part of why it was so important to me. My oldest four siblings hadn't gone to university, instead leaving education at 18 or younger, But Jeanne had herself gone to Oxford, and this was probably when I first became aware of the university and how hard it was to get in, and it became highly important to me. The whole way through my education and in many other areas of life, I had Jeanne there as a yardstick of success. Whatever she accomplished, I needed to do better to prove to my parents, and to Jeanne most of all, that I was just as good as her. In fact, thinking about it now, probably a big part of the reason I became a lawyer was because she, before me, had become one, too. And really, these are the biggest compliments of all that I can give her. That, for me, just to be judged in the same breath as this person that I'd idolised, that I'd done everything to copy, that makes me prouder than anything.
[00:13:10.810] - Oliver (Host)
After that niceness, though, I want to finish off the episode by playing a little clip of her talking to make her look as bad as possible. In this little clip, a seven-year-old Jean is upset because I had the temerity, the cheek, the nerve, the audacity, the outrageous boldness to accidentally disobey her for a moment and position myself in front of her for a family photo:
[00:13:35.350] - Jeanne (Special Guest)
"If you just leave - No! Because then you're in front! Get off now!"
[00:13:44.240] - Oliver (Host)
So, César, How are you?
[00:13:47.980] - César (Guest)
I'm good. I feel, I mean - today we have to say it's a very gloomy day, right?
[00:13:56.930] - Oliver (Host)
In Valencia.
[00:13:57.690] - César (Guest)
The sun is not out as usual.
[00:13:59.960] - Oliver (Host)
An uncharacteristically gloomy day.
[00:14:02.320] - César (Guest)
Yeah. And so is our heart. No, I liked your monologue. It made me feel slightly emotional. And you're not going to say it, but you had to stop recording several times because you felt like your voice was breaking a bit.
[00:14:20.480] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah, it's funny that because obviously, I wasn't even saying anything sad or even anything that nice. But for some reason, Jeanne does make me feel emotional.
[00:14:31.380] - César (Guest)
Yeah, I hope if she's listening, Jolene, Jane, Jean -
[00:14:36.490] - Oliver (Host)
Jeanne -
[00:14:37.520] - César (Guest)
Jane. Jolene. I'm sure she'd like it.
[00:14:42.740] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah, well, I mean, let's add some stuff that she might not like now.
[00:14:46.830] - César (Guest)
Yeah. Maybe she's thinking, "What has he done?"
[00:14:50.530] - Oliver (Host)
Do you know, just the idea that we would worry about whether she would like it or not, I think shows the power, I suppose - not the power, but the importance that she has for me. I think that that's the funny thing about siblings in general. I was going to say that it's probably something about older siblings, but actually, you have a younger sister, and she matters an incredible amount to you. I think that no one really matters more to you than her. I think I would feel comfortable saying.
[00:15:31.770] - César (Guest)
Yeah, and I was thinking, because you clearly look up to your sister, and it's more usual that you look up to your elder brother or sister. But I also look up to my younger sister, especially now that she's a young adult, she's 20, and her personality is more formed. I admire some of her traits that I don't have.
[00:16:00.860] - Oliver (Host)
I mean, the siblings that I know best, the three that I grew up with, I look up to them all for different reasons. I think Jeanne is probably the most similar to me in personality and everything like that. Well, she provides the most obvious template for me to follow. But my two brothers that I go out with, the one who lives in Australia, my Australian brother - I mean, I'll probably do an episode, he wants to do an episode with me - I think that he's a very big person, and so I'm going to end up crying. I think he's a very big person, and I think that's impressive. I think he's also someone who has created an incredible life for himself from, you know, times that were probably more difficult. I think that's really impressive, too. Then with my little brother, I think that I don't understand where he came from in many respects. He's such a determined person and so single-minded and impressively driven and the most loyal person I know. I don't know. I suppose I feel very lucky to have those siblings, the three that I know better. The three that are older, it's not that I'm not lucky to have them, I just don't know them in the same way.
