Mid Summer Murders Comes to Laos

Mid-Summer Murders Comes to Laos 

I help a young man named Leng practice English.  He is very enthusiastic so I greatly enjoy the time we spend together. 

You Tube is being used as a great resource for those wanting to learn a language.  For example, if you're learning English you can choose stories that are at you level of comprehension.

As well as slowly and clearly reading you the story,  the words are written for you to follow as you go.  You can even decide how fast the story will be read depending on your level of understanding. Sounds great, so we listened to part of the story he has been following.

This was like a script straight out of Mid Summer Murders:
 Janie lives at home in the manor house with her wealthy mother, Mary, who dominates her life.  She has never married.   Her younger sister Dianne lives in London.  Dianne wants to be a singer, is always off having fun and never has any money.  She is forever asking for and being given money by her mother.  There is also a son Roger. 

Mary has called the family together this weekend because she has something very important to tell them.  It is Friday night and the three siblings have arrived,  (Dianne of course has had to borrow the train fare).  There appears to be intense sibling rivalry (of course), but neither Janie, Dianne nor Roger are aware of the purpose for the meeting.   Mary is to reveal all on Saturday Evening.

After a “testy” Friday evening, everyone goes to bed.  

In the morning all the siblings are in the kitchen.  Dianne takes a cup of coffee up to her mother and returns to the kitchen, ashen faced.  “I think Mummy is dead”.


The usual Mid-Summer script ensues.  Typical greedy, dysfunctional upper class English family with a skeleton in the closet.

Leng had to listen to many hours of this before the culprit was revealed....and he loved it. Listening to it improved his English comprehension and then telling me the story the next day added to his spoken ability.

We had a ball.  Each day when we got together to practice English, he had to tell me the latest instalment.  He was so caught up in the soap opera, but also saw the absurdity of it.  We laughed and laughed over, “Did Jaynie really say that?” and “What did he do next”. Etc etc.  

I asked “do you have families like that in Laos?  He thought  there probably were amongst the “rich and famous”, as he could certainly relate to this.  I think normal people would be too hard at work to have time to behave so self indulgently.