We love snow 

http:\/\/www.listen-to-english.com 

2008 

These podcasts are written and produced by Peter Carter, Birmingham, England,[email protected] 

Welcome... 

..to Listen to English, the podcast website for people learning English. 

The podcasts on this site will help you to improve your English vocabulary and pronunciation and your listening skills. There are two short (3 to 5 minutes) podcasts every week, in clearly spoken English. Many of them are linked to grammar and vocabulary notes, or to exercises or quizes. You can download the podcasts to your computer, or subscribe using a programme such as iTunes or Yahoo, or simply listen to them by clicking the Flash player on the web page beneath each episode. You can put the podcasts onto your iPod or MP3 player, and listen to them on your way to school or work. The full text of each podcast is on this site (and will also appear on your iPod screen), so you can look up the meanings of words that you do not understand in a dictionary. Then close your eyes and listen! Have fun! 

We love snow! 

Wednesday 04 February 2009 

Fisher Street, London, in the snow. Photo byDanny McL\/flickr 

When English people meet each other, they generally start their conversation by talking about the weather. "It's nice weather we are having", they say. Or, "It's a bit cold for the time of year." This week we have had a big national conversation all about the weather. It has snowed. 

If you live in Scandinavia, or Germany, or Russia or Canada, you are perhaps saying, "It is winter. It snows in winter. Why are the crazy English obsessed with the snow? What is the problem?" 

The problem is that, in recent years we have had very little snow. Our winters have been wet and windy, but in most places they have not been cold and snowy. This week has been different. We have had the heaviest fall of snow for 18 years. The snow has come on east winds all the way from Russia. It has been particularly heavy in London and the south-east of England. 

We do not know how to cope with snow in England. In other countries, normal life continues even in the snow. On Monday this week, however, London came to a complete standstill. There were no buses. There were hardly any trains. The airports were closed. People could not go to work. Children could not go to school. It was like an extra public holiday. The TV news had interviews with tourists who were visiting London. They were puzzled. They said that they had come to London to do some shopping, but all the shops were shut. 

Later on Monday, the snow came here to Birmingham, and then moved further north over the rest of the country. We woke up on Tuesday to see the sun shining on a world which was sparkling white. Then came the really wonderful news - all the schools in Birmingham would be closed for the day. 

But today, Wednesday, the national conversation about the snow has turned into a national argument about the snow. Why does normal life come to a standstill in England whenever we have even a little bit of snow? Surely we could do more to keep the roads open and the trains and buses running. What must the rest of the world think about this country, when they read or see on TV that everything in London has stopped because of some snow? And why were so many schools closed? Surely most children and most teachers could have got to school, even if they had to walk. 

Some older people remember - or think they remember - winters in the 1950s and 1960s when there was lots of snow. They have become national experts on snow, and they have been on TV telling us how they used to go to school through snowdrifts 2 meters deep, and things like that. 

While the adults have been arguing, the children have been enjoying themselves. Until this week, most British children had never seen real snow, lots of snow, snow to make snowmen and snowballs. Tuesday was a wonderful day - cold and sunny - and because so many schools were closed, the children could go out into the gardens and the parks to play in the snow, and sledge down the hills. This is much more useful than a day in school, in my opinion. The children will remember this winter for the rest of their lives. 

And the weather forecast is - more snow. Good. 

Massive reductions - up to 50% off! 

Thursday 29 January 2009 

It has been more than two weeks since my last podcast. I have two excuses. The first is that I have had another bout of flu - not badly, but enough to make it difficult to do anything like writing or recording a podcast. My second excuse is much more exciting. I have just finished a project on which I have been working for several months. The computer programme, or software, which runs the Listen to English website is called LoudBlog. I have been rewriting LoudBlog, to add some new features. I have called the new programme PodHawk. If you are really interested, you can read all about PodHawk at www.podhawk.com. 

Every day for the past couple of weeks, I have looked through the newspaper for a nice, light-hearted story that I could use in a podcast. But there have been no nice, light-hearted stories, only serious, depressing stories about the recession and unemployment. But yesterday I found some inspiration. I was in a traffic jam, behind a bus. It was a number 37 bus, going from Birmingham to Solihull, but that is not important. On the back of the bus was the slogan "Up to every 5 minutes Monday to Saturday". 

Now, "up to every 5 minutes Monday to Saturday" is not very good grammar. And if you look up each word in a dictionary, it still won't make any sense. "Up to" indicates a maximum. If you see road sign which says that you can park for "up to an hour", it means that you may park your car for an hour, but not for longer. I know however what the bus company is trying to say. It wants to tell us that, on Mondays to Saturdays, there are buses every 5 minutes at some times of the day. At other times of the day, the buses run less often - maybe every 10 minutes or every 15 minutes. But the bus company wants to tell us only the good news - sometimes there is a bus every 5 minutes. So - "Up to every 5 minutes Monday to Saturday". 

In recent years, the phrase "up to" has become very common when people want to tell you only the good news and not the not-so-good news. For example, at this time of year, many of the shops in Britain have sales. They reduce their prices to try to persuade us to buy all the rubbish we refused to buy before Christmas. This year, there have been lots of sales, because of the recession. You will see signs in shop windows which say something like "Massive reductions - up to 50% off". This means, "We have cut some of our prices. Some of the price cuts are big - 50% - but most of them are much smaller - maybe 10% - and some prices we have not cut at all." It does sound so much better to say "Up to 50% off", doesn't it? 

"Up to" is also a a favourite phrase in advertisements when they only want to tell us the good news. A car advertisement might say, for example, that the car has "up to 25% more space" or has "up to 30% better mileage". An advert for a household cleaner might say that it has "up to 45% more cleaning power". What is "cleaning power"? How can I measure it? "Up to 45% more cleaning power" really, really does not mean anything. 

We have an expression in English, to "take something with a pinch of salt." It means, to be a bit sceptical, a bit doubtful, not to accept something "at its face value". So, for example, Kevin tells Joanne about the truly amazing, truly wonderful things which his football team did at the match last Saturday. Joanne knows that Kevin often exaggerates, and that she does not need to believe every detail of what he says. She takes Kevin's story "with a pinch of salt". 

So, when you see "up to 50% off" or "up to 45% more cleaning power" or even "a bus up to every 5 minutes", you know that they are only telling you the good news, and that you should take what they say with a pinch of salt. 

How to keep track of the kids 

Tuesday 13 January 2009 

Kiri:D\/flickr has called this beautiful photograph "I lose track of time..." 

Do you know the English expression "to keep track of" something? If you "keep track of " something, you always have a good, up-to-date knowledge of it. Here are some examples to help you understand the way we use the expression. 

Molly is an air-traffic controller. She works at a busy airport, and her job is to guide planes into the airport safely. She needs to keep track of all the planes which arrive at the airport. 

Kevin likes to keep track of his money. He always writes down what he spends, so he knows how much money is left in his bank account. 

Joanne has a job where she needs to visit lots of other companies, and to meet people at her office. She has a special programme on her computer to help her keep track of her appointments. 

And John uses Facebook to keep track of what his friends are doing. Perhaps you use Facebook to keep track of your friends too. 

The opposite of "keep track of" is "lose track of". Sometimes, if I am reading a good book, I lose track of time. That is, I forget what time it is. Suddenly I realise that it is much later than I thought. 

Kevin has three older brothers and an older sister. They are all married and have children. Kevin is "Uncle Kevin" to the children. But poor Kevin always loses track of the children's birthdays. He cannot remember whether little Harry has a birthday in March or in June, and whether little Deborah is 3 or 4 years old. 

At Kevin's work, there have been a lot of changes. The boss has re-organised all the Departments and has moved a lot of people to new jobs. Kevin cannot keep track of all the changes. He cannot remember who is now doing which job. 

I have a reason for telling you about "keep track of". There was an article in the newspaper yesterday about the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in the United States. This is the show where firms display their latest clever gadgetswhich they hope to persuade the public to buy. A British company is displaying a gadget which looks like an ordinary wristwatch. Inside the watch is a chip which uses the Global Positioning System to keep track of where the watch is. The idea is that parents will buy these watches for their children; they can then receive text messages on their mobile phones which tell them where their child is. Is he at school? Has he gone to see his friend? And so on. But won't children simply take the watch off if they do not want their parents to know where they are? Well, if the child removes the watch, this will immediately send a message to the parents. 

The new device sounds like a way of making children prisoners. However, the company which makes it says that it hopes that it will give children more freedom, not less. Parents may be happy to let their children go out to visit friends, or to play in the park, if they always know where the children are. 

I can however think of one problem. I wear a watch so that I always know what time it is. Most older people are like me, and have a watch. Children and teenagers, however, do not wear watches. If they want to know the time, they look at their mobile phones. They will not want to wear the new watch. They will know that its real purpose is to enable parents to keep track of the children, not to enable the children to keep track of the time. 

What do you think? If you are a young person, would you agree to wear this new watch? If you are a parent, would you think that the watch is a good way to keep track of where your children are and what they are doing? 

Crackers 

Monday 05 January 2009 

Christmas crackers. Photo by Miss Shari\/flickr. 

A Happy New Year, everyone. Many thanks to all of you who sent e-mails to wish me a speedy recovery from the flu. I am now much better - thank you. 

Today's podcast is a delayed Christmas podcast. I would have made it before Christmas, but I was unwell so I could not do so. I hope you will like it nonetheless. In the podcast, we meet the words "crack" and "crackers", and we learn what you should do at a Christmas dinner in England. 

Let's start with the word "crack". Imagine that you drop a plate - a china plate - on the floor. It does not break into lots of pieces, but when you pick it up you see that the plate now has a line running across it. You know that soon the plate will break completely along this line. The line is a "crack". You have "cracked" the plate. The plate is "cracked". Here are some other things which you can crack. A piece of wood can crack if you hit it hard. Ice on a river or a pond can crack if you walk on it. A window can crack if you throw a stone at it. And an egg can crack if you tap it with a knife or a spoon. 

We also use the word "crack" to describe the sound of something cracking - a sudden, short sound - "crack" - like that. 

And a "cracker"? What is that? It is something which makes a cracking sound. In America, they call a savoury biscuit - the sort you eat with cheese, for example - a "cracker". A "firecracker" is a firework, especially a firework which makes a cracking sound. "Crackers" is also a rather old-fashioned slang word meaning "mad" or "crazy". And in England, we have Christmas crackers. 

Imagine that your English friend has invited you to join his family for dinner on Christmas Day. When you sit down at the dinner table, you will probably find a strange object made out of coloured paper and cardboard on the plate in front of you. If you pick up the strange object and shake it, you will hear something rattling inside. The strange object is a Christmas cracker. There is a picture of some Christmas crackers on the website, and (I hope) on your iPod screen as well, so you can see what they look like. 

What do you do with the Christmas cracker? Perhaps you remember what I just said about biscuits in America. Perhaps you should eat the cracker? No. Do not try to eat a Christmas cracker. Perhaps a Christmas cracker is like a firecracker. Perhaps you should find a match and set fire to the Christmas cracker? Wrong. Do not set fire to the Christmas cracker. Well, perhaps the best thing is just to put the Christmas cracker in your pocket so that you can look at it more closely later, when you are alone. No. No. No. You hold of one end of the cracker and give the other end to the person sitting next to you. Together you pull the cracker. The cracker will break open with a "crack" sound - that is why it is called a cracker! And the things inside the cracker will fall out. 

First, you will find a silly little hat made of paper. Etiquette requires that you put this silly paper hat on your head and wear it throughout the meal. Do not feel embarrassed. Everyone else will wear silly paper hats as well. Second, you will find a toy, or a puzzle. You are allowed to play with the toy or puzzle during the meal. Indeed, if you are lucky you may find a whistle inside the cracker; you can blow the whistle as often and as loudly as you like. Third, you will find a little piece of paper. On the paper is a joke. It will be a bad joke. For example, this is the joke from my Christmas Day cracker: 

"Why did the skeleton not go to the party?" 

"Because it had nobody to go with." 

"No body" - "nobody" - do you understand? Never mind, I said it was a bad joke. You should read the joke from your cracker out loud to all the other people at the table. Everyone will laugh. You should laugh loudly when other people read their jokes as well, even if you do not understand the joke, and even if you do not think that it is funny. 

You may be thinking, perhaps all this stuff about Christmas crackers and paper hats and things is an ancient Christmas tradition, going back hundreds and hundreds of years. Wrong again. Christmas crackers have nothing - absolutely nothing - to do with the birth of Jesus, which is what we are celebrating at Christmas. The first Christmas crackers were made in the middle of the 19th century by a man called Tom Smith. Today, you can buy boxes of Christmas crackers in the supermarket in the few weeks before Christmas. Or you can make your own crackers, if you wish. 

So now you know that the English really are mad. Crackers, in fact. Happy New Year! 

I am ill 

Wednesday 17 December 2008 

My teddy bear has flu as well! 

I am ill. I have flu. I have been sent to bed with a hot water bottle and my teddy bear until I am better. So I have not had time this week to make a proper podcast. I hope to have time in a few days. 

But maybe this is a good opportunity to give you some information which I hope you will find useful. Some of you have sent me e-mails asking me whether there is a podcast similar to mine, but in American instead of British English. I have recently looked at the Voice of America website. Voice of America is a radio station which is largely funded by the American Government. I remember Voice of America in the old days, when it used to broadcast anti-Communist propaganda to listeners in Eastern Europe. But times have changed, and Voice of America is more balanced today. Among other things, there is a Learning English section on the VoA website, and it includes podcasts. Like the Listen to English podcasts, you can listen to the podcast and read the text at the same time. If you are interested in American English, try listening to some of these podcasts. 

There is a link from the VoA website to Ted Lamphair's blog. Ted has had a long career as a radio reporter and he writes about the many places in America, and in the rest of the world, which he has visited. At the end of each blog post, he explains some of the more difficult or unusual words which he has used. His blog posts are quite long, but they are written in good American English, and you will find them both interesting and useful reading practice. 

Recently, I received an e-mail from Mike Marzio. He tells me that he runs a language school in the south of France. He has also built a large collection of short video clips of people speaking English, in the streets in America and in many other English speaking countries. The video clips are on his website. Many of the videos are linked to quizzes, so that you can test how well you understood what the people in the video were saying. 

Finally, the English Cafe website has an article on how to use Google to improve your English. If you cannot remember whether you should say "I arrived to London" or "I arrived in London", just try Googling "I arrived to London" and "I arrived in London". Go on. Try it. Which one is correct? 

That's all for today. I must go and look after my teddy bear. He seems to have flu as well. 

Christmas Shopping 

Monday 08 December 2008 

Christmas shopping crowds in Oxford Street, London, photographed by Claire Rowland\/flickr 

In today's podcast, we have a serious discussion of the state of the world economy, and we go Christmas shopping with Kevin and Joanne. 

As I am sure you know, there are some big problems in the world's economy at present. There is a recession (that is, a reduction in output) in many countries, including Britain. The problem is that banks in America, and in Britain and some other countries, lent money to people who could not afford to repay. So many banks are in big trouble, and have stopped lending to anyone. So people have less money to spend, and many have lost their jobs. And the big shops are cutting their prices because they are worried that people are not buying. And governments have had to intervene, to do things, some of which are useful and some of which are not useful. That is Listen to English's summary of the world's economic problems. You can use it in your economics homework if you wish. 

December is the biggest shopping month of the year in Britain, as it is in many countries. People want to buy Christmas presents for their friends and family, and nice things for themselves as well. As a result, the shops are full of people. But perhaps this year is different. Because of the recession, maybe the big stores and the out-of-town shopping centres are deserted. Perhaps this year, for once, it will be possible to go Christmas shopping in peace. Wrong. Things are as bad as ever. 

Kevin and Joanne went Christmas shopping last Saturday afternoon. They needed to buy a present for Kevin's aunt Joan, who is 73 years old. "A cardigan," said Kevin. "Old ladies always like a new cardigan." So they agreed, they would buy Aunt Joan a new cardigan. 

"Good," said Kevin. "I am glad that we have decided what to buy her. So is it alright if you buy the cardigan and I go with George to the football match". 

"No it is not alright", said Joanne. "She is your aunt and you can come and help choose her present." 

They took the bus into the centre of town. There were crowds of people everywhere - people going to and fro; people going in and out of shops; people getting on and off buses; people getting into and out of taxis. Every now and then, there was a gap in the crowds, and Kevin and Joanne made their way carefully down the street to Marks and Spencer. Marks and Spencer is, as I am sure you know, a well-known British store which sells mainly clothes, including cardigans of the sort which 73 year old aunts like to get for Christmas. 

In Marks and Spencer, Kevin and Joanne looked around for the ladies' cardigans. They went round and round the store, and up and down the escalator, looking unsuccessfully for cardigans. Then Kevin saw them, in a corner. It took several minutes for Kevin and Joanne to fight their way through the crowds to reach the cardigans. It took about 10 more minutes to find a cardigan of the right size and colour. And it took about 15 more minutes before Kevin and Joanne reached the front of the queue at the tills to pay for the cardigan. Kevin and Joanne were exhausted. When English people are exhausted, and even when they are not exhausted, they need a cup of tea. 

Kevin and Joanne looked for a cafe. They were all full. Several had a queue of people waiting outside. Then Joanne remembered that there was a cafe at the art gallery. The art gallery was empty. Perhaps people are not interested in culture at Christmas. Kevin, who had never actually been there before, looked around with interest. "That painting is upside down," he said in a loud voice as they went through the modern art section. "And that one is sideways." "Kevin, " said Joanne. "The people in the art gallery know which way to hang their paintings and you don't. Now shut up and stop making an idiot of yourself." 