[00:17:36.270] - César (Guest)
Can I ask you, what do you bring on the table?
[00:17:39.170] - Oliver (Host)
What do I bring to the table?
[00:17:40.890] - César (Guest)
What do you bring to the table? Thank you. In the sense of you have mentioned all the traits and how you feel so lucky to have them and how inspiring they are in different regards. What do you think they feel about you? And apart from the language, I'm sure, languages that you speak - I'm sure all of them are jealous about that. But apart from that, what do you think you bring to the table?
[00:18:12.960] - Oliver (Host)
I mean, I think, you'd probably have to ask them. I think that they'd probably... I think if you ask them, the one thing that they'd probably all say immediately was, kind of, academic results, just because at school, I did well academically, and I think that whenever they talk about me, that's what they mention. In terms of personality, I guess it probably would depend on each of them, but I think Jeanne would probably say that she's glad that I'm here in the family because she's always got an ally in arguments. We argue a lot with my dad, and almost always, she and I are on the same side. We almost always think the same.
[00:19:02.800] - César (Guest)
You're a tandem.
[00:19:03.840] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah, we think the same things. We defend each other's points of view. It's not that it's, you know, synthetic or something that we do just to be loyal to each other, I think we genuinely think very similarly. I think that she probably would be... She'd probably say she was happy that I was here for that. But you'd have to ask them.
[00:19:30.440] - César (Guest)
I will.
[00:19:32.680] - Oliver (Host)
What do you think that your sister... I mean, I said that your sister is incredibly important for you. I think you're arguably probably even more important for her. Why do you think that is? Talk about what it is to be an older brother, because I'm an older brother too, but there's a big gap between you and your sister.
[00:19:53.380] - César (Guest)
16 years.
[00:19:54.500] - Oliver (Host)
Wow.
[00:19:55.110] - César (Guest)
I was 16 or 15. I can't remember now. I think I was 16 when she was born.
[00:20:00.090] - Oliver (Host)
I mean, that's like another generation. Yeah. Well, it is another generation.
[00:20:03.830] - César (Guest)
She's Gen Z, and I'm a millennial. I guess if you tend to have this sentiment of protection towards your younger siblings. If the age gap is so big, as in our case, this sense of protection, that need of feeling almost like a parent for her.
[00:20:31.560] - Oliver (Host)
I was going to say that, actually, because I think of her as someone who's got quite a lot of self-confidence. She's really sure about what she wants for someone of that age. But even when someone has a lot of self-confidence, sometimes they want someone that they call up and they just, kind of, vent to - they just talk about their feelings, or we can say in English that they use them as a sounding board, like a sounding board for ideas, which is where you just, kind of, like, say to them everything that's going through your mind, all the ideas you have. And you might not even necessarily take their advice if they give it, but you're, you're kind of talking to yourself via them. The person that functions as a Sounding Board has to have a lot of patience and be interested enough to actually listen and feedback. And my mum, for me, is the Sounding Board. You know, I ring her up and just talk rubbish to her for hours sometimes. She patiently listens and she'll give me feedback and everything. But for you and your sister, I think that you are your sister's Sounding Board.
[00:21:44.150] - César (Guest)
Maybe many times, yeah. She would call me and ask me for advice, or she would just vent.
[00:21:51.830] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah, talk about her anxieties. She doesn't even necessarily need anything. She just wants to talk.
[00:21:58.840] - César (Guest)
Yeah, exactly. I'm glad she does it. Obviously, she's got friends as well, and she does it with friends. I guess she doesn't talk to me about all the things that goes, all the things that go through her mind. But I'm glad she's able to share with me some of them, especially, maybe she's got an issue with a friend or things from, issues from uni or things like that - work. It's quite interesting to see because until recently, when she was a teenager, obviously the relationship was different because I had to very subtly try to influence her behaviour without becoming a control freak. But now that she's more like an adult, I'm more like a brother, but also like a friend. And she opens up more often as well. And I open up as well. It's quite interesting I have known her since she was a baby. I've changed her nappies. I've fed her. I took her to school when she was little. Then we went through the teenage years -
[00:23:16.400] - Oliver (Host)
The difficult teenage years.
