english Lucy today I'm going to tell

you a story the story's going to teach

you the true meaning of the term prized

possession prized possession and it's

going to be fantastic listening practice

because I'm telling you from the heart

you've got subtitles as well i always

recommend that you watch it once without

subtitles and then once again with

subtitles to see how much you managed to

understand so what is a prized

possession a prized possession is the

possession that is very important to you

it's something that you treasure more

than anything else so I have a couple of

prized possessions in my life and I

thought the story behind them would be

really nice to use as listening practice

so I've got a couple I've already

spoken to you about this ring here if and

if you haven't seen the Q&A that i did

when i reached 100,000 subscribers then

you can click on the card up here in that

Q&A I tell you amongst many other things

the beautiful story behind the ring that

I've got my finger today and but today

i'm going to be talking to you about

another prized possession which is this

book here and you can see on the front it

says well you might not be able to see

what it says it started with leaf and

I'm going to tell you about how this

book came to be

I grew up in the countryside in the

reason or county of bedfordshire which

is in central England slightly north of

London and as I grew up in a tiny village I

had to use my imagination quite a lot

so i used to play pretend games on my

own

quite a lot and one day I found a leaf so

it really did all start with a leaf and

it was a nice that had a tiny squiggle

on it and it must have been eaten by

caterpillar or something or an insect

but I looked at this leaf and I knew exactly

what it was I looked at this leaf and I knew a fairy

had written me a letter and because they

don't have paper in fairy land they must have

written it on a leaf

I must have been about six and a half

years old and and I took it upon

myself to reply to the letter because that's polite

isn't it so I responded to the fairy

saying quite clearly next time you write

to me can you write with bigger

handwriting please and what's the point

of writing to me if I can't read it and I

left my response to the leaf message

right where I found it which was on a

window sill outside my house so I got

into my bedroom one day and I dropped

the message out of the window I got up in the

morning raced outside and would you

believe it

there was a response there was a tiny

little letter with very tiny writing

but slightly bigger than before because

to fit on a leaf it was pretty small and

it was a gorgeous letter saying Hi Lucy

sorry we forgot that we had to write in

english to you we speak fairy language and the

letter was signed from Nina which was a

fairy that lived in my garden and

communication between Nina and i continued

for two years yes i would write a letter

to Nina the fairy almost every night

sometimes I went a while without writing

and

and I'd apologize and she would

always reply

my letters would get a bit wet

and she would say that she had to put some

magic on it and and clarify my writing I

wasn't really that bothered if it landed in a

puddle and got wet because fairies are magic

they can just magic it away. Little did I know

that it was actually my dad responding

to all of these fairy letters

poor daddy he was working so hard and

such long hours at that time he would

come home late from work every night it

would be raining and my mum would say

you'll never guess what

And he'd go 'what?' There's another fairy letter so he'd have

to get on his computer and decipher my

six-year-old writing and write a response and on my 21st birthday I

received this which I didn't really know

what it was when i said so it i just

read the title it started with a leaf by

Lucy aged six-and-a-half with help from

Nina and Aspion the garden fairies Aspion

was Nina's friend and I didn't know

this but my dad had saved all of my

letters and all of his responses dated

them and put them in this amazing book

ready for when I turned 21 and this it's

just beautiful because the letters were

written over the duration of two years

so you can see my handwriting in the

beginning all messy and all over the

place and my handwriting in the end beautiful

and neat quite neat so I'm going to read you

some except some parts and pages from

this book that I find really really

funny

this is written on the 22nd of

February 2001 Dear Nina, we have found

out that you've been doing my letters on

the computer

What do fairies eat? love lucy and the

reason this is funny

is because at that age I had started

to use my dad's computer to play games and

to surf the internet i think i had

a

neopet or something and then I had been

looking at his documents and I saw a

letter I saw a word document

called fairy letter and I opened it and it was

one of the letters that the fairies had

written to me so I ran into my

dad's room and I said Daddy you will

never guess what he was thinking ohdear

she's going to find out that it's me but

no I said the fairies have been using

your computer

my dad had to pretend to be all shocked

and cross like god they really shouldn't do that

I can't believe it but yes I find that

one very funny and another thing that

perhaps isn't so funny is this I don't know if you

can see it and I made my fairy a birthday

present and it was a tiny duvet and

a pillow for her to use in the winter and my dad said

oh god it was so sweet when we opened it

you had sewn it

you'd sewn it by hand and I had to tell

them i hope you didn't put that anywhere

near your face

and my dad said why so I told my dad

yes it was very sweet of me but do you know

what I stuffed the duvet with and I'd

actually found a dead rabbit in the

garden which had obviously been attacked

by a cat or something and I collected

all of this dead rabbit's fur and I used that

to make the duvet and the pillow case my

dad had been like treasuring it putting

it near his face thinking it was so sweet when really it had

a dead rabbit inside of it oh yeah that

was particularly funny. This is from the 14th of

February 2001 Dear Nina, can fairies

tell the future so how long what I live

for

happy valentines day love lucy PS it's

my brother's birthday soon

this one is from the sixth of June 2001

Dear Nina I'm sorry I haven't written

to you for such a long time

guess what there's only four more days

till my birthday

if I ever had a wish with I can't i

would wish to speak to animals yours

sincerely (oh very posh) Lucy PS Daniel has

lost his tooth

could you give it to him or give it to

me to give to him

And the fairies replied the very next day Dear

Lucy

thank you for your letter what a long

time it has been since we last heard from you

I can hardly believe that you are nearly

seven years old we can remember when you

were first born

it's a good job that your orange hair

changed color that was because i was

born with orange hair we can speak to

animals but I don't think humans can if

you could what would you say to them we

were sorry to hear about DanieI's tooth

would ask Jessebel the tooth ferry to

look out for it

do you ever have funny dreams love Nina

so yes

I think that explains why this is one of

my prized possessions

it was an amazing gift to receive and it

just goes to show the money just can't

buy the best presents

it's all about the thought and the time

that goes into them

my dad must have spent hours putting

this together and hours writing all the

letters so very very special i think my

dad has a fan club on this channel now

so it's probably will help you love him

even more as much as i do he's a

great man

so yes thats it for todays lesson I have

got a few more prized possessions

so if you like this video and you want

to hear about more special objects and

the story behind them and have them

subtitled and use them as listening

practice and let me know in the comments

and if you hate it you can tell me aswell

right that it for your lesson today i hope

you have a lovely day

remember if you want to take your listening

practice a step further

don't forget to sign up to audible.com

for your 30-day free trial where you can

get a free audiobook and you can listen

and practice the link to that is in

the description box

don't forget to connect with me on all

of my social media especially my

facebook because every sunday at four

thirty GMT I host a free live

pronunciation lesson

take care of yourselves and have a

lovely day I'll see you soon for another

lesson

mwah!