There were only a few people in the cafe at the back of the gallery. Kevin and Joanne drank tea, and ate a slice of cake each. They talked about how difficult it was to do shopping when there were so many people. "You know," said Kevin. "It is better at a football match. There aren't as many people, and they are not so aggressive." 

"Drink your tea," said Joanne. "We need to find a present for my mother next." 

Learning languages - why can't the English do it? 

Monday 01 December 2008 

They speak many different languages in this restaurant in Lugano, Switzerland, where they have very big brains indeed! Photo by Eric Andresen\/flickr 

I read an interesting story in the newspaper last week. It said thatresearchers at University College London had measured the brains of people who are bilingual (that is, people who speak two languages well) and also the brains of people who spoke only one language. They found that the part of the brain which processesinformation is better developed in people who are bilingual than in people who are mono-lingual. This effect is particularly strong in people who learnt a second language as a young child of less than five years old. So, quite simply, learning a second language makes your brain work better, and if you learn another language when you are very young, your brain will be very wonderful indeed! 

If you are listening to this podcast, you are - I guess - learning a language which is not your own. So you must all have brains which work very well. The report in the newspaper is good news for you. Congratulations. 

But it is bad news for us English, because we are really bad at learning foreign languages. Only the Americans are as bad as we are. So, British brains and American brains are perhaps not as good as the brains of people in a country like Switzerland where it is normal for people to speak two or even three languages to a high standard. In Britain, only about one adult in ten can communicate at all in a language other than English. In fact, "one in ten" may be too optimistic. A few years ago, a survey by a recruitment agency found that only 5% of British people could count to 20 in another language. What? How difficult is it to learn to count to 20 in German, or French, or Italian? British people who go to live in Spain or France arenotorious for failing to learn Spanish or French, even after they have lived in the country for many years. 

You probably know already that English children move from primary school to secondary school at the age of eleven. At secondary school, they start learning a foreign language, normally French. A year or two later, some children will start a second foreign language. At one time, the second foreign language was normally German, but this is not the case today. German language teaching has declined sharply in Britain. Spanish has taken its place. I do not know why Spanish has become so much more popular than German. Perhaps it is because so many English people go to Spain for their holidays. 

In addition, in big cities where there is a large immigrant population, it is common for secondary schools to offer courses in south Asian languages like Punjabi or Urdu. But of course, most of the children who take these courses speak the language at home already. The courses give them a better knowledge and understanding of their own language, which is a good and important thing to do, but it does not teach them a new language. 

Students at an English language college in Canada. Photo by Adrian Bailon\/flickr. 

When they are 14, children in England have to choose which subjects they will study for their General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exams, which they take when they are 16. The government decided a few years ago that it would no longer be compulsory for children to include a foreign language in the subjects they chose. The result has been that the number of children who study a language after the age of 14 has fallen dramatically. The number of children taking the GCSEFrench exam, for example, has fallen by 50% since 2001. 

We see the same pattern when we look at British universities. The total number of students at university in Britain has risen, but the number of students taking degree courses in foreign languages has fallen. There have been particularly big declines in the numbers studying French and German. 

This is not a good situation. Everyone - politicians, school teachers, academics - agree about this. If young people do not study a foreign language, probably they will not understand much about other countries or other cultures. Most British teenagers, however, do not think that learning a foreign language is interesting or important. They think that they will never need to speak a foreign language, and that all foreigners speak English anyway. Foreign languages have a low status with young people. Our government thinks that part of the answer is to start language learning at a younger age. It wants primary schools to start teaching a foreign language. However, at the same time, it has cut funding for adult education classes in foreign languages. 

The problem is complicated and deep-seated. How do you think that we can interest more young people in England in learning languages? 

The Great Train Robbery 

Monday 24 November 2008 

This was the engine which pulled the train in the Great Train Robbery. The picture is signed by Bruce Reynolds, who planned and led the robbery. 

I think you know the English word "famous". If someone is famous, it means that everyone has heard of them, that they are well-known. So, Beethoven was a famous composer, and the Eifel Tower is a famous landmark in Paris. But, suppose that someone is well-known for bad things and not for good things. Can we still say that they are "famous"? There are two words which we can use to describe someone or something which is famous for bad things - "infamous" and "notorious". So, we would probably not say that Hitler for example was "famous", we would say that he was "notorious". 

This is a long way of introducing today's podcast, which is about the most famous - or perhaps the most notorious - crime in Britain in the last 100 years. It happened 45 years ago, in August 1963. In those days our Post Office used to send mail from one part of the country to another in special mail trains called Travelling Post Offices. During the journey, the Post Office staff sorted the mail so that it was ready to be delivered the next morning. Some of the mail was valuable. For example, the banks used the mail trains to send banknotes around the country. 

In the summer of 1963, a group of criminals planned an attack on one of the Travelling Post Offices. They interfered with the railway signals in order to stop the train. Then they uncoupled the railway carriage which contained the banknotes, and used the railway engine to take it to a place where the railway crossed a bridge over a road. They threw 120 packages of banknotes over the bridge to other gang members, who loaded them into Land Rovers. The gang escaped with over \u00a32.5 million pounds in used banknotes. This is equivalent to over \u00a340 million today. It was at the time the biggest ever robbery in Britain. 

A few days later, the police found the gang's hideout, in an isolated farmhouse. And in the weeks after that, the police found and arrested 13 of the 15 gang members. They were tried, and sentenced to long periods in prison. However, most of the stolen money has never been found. 

The story did not end there. Two of the gang members escaped from prison. Charlie Wilson fled to Canada. He was eventually brought back to England and to prison. Ronnie Biggs fled first to France, then to Australia, and then to Brazil. The British police found where he was, but they could not persuade the Brazilian courts to send him back to England. So Ronnie Biggs lived in Brazil for more than 30 years. He had a home and a family and friends there. But in 2001, when he was 71 years old, he returned to England. He said that he wanted to "walk into a pub as an Englishman and buy a pint of bitter". In other words, he was home-sick. I do not know if he was ever able to buy his pint of bitter in a pub, because he was arrested and sent back to prison, where he still is. 

The story of the Great Train Robbery has fascinated the British public over the years. Our newspapers reported every detail of the robbery, the capture of the gang, their trial, the escapes from prison and Ronnie Biggs' return to England. Only a few weeks ago there were reports that Biggs, who is now old and ill, would shortly be released from prison. Why are we so interested in the Great Train Robbery? Some people sympathise with the robbers. They think that the Great Train Robbery was a clever, daring plan, and that the robbers were unlucky to be caught. Ronnie Biggs is the most famous (or the most notorious) of the train robbers, and many people therefore think that he was the mastermind behind the plan. 

The truth is more complicated, however. The robbery was not particularly clever. Ronnie Biggs was not the leader - in fact he played only a small part. The gang was too large - 15 people in all - which increased the chances that one of them would do something stupid. They had planned to drive the train themselves to the bridge where they unloaded the banknotes. But after they had stopped the train, they realised that they did not know how to drive the engine, so they made the real train driver drive it for them. And they left their fingerprints all over the train, and the farmhouse where they went after the robbery. 

So, was the Great Train Robbery Britain's most famous crime? Or the most notorious crime? What do you think? 

Can you tell the difference? 

Monday 17 November 2008 

An avatar - young, tall and handsome, just like me! Image by Brian Gray\/flickr. 

Today we visit Second Life, and we learn the English expression "to tell the difference". 

My daughter likes chocolate cake. Last week I made a chocolate cake. I also bought a chocolate cake at the supermarket. I gave my daughter a little piece of each one. "Can you tell the difference?" I asked her. I meant, if you taste both bits of cake, can you say which one is mine and which one is the supermarket's? So she tasted, and she said that she could tell the difference. The supermarket cake was much better. Oh dear! 

There was a story in the newspapers last week about two people who cannot tell the difference - the difference between real life and a fantasy world. Their names are David and Amy. They first met each other in an internet chatroom. Then they met in real life, and got married. 

After they got married, they started spending a lot of time on Second Life. I am sure that you know about Second Life. It is an internet programme which contains avirtual world - not the real world of your job and your family, but an imaginary world. You can go and live in this virtual world. You make an avatar, which is a sort of virtual you. You decide what your avatar will look like, what it will wear and what it will be called. You learn how to move your avatar to different places in Second Life, and how to make things, and how to meet other avatars and talk to them. 

There was a picture of the real David and Amy in the newspapers. The real David and Amy seem to eat a lot of chips and doughnuts. But, like a lot of other people, David and Amy chose avatars which are young, tall and handsome. They explored Second Life with their avatars. David's avatar became a night-club owner who travels in a helicopter gunship. Amy's avatar became a disc jockey. In real life, neither David nor Amy had a job. Perhaps they spent too much time on Second Life to be able to work. 

Then the trouble started. David's avatar started meeting other women on Second Life. The real Amy was not pleased, but she gave David a second chance. Then David's avatar met a young, tall, handsome lady avatar called Modesty McDonnell. They started to spend a lot of time together. The real Amy was furious. Now the real Amy and the real David are getting divorced. And now the real David is engaged to the real woman whose avatar is Modesty McDonnell. The newly-engaged couple have never actually met in the real world. This is because David lives in England while the real Modesty McDonnell lives in Arizona in America. But perhaps this does not matter. Perhaps the only important thing is that the two avatars love each other. 

So, there is a real world where real people live, eat, have children and die. And there are imaginary worlds like Second Life. Sensible people can tell the difference between them. David and Amy, it seems, cannot tell the difference. 

I once spent an afternoon in Second Life. I chose an avatar - young, tall and handsome, just like the real me, of course. Then I had to teach my avatar how to walk and to drive a car. He was useless. He kept walking into walls and into the sea. When he drove a car, he hit people and other cars. So I never went back to Second Life. 

But perhaps I should try Second Life again. Because last night something really terrible happened. The British television viewers - who cannot tell the difference between a beautiful woman and a baby elephant - voted the incomparably lovely Ms Cherie Lunghi off Strictly Come Dancing. My dreams are in ruins. So - Cherie - if you are listening, get an avatar on Second Life and meet me there, and we will dance together the whole night long. 

Cans and Bottles 

Monday 10 November 2008 

A discarded drinks can. Photo by Joanna Young\/flickr 

There was a story in the newspapers recently about a couple called John and Ann Till. They live near a town called Petersfield in south-east England, and earlier this year they got married. They wanted to go on a honeymoon to the United States after the wedding. The difficulty they had was that it was going to cost too much. They could not afford it. The cost of their air fares, of hotels and travel and car-hire while they were in America - all of these things were too expensive. What could they do? 

Then they saw that their local supermarket had started a scheme to encourage people to recycle cans and bottles. For every four cans or bottles that you returned to the recycling centre at the supermarket, the supermarket would give you 1reward point. What is a reward point? Well, some supermarkets, garages and other shops give their customers reward points every time they buy things at the shop concerned. You can collect these reward points, and when you have enough, you can exchange them for, for example, a weekend break in a country hotel, or a new MP3 player. I have been collecting reward points from my local supermarket for years. Soon I will have enough to get an electric toaster! 

So, John and Ann decided to collect cans and bottles, and take them to the recycling centre. For three months, they went out every evening, looking for cans and bottles. At first they thought that they might not be able to find enough. But they were amazed by the amount of rubbish that people throw away - in the streets, in their gardens (or other people's gardens), in the parks and in the countryside. John Till told the newspapers, "There was enough rubbish out there to fly us to the moon and back." John and Ann spent hours putting cans and bottles into the machines at the recycling centre. Eventually, they found enough cans and bottles, and collected enough rewards points, to pay for their air fare to America, where I am sure they had a wonderful honeymoon, and went to lots of interesting places. 

John and Ann Till collect cans and bottles to pay for their honeymoon in America. 

Are you thinking to yourself, that's a nice heart-warming story about two people who wanted to do what they could to help the environment? I am afraid that I do not feel that way, for three reasons. First, as I told you in an earlier podcast, we in England are really bad at recycling. We are better than a few years ago, but many countries in Europe recycle a lot more domestic waste than we do. On the other hand, we are very good at throwing things away and generally making a mess. We throw away newspapers in the street and on the buses; we throw away food packaging and beer cans in the parks, and plastic bags and bottles in the countryside. John and Ann were able to collect all those cans and bottles only because other people had so carelessly thrown them away. 

Second, the idea that it is good to pay people to recycle things is still very new in Britain. In other countries in Europe, it is normal to return cans or bottles to the supermarket and to get money in return. In Germany and Scandinavia, they have done this for years. But in Britain, we are only starting to experiment with them. John and Ann were lucky. Their local supermarket was one of only a handful of places where they pay you to recycle things. 

And finally, what did John and Ann do with the rewards points which they got for all those cans and bottles? They bought air tickets to America. Unfortunately, air travel generates large amounts of carbon dioxide, the main gas responsible for climate change. Trying to be green is not easy! 

I want to dance 

Monday 03 November 2008 

The incomparably lovely Ms Cherie Lunghi and her partner on Strictly Come Dancing. Vote for her! 

I am sorry that there was no podcast last week. It was half-term week, the week in the middle of the school term when the children have a holiday. We went to Dorset, on the south coast of England, to visit my mother-in -law, so there was no time to make a podcast. 

Today, I want to tell you about a TV programme which is very popular in England at present, and to introduce you to the word "celebrity". I shall also reveal to you a secret ambition that I have! 

The TV programme is called Strictly Come Dancing. It is, as you can guess, about dancing. But not any old sort of dancing. Strictly Come Dancing is about ballroomdancing. That means dances like the waltz, the quickstep and the tango - the old-fashioned sort of dancing, in other words, where men and women dance as couples, and the women wear long dresses and the men wear dinner jackets. If you still don't understand what I mean, have a look at the Strictly Come Dancing website, where you will find lots of photos and videos. 

Strictly Come Dancing is a competition. Every Saturday evening, the couples perform their dances, and a group of judges give them points out of 10. Then the viewers are able to vote by telephone for the couple they think is best. The judges' points, and the viewers' votes are then combined, and on Sunday evening we hear the result. The two couples with the lowest score have to dance again, and the judges decide which of them can stay and which of them has to leave the programme. It is all very exciting. My teenage daughter, and her grandmother, watch every week, along with about half the rest of the population of England. 

All the people whom the BBC invites as contestants in Strictly Come Dancing are "celebrities". "Celebrities" means people like pop singers, actors, sportsmen or women, and TV presenters. They are people you may have seen on television, in a soap opera perhaps or on a sports programme. A lot of popular culture nowdays is about "celebrities". There are, for instance, magazines which contain nothing except news about celebrities - who is dating whom, who is getting married, who is getting divorced, what clothes they wear and which night-clubs they go to. Perhaps it is the same in your country. Clearly, celebrities leave magic lives - they are not ordinary people like you or me. 

In the present series of Strictly Come Dancing, for example, there are three sports stars, two pop singers, several stars from soap operas, a TV chef and couple of models. There is also my favourite, the incomparably lovely actress Cherie Lunghi (vote for Cherie, everyone!), and a well-known television journalist called John Sergeant. John Sergeant dances like a baby elephant. The judges give him low scores, but the viewers love him, so he has stayed on the programme. 

Why is Strictly Come Dancing so popular? There are several reasons, I think. It isglamorous - people love lavish costumes and beautiful music. It is about people whom we think we know. We have seen them on TV. Their faces are familiar. They have never seen us or spoken to us, of course, but we think we know them, and know what they are like. Also, Strictly Come Dancing is a competition - there are winners and losers, and we as viewers are able to vote. And finally, we all secretly think that we could dance like that too - all it needs is a bit of training and a bit of practice. 

My secret ambition is to be on Strictly Come Dancing. I think I would be very good. I would dance elegantly with a beautiful lady partner and the judges would all say how wonderful I am. The viewers would think so too, and they would all vote for me. The trouble is, you need to be a celebrity to get on to Strictly Come Dancing and I am not a celebrity. How can I become a celebrity? I have looked at the job advertisements in the newspaper. There are lots of jobs for plumbers and HGVdrivers, but none for celebrities, not even for "junior celebrities" or "trainee celebrities". Maybe, just maybe, the BBC would let me on the programme as a celebrity podcaster. Perhaps if you all sent e-mails to the BBC ... Oh, never mind. It is just a dream! 

Mind the Gap! 

Tuesday 21 October 2008 

Mind the gap, on the London Underground. Photo by Marcia Cabral de Moura\/flickr 

In today's podcast, I am going to talk about the English word "mind", and about some expressions which contain the word "mind". 

Your "mind" means the things which happen inside your head, or inside your brain - your thinking, in other words. We can say, for example, that someone has "a good mind" - that means, they think clearly and logically. Or we can say that someone has a mathematical mind - they are naturally good at maths. Or we can say about someone "she has a mind of her own" - that means, she thinks for herself, she does not just accept what other people say. 

We also use "mind" as a verb. To mind something means to be aware of something, to be careful about something, to "have it in your mind". If you have visited London, I am sure you have travelled on the Underground and seen the signs or heard the loudspeaker announcements which tell you to "mind the gap". There is often a gap between the railway carriage and the station platform. If you "mind the gap", you think about the gap and take care when you get on or off the train. If you don't mind the gap, you may trip or fall and hurt yourself. 

You can mind other things as well - children, for example, or animals. Joanne has a friend called Susan. Susan looks after small children in her own home while their parents are at work. She plays with the children, she feeds them, and she takes them for a walk to the park and to the shops. She is what we call a "childminder". 