[00:23:18.440] - César (Guest)
- me living in the UK, and now she's an adult, so it's interesting to see how that relationship has been changing and evolving and it's more mature.
[00:23:30.570] - Oliver (Host)
I'm going to sound so American, but that's actually quite beautiful, really, isn't it?
[00:23:35.140] - César (Guest)
It is beautiful.
[00:23:37.090] - Oliver (Host)
But it's... Oh, God, I feel such a traitor to my country.
[00:23:40.760] - César (Guest)
Because your eyes are...
[00:23:42.510] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah, exactly. Because it's like Harry Potter - Rita Skeeter, the journalist - she writes about Harry, and Harry will be totally neutral in his emotions. And her account of it in the newspaper will be like "a young Harry, his eyes welling up with emotion."
[00:24:00.670] - César (Guest)
That's what is happening, listener.
[00:24:02.030] - Oliver (Host)
No. In my little speech, I talked about the fact that sibling relationships vary hugely. And I think that we have a good example of that here, right? That we both have younger siblings, but my relationship with my younger sibling is totally different from the one that you have with your younger sister. I suppose part of that is because there's only three years between me and my little brother, and 16 between you and your sister. But also because you were so much older, and then her dad died when she was very young as well, that meant you do have a a weird hybrid parent-sibling relationship. But I remember you saying to me - this is a long question - but I remember you saying to me when we first started going out that it was really important for you that she see you as a brother, not as some almost-dad type figure.
[00:24:59.840] - César (Guest)
Yeah.
[00:25:00.250] - Oliver (Host)
And my question is, when you were talking about trying to guide her during her teenage years, what did you view your responsibility to her as being during those years?
[00:25:18.680] - César (Guest)
Well, I guess, well, firstly, her teenage years were marked by COVID, 2020, 2021, which was, it was really hard in Spain. The lockdown was horrible in Spain. Obviously, my mum had me when she was 24, and she had my sister when she was 40. So it's a huge generational gap between my mum and my sister, and I'm right in the middle. So I can understand very well my mum's point of view, and I can understand very well as well my sister's philosophy and point of view. So I always try to - my figure is almost like a diplomat. I always have to bridge, I always have to build a bridge between them if there's any conflict.
[00:26:09.720] - Oliver (Host)
So you're like a mediator.
[00:26:11.370] - César (Guest)
Yeah, exactly. It was more during the teenage years, obviously, because they're more complicated. I've never tried to step up on that relationship because obviously my stepdad died, but I never wanted to become her dad because I wasn't, I wanted to be her brother, and I helped her by guiding her when I think she needs to with things like university, work, friendship. But for example, she will never ask me for money.
[00:26:50.070] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah. And you're never going to forbid her from doing something. And I guess that's kind of like...
[00:26:56.300] - César (Guest)
I've never done that.
[00:26:57.230] - Oliver (Host)
From the difference between a father figure and being a brother figure is the fact that when she asks you, "Should I do this?" You can say, "Well, I think you should do this." But you never say, like her mum could, "No, you are staying home."
[00:27:10.010] - César (Guest)
Exactly. I've never punished her or something I don't have that. Because it's not my responsibility.
[00:27:18.690] - Oliver (Host)
Even though I'm sure she would obey it if you did try to publish her. Maybe not now - she's 20. The reason that we're talking about sisters today is because we talked about brothers in the Spanish podcast. So it's been a pleasure. You know, I've teetered on the edge of emotional breakdown throughout most of the episode. I'm sorry, listener, if you heard that in my voice. But thank you very much for listening. Email me at oliver@morethanalanguage.com if you have your own stories about your siblings that you'd like to share with me, about your sisters, what it is to be a sister or to have a sister. And please remember to rate and share the podcast so that it can continue to grow. Thank you very much.
[00:28:08.540] - César (Guest)
Bye!
[00:28:09.310] - Oliver (Host)
Bye-bye.
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