If we say "mind out" to someone, we mean "be careful". When Susan takes her group of little children for a walk, they need to cross the road. She holds the children by the hand and says to them, "Mind out, in case a car is coming". 

Kevin, you may remember, is into 1980s punk rock. One of his favourite bands is playing at a gig on Saturday. He asks Joanne if she would like to go to hear them. "No way", says Joanne, who thinks that listening to 1980s punk rock is a form of torture. "Do you mind if I go with George?" asks Kevin. He means, does it cause you any problems if I go to the gig with George? And Joanne says, "No, of course I don't mind". 

And then there is the expression, "to make up your mind". This means, simply, to decide to do something. If I make up my mind to sell my old car, it means that I have decided to sell my car. Joanne's friend Susan, the childminder, is alwaysdithering. She cannot decide what to do. Should she wear a red jumper or a blue jumper. Should she read a book or watch television. Should she take a bus or walk. She cannot decide. Joanne sometimes says to her, "For goodness sake, make up your mind!" That means, "Stop wasting time - just decide what to do and do it!" 

And finally, let's meet the expression "to change your mind". If I decide to do something, but then I decide to do something else instead, I "change my mind". Kevin has saved up some money and has made up his mind to buy an iPod. It is exactly what he needs to listen to his collection of 1980s punk rock music on the train. But on his way to the iPod shop, he passes a shoe shop. In the window there is a pair of green suede shoes. They are, thinks Kevin, the finest, the most beautiful green suede shoes in the whole world. Suddenly, he is in love with the shoes. He decides to buy the shoes and not the iPod. He "changes his mind". 

Wanted - a new patron saint for England. 

Tuesday 14 October 2008 

St George killing the dragon - painting by Paolo Uccello c. 1470. 

In Christian tradition, a "saint" means someone whom the Church recognises as having led a particularly good and holy life. There are lots of Christian saints. The Roman Catholic church recognises more than 10,000 of them. You can't be recognised as a saint while you are alive. All saints are dead, and many of them have been dead for a very long time. 

Some Christian saints are associated with particular countries, or particular occupations or particular sorts of people. We call these saints "patron saints" . For example, St Christopher is the patron saint of travellers, St Stephen is the patron saint of bricklayers, and St Joan is the patron saint of France. 

The patron saint of England is St George. Until recently, we English did not make a lot of fuss about St George. But things have changed in the last 20 years. English football fans now wave the flag of St George (a red cross on a white background) at football matches. And many people want St George's Day (23 April) to be made a public holiday in England (but not in Scotland or Wales, of course, because Scotland and Wales have their own patron saints). 

The traditional story of St George says that he was a soldier in the Roman army at the beginning of the fourth century. He was arrested and executed because he refused to renounce his Christian faith. There is also a story that St George fought and killed a dragon, and thereby rescued a beautiful princess whom the dragon was about to eat. 

At this point, I must tell you, gentle listeners, that I think that there are big problems about having St George as patron saint of England. 

1. The story of St George is, well, just a story. Most experts agree that he never existed. 

2. If St George did exist, he was definitely not English, nor did he ever visit England, nor did he have any connection at all with England. 

3. It is not good to kill dragons. There are hardly any dragons left in the world. An environmentally responsible saint would have created a national nature reserve where the dragon could live in peace and people could come and take photographs of it. 

4. St George is also the patron saint of about 12 other countries, including Canada, Georgia, Greece and Lithuania. Poor St George is overworked and overstressed. He has too many countries to worry about. And what would he do if two of his countries started to fight one another? 

St Wulfstan, from a stained glass window in the parish church in Long Itchington. 

So I would like to suggest that England should have a new patron saint, and as it happens I know exactly the right saint for the job. His name is St Wulfstan. He was born in a village called Long Itchington, which is about 35 miles from Birmingham, exactly 1000 years ago in 1008. He studied in monasteries, and became a priest and in 1062 became the bishop of Worcester. Four years later, in 1066, one of the most important events in England's history occurred. William of Normandy, known as William the Conqueror, conquered England and became king. His armies killed, or drove out or replaced all the important English people of the country - the nobles, and senior people in government and the church - and replaced them with French-speaking people from Normandy. All except Wulfstan. After a few years, he was the only English person in a senior position in the country. How did he survive? Why did William not replace him? We know that Wulfstan was respected because of his simple and holy lifestyle. For instance, he fasted for three days every week, and on the remaining days ate only bread, vegetables and fruit. But he was also a very capable administrator. He built numerous new churches. He helped to compile the great Domesday Book which recorded details of everything in William's new kingdom - every town and village, every mill, every wood. He tried to help the poor and to protect people who had lost their homes and their lands to the Norman conquerors, but he also opposed rebellion against the new rulers of the country. He was deeply concerned about the trade in slaves between Ireland and the port of Bristol, and tried to persuade the king to prohibit it. 

The story of St Wulfstan is not, I agree, as romantic as the story of St George. St George suffered a martyrs death; Wulfstan died peacefully at the age of 89. But Wulfstan would have these advantages as patron saint of England: 

1. He definitely existed 

2. He was English. 

3. He freed slaves, which is better than killing dragons. 

4. He is the patron saint of vegetarians, which is very appropriate, because there are more vegetarians in England than in any other country in Europe. 

5. He is not the patron saint of anywhere else, so he would have time to be a proper patron saint of England. 

What do you think? If you go to the website, you will find a poll where you can vote for either George or Wulfstan. 

Up-to-date 

Monday 06 October 2008 

An iPhone - up-to-date technology. Picture by Niels van Eck\/flickr. 

In today's podcast, I am going to talk about the English word "up-to-date". Well, it is really three words - "up", "to" and "date" - normally we spell it with hyphens in between - but we can think of "up-to-date" as a single word. "Up-to-date" is an adjective. It means "having the latest information or ideas". We can say that something, or someone, is "up-to-date". 

I will give you some examples in a minute. But first, you need to know that the opposite of "up-to-date" is "out-of-date". If something is out-of-date, it does not contain the latest information or ideas. Sometimes it means "old fashioned" or "no longer valid". 

Lets look at some examples. 

Kevin, as you know, is mad keen about football. Often on Saturday he goes to see his team play. But he also want to know what is happening in the other football matches that are taking place at the same time. So he gets text messages on his mobile phone, to give him the latest scores in the other matches. Kevin likes to be up-to-date. The text messages keep Kevin up-to-date with the other football matches. 

Joanne is planning to go on a picnic with some friends. Will the weather by OK, or will it rain? The weather forecast yesterday was that the weather today would be cloudy but dry. but perhaps that weather forecast is now out-of-date. So Joanne listens to the weather forecast on the radio to get up-to-date information about the weather. The weather forecast still says that the weather will be cloudy but dry, so Joanne and her friends set off for their picnic. However, they get lost, because they are using an out-of-date map, which does not show some roads which have been built in the last ten years. 

John loves technology, or - rather - he loves technological gadgets which do clever things. Not all of these gadgets are useful, but John loves them anyway. He has just bought the latest, the most up-to-date iPhone. Is an iPhone useful, or is it just a gadget? I don't know! 

Mary has some important exams at the end of the year. She also has to complete a project to show to the examiners. Her teacher asks her, "Are you up-to-date with your project?" That means, have you done everything you should have done by now? If Mary's work is not up-to-date, we say that she is "behind" with her work. She will have to work hard all weekend in order to catch up. 

George thinks that it would be a great idea to go to Paris for the weekend with some friends. But he can't. His passport is out-of-date. That means, it is no longer valid. He will need to get his passport renewed. 

Kevin sees an advertisement for a job in the newspaper. It looks attractive. It is closer to home, and it would pay more. The advertisement says that he should send an up-to-date CV (CV stands for curriculum vitae, which is Latin and means an list of the things that you have done in your life - what school you went to, what you studied at university, what jobs you have done - things like that.) The last time that Kevin looked at his CV was three years ago, so the CV is out-of-date. He needs to update his CV, by adding information for the last three years. He needs to bring his CV up-to-date. 

Joanne's grandmother is 92 years old. Despite her age, she likes the latest pop music, and she always watches the news on television, because she likes to keep up-to-date with what is happening in the world. Joanne's grandfather, however, has some very out-of-date attitudes - he wants to bring back compulsory military service, for example, and thinks that too many married women go out to work. 

And finally, I looked in my fridge a few minutes ago. There was some yoghurt at the back of the fridge. The label on the yoghurt pot says "Best before 28 August". Today is 6 October. The yoghurt is out-of-date. Shall I eat the yoghurt anyway? Maybe not. 

The Prefabs 

Monday 29 September 2008 

The only remaining prefabs in Birmingham. 

Near to where I live, there is a group of small houses. They are bungalows - that is, they are single-storey houses. There are gardens in front of the houses, and behind them; and most of the gardens are well-kept. There is something unusual about the houses, however. Most houses in this part of England are built of brick. These houses, however, are built of cement mixed with asbestos. They are what we call "prefabs", or prefabricated houses, and they have an interesting history. 

At the end of the Second World War, there was a serious shortage of houses in Britain. Tens of thousands of homes had been destroyed by bombing. It was also necessary to find homes for all the servicemen returning from the war. The government decided to build 500,000 new houses to solve the problem. They thought it would be too slow and expensive to build proper brick houses, so they decided to build prefabricated houses instead. Prefabricated houses are made in sections in a factory. The house-builders then take the sections by lorry to the place where the houses are to be built, and fix them together. Houses of this sort are common in many other countries such as the United States. But they are very unusual in Britain. The government explained that the new prefabs would only be temporary. They would be taken down after 10 or 15 years, and proper houses would replace them. 

The prefab building programme started in the final months of the war. German and Italian prisoners of war built some of the first houses. Factories which had previously built military equipment were used to make the sections for the houses. In some cases, they used aluminium from old fighter planes. 

Things did not happen exactly as the government had planned. Prefabs turned outto cost more than normal houses, and in the end only about 167,000 of them were built. And they were not generally replaced with proper houses after 10 or 15 years; they had to last much longer. There were problems too about very poor insulation, which made the prefabs cold in winter, and leaking roofs. 

But for many working-class families, a prefab was like a dream come true. Previously, they had lived in cramped terraced houses in the centre of big cities, where they had little space or privacy. Their new prefab had a garden for the children to play in, and an indoor toilet, and a fitted kitchen with a refrigerator! 

Gradually, over the years, the prefabs were demolished. Often blocks of flats replaced them. The planners and architects liked the concrete tower blocks; but the people who had to live in them disagreed. The old prefabs - despite their problems - had been better, and closer to the sorts of homes that people wanted. 

Today, hardly any prefabs remain. Here in Birmingham they have all gone, except for the small group near my home. These have been refurbished, and they are now, happily, listed buildings, which means that they cannot be altered or demolished. They are a part of the social history of Britain, and it is good that they are still here. 

Lost and Found 

Wednesday 24 September 2008 

The lost car keys. Picture byfallsroad\/flickr. 

Alexandre Monteiro has sent me an e-mail asking about the difference between the words "seek", "find" and "look". I hope that this podcast will help him, and other people. 

I guess you know the English verb "to lose". The past tense is "lost". If you lose your pen, you do not know where you left it or where you put it. The pen is lost. 

When you lose something, probably you want to find it again. So you look for it, or you search for it, or you hunt for it. We also have a verb "to seek" which has a similar meaning to "search". But we generally use "seek" when we are talking about abstract things. We can say, for example, "I am seeking happiness". But we probably would not say "I am seeking my car keys". 

And that brings us to our story today, which is about Joanne, and she has lost her car keys. 

Joanne is looking after her nephew Nick, who is two and a half years old. They have a happy afternoon together in the park. Then they come home and draw some pictures. Then Nick helps Joanne to make some biscuits. Nick eats most of the biscuits, until Joanne says, "No more, Nick. Your Mum will be cross if you eat too many biscuits and then can't eat your tea." Then Nick watches a video, and then it is time for him to go home. Joanne helps Nick to put on his shoes and coat. She looks in her handbag for her car keys. 

The keys are not there. They are not in the pockets of her jacket, either. "Where can I have put them?" she says. She looks for the keys in the kitchen. Perhaps she left them on the kitchen table when they were making biscuits. But the keys are not there. 

She searches for the keys in the sitting room. Perhaps they have fallen down the back of the sofa. But the keys are not there. 

She hunts for the keys in the bedroom. Perhaps she put them down on the dressing-table. But the keys are not there. 

She searches high and low, but the keys are nowhere to be found. 

"Have you seen my car keys, Nick?" says Joanne. 

"Down the toilet", says Nick. 

"What?" says Joanne. "Nick, did you put the keys down the toilet?" 

"Don't know", says Nick, helpfully. "Can I have another biscuit?" 

Joanne rushes to the bathroom and looks into the toilet. No keys. 

By this time, Joanne is getting desperate. She told her sister that Nick would be home at 5.30. It is now 5.45. The door opens. Kevin comes in. He is in a good mood. He has been to a football match, where his team won 2-0. And he is carrying Joanne's car keys. 

"Where did you find them?" asks Joanne. 

"You left them in the car ignition", says Kevin. "You are lucky that no-one drove your car away. Oh, I smell biscuits. Can I have one?" 

How to enter the kitchen! 

Friday 19 September 2008 

A mouse in the kitchen! Photo by yeimaya\/flickr. 

I have some poetry for you in today's podcast. It is a poem by a woman called Susie Paskins, and it is called "How to enter the kitchen". 

Let me first explain what the poem is about. Susie has a problem. There is a mouse in her kitchen! She knows that the mouse is there - somewhere in the kitchen - and she does not like it. So what does she do? She makes lots of noise when she goes into the kitchen. She does not look in the corners of the room, where the mouse might be. She sings loudly when she puts water in the kettle to boil. She pretends that she does not worry about the mouse at all. 

The poem then goes on to say that we have secret parts of our lives which are like the mouse in the kitchen. Normally we ignore them. We make lots of noise so that we do not have to see them. And the secret parts of our lives, like the mouse, run away and hide. 

But perhaps it would be better if we sat quietly and waited. Then we might see these parts of our life, and we would not be afraid of them any more. Just like the mouse in the kitchen! 

Here is the poem: 

Approach with confidence, 

Then fling the door wide, 

Make a loud stamping noise. 

Do not look in the corners - That is where it might be, 

Whisking and darting, 

A black shadow 

Running to hide. 

Sing loudly as you put the kettle  

on. 

Pretend a certainty you do not feel 

That it will not - horror! - run over  

your feet 

Or pause and stare up at you, 

Defying your possession of its  

space. 

Parts of you 

Hide in corners too, 

Not seeing the light, 

Muttering and grumbling, 

Too low to be heard. 

Mostly you avert your gaze 

And make too much noise 

To confront them. 

So they run away  

And hide in the secret places. 

But perhaps 

You should quietly tiptoe  

To the corner and wait. 

And then you might see, 

And not be afraid  

Of what lives in the dark. 

Poem originally published in Quaker Monthly, March 2008. Reproduced here by permission. 

The Longest Name 

Tuesday 16 September 2008 

The name sign on the railway station at Llanfair PG. 

Once upon a time, there was a village in north Wales called Llanfair. Llanfair means, simply, "the church of St Mary" in the Welsh language, and there are many other places in Wales called Llanfair. The particular Llanfair in this story was called Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll, to distinguish it from the other places called Llanfair. The name Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll means, in English, "the church of St Mary beside the hollow (or little valley) with the white hazel tree". I think you will agree that Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll is perhaps too long for normal, everyday use. And English speaking people like me often find Welsh names difficult to pronounce. So people shortened the name to Llanfair PG. And people often still call the village Llanfair PG today. 

In the 1850s, a railway line was built along the coast of north Wales. It ran to Holyhead, which was the main port for ships sailing to Ireland. The railway line was busy and important. But only a few trains stopped at the station at Llanfair PG, and only a few visitors came to the village. 

How could Llanfair PG attract more visitors? "I know," said a man who lived near the village. "We need a new name. A special name. A name that people will remember. A name that will make people say 'That's interesting. I really want to visit that place'". So he suggested a new name - the longest place name in Britain. And other people agreed, and so the village was re-named ?Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. (That was not me speaking, by the way. That was a real Welsh person speaking real Welsh!) What did the new name mean? In English it is: "The church of St Mary beside the hollow with the white hazel tree and the rapid whirlpool and the church of St Tysilio with the red cave". They put up a new name sign in the railway station, and it was the longest railway name sign in Britain. And they waited for the tourists to come. 

Changing the name of the village was what today we would call a "publicity stunt" - something which you do to get people to notice you. Many companies, when they want to sell more of their products, find a new name for the product, or they design new packaging, or do something else to attract more customers. Sometimes this works. sometimes it doesn't. 

Did the new name work for Llanfair PG? I do not think so. Llanfair is still a quiet little place with about 3,000 inhabitants. Some trains stop there, but many go through without stopping. People arrive in their cars. They park in the station car park. They take a photograph of the the name sign on the station platform. Then they get back in their cars and drive away. 

Why did the new name not attract more visitors? The answer is easy, I think. Imagine going to a railway ticket office and asking for "a ticket to ?Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, please." 

A wet summer, and the Olympic Games 

Wednesday 10 September 2008 

A wet summer. This photo was taken in the Netherlands by Aneemiek van der Kuil but Britain in August was like this too! 

The summer holidays are over. People have returned to work. The children are back at school. And this is my first podcast since July. 

So, what sort of summer has it been in Britain? Let's start with the bad news. Our economy is in big difficulties. Prices are rising, especially prices for food. Petrol prices are now so high that people are using their cars less, and trains and buses more. Holidays abroad are now much more expensive, because the British pound has fallen in value. Our economy has stopped growing. Indeed, there may be a recession next year - that is, a period when the economy shrinks, or becomes smaller. Our Chancellor of the Exchequer (that means, our Finance Minister) certainly thinks that things are bad. He recently told a newspaper reporter that the economic position was the worst for 60 years. 

Many British people own their own homes. They buy their homes with a loan from a bank. The last ten years have been a very nice time to own a house. House prices have risen steadily, and people felt that they were getting richer, so they spent more. In fact, Britain has had its longest period of economic growth for 100 years. But this has now stopped. House prices have fallen, and everyone expects that they will fall further. The fall in house prices has been the fastest for over 25 years. This is bad news if you own your house already; it is good news if you do not own a house but would like to buy one. 

However, the really awful thing - the thing that makes British people really gloomy- is the weather. It has rained since the end of July. We have had the wettest August for many years. And there has been hardly any sunshine. In many places, August has been the dullest August (that is, the least sunny August) since 1927. It is still raining. And the weather forecast is - yes, more rain. 

I am glad to say, however, that the summer has had one happy thing for Britain. At the Olympic Games in Beijing, British athletes won 45 medals. That is the highest number of medals since 1908. We even won more medals than the Australians, which is very satisfying. So, while the rain poured down, we could at least watch the Olympic Games on television. The next Olympic Games, in 2012, will take place in London. Will they be the wettest Olympic Games ever? Or will it stop raining before then? 

Break up 

Monday 21 July 2008 

This car is being broken up in a scrap yard. Photo by Olly Clark\/flickr 

There is an English phrasal verb "to break up". It means to break into pieces. Here are some examples of ways in which we can use it. 

Imagine a storm at sea. The wind and the waves drive a ship onto the rocks. The waves smash the ship into pieces. The ship breaks up. 

Or, think about the great ice sheets in the Arctic and the Antarctic. Many scientists say that, because the world's climate is getting warmer, the ice sheets are starting to break up. 

Or, think about a really old car. You have had it for many years. You and it have had some fine adventures together. But now the engine does not start. And when, eventually, it does start, there are horrible clunking sounds and a cloud of black smoke comes out of the exhaust pipe. The car is finished. You take the car to thescrap yard where they break it up, so that the metal and some of the parts can be re-used. 

And sometimes we say that a relationship breaks up. For instance, Joe and Mary have been going out together for a few months. They are boyfriend and girlfriend. But then they disagree and argue. Joe starts to think that he really doesn't like Mary very much. Mary starts to think that Joe is selfish and boring. They break up. They decide that they are not going to be boyfriend and girlfriend any more. 

You may be thinking that "break up" is a rather sad expression. We use it to talk about shipwrecks, and cars that have reached the end of their lives, and relationships which come to an end. But there is at least one really happy use of "break up". We can say that a school breaks up. That means, simply, that it is the end of term. It is the beginning of the holidays. 

There is a primary school behind my house. The school breaks up today. Today is the last day of the school term. The children are very happy. They are making even more noise in the school playground than they usually do. After today, there will be six weeks with no school. Six weeks to stay late in bed. Six weeks to play in the garden. Six weeks to watch rubbish programmes on daytime television and to play on the computer. Six weeks to visit your grandparents, or to go on holiday. Six weeks to argue with your older sister. Six weeks to drive your parents mad. 

Listen to English is going on holiday too. This will be my last podcast for this term. But don't worry - I will be back with a new podcast on 10 September. I am going to spend part of the holiday in Wales, so here is some Welsh music for you to listen to. It is played on the Welsh harp by Cheryl Ann Fulton. I will put an extra posting on the website with a flash player where you can listen to more of her music if you like it. Until September, goodbye. 

Better 

Monday 14 July 2008 

Better buses, better service, better catch one 

I am sorry that there was no podcast last week. I was unwell. But now I am better. That means, I am not unwell any more. I have recovered. I am better. 

And today's podcast is about the word "better". "Better" is of course the comparative form of the adjective "good". Good - better- best. We can say: "This is a good restaurant. But the restaurant over the road is better. And the restaurant round the corner is the best restaurant in the town." 

We can use "better" in other ways, too. There is an English expression "I had better" do something. It means "I must" do something, or "it would be a good idea" to do something. Here are some examples: 

Kevin and Joanne are having breakfast. Joanne looks in the fridge. There is no milk. "I had better buy some milk this morning," she says. Kevin looks at his watch. It is nearly 7.30am. "I had better go now," he says. "I have to go to a meeting at 8.30." "Yes," says Joanne. "You had better hurry, otherwise you will miss the train. And it is raining. You had better take an umbrella". 

In Birmingham, where I live, there is a bus company. Actually, there are lots of bus companies, because our government believes that competition in public transport is a good thing. Our government is wrong. Britain has some of the worst public transport in Europe. But that is different podcast. One of our competing bus companies has a slogan on the side of its buses. It says: "better buses, better service, better catch one". This is what it means. 

Better buses... 

"Better buses" - the company has better buses. But better than what? Better than the buses of the other bus companies? Better than the old buses which it used to have? I suppose that "better buses" is OK as an advertising slogan, but if you want people to understand exactly what you mean, remember to use the word "than" - "better buses than our old buses", for example. 

"Better service" - This means more frequent buses, more reliable buses. Perhaps the company means that they now run buses late in the evening and on Sundays. 

And "better catch one" is short for "you had better catch one". In other words, it would be a good idea to catch one of our wonderful better buses. Remember that in English, we can take a bus or a train or a plane; or we can catch a bus or a train or a plane. 

Now you know all about "I had better". There is a quiz with the podcast today. You can find it on the website. Now it is late. I had better stop now. I had better go to the supermarket. I had better cook supper for the children. I had better say goodbye. 

Stonehenge 

Friday 04 July 2008 

A rainbow behind Stonehenge. This remarkable photo was taken by Lucille Pine\/flickr 

In today's podcast, we talk about some theories. We talk about things which may be true, or may not be true. We use words like "perhaps" and "maybe" and "it could be that..". See how many examples you can find. 

We English have not lived in England for long. Our ancestors, the Saxons, came to England from northern Germany in the fifth century. They spoke a language which we call Anglo-Saxon or Old English. Over the centuries, Anglo-Saxon changed to become modern English. 

Before the Saxon invasions, people called the Celts lived here. The modern Welsh language is descended from the languages of these Celtic people. But the Celts had not lived in Britain for long, either. There were people here before the Celts came. These people had no written language, so they left us no manuscripts orinscriptions to tell us about them. However, they left us plenty of archaeological evidence - burial places, pottery, tools and so on. And they left us a remarkable and mysterious monument called Stonehenge. 

If you drive by car south-west out of London, along a road with the romantic name A303, you will reach Stonehenge after about an hour and a half. You will see a circle of great stones, with other stones placed carefully on top of them. There are other, smaller stones - called "bluestones". Around Stonehenge, there are other ancient places - burial places, for instance, and ancient paths. 

The archaeologists tell us that Stonehenge was not all built at one time. The oldest parts of Stonehenge are about 5,000 years old. The "bluestones" came about 1000 years later, and the great circle of stones a few hundred years after that. The great stones probably came from a place about 40km away. They each weigh about 25 tonnes. Experts say that perhaps 500 men pulled each stone, while 100 more placed logs on the ground for the stone to roll over. The "bluestones" are even more remarkable - they are much smaller, about 4 tonnes each, but they come from Preseli in south Wales, a distance of nearly 400 km. How did they get to Stonehenge? Maybe people carried them on small boats, over the sea and along rivers. 

The big question is "Why?" Why did these people, four or five thousand years ago, build Stonehenge, and what did they use it for? Here are some of the theories: 

- Perhaps Stonehenge was a religious temple. Perhaps priests sacrificed animals or even human beings here. 

- Maybe Stonehenge was a centre of political power, a place built by a great and powerful king. 

- Possibly, it was a place to celebrate the dead, a place to send them on their way to the next world. 

- Or it could have been a place where sick or injured people came to be cured, like Lourdes in France is today. 

- Or Stonehenge might have been a place to watch the movement of the sun, moon and stars, and to forecast important events like eclipses. 

- Or, conceivably, it was all of these things, or it had different purposes at different times. 

Today, Stonehenge is an important tourist site, and a place for people who like to believe in magic. At the summer solstice (that is June 21st, the longest day of the year) people go to Stonehenge to watch the sun rise. This year, about 30,000 people were there. And, because this is England, it rained. 

How much does the Queen cost? 

Monday 30 June 2008 

Queen Elizabeth II 

Thank you all for your e-mails, and for your suggestions about subjects for future podcasts. 

A listener in France has asked, can I make a podcast about the Queen? And several other listeners have said that they would like some help with listening to numbers (which is always one of the most difficult things in any foreign language). I am going to kill two birds with one stone, as we say in English. This podcast is about the Queen, and also about listening to numbers. I have left gaps in the script where there are numbers,. Try to fill in the numbers as you hear them. You can check on the website whether you have heard them correctly. 

Queen Elizabeth (a)..... came to the throne in (b)....., following the death of her father, King George\u00a9...... She is now (d)..... years old, and she has been Queen for (e)..... years. She is the (f)..... monarch (that is, king or queen) since the Norman Conquest of England in the year (g)...... What sort of things does she do? 

The Queen has all sorts of official engagements in this country - visits to towns and cities, to schools and hospitals, to open new buildings and to attend official dinners. Last year she had (h)..... official engagements, which is (i)..... more than in (j)...... 

The Queen makes official visits to other countries too. Since she came to the throne, the Queen has made over (k)..... visits to about (l)..... different countries. Last year , she visited the United States, Uganda, Belgium and the Netherlands. 

The Queen sends messages of congratulations to everyone in Britain who reaches their (m)..... birthday. Since (n)....., she has sent (o)..... of these messages. She has also sent more than (p)..... messages of congratulation to married couples who are celebrating their "diamond wedding", that is the (q)..... anniversary of their wedding. 

Last week, her office published the royal accounts for\u00ae...... The accounts show that the cost of the Queen's official duties last year was \u00a3(s)...... This was \u00a3(t)....., or (u).....% more than in (v)...... However, officials at the palace want everyone to know that in real terms, that is after allowing for inflation, the cost of the Queen has fallen by (w).....% in the last (x)..... years. 

How much is \u00a3(y).....? Well, there are about (z)..... people in Britain, so \u00a3(aa)..... is about (bb)..... pence for each of us. Palace officials, who try very hard to keep up with new technology and new fashions, have pointed out to the newspapers that (cc)..... pence is about the cost of a download from the iTunes music store. 

An important part of the cost of the Queen's official duties is the cost of travel. Travel, in Britain and overseas, cost \u00a3(dd)..... pounds last year. The Queen has a special royal train. Our newspapers love to tell us how much the royal train costs. Last year the royal train was used only (ee)..... times. One of these trips was a visit which Prince Charles made to a pub in the town of Penrith - the cost was \u00a3(ff)...... 

However, palace officials have told the press that there are serious problems because several of the royal palaces need to be repaired. Altogether an extra \u00a3(gg)..... is needed for this. The roof at Windsor Castle needs to be replaced - this will cost \u00a3(hh)...... Many parts of Buckingham Palace in London have not been redecorated for over (ii).....years, and the electrical wiring is over (jj)..... years old. It will cost \u00a3(kk)..... to rewire the palace, and replace the plumbing (that is, the water pipes and the drains), and to remove dangerous asbestos from the building. 

In fact, Buckingham Palace seems to be such a mess that I am surprised that the Queen still lives there. If you know of somewhere else where she could live temporarily, until Buckingham Palace is repaired, perhaps you could telephone her office and tell them The number is (ll)..... 

Alfred Brendel Calls Time 

Wednesday 25 June 2008 

Alfred Brendel 

Last November, the Guardian newspaper contained an article. This was the headline. 

"Alfred Brendel, piano maestro, calls time on concert career." 

What does it mean? 

Well, you may already know about Alfred Brendel. He is a pianist, or a "piano maestro" as the Guardian headline calls him. He is famous for his playing of works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. We shall talk more about him in a minute. 

But what does "call time" mean? Until about 30 years ago, there were strict laws in Britain about when pubs could open. Generally, all pubs had to close at 10.30 in the evening, and everyone had to stop drinking and leave the pub at that time. Shortly before 10.30pm, the landlord of the pub used to ring a bell, and call out "Time, gentlemen, please!" or something like that. So, "to call time" means to announce that you will soon close something, or soon finish something. 

Lets go back to the newspaper headline. "Alfred Brendel, piano maestro, calls time on his concert career". It means that Alfred Brendel has announced that his career as a concert pianist will soon come to an end. In other words, he has said that he is going to retire. 

There is another idiom with a similar meaning - "to call it a day". Imagine that you have been working all day on a project for school or college. It is now the evening and you are tired. Yes, there are some more things you could do, but you decide to stop now and go to bed. You "call it a day". Alfred Brendel has decided, at the age of 77, to "call it a day" too. 

Alfred Brendel is a remarkable man. He was born in what is now the Czech Republic in 1931. His family were not musical, and he had little formal training on the piano. Nonetheless, he made a successful career as a pianist from the 1950s. Since the 1970s, he has lived in Britain. He is not only a famous pianist, he also writes about music, and writes poetry, both in English and in German. When he retires, at the end of this year, he wants to spend more time writing and teaching. 

For the last 15 years, Alfred Brendel has come regularly to Birmingham to play in Symphony Hall. Last night, I attended his last concert here. Every ticket was sold, every seat in the hall was occupied. When he played, the audience was completely silent. As we say in English, you could have heard a pin drop. Alfred Brendel's playing is very personal and very direct. It is as if he was in your sitting room, playing specially for you. At the end of the concert, we gave him a standing ovation, and he gave us two encores. It was a memorable occasion, though also a rather sad occasion. 

To end the podcast, here is Alfred Brendel playing some music by Schubert. May he have a long and happy retirement. 

Captain Calamity 

Friday 20 June 2008 

I could not find a picture or Forwick, but here is one of another part of the Shetlands, so that you can see what the landscape looks like. It was taken by tigernuts\/flickr 

In the past year, we have had two podcasts about English people who have gone to Scotland to do slightly crazy things. We had Andy Strangeway, who has spent a night on every island in Scotland. Then we had Steve Feltham, who has spent the last 17 years looking for the Loch Ness monster. Today we meet Stuart Hill. He lives on a tiny island in Shetland (a group of islands to the north of Scotland), and he has just declared his island to be an independent state. 

This is not the first time that Stuart Hill has been in the news. He has a nickname, "Captain Calamity". (A "calamity" is another word for a "disaster"). This is why. He comes from Essex in eastern England. Several years ago he bought himself a small boat. His boat became his main interest. He took a sail from a wind-surfing board and fixed it to his boat. He started to go for sailing trips. Then, in 2001, he decided to sail his boat single-handed all the way round Britain. His wife and his children thought he was mad. The distance around Britain is over 3,000 kilometers, and there are dangerous rocks and currents, and the waves and the weather are often dangerous too. 

Stuart Hill set off. Within minutes, he hit another boat, and his sail collapsed into the water. He found he had forgotten some important equipment, and a friend had to swim out to his boat with it. Over the next few weeks, he had more problems with his boat, and he had to be rescued five times by lifeboats and twice by helicopter. Finally, in August 2001, his boat turned over in a storm near the Shetland islands. He was rescued again, but he had lost everything - he had no boat, and no money and nothing but the clothes he stood up in. So he stayed in Shetland, and got a job there, working in a fish-processing factory. 

This week, Stuart Hill was in the news again. He now lives on a tiny Shetland island called Forewick Holm, where he is the only inhabitant (apart from lots of sheep and sea-birds). He is 65 years old, which means that he is able to get a state old-age pension. Most pensioners want a quiet life, but not Stuart. He has declared that Forwick is now an independent state, and that it is no longer part of Britain or of the European Union. There will be no taxes in Forwick, he says, and his state will soon issue its own currency. 

Why is he doing this? He wants to draw attention to an argument that Shetland is legally not part of Scotland (and therefore not part of Britain). Many centuries ago, Shetland was ruled by the king of Norway. But in 1469, the king of Norway needed some money in a hurry, so he gave Shetland to the king of Scotland in return for a loan. So, says Stuart Hill, Shetland is not part of Scotland. It should be an independent state, able in particular to control oil production from the oil fields around its coast and to collect revenues from the oil companies. Some Shetlanders probably agree with him, though I doubt if they want Captain Calamity as their ruler. 

Stuart Hill has spent much of the week being interviewed by the newspapers. "It's all jolly good fun," he says. "Every pensioner should do something like this." 

Getting married 

Tuesday 17 June 2008 

While I was searching Flickr, I found this wonderful picture of a wedding cake. By princess of Ilyr\/flickr who likes taking photos of food! 

Our podcast today is about weddings. I hope you will learn some new English words. There is a quiz attached to the podcast today so that you can test how much you know. 

In England, you can get married in a church, or you can have a civil wedding (that is, a non-religious wedding) . Until about 10 years ago, civil weddings always took place at aRegistry Office. Nowdays, however, you can get married in all sorts of places - in hotels, in country houses, and in many mosques and Hindu temples, for example. 

A wedding can be very expensive. Onewebsite that I have seen says that the average cost of a wedding in Britain is over \u00a311,000. Here are some of the things that many couples will want for their wedding: 

a wedding-dress for the bride, and dresses for her bridesmaids; 

wedding rings for the bride and the bridegroom; 

flowers for the church or the place where the wedding is held; 

a reception (that is, a party or a formal meal) for the wedding guests after the wedding ceremony; 

a wedding cake; 

a professional photographer, to take pictures or videos of the wedding; 

a honeymoon (a holiday) for the newly-married couple after the wedding. 

And there are lots more things to spend money on if you want to. Some couples want to hire a beautiful horse-drawn carriage, or a vintage Rolls Royce car to take them away after the wedding. Some people even fly to holiday resorts in Mexico or Thailand to get married, and their families and friends fly there too. 

There is no such thing as a "typical wedding". Every couple getting married has to decide for themselves what sort of wedding they want - a religious wedding, or a civil wedding; a big wedding with lots of guests; or a small, simple wedding. 

I went to a wedding last weekend. It was definitely not a typical wedding, but you might be interested in it. It was a Quaker wedding. There was no priest or ministerto conduct the wedding, and no music or singing. The bride and groom and the wedding guests all sat silently together. After about 10 minutes, the bride and groom stood up and said that they took each other as man and wife and made their promises to each other. After that, some of their friends and relatives spoke about love and marriage, or read a poem or a passage from the Bible, or simply wished the couple every happiness together. The wedding lasted for about an hour. At the end, everyone who was there - about 80 of us - signed the wedding certificate as witnesses to the marriage. 

And then - because we are British - we all drank cups of tea and chatted to friends and family members whom we had not seen for a long time. We went out into thegarden of the Quaker Meeting House to take photos of the bride and groom. In the evening, we were all invited to a ceilidh. "Ceilidh" is a Scottish Gaelic word, which has become part of the English language in recent years. It means an evening of dancing, singing, story telling and poetry. The bride and groom cut their wedding cake, and we danced traditional English and Scottish dances until late in the evening. And then all the wedding guests, and the bride and groom too, did the washing up and helped to put the chairs and tables back in their proper places. 

We had a wonderful time. Is this the sort of wedding you would like? 

Kevin gets cold feet 

Tuesday 10 June 2008 

Parachute. Photo by John Shappell\/flickr 

Today, we meet the expression "to have cold feet" about something. It means ...well, I will tell you a story, and you will see what it means. 

About 3 months ago, Kevin went to the pub with his friend George. At the pub they met some friends who were talking about parachute jumping (or "skydiving"). They were planning to go on a course to learn how to jump out of an aeroplane with a parachute. They thought it would be a really interesting thing to do. Maybe people would agree to sponsor their first jump so that they could raise money for a charity. By the end of the evening, Kevin and George had agreed that they too would go on the parachute jumping course. It sounded good fun. And Kevin would be able to tell everyone at work about his parachute jump, and they would be impressed. 

Today is the last day of the parachute jumping course. For the first few days, Kevin, George and the other course participants learned how parachutes work, and how to open the parachute in the air, and how to land on the ground safely. But today, the instructors will take them up in a small aeroplane, and they will make their first real parachute jump. 

Kevin feels ill. Three months ago, in the pub, jumping out of an aeroplane with a parachute was a great idea. Now Kevin thinks, "Why did I say that I would do this?" Jumping out of an aeroplane is a crazy thing to do. Suppose he cannot make the parachute work. He would fall hundreds of meters and be killed. Or maybe his parachute will work, but he will land in a river, or in a tree, or on the roof of a house, or in a field with a mad bull. He imagines himself, lying on the ground with a broken ankle, with the mad bull snorting angrily at him. 

In other words, Kevin has cold feet. Three months ago, he was enthusiastic about the parachute jump. Now he thinks it is a stupid idea. Perhaps he could pretend to be ill, or that his aunt has just died and he needs to go to her funeral. Yes - Kevin has cold feet. 

Kevin arrives at the little airfield where the course is taking place The other course participants all seem a little quiet this morning. Perhaps they have cold feet too. 

Then the instructor comes out of his office. "Bad news, I am afraid," he says. "There is a mechanical problem with the aircraft, and it will take two or three days to fix it. So - I'm sorry - but we won't be able to do the parachute jump today." And everyone on the course says how disappointed they are, and how they had really been looking forward to the parachute jump, and what bad luck it is that the aeroplane cannot fly. And Kevin says all these things too. But secretly, inside, he isrelieved. And he thinks that some of the other people on the course look relieved too. 

Godiva and Peeping Tom 

Thursday 05 June 2008 

Maureen O Hara starred as Godiva in a 1955 Holywood film. 

Do you know the English word "to peep"? If I "peep" at something, it means that I look at it quickly and secretly, and I hope that no-one notices. For example, I buy a birthday present for my daughter. She wants to know what the present is. But it is not her birthday yet, so I do not tell her. Quietly she goes upstairs and peeps into the bag, to see what the present is. 

Or, I hear someone walking up the path to my house. Is it the postman? I peep out of the window to see who it is. 

However, peeping can be bad for you, as we hear in today's podcast. 

Not far from Birmingham, where I live, is a town called Coventry. My grandmother was born in Coventry, and she lived there until she was married. Coventry is an industrial town, but it is also an old town, much older than Birmingham. In the 11th century, the powerful Earl Leofric imposed taxes on the people of Coventry and on the market which took place there. The people complained that the taxes were too high. The wife of Leofric, whose name was Godiva, agreed with the people. She went to her husband and begged him to reduce the taxes. Leofric refused. Godiva continued to plead with him. Eventually, Leofric said that he would reduce the taxes if Godiva would ride naked on a horse through the town and market place of Coventry. Godiva was astonished. But she was a woman of strong character, and she agreed. 

So Godiva called for her servants to bring her horse, and she rode naked through Coventry. The people of Coventry all went into their houses and closed the doors and the shutters on their windows so that they should not see her. All the people? Well, no, there was a man called Tom, who peeped through a hole in the window-shutters when he heard Godiva's horse coming. And because he peeped, he was struck blind - that means, he became blind immediately. 

According to the story, Leofric did indeed reduce the taxes. To this day, the people of Coventry celebrate Godiva's ride through the town. And, in English, we have a special name for someone who spies secretly on other people. We call him a "Peeping Tom". 

So if you think that taxes are too high in your country, you know what to do. Find a horse, and take your clothes off. But don't peep! 

I could do with a haircut 

Friday 23 May 2008 

I could do with a haircut. Artwork by Lorrie McClanahan\/flickr 

In today's podcast we meet the English expression "I could do with..." 

"I could do with..." is an indirect way of saying "I need..." If I say "I could do with"something, it means "I need" something. 

So, if I say to my teenage son, "You could do with a haircut", I mean "Your hair is too long and you need to get it cut". 

One more thing before we start. The expression always uses the conditional "could" form of the verb. We always say "I could do with..", and never "I can do with.." OK? 

It is the weekend. Kevin's plans include an afternoon in front of the television watching football. 

Joanne however has other ideas. "The house could do with cleaning", she says. "I will start on the kitchen now, but this afternoon I could do with some help." 

Kevin protests that he wants to watch the football. "United could do with a wintoday," he adds. Joanne says that United will win even if he does not watch them play. "We could do with some more floor cleaner," she says. "Please could you go to the shops and buy some." 

So Kevin walks to the shops while Joanne sets to work, cleaning the kitchen. Kevin returns about twenty minutes later, a little out of breath. "I could do with a rest," he says. And he sits down on a chair and watches Joanne cleaning the floor. 

"Kevin, you are out of breath because you are too fat," says Joanne. "You could do with losing some weight." 

"What?" says Kevin, horrified. 

"Yes. You could do with going swimming twice a week, or going to the gym." 

An idea comes into Kevin's mind. At the gym, they have a cafe with a TV set. He could go to the gym, and watch the football on television instead of exercising. 

"You're right," says Kevin, "I could do with some exercise. I'll go to the gym this afternoon." 

"Nice try, Kevin," says Joanne. "You can stay here and do some exercise at home. The carpet could do with vacuuming, and the lawn could do with being mowed." 

Three hours later, Kevin and Joanne are sitting on the sofa. They are exhausted, but the house is clean and tidy for the first time in weeks. "I could do with a drink," says Joanne, "and I could do with something to eat." 

"I'm tired," says Kevin. "I could do with a shower and an early night." 

And as for me, I could do with a holiday. So I am going to Germany next week, but I will be back with a new Listen to English podcast on about 5 June. 

The Worst Poet 

Tuesday 20 May 2008 

William McGonagall 

We stay in Scotland for today's podcast. We are going to meet a man called William Topaz McGonagall. Most people agree that he was the worst poet ever in the English language. 

He was born in 1825. His father was a cotton weaver, who had to move from town to town in Scotland to find work. Young William spent only 18 months at school before he too had to go and work in the mills and factories. He became a jute weaver in Dundee, a town on the east coast of Scotland. (Jute is a fibre which is used to make sacks. In the 19th century, Dundee was the centre of the jute industry in Britain). It was in 1877, when William was 52 years old, that he suddenly discovered that he was a poet. Not just a poet - a great poet - possibly the finest poet since Shakespeare. 

Over the next 25 years, Willam McGonagall wrote a large number of poems. He wrote about the great public events of the day, like the attempt to assassinate Queen Victoria, and the funeral of the Emperor of Germany. He was particularly fond of disasters, like shipwrecks and railway accidents. He wrote about famous battles, and about people and places that he knew. 

And his poetry was bad. It was so bad that it almost became good, if you see what I mean. It was like someone playing a musical instrument, loudly and confidently, but completely out of tune and without any sense of rhythm. It was like a newspaper report turned into poetry. Here are some examples. 

In 1878, a railway bridge was built over the river Tay near Dundee. At the time, it was the longest bridge in the world. It was a triumph of British engineering, and the nation felt proud. Naturally, William McGonagall wrote a poem about it. It began: 

Beautiful railway bridge over the silvery Tay! 

With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array, 

And your central girders, which seem to the eye 

To be almost towering to the sky. 

Less than two years later, the Tay bridge collapsed in a storm while a train was passing over it. Many people were killed. McGonagall wrote: 

Beautiful railway bridge over the silvery Tay! 

Alas! I am very sorry to say 

That ninety lives have been taken away 

On the last Sabbath day of 1879 

Which will be remembered for a very long time. 

A new Tay Bridge was completed in 1887, and of course William wrote a poem for the occasion. I think you can guess how it began. 

Beautiful new railway bridge over the silvery Tay! 

With your strong brick piers and buttresses in so grand array, 

And your thirteen central girders, which seem to my eye, 

Strong enough all windy storms to defy. 

Portrait of William McGonagall by W B Lamond 

William McGonagall organised public events where he would read his poetry. They were very popular. People came to laugh at his poems, and throw rotten fruit and vegetables at him. (Obviously, in those days, there was not much to do in Dundee in the evenings). But McGonagall continued to believe that he had a special gift as a poet. His fame as a bad poet spread throughout Scotland, and then in the rest of Britain and in the British empire. But his poetry did not make him rich, and he died penniless in Edinburgh in 1902. He has never been forgotten however. His books of poetry have been reprinted regularly. Last week, a manuscript of some of his poems was sold at auction for thousands of pounds. People still read his poems today and smile. 

The Loch Ness Monster 

Tuesday 13 May 2008 

Loch Ness at sunrise. Photo by geordiemac\/flickr 

Loch Ness is in Scotland, and it is long and narrow and very deep. Loch Ness is special. What is it? 

Well, "loch" is a Scottish Gaellic word that means a lake or an inlet of the sea. There are thousands of place names in Scotland containing the word "loch". So Loch Ness is a lake. It is in fact the largest freshwater lake in Britain. But that is not the reason why Loch Ness is special. 

No, Loch Ness is special because it has its very own monster. People say that deep in the lake there lives a large creature. Occasionally - very occasionally - you can see the creature swimming on the surface of Loch Ness, or even moving on the land close to the shores of the lake. No-one is certain what sort of creature it is, so it has no proper scientific name. But everyone calls the Loch Ness monster "Nessie". 

The oldest stories about the monster date from the 6th century. St Columba, who first brought Christianity to Scotland, is said to have saved the life of a man who had been attacked by a huge creature near Loch Ness. The modern stories about the monster started in 1933, when there were three sightings of a large, strange creature, about 1 metre high and 8 metres long, with a long neck. There have been similar reports in most years since then, sometimes of a creature on land, though more normally of a creature in the water. There have been some photographs of Nessie as well, but most of them are of poor quality, and some may be fakes. Several studies of Loch Ness using sonar equipment have found traces of a large object or objects deep in the water. 

So what is Nessie? Some people think that she (or he?) may be a type of dinosaur, which had managed to survive when all the other dinosaurs on earth died out. But most scientists think that this is extremely implausible. So is Nessie some other sort of animal, such as an eel or a seal? Or perhaps Nessie does not exist at all. Perhaps the people who say that they have seen a creature in Loch Ness actually saw other things - a small boat, perhaps, or a group of birds, or a pattern of waves and shadows on the water. 

Steve Feltham is one of the people who believes that Nessie exists. In 1991, he gave up his home, his job and his girlfriend to become a full-time Nessie hunter. For the last seventeen years, he has lived beside Loch Ness looking for the monster. His home is an old van that used to be a mobile library. It is parked in the car park of a pub, close to the shore of the Loch. Steve makes little clay models of Nessie to sell to tourists. He has only once, in 17 years, seen something which might have been Nessie, but that is not important for him. He loves his life as a Nessie hunter. We shall have more about him in the next podcast. 

Bank Holiday 

Sunday 04 May 2008 

We go to the seaside. We sit on the sand and eat ice-cream.... Photo by crunchcandy\/flickr 

Irene, who lives in Germany, is a regular listener to these podcasts. She has sent me an e-mail to suggest that I make a podcast about "bank holidays" in England and the way that we celebrate them. 

Most countries have public holidays at various times of the year - that means, days when schools, offices and many businesses are closed, so that most people do not have to go to work. In England, our public holidays have the rather strange name "bank holidays". The name comes from an Act of Parliament in 1871, which required the Bank of England to close on certain days during the year. The idea was that, if the Bank of England was closed, many other businesses would close as well, and that their employees could have a day off work. And that is in fact what has happened - the "bank holidays" have become general public holidays. 

Some of the "bank holidays" are at the times of the important traditional Christian festivals at Easter and Christmas. But the other holidays are not religious, they are secular. Unlike public holidays in many other countries, they are not on a fixed date every year. Instead they are all on Mondays, so that people can take a long weekend break if they wish. Tomorrow, for example, is the May Day Bank Holiday, which is on the first Monday in May every year. We have another bank holiday, the Spring Bank Holiday, on the last Monday in May; and another bank holiday on the last Monday in August. 

In Scotland and Ireland they have bank holidays on the feast days of their patron saints - St Andrew's Day (30 November) in Scotland, and St Patrick's Day (17 March) in Ireland. But although we poor English have a patron saint, St George, we do not get a holiday on St George's Day on 23 April. This is not fair. 

So, what do we English do on our bank holidays? We visit friends and relatives. Or perhaps we stay in bed until lunch-time. We dig our gardens and we mow our lawns. We go to football or cricket matches. We go to huge out-of-town superstores to buy curtains and things for the kitchen. We do DIY jobs around the house, like painting the bedroom or putting up a new shelf in the bathroom. And if the weather is good, we get in our cars and we go to the seaside. There we sit on the sand and eat ice-creams. At the end of the day, we get back into our cars and drive home. We get stuck in enormous traffic jams on the motorways. The children argue and fight in the back of the car. We arrive home tired but happy late in the evening. A perfect bank holiday! It's such a pity we have to get up in the morning and go to work. 

How to stay warm 

Thursday 01 May 2008 

Sheep on the road in North Yorkshire. Photo byJulia Parsons\/flickr 

If you visit upland areas of Britain - places like the mountains of Scotland, or Wales, or the Pennine Hills in northern England - you will see a lot of sheep. Many of the sheep are in places where there are no walls or hedges to keep them in their fields. So the sheep can wander where they like, over the hills, and of course on the roads as well. Sheep do not take much notice of cars. So, imagine you are driving along a little road in northern England. The sun is shining. You look at the beautiful views across the hills and the valleys. You turn a corner. And you find a flock of sheep on the road. The sheep look at you. You look at the sheep. You toot your car horn. The sheep look at you some more. Then slowly, they move and let you past. 

The sheep particularly like the road in the evening, because it is warm. During the day, the sun shines on the road. If you try to walk across a sunny road in bare feet, you will know how hot the road can be. When evening comes, the road is a nice warm place for the sheep to go to sleep. And the sheep do not want to move, just because a car comes round the corner. Well, you would not like getting out of bed to let a car come past. 

What is the point of this little story about sheep? It is that roads are very good atabsorbing heat from the sun. A laboratory in England wants to see if it can use this fact to keep roads free of ice and snow in the winter. It wants to place pipes filled with water underneath the road. When the sun shines, the road will become hot and the water in the pipes will become hot too. A small pump will pump the hot water into a tank buried in the ground at the side of the road. The tank will be heavily insulated. That means that the heat will not be able to escape, and the water will stay warm for a long time. And on cold winter nights, the pump will pump the warm water back into the pipes underneath the road. The warm water will heat the road surface and keep it free of ice. 

The scientists and technologists call this technology "Interseasonal Heat Transfer", or IHT. It is of course a very simple technology, but many people think that intelligent use of simple technology will be very important in the future. Climate change and the rising prices of fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil make it urgent to find new ways of doing things which will not damage the environment. If we can store heat from roads, car parks, airport runways, roofs, school playgrounds etc in summer, we could use the heat during the winter - not just for keeping roads free of ice, but for heating buildings and providing hot water. 

In the last podcast, I asked you to imagine that you were very rich, and had lots of servants. Naturally, you have a tennis court and a swimming pool - probably you have three tennis courts and two swimming pools. How will you keep your swimming pools warm in winter? Easy - place pipes filled with water under the tennis courts to collect heat from the sun in summer. Store the hot water in insulated tanks and use it to heat the swimming pools in winter. 

I get my car repaired. You get your hair cut. 

Friday 25 April 2008 

We get our milk delivered. Photo of a milkman with his milk float by Hembo Pagi\/flickr 

My car does not go. I don't know what is wrong with it. The engine won't start. The car will not move. What shall I do? 

I will get the car repaired. That means - I will not repair the car myself. I will ask someone else to do it, and they will repair the car for me. Look at the way we can talk about this in English. 

I will get my car repaired. 

I will have my car repaired. 

I will get the garage to repair my car. 

I will have the garage repair my car. 

Now here is something which we all need, but which we cannot do for ourselves - cutting our hair. (What? You cut your own hair? How? Would you like to send me a photo so I can put it on the website?) So what do you do? 

You get your hair cut. 

You have your hair cut. 

You get the hairdresser to cut your hair. 

You have the hairdresser cut your hair. 

Do you know what a milkman is? In England you can have your milk delivered to your home. Our milkman comes at about 3am. He leaves two bottles of milk and one bottle of orange juice outside our door. He drives a little electric van (we call it a "milk float" in English), so he makes hardly any noise. The milk bottles are made of glass, and when they are empty, we leave them outside the door for the milkman to collect. So : 

We get our milk delivered. 

We have our milk delivered. 

We get the milkman to deliver our milk. 

We have the milkman deliver our milk. 

Now imagine that you are very rich. No, not very rich - very, very rich indeed. You do not have a luxury sports car. You have three luxury sports cars, and a yacht, and a private aeroplane, and a home in Monte Carlo where your friends are all very rich too. And you have servants - people to do things for you. Here are some of the things you get your servants to do: 

You get your food cooked. 

You have your finger nails polished. 

You get your butler to pour your champagne. 

You have your gardener mow the lawn. 

If you like, think of other things which your servants can do for you. Use the expressions we have used in this podcast -"I get something done", "I have something done" etc - and put them on the Listen to English website as comments. Or perhaps you can get someone to put them on the website for you. 

The Great Smell 

Sunday 20 April 2008 

The Stink! Photo bywhizchickenonabun\/flickr 

In the last podcast, I said that I would tell you how Birmingham did in their match against Aston Villa. Well, they lost 5-1. Sorry, Birmingham! Birmingham could still stay in the Premiership next season, but things are not looking good. The nail-biting continues. 

Now for our story today. It started on Thursday evening last week. People in the south-east of England noticed a strange smell in the air. It was not a pleasant smell. Rather, it was the smell of rotten things, ofmanure and sewage, mixed with the smell of traffic fumes. People started to complain - to the newspapers and TV stations, and to the weather forecasters at the Meteorological Office. What was it? 

Well, said the Meteorological Office, the cause of the Great Smell was this. There was a mass of cold, still air over northern Europe. There was low cloud and no wind. All sorts of smells and fumes - from industry and from farms, from traffic and from everyday life - had become trapped under the cloud. Then on Thursday, the cold air, and its smells, had moved westwards over southern England. 

"What?" said our newspapers. "You mean, it isn't a good, healthy English smell. It's a nasty foreign smell." And the newspapers started to run stories about how the smell was all the fault of the French, because we English always blame the French first whenever anything bad happens. However, it then became clear that the smell was coming, not from France, but from further north and east. So we started to blame the Germans and the Dutch, because we English always blame the Germans and the Dutch second whenever anything bad happens. 

The Meteorological Office tried to explain that the smell was not a threat to health, and that it would blow away in the next few days. But the newspapers did not want to listen. They were having too much fun blaming foreigners. 

The truth, of course, is this: 

1. there was nothing more interesting for the newspapers to report; 

2. people who live in towns get used to town smells, like traffic fumes and fast-food restaurants. They forget that there are country smells too, like the smell of manure being spread on fields. 

3. many newspapers forget that England too has serious pollution problems. Normally, the westerly winds carry our pollution over to other countries, so maybe it is fair that occasionally other countries' polluted air comes to us. 

And what can you learn from this story? First, remember that "smell" in English is a neutral word. We can talk about nice smells and unpleasant smells. You can tell your girlfriend that her new perfume smells lovely; and you can say that a pile of rotten rubbish smells horrible. 

Second, there are lots of other words that you can use instead of "smell". A delicate, pleasant smell, like the smell of a flower, can be called a "scent". "Aroma" is a neutral word like "smell" - there are pleasant aromas (like dinner cooking in the kitchen) and unpleasant aromas. And a really nasty smell like the smell of sewage can be called a "stink" or a "stench". 

So now you know lots of words to use if you ever want to talk about the smelly English. 

PS. I forgot - the word "odour" also means a smell, normally an unpleasant smell. 

Why the Blues are biting their nails 

Friday 18 April 2008 

Blues fans looking glum after their team lost a match last year. Sick as a parrot? 

Do you bite your finger nails? No - don't answer that question. I don't really want to know. Biting your nails is a bad habit which will lead to premature baldness and make you unattractive to the opposite sex. Instead, we are going to talk football in this podcast, and football has nothing to do with biting your nails, has it? 

I want you to imagine that you are a life-long supporter of Birmingham City Football Club. Every week during the football season, you go to watch the team play. You wear a blue shirt, and a blue and white scarf and a blue and white hat. (Yes, you probably guessed that blue is the Birmingham City colour). If you can't go to a match, you stay at home or go to the pub to watch it on television. And you wear your blue and white football kiteven when you watch a match on TV. This is strange behaviour, but Blues fans arededicated people. 

You live in Birmingham, and many of your friends are Blues supporters like you. But Birmingham is a divided city, because another tribe of people live here too. They are the supporters of Birmingham's other big football club, Aston Villa. Both Birmingham City and Aston Villa play in the Premier League, or the Premiership, which is the top division in English football, made up of the 20 top clubs in the country. 

And I need to mention too that there is a third football club. It isn't actually in Birmingham, because its football ground is just over the border in the town of Sandwell. This third club is West Bromwich Albion, though everyone calls them the Baggies. (No, I don't know why they are called the Baggies.) When West Brom score a goal, their supporters celebrate by jumping up and down and shouting "Boing Boing"; and I don't know why they do that either. Unlike Birmingham City and Aston Villa, the Baggies play in the Championship, which is the division below the Premier League. 

It is getting towards the end of the English football season. Since the beginning of the season, at the end of last August, most clubs in the Premiership have played 34 games. They each have only have four more games to go. Aston Villa are 7th from the top of the Premiership. They are not going to win the Premiership, but they will definitely still play in the Premiership next year. And the Baggies are at present top of the Championship, so it is very likely that they will be promoted at the end of the season, and will play in the Premiership next year along with Aston Villa. 

And Birmingham City? Well, poor old Birmingham are fourth from the bottom of the Premiership. They could still win sufficient matches to stay in the Premiership next year; but equally they could be relegated at the end of the season. And how would that make you feel, Birmingham City supporter? You would feel awful. You would be depressed. You might even be suicidal. You can imagine the smirks on the faces of the Villa and Baggies fans. 

On Sunday, the Blues and their blue and white supporters will travel across Birmingham to play Aston Villa. The Blues really need to win this game if they are to be sure of staying in the Premiership. If you were a Birmingham City supporter, what words could you use to describe the atmosphere before the match - nervous, perhaps; or tense; or even "nail-biting". If something is "nail-biting" , we mean that it is very tense and exciting, and all we can do is to wait for it to finish, and bite our nails while we are waiting. So, we can talk about a "nail-biting" atmosphere; or we can say that the last 15 minutes of the match was "nail-biting"; or that you had a "nail-biting" wait for the results of your exam. 

Finally, can I remind you of two vital football phrases. If Birmingham win on Sunday, you will be "over the moon". And if they lose, you will be "sick as a parrot". I will tell you in the next podcast which you are. 

Folly 

Monday 14 April 2008 

Perrott's Folly. 

Today we meet the English word "folly", and we visit a strange old building and an art exhibition. 

Let's start with the word "folly". I guess you know what "foolish" means. If someone is foolish, he or she does stupid or unwise things. We can call such a person a "fool". And a "folly" is, simply, something which is foolish - something which is stupid, or unwise, or not sensible. We can say, for example, that it is folly to spend all your money at a casino, or that it is folly to drive your car on the wrong side of the road. 

In the 18th century, it was fashionable for wealthy landowners to decorate their estates with beautiful but completely unnecessary buildings. For example, a landowner might build something that looks like a ruined Greek temple, half hidden in the trees. Or he might build a tall tower on the top of a hill. These buildings had no useful purpose. They were simply to decorate the landscape. We call them "Follies". 

We have a folly here in Birmingham. It is called Perrott's Folly. It is a tower nearly 30 meters tall. There are six rooms, one above the other, and a spiral staircase. A man called John Perrott built the tower, in the middle of the 18th century. At that time, there was open country all around. Birmingham was still a village, a mile or two away. Today it is quite different. There are streets and cars, houses and factories and offices, where there were once fields and woods. 

Close by, there is a second tower, built in the 19th century by Birmingham Waterworks. I guess you have heard of the author J R R Tolkien, who wrote the Lord of the Rings books. When he was a child, Tolkien walked past the two towers - Perrott's Folly and the waterworks tower - every day on his way to school. Tolkien fans say that the two towers were the inspiration for the two dark, evil towers which play an important part in Lord of the Rings. 

Today Perrott's Folly is in poor condition. One of the floors is missing and the paint is flaking off the walls. There are old pipes and a boiler from a long-forgotten heating system, perhaps from the time when Birmingham University used the tower as a weather station. It is not an obvious place to hold an art exhibition. 

Part of the J\u00fcrgen Partenheimer exhibition in Perrott's Folly. 

But last week I was able to visit Perrott's Folly to see some art works by the modern German artist J\u00fcrgen Partenheimer. Carefully we climbed the spiral staircase. In each of the rooms, J\u00fcrgen Partenheimer had placed a single art work. When you look at his art works, they seem to remind you of something you once saw but which is now lost deep in your memory. And while we were looking at the art works, there was music playing- music written specially for this exhibition by the Irish composer Kevin Volans. The music too seems to remind you of something that you once heard but have now forgotten. Very strange. Here is a little bit to keep you company until the next podcast. 

Up up up 

Friday 11 April 2008 

Up! Photo by ezu\/flickr 

When you learn English, you learn about phrasal verbs. What are phrasal verbs? They are verbs which are formed, not of one word, but of two or more words. For instance, if I come home from work and want to watch a TV programme, I go into my sitting room and I switch the TV on. "Switch on " is a phrasal verb. And when I have finished watching the programme, I switch the TV off, or I turn the TV off - "to switch off" and "to turn off" are both phrasal verbs. 

We have thousands of phrasal verbs in English, and I could make podcasts about different phrasal verbs for the next year ( but don't worry, I won't!) However today, we are going to have a podcast containing lots of phrasal verbs with the word "up". You know what "up" means, of course. "Up" is the opposite of "down". You can climb up the stairs, and you can climb down the stairs again. However, lots of phrases and expressions containing the word "up" have nothing to do with "up" in the sense of "not down", and this is very confusing. 

I am sure that you already know several phrasal verbs containing "up". In the morning, you wake up. Then you get up. After that, perhaps you have some breakfast. When you have finished eating breakfast, you stand up, and clear the table, and wash up the dishes. 

And then perhaps you notice that your room is in a terrible mess - there are clothes and books and CDs on the floor. So you tidy up your room. Yesterday you spilled some coffee on the table. Now you clean it up, and you sweep up some cake crumbs that are on the floor. 

Then you set off for school. Today there are some roadworks near your house - some workmen are digging up the road, to repair a broken water pipe. The roadworks hold the traffic up, and you are nearly late for school. 

In your English lesson,your teacher asks the class to make up a story about a family going on holiday. First you make some notes about words and phrases which you might use. Then you start to write up your story. You have to look up some of the words in the dictionary. At the end of the lesson, your teacher says, "The time is up - please give me your stories and clear up your things before you leave." 

It is time for lunch. Your friend calls out to you, but there are so many people making so much noise that you cannot hear what he says. "Speak up," you shout, "I can't hear you". "Hurry up", he says, "I don't want to be late." You are hungry, and you eat up all your lunch. 

After school, you have just got home when your cousin turns up. She has recently broken up with her boyfriend. You never liked her boyfriend - in your opinion he was silly and immature and needed to grow up. You don't understand why she put up with him for so long. You try to cheer your cousin up by telling her all this, but it just makes your cousin more upset. You decide to shut up and change the subject. You suggest a trip to the cinema together. But your cousin says she is hard up and can't afford to go. So you end up offering to pay for her cinema ticket. 

And now I am fed up with finding phrases containing the word "up". I am sure there are many, many more of them. If you want to tell me, and all the other visitors to the Listen to English website, about your day, using phrasal verbs containing "up", then please post a comment on the website. On the website, you will also find a short grammar and vocabulary note. 

Murdered someone once! 

Monday 07 April 2008 

Felix Dennis 

Felix Dennis publishes magazines. He is, in fact, a very successful publisher, and his magazines have made him very rich. He is one of the richest people in Britain. He has written a book about how to get rich. Unlike most books that tell you how to get rich, Felix Dennis' book tells you that there are no simple ways to make a fortune, and that you have to work very hard and take big risks. Felix Dennis also writes poetry. Personally, I do not think his poetry is particularly good, but many people disagree with me, and his books of poetry sell very well. He is a great fan of the boxer Mohammed Ali, and he has written books about him. When he was young, Felix spent a short time in prison for publishing obscene material. Oh, and he also used to be addicted to crack cocaine, but he has now overcome his addiction. 

Is there anything more to know about Felix Dennis? Well, last week the Times newspaper published an interview with him, and in the interview, Mr Dennis revealed that he had once murdered someone! The man he had murdered had been abusive to a woman whom Felix Dennis had known. 

"He hurt her, " he explained, "and I told him to stop, and he kept on." 

"Wouldn't let her alone. She told him to stop. I told him to stop. Many people told him to stop." 

"Wouldn't stop, kept on and on and on." 

So what did Felix Dennis do? 

"In the end, had a little meeting with him. Pushed him off the edge of a cliff. Weren't hard." 

The interviewer asked where this had happened. 

"Don't matter where it was." 

And when? 

"About 25 years ago". 

I am sure you have noticed something strange about the way in which Felix Dennis speaks. He often leaves out the subject of his sentences. For instance, he says "wouldn't stop" instead of "he wouldn't stop". And he uses some incorrect verb forms - he says "weren't hard" instead of "it wasn't hard". 

Can you turn Felix Dennis's story into correct English? There is a pdf file on the website for you to look at if you have problems. 

So, have the police arrested Mr Dennis and charged him with murder? Will his career end with a second, much longer time in prison? 

Well, no. Felix Dennis has said that when the Times interviewed him, he was drunk. In fact, he was very drunk. His story about murdering someone was "hogwash" (that is, it was nonsense or rubbish). 

I do not know exactly what Felix Dennis said, but perhaps it was like this; 

"Ridiculous story". 

"Had too much to drink. Two, three bottles of wine maybe." 

"Never harmed anyone in my whole life." 

"Stupid to talk to the Times." 

"Can't imagine why I said that." 

"Hope no-one believes it." 

Budget 

Tuesday 11 March 2008 

On Budget Day 2007, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, leaving 11 Downing Street with the red box containing his budget papers. Gordon Brown is now the Prime Minister. The new Chancellor, Alastair Darling, will take the red box to Parliament later today. 

Today we are going to find out about the English word "budget". 

But first, I asked you a question at the end of the last podcast. I told you about the supermarket check-out for people who are buying only a few things. I asked you whether the sign above this checkout should say "10 items or less" or "10 items or fewer". 

Well, I think it should say "10 items or fewer". We can count items - one item, two items etc - and "fewer" is a word which we use with things we can count, while "less" is a word we use with things we cannot count. But many people - and several supermarkets - say "10 items or less". That is the problem with English - English people don't speak it properly. 

But now lets talk about budgets. What is a budget? Suppose you make a list of everything you need to spend money on in the next month - rent, food, clothes, bus fares etc. Then you work out how much money you will earn. And then you compare these two - your income and your expenditure - to see whether you will have enough money. This is a "budget" - a look into the future to see how much money will come in and how much will go out. It is a financial plan, in other words. 

We use the word "budget" in other ways too. For example, suppose you want to buy a new computer. You work out how much money you have, and how much you will need to spend on other things. Then you calculate that you could afford to pay \u00a3450 for a new computer. \u00a3450 is your "budget" for the new computer. 

We can use the word "budget" as a verb. "To budget" means to plan what you will spend money on. You might say, for example "I don't have a lot of money. I need to budget carefully". 

Sometimes "budget" just means "cheap". The problem with the word "cheap" is that it implies poor quality as well as low price. So shops don't like to advertise their goods as "cheap". They look for other words instead. They talk about "ourvalue tinned tomatoes", "our bargain sofas" or "our budget range of computers". You see how much better it sounds to say "budget" instead of "cheap". I should be an advertising executive, not a podcaster. 

And why are we talking about budgets in this podcast? Well, today is "budget day", one of the great events of British politics. This afternoon our Finance Minister (or "Chancellor of the Exchequer" as we call him) will leave his home at number 11 Downing Street, next door to where the Prime Minister lives, carrying a red box. He will travel in his official car to Parliament, which is about 200 meters away. (I don't know why he cannot walk, like a normal person.) When he gets to Parliament, he will open the red box and take out a file of papers. He will then tell Parliament about the government's budget for the next financial year - how much the government will spend and how much it will take from us in taxes. He will tell us about tax increases and tax cuts, and say how wise and careful the government is, and how the British economy is doing really well. And then the opposition parties will say that the government is spending too much, or too little, or that taxes are too high, or too low, and that the British economy is in a terrible mess. And by this evening, we will all be able to work out whether the budget has made us better off or worse off. I can hardly wait. 

How many apples? How much sugar? 

Tuesday 04 March 2008 

We can count apples ...... 

Photo by nettsu\/flickr 

What is the difference between apples and sugar? 

What is the difference between light-bulbs and electricity? 

What is the difference between trees and rain? 

What do you think? Do you give up? Shall I tell you? 

The difference between apples and sugar is simply this. You can count apples - one apple, two apples, three apples etc. You cannot count sugar. You can weigh sugar, you can measure sugar, but you cannot count sugar. And it is the same with lightbulbs and electricity, and trees and rain. You can count lightbulbs and trees; you cannot count electricity or rain. 

Does this matter, you may be asking? Why is he telling us these things? 

Well, dear listeners, often we want to say "how many?" or "how much?" of something there is. And when we do this we need to remember that there are some words which we can use only with things we can count, and other words which we can use only with things we cannot count. Here are some examples. 

We can count cars - one car, two cars etc. We can say: 

there are only a few cars on the road today 

there are many cars on the road today 

there are several cars parked outside my house 

there are fewer cars than there were yesterday 

"Few", "many", "several" and "fewer" are words that we can use with things we can count, like cars. But we cannot use them with things that we cannot count. 

... but we cannot count water 

Photo by rogilde\/flickr 

Or, imagine that you are painting your house. We cannot count paint. We can weigh paint, and we can measure paint, but we cannot count paint. We can say: 

I need a little paint for the kitchen (or a little bit of paint for the kitchen). 

so I do not need to buy much paint. 

but I need a large amount of paint for living room. 

I need less paint for the bathroom than for the bedroom. 

"A little", "much", "a large amount of" and "less" are words that we can use with things that we cannot count like paint, but not with things that we can count. 

How do you know what things we can count and what things we cannot count? Well, generally, if a noun is a plural noun (if it has an "-s" on the end), then it is the name of something we can count, like apples or cars. And if the noun is singular (no "-s" on the end) then it is the name of something that we cannot count, like electricity or rain. If you find it easier, think "plural or singular" instead of "countable or not countable". And remember that there are also lots of words and expressions that you can use both with things you can count and with things that you cannot count ("lots of.." is one of them). 

There is a grammar note on the podcast website with a PDF file which you can download. And there is also a quiz, so that you can test whether you have understood the podcast. 

Finally, here is a problem for you to think about. In many supermarkets in England, they have a check-out which is specially for people who only want to buy a few things. This is so that they do not have to wait a long time behind people who are buying a whole month's groceries for a family of 12 people. There is a sign to show which is the check-out for people who are buying only a few things. In some supermarkets, the sign says "10 items or less". But in one supermarket, it says "10 items or fewer". Which one is right? Answer next time. 

The Market Rasen Earthquake 

Friday 29 February 2008 

Some chimneys were damaged in Yorkshire ... 

The big news story this week was the great Market Rasen earthquake. 

We have lots of earthquakes in Britain. There are about 200 every year, but most of them are so small that people do not notice them 

The earthquake this week - in the early hours [ie between midnight and about 4am] of Wednesday morning - was different, however. It was of course, very small compared with earthquakes in other countries. But it was the biggest earthquake in Britain for 25 years, and people could feel it over a large part of England. 

The epicentre of the earthquake was close to a small town in eastern England called Market Rasen. Very little happens in Market Rasen. It is famous for ...well, it isn't famous for anything really. There is a racecourse and a man who wrote the lyrics for one of Michael Jackson's songs once went to school there. Several web-sites tell me that Charles Dickens, the famous 19th century novelist, described Market Rasen as "the sleepiest town in England". However, I can't find where Charles Dickens said this, so I don't know if it is true. 

But everyone, and everywhere, can be world famous for 15 minutes. Market Rasen's 15 minutes of fame was this week. On Wednesday, newspaper and TV reporters set to work to write the story of the great Market Rasen earthquake. Here are some of the things that they found : 

teacups rattled in Bedfordshire; 

toothpaste fell off a bathroom shelf in Halifax; 

cupboard doors flew open in Tipton, near Birmingham; 

a radio jumped up and down in London; 

a glass of water rattled on a bedside table in Chester; 

some chimneys were damaged in Yorkshire; 

a piece of stone fell off the church at Market Rasen. 

...and a glass of water rattled on a bedside table in Chester. 

Photo by bram_app\/flickr. 

As you can see, there was no story for the journalists to find. No-one was killed; only 1 person was injured; and damage to buildings was small. So why was the Market Rasen earthquake the big news story of the week? 

I think it is because the earthquake was an experience which everyone shared. On Wednesday morning, everyone had a personal story to tell. Some people could say how they woke up in the night. Their houses shook, and they heard a deep rumbling sound. Some people knew immediately that it was an earthquake. Other people said that they were frightened because they did not know what had happened. Some people ran out of their houses to see what was happening. Other people stayed in bed and went back to sleep. And other people said that they had not woken up at all - they had slept straight through the earthquake. So, for a few hours on Wednesday morning, everyone in England could talk about the same thing. 

When people try to describe something like an earthquake, they often use the expressions "it was like..." or "it was as if...". I found these descriptions in the newspapers: 

it was as if a giant was shaking my house; 

it was like a bomb had exploded; 

it was like a train very close to the house; 

it was as if someone had hit the house; 

it was like a plane had crashed; 

it was like a heavy lorry passing the house; 

it was as if a train was going under the house; 

it was like there was a big animal on the roof. 

Listen to English will be back next week with more important news stories. 

A Gruesome Discovery 

Tuesday 26 February 2008 

The harbour at St Aubin in Jersey in the Channel Islands. Photo by MarilynJane\/flickr. 

Today we visit the Channel Islands. The Channel Islands are a group of islands in the English Channel, close to the north coast of France. But they are not part of France. And they are not really part of Britain either. The British Queen is also ruler of the Channel Islands, and the British government looks after their defence and foreign affairs. But in other respects, the islands are tiny independent states - they have their own Parliaments and governments and their own laws. Until about 100 years ago, most people on the islands spoke a dialect of French, but today the main language is English. 

The Channel Islands are famous for cows, potatoes and income tax. The Jersey and Guernsey breeds of cattle - which come from the Channel Islands - produce a creamy milk with lots of butterfat. At one time, we could buy Channel Islands milk in England - people said how good it was for you, because it had so much cream. Today, everyone is afraid of getting too fat, so we don't want milk with lots of cream in it. And the potatoes? Well, many farmers in the Channel Islands grow potatoes which are ready to be harvested and eaten several weeks before potatoes grown in England. These Channel Island potatoes are called Jersey Royals and you can buy them in English supermarkets in April and May. And the income tax? Well, there isn't any income tax in the Channel Islands. In fact, the Channel Islands is a good place to live if you are very rich. And lots of rich people live there, and the harbours in the islands are full of their yachts. 

A Jersey Cow - excellent milk with lots of cream. Photo byDavid Nutter\/flickr. 

However, in the last few days the Channel Islands have been in the news for a very different reason. About 12 months ago, the police in Jersey - the largest of the Channel Islands - received reports about the abuse of children in care on the island. I need to explain what this means. "Abuse" means very bad treatment of someone, like violence, or emotional or sexual bad treatment. And "children in care" means children who can no longer live with their parents, but live with foster parents or in a children's home instead. About 150 people have now told the Jersey police about abuse of children in care on the island, over a period of many years. Many of their reports are about abuse at a children's home called Haut de la Garenne. The Haut de la Garenne children's home closed in 1986, and the building is now a youth hostel. A few days ago, the police made agruesome discovery there. Using a police sniffer dog , they found the remains of a child buried under a concrete floor. The police think that there may be several more bodies to be found. 

Jersey is a relatively small community of under 100,000 people. The stories about child abuse have become a major political issue on the island. People are asking how could abuse of children have continued for so long? Who knew about the abuse at Haut de la Garenne? Who was responsible for the bad treatment of children? Why is it that it is only today - 20 years after the Haut de la Garenne children's home closed - that the police are investigating? 

I guess that if you live somewhere like the Channel Islands, it is easy to think that you live in a little paradise, and that the problems of the rest of the world - crime, poverty, war, disease - do not really affect you. The child's body at Haut de la Garenne tells us that this is, unfortunately, not true. 

Painting the Forth Bridge 

Tuesday 19 February 2008 

The Forth Railway Bridge. Photo bytigersweet\/flickr 

My last podcast was about a motorway junction. But today I am going to talk about something much more romantic. When I think about it, a dreamy look comes into my eyes and my heart begins to flutter. Yes, dear listeners, I am going to talk about a railway bridge. 

If you look at a map of Scotland, you will see that on the east coast there are several wide riverestuaries. The Scots word for a river estuary is a "firth". Just north of Edinburgh is the Firth of Forth, the estuary of the river Forth. Further north, there is the Firth of Tay, the estuary of the river Tay. Until late in the 19th century, people crossed these estuaries by ferry, or they made a long detour by road to a bridge over the river. But when the railway companies arrived in Scotland, they wanted to build fast, direct railway lines between the towns and citites. They needed to build bridges over the firths. 

The first bridge was over the Firth of Tay. It was completed in 1877, but it wasdestroyed in a storm two years later. A train was passing over the bridge when it collapsed, and many people were killed. The collapse of the Tay Bridge was a great disaster, at became an important political issue in Britain at the time. The engineers responsible for the second bridge, over the Firth of Forth, decided that their bridge had to be much stronger. So they built it with steel. It was in fact the first big steel bridge in the world. About 4000 workmen worked on the bridge, which was opened in 1890. 

And the bridge which they built still stands today. About 200 trains cross the bridge every day. If you travel on one of these trains, you will often see people working on the bridge. They are always there. They are scraping off old paint, or repairing the bridge, or painting or welding. People say that the painters who work on the Forth Bridge start at one end of the bridge and gradually work their way across [ie they go forward, slowly, as they paint]. By the time they reach the other side, several years later, it is time to start painting again. This was never actually true, but everyone believed that it was. In English, if we say that something is "like painting the Forth Bridge", we mean that it is a job that never ends. By the time you have finished, you have to start again. In our house, doing the ironing is like painting the Forth Bridge. What is it like in your home? 

However, in today's newspapers there is a report that the engineering company that maintains the bridge is painting it with a new sort of paint. They have tested the paint on oil rigs in the North Sea. It will last for 20 or 30 years, without repainting. So another great British tradititon has gone. In future, painting the Forth Bridge will no longer be - well - like painting the Forth Bridge. 

Spaghetti Junction 

Tuesday 12 February 2008 

If you are a regular listener to these podcasts, you will know that I live in BIrmingham. In Birmingham, we have the most famous landmark in the whole of Britain. What is a landmark? It means a place, or a building, or a natural feature like a river or a mountain, that everyone knows about. And what is Birmingham's famous landmark? An ancient castle, perhaps, or a cathedral, or a statue on the top of a hill? No. None of these. Our famous landmark is called Spaghetti Junction. It is not, as you might think, an Italian restaurant. It is an interchange, or junction, on the M6 motorway about 5km north of the centre of Birmingham. If you look at the picture on the website, or on your iPod screen, you will see why people call it Spaghetti Junction. It looks like a plate of spaghetti. 

Now, please don't send me e-mails to say that you have a motorway junction called Spaghetti Junction in your country too. I don't care about your Spaghetti Junction. Birmingham's Spaghetti Junction was the first Spaghetti Junction, and it is still the largest motorway junction in Europe. Work on Spaghetti Junction started 40 years ago, in 1968, and was finished four years later. About 150,000 vehicles, and 5 million tons of freight, pass through Spaghetti Junction every day. 

Everyone in Britain knows about Spaghetti Junction and where it is, even people who have never visited Birmingham itself. It is so well-known because it isunavoidable. If you travel by road in Britain, sooner or later you will pass Spaghetti Junction. You will remember it because it is the place where the traffic gets really bad, where the journey gets really boring and where the children start fighting in the back of the car. And if by accident you take the wrong road at Spaghetti Junction, you will find yourself in London instead of Manchester. Some people who took the wrong road at Spaghetti Junction five years ago are still trying to find their way home. So be careful. 

Here are some other interesting things about Spaghetti Junction. It is not just a motorway junction. Underneath the motorway there are two railway lines, three canals, a river and several footpaths. There is a Birmingham joke that two of the roads at Spaghetti Junction are dead-ends. [A dead-end road means a road that goes nowhere]. And another Birmingham joke that there is a beach underneath the concrete arches of the motorway. A beach? It is in fact just a bank of dirt and gravel, with a view over a smelly river and an old factory. You are welcome to come to Birmingham for a beach holiday if you like, but you may find that Spain would be better. 

More seriously, it was necessary to demolish a few hundred houses and other buildings to build the motorway and Spaghetti Junction. The motorway created abarrier which cuts off the northern suburbs of the city from the city centre. The vehicles on the motorway create noise and pollution over a wide area. Birmingham today - more than any other British city - is a city of roads and cars, of heavy lorries and multi-storey car-parks and poor public transport. So perhaps it is appropriate that Birmingham's most famous landmark is a motorway junction. 

Whether the weather is fine ... 

Friday 08 February 2008 

A listener to these podcasts who lives in Brazil has sent me an e-mail to say, please can I make a podcast about when we say "if" and when we say "whether". I have thought very hard about this, because it is not easy to explain. The trouble is that you do not think about grammar rules for your own language. You just know what word is correct and what word is wrong. 

At one time, perhaps 50 years ago, there were clear rules about when we should use "if" and when we should use "whether". I shall explain these rules first, because if you stick to these rules, your English will be correct. But I will also tell you that, unfortunately, we English often do not obey the rules. 

Here are some sentences where we use the word "if". 

If the sun shines tomorrow, we will go for a picnic. 

If the train is late, I will miss the meeting. 

If I have time, I will drink some coffee and read the newspaper. 

If I had remembered my umbrella, I would not have got so wet. 

Now here are some sentences with "whether". 

Whether the sun shines tomorrow or not, we will have a picnic. 

Whether or not the train is late, I will still miss the meeting. 

I go for a walk every day, whether it is summer or winter. 

Now do you see the difference between "if" and "whether". "If" introduces a single condition. It talks about only one possible thing that might happen - if the sun shines tomorrow, if the train is late and so on. A sentence with "whether" talks about two or more different things that might happen - maybe the sun will shine tomorrow, maybe it will not, but we will go for a picnic whether or not the sun is shining. Very often "whether" sentences contain the words "or not"; or they say "or not" indirectly, like the last example I gave you. 

We also use the word "whether" to begin a noun clause that describes a question or a problem or an issue. Let's look at some examples, so that you can see what I mean. 

John asked me whether I could go to a party on Saturday. ("Whether" tells us that there is a question or problem - can you come to the party?) 

I told him that it depended on whether I finished my homework in time. ("Whether" tells us that there is a question or problem - will I finish my homework in time?) 

I do not know whether the train goes at 3pm or at 3.15pm. ("Whether" tells us that there is a question or problem - what time does the train go?) 

I need to find out whether my mother is coming at the weekend.("Whether" tells us that there is a question or problem - is my mother coming at the weekend?) 

Joanne asked her boss whether she could go home early. ("Whether" tells us that there is a question or problem - can I go home early?) 

So - here is our simple rule. 

"If" introduces a single condition. 

"Whether" introduces alternatives, and is often followed by "or not". 

And "whether" starts noun clauses that tell us that there is a question or a problem. 

The trouble is, however, that in modern English, particularly spoken English, people often say "if" when they should say "whether". In particular, people often start noun clauses about questions or problems with "if" instead of "whether". It is very common to hear people say for example "He asked me if I could go to his party on Saturday". In some languages, like French, there is a central institute or academy which decides what the proper rules for the language are. We do not have anything like this for English. Good English is simply the English that educated and intelligent English people speak. So if people say "if" instead of "whether", then "if" is correct!  

I hope this is not too confusing. I have made a little quiz so that you can practice "if" and "whether" - you will find a link on the website. 

Finally, here is a little poem about "whether". You will have to listen carefully, because there are two words in English that we pronounce "whether". There is the word "whether" which we have been talking about in today's podcast, and there is the "weather" - rain, wind, sunshine and so on. 

Whether the weather is fine 

Or whether the weather is not 

Whether the weather is cold 

Or whether the weather is hot 

We'll weather the weather 

Whatever the weather 

Whether we like it or not. 

Picture of stormy weather by Robert Voors\/flickr 

Pancake Day 

Tuesday 05 February 2008 

Today is Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Day. Shrove Tuesday is the day before the beginning ofLent, which is the period of 40 days leading up to Easter. Traditionally, during Lent, Christians avoid eating rich foods, for example foods containing lots of eggs or milk. So how do we use up our eggs and milk before Lent begins? We make pancakes, like this. 

First, mix some flour and a pinch of salt in a bowl, and then break two eggs into the flour. Whisk the eggs and flour together. While you are still whisking, add a little bit of milk, and then a bit more, until the batter is like thick cream. Then, heat a frying pan until it is really hot, and pour a small amount of the batter into the pan. Tip the pan from side to side to spread the batter thinly all over the pan, and cook the batter for about half a minute. 

Then - and this is the really good bit - you turn the pancake over, so that it can cook on the other side. How? You flick the pan, tossing the pancake into the air, and catch the pancake in the pan again. Or maybe you don't catch the pancake. Maybe it lands on the floor, or sticks to the ceiling. Your children will think it is very funny, even if you don't. 

Assuming that you catch the pancake, and that it doesn't go on the floor, you then cook it for a few more seconds and serve it with lemon and sugar. 

In many places there are pancake races on Pancake Day. The runners have to toss a pancake in a frying pan while they are running. One of the most famous pancake races is in London, with teams from The House of Commons, the House of Lords and the press. I read in today's paper, however, that one traditional pancake race, in Ripon in Yorkshire, has been cancelled for health and safety reasons. Health and safety reasons? What can be dangerous about a pancake race? 

The other traditional Shrove Tuesday sport is much more dangerous - football. Shrove Tuesday football is not like the modern game with 11 players on each team, and a referee. No, it is a very ancient game and the rules are ...let me see....oh, there aren't any rules. In the town of Atherstone, not far from Birmingham, for example, the Shrove Tuesday ball game is played like this. At 3pm, someone will open an upstairs window in Barclay's Bank in Atherstone High Street. He or she will throw a ball into the street below. The crowds in the street will then kick the ball, throw the ball, run away with the ball, fight each other for the ball, hide the ball, do almost anything with the ball. (But they are not allowed to take the ball out of Atherstone - that is about the only rule in the game.) At 5pm a klaxonsounds. Whoever has the ball when the klaxon sounds is the winner. It sounds more like total war than a game of football, but everyone seems to enjoy themselves.  

Have a good Pancake Day! 

Rhubarb 

Friday 01 February 2008 

In this podcast, we are going to meet some words about food - some very English sorts of food. Look out for these words - rhubarb,pie, crumble, chutney, custard. 

A lot of people who visit England think that English food is very strange. A lot of English people think this too. My children, for example, seem to eat nothing but pizza and pasta. And the most popular restaurants in England are often Italian or Indian or Thai - they are generally not English. 

However, some traditional English food is very good. We keep it secret, however, because we don't want the whole world to find out. One of our secrets is rhubarb. You can see a picture of a rhubarb plant on the website, and on your iPod screens. It has red stems and big leaves. The stems are the bit which we eat; the leaves are actually poisonous. Because the stems are very bitter, we chop then into pieces and cook the pieces very slowly with lots of sugar. We then use the cooked rhubarb to make pies, or crumbles, or we eat the rhubarb with custard. We also make rhubarb jam, and rhubarb chutney. There are lots of rhubarb recipes on theBBC website. Try some of them if you want to experience some uniquely English cooking. 

I need to warn you, however, that the taste of rhubarb is something which you either love or hate. And rhubarb is said to be a laxative - that means, it makes you want to go to the toilet, so be careful how much rhubarb you eat! 

In the 19th century, a gardener left an old chimney-pot on top of one of his rhubarb plants. The rhubarb grew up through the chimney pot, looking for the light. The stems were pale pink in colour, instead of bright red. And the rhubarb which had grown in the dark had a beautiful delicate taste. This method of growing rhubarb in the dark is called "forcing", and we can talk about "forced rhubarb". We can buy forced rhubarb in January and February, when there are not many home-grown fruit or vegetables in the shops. Most of the forced rhubarb comes from Yorkshire in the north of England. The rhubarb grows in big sheds, in the dark. The growers pick the rhubarb by hand, using candles instead of electric lights because the sheds must be kept as dark as possible. People say that if you stand in a rhubarb shed, and listen carefully, you can hear the rhubarb growing. 

At one time, there were over 200 rhubarb growers in Yorkshire. Special trains used to take the picked rhubarb to London and other big cities. But today there are only about 12 traditional rhubarb growers left. Why? Public taste has changed, and rhubarb has a very old-fashioned image. People remember the wonderful rhubarb crumble that their grandmothers used to make. But they prefer to buy imported strawberries or other fruit instead. This is very sad. So I have made this podcast hoping that it will help to revive interest in rhubarb. Next time you are in England, eat some rhubarb, if you dare! 

Pictures by cdell\/flickr, cheftami\/flickr and kevandem\/flickr 

Languages 

Tuesday 29 January 2008 

Last week a woman called Marie Smith Jones died. She was 89 years old and she lived in Alaska in North America. Marie was the last person alive to speak a language called Eyak. Eyak is, or was, one of the native North American languages. Linguists have carefully recorded Eyak grammar and vocabulary and pronunciation. But no-one speaks Eyak any more. It is a dead language. 

We do not have an official language in Britain, but most people of course speak English or a dialect of English. There are several other native or indigenous languages in Britain. They are descended from the languages spoken by the Celtic people who lived in Britain before the English arrived in the 4th and 5th centuries. The most important is Welsh, which is spoken by about more than half a million people in Wales, or about 20% of the population. Welsh and English now have equal official status in Wales. If you visit Wales, you will see that all road signs are in English and Welsh. Welsh is flourishing. 

Two other Celtic languages, Scots Gaelic in Scotland and Irish Gaelic in Northern Ireland are spoken by only a few percent of the population. Another Celtic language in South-West England - called Cornish - died out completely in the 19th century, just like Eyak has died out. It was re-introduced about 100 years ago and today Cornish is spoken by a few thousand people. 

It is interesting that we use some of the same words for languages as we use for plants and animals. Here are some examples: 

We talk about native or indigenous plants or animals - that means the plants and animals which live naturally in a place, and have been there a long time. Similarly, we talk about native or indigenous languages, like English in England, or Irish Gaelic in Ireland. 

We can say that modern horses are descended from wild horses. Similarly, we can say that modern Welsh is descended from an old Celtic language. 

We can say, for instance, that wolves have died out in Britain. Similarly, we can say that the Eyak language has died out. 

We can say that an animal like the rhinocerous is endangered; and we can also say that a language is endangered, if the number of people speaking it is very small. 

Of course some species of animals are flourishing - probably their numbers are growing and they are not likely to die out. Similarly, we can say that today the Welsh language is flourishing. 

And some species of animals or birds die out, but are then re-introduced into the wild. We have several examples of this in England, particularly a bird called the red kite. Similarly, we can say that the Cornish language has been re-introduced. 

I have also read in the paper that some experts think that three quarters of the world's languages will die out in the next 100 years. Do you think that this will happen? Perhaps languages and animals die out for similar reasons - reasons such as over-exploitation of natural resources, modern travel and tourism, and population movement. How many people will speak English one hundred years from now? English is widely spoken as a second language today, partly because of British colonial history, and partly because of American economic power. However, 100 years from now, British colonial history will be a long way in the past, and American economic power may be much less. What languages will your grandchildren and great-grandchildren learn? Chinese perhaps? 

Swimming the Channel 

Friday 25 January 2008 

This week we meet the verb "to swim"; and we also meet a famous swimmer, called Captain Webb. The verb "to swim" is one of a very small group of English verbs where there are three different vowel sounds in three different tenses, like this: 

I swim 

I swam 

I have swum 

The other common verb which is like this is "to sing" (I sing, I sang, I have sung). 

A few weeks ago, I watched a television programme. A woman who was on the programme said that, when she was younger, she had swum the Channel. What does that mean? 

"The Channel" is the sea which lies between England and France. Its proper name is "The English Channel" but normally in English we talk about "The Channel". We talk about "crossing the Channel", which means that we are going to visit France or Belgium or another country on the mainland of Europe. The Channel is about 22 miles or 36 kilometres wide at its narrowest point, between Dover in England and Calais in France. There are regular ferries across the Channel, and a huge number of ships pass through the Channel on their way to ports in Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. And some people swim across the Channel. 

Speaking personally, I do not enjoy swimming very much and I think that people who swim the Channel must be either very brave or very foolish. The English Channel is cold. It is also not very clean, and there are lots of ships which might hit someone swimming. But the distance across the Channel is about as far as it is possible for someone to swim in the sea. So it is a bit like Mount Everest - it is the big challenge, the final goal, for people who are keen on long-distance swimming. 

The first person to swim across the Channel was Captain Matthew Webb. He was 29 years old when he swam from England to France in August 1875. The crossingtook him rather under 22 hours. His swim across the Channel made Captain Webb famous. There is a picture of him on the website, and - I hope - on your iPod screens. The Victorians liked their heroes to be tall, upright and handsome, and to wear a moustache; and you will see that Captain Webb is indeed tall, upright and handsome, and that he has a moustache. I think incidentally that the photographer who took the photo was working in a studio, and that the waves and the sea behind Captain Webb are painted and not real. 

Fifty years after Captain Webb's great swim, only about 10 other people had managed to swim the Channel. It is interesting that nearly always they swam from England to France, and not the other way. Why? I have no idea! Since the 1920s many more people - about 1000 altogether - have made the great swim, including some who have swum from England to France and then back again. Modern swimmers swim much faster than Captain Webb - the fastest swim, by Petar Stoychev in August last year, took under 7 hours, only a third of Captain Webb's time. A woman called Alison Streeter has swum the Channel a record 43 times; in fact, in 1992 alone she swam the Channel 7 times. 

And what happened to Captain Webb? Did he live to an old age, so that he could tell his grandchildren all about his great swim to France? I am afraid not. He became a professional swimmer, and wrote a book about - can you guess? - How to Swim. Abrand of matches was named after him - there is a picture of a box of Captain Webb matches on the website. He did stunts like floating in a tank of water for 128 hours. And in 1883, 8 years after his Channel swim, he decided to swim across the Niagara River, between Canada and the USA, just below the Niagara Falls where the water is dangerous and fast flowing. Within a few minutes he had disappeared; his body was found four days later. It was a sad end for a very remarkable man. 

It is a long time since we had any music on this podcast. So here is a song by Amy Kohn called "1977 Swimming Lessons". She is I think remembering swimming lessons in a swimming pool when she was a child. I hope you enjoy it. 

To hold you, to hold you 

Monday 21 January 2008 

Hello, everyone. It is very good to be making a new podcast. My internet connection is working again. Thank you very much for your patience, and a big thank you in particular to all those of you who sent me e-mails saying how sorry you were about my internet problems. 

It is a long time since we had any poetry on the podcast. From time to time, I look at a book of English poetry and wonder whether I can use any of the poems. But very few poems are written in simple English which is easy to understand. My friend, Margaret Scorey, however writes poems which use simple and direct English, and are therefore very good for English learners. Here is a poem she wrote about a month ago. She wrote it for a woman who had recently become a grandmother. But the woman's family, and the new grandchild, were in America, so grandmother travelled to America to hold her new grandchild in her arms for the first time. Margaret has called the poem "To Hold you, to hold you". 

My longing is to hold you, 

to feel your soft cheeks against mine 

to look into your gentle eyes 

to touch your hair 

and feel the warmth of your breath. 

Soon I will. 

But know that when I return, 

the ache will be as great as it is now, 

softened only by memories. 

But one thing, I will be able to say is, 

'I've done it, I've done it, I've held you'. 

Frustrated 

Friday 11 January 2008 

On the day after Christmas Day - the day we call Boxing Day in England - something terrible happened. My internet connection stopped working. I could not surf the net. I could not read my e-mails. I could not check my website or upload new podcasts. The internet is a bit like cigarettes. You become addicted, or "hooked" as we say in colloquial English. When suddenly you cannot use the internet, it is like wanting a cigarette, and finding that you do not have any cigarettes and that the shops are all closed. So, when my internet connection stopped working, how did I feel? What words can we use to describe my feelings? 

Well, we could use words like "angry" or "furious". But these words are too strong. If someone is angry or furious, they are shouting at people and banging the table. I was not shouting at people about my internet connection, nor was I banging the table. So "angry" and "furious" are not the right words. 

Could we use the word "upset"? If something upsets you, it means that it has hurt you emotionally. You may be unable to discuss the upsetting thing without crying. You may not want to talk to people, or to eat your food. Well, my internet connection problem was not like that. So I was not "upset" when my internet connection stopped working. 

We need some words that mean "a little bit angry". There are several of them. We can say, for example, that I was cross when the train was late and I missed an important meeting. I was annoyed when I could not find my car keys. I was irritated when someone did not reply to an e-mail. Yes, all of these words would do - I was cross, and annoyed, and irritated, when my internet connection stopped working. 

But there is another word that describes exactly how I felt. I wanted to do things - surfing the net, sending e-mails etc - but I could not. And I could do nothing to solve the problem. The only thing to do was to wait for my internet provider to mend the connection. And it was Christmas, so all of their engineers were on holiday. So I had to wait, and wait, and wait! I felt "frustrated". The feeling we have when we cannot do something we normally do is "frustration". If you break your leg, and you cannot play football for two months, you might find this "frustrating". That is how it was with my internet connection - it was frustrating. I felt frustrated 

The really bad news is that my internet connection still does not work. I have complained to my internet company. They say that there is nothing wrong. What do they mean, nothing is wrong? I can't access the internet. Of course something is wrong. Now I am very frustrated. I am not just cross with my internet company, I am starting to be angry. I am shouting at the internet company and banging the table. I have cancelled my contract with them, and next week some nice people from the cable TV company will come and install a new fibre-optic cable to my house, and I will have the internet again. 

And how will I feel then? "Happy" - yes, of course. But a really good word is "relieved". Imagine that your teenage daughter goes out with some friends for the evening. She says she will be home at 10 o'clock. Ten o'clock comes and she is not home; 10.30, 11 o'clock. You get worried and anxious. What has happened? Should you telephone the police? Then at midnight, the phone rings. It is your daughter. She is at her friend's house. How do you feel? You might be cross with your daughter because she did not telephone earlier. But mainly you would feel relieved - no more worries, no more problems, everything is OK again - relieved. That is how I shall feel when my internet connection is back - relieved. 

In the meantime, I am using an internet cafe to upload my podcasts. It takes a lot longer to make and upload podcasts without an internet connnection at home. So, sorry, I do not have time to find a good picture to put on the website or your iPod screen to illustrate this podcast. And I may not be able to make another podcast until my internet connection is back. How will you feel about no new podcast next week? Will you be angry, or annoyed, or upset, or frustrated? Or will you feel relieved? I hope not! 

Eddie the Eagle 

Monday 07 January 2008 

Every four years, the Olympic Games are held. This year - 2008 - is an Olympic year. The games are to be held inBeijing in China. As well as the main Olympic Games, there are also the winter Olympics. The winter Olympics are for snow sports - things like ski-ing, ice-skatingand bob-sleighing. Like the main Olympic Games, they take place every four years. They used to be held in the same year as the main Games; but now they are held in the year mid-way between the main Games. The last winter Olympics were in 2006; the next winter Olympics will be in 2010, in Vancouver in Canada. 

Naturally, most of the winners in the sports at the winter Olympics are from countries with mountains and lots of snow - countries like Austria, Norway, Finland and Switzerland for example. In Britain, our mountains are quite small, and we do not have a lot of snow, so generally there are only a few British winners at the winter Olympics. But 20 years ago, in 1988, when the winter Olympics were held in Calgary in Canada, one of the British competitors became world famous. It happened like this. 

Michael Edwards was 13 when he first when ski-ing on a school ski trip. He loved it. He also had a childhood ambition to be a stuntman. A stuntman is someone who acts the really dangerous bits in films - where people fall through windows, for example, or drive a car over a cliff. So Michael decided that ski-jumping should be his sport. In ski-jumping, the competitors ski very fast down a long, straight slope and onto a ramp. They then take off and fly though the air, and land 100 or 200 meters further on. It is slightly less dangerous than jumping out of an aeroplane with no parachute. You have to be very brave or very stupid to do ski-jumping. 

It is not easy to be a ski-jumper in Britain. There are, to start with, no ski jumps where you can practice. Michael went to some of the top French and Austrian ski-jumping coaches to ask them for advice. However, as he did not speak any French or German, this did not help him much. Also, Michael was short-sighted. He had to wear thick glasses, that often steamed up as he went down the ski slope, so that he could hardly see where he was going. But he kept on practising and training, and in 1987 he entered the world ski-jumping championships in Obertsdorf. There were 98 competitors. Michael came 98th. The press started to call him "Eddie the Eagle". 

Eddie (as we will now call him) then asked the British Olympic Committee whether he could represent Britain in the ski-jumping event at the winter games in Calgary. There were no other British ski-jumpers. So the Committee agreed that he could go. He borrowed some skis, and set off for Calgary. In Calgary, Eddie was in competition with some of the finest ski-jumpers in the world. His best jump was 73.5 meters. To me, this seems a very long way to fly through the air with skis on one's feet. But top-class ski-jumpers regularly jump 200 meters and more. So Eddie did spectacularly badly in the Games, but he became one of the best known people in Calgary. Everyone laughed about him; and wondered whether he would be taken away in an ambulance after his next jump. He waved to the television cameras, and shouted "Hello Mum, it's me" before he set off down the ski slope. We British love a brave loser, so we loved Eddie. 

The International Olympic Committee, the men in suits who run the Olympic Games, did not find Eddie amusing however. They changed the rules to make it much more difficult for someone like him to compete in future Games. The International Olympic Committee must be some of the most boring people in the world. So, at the next Winter Olympics in 2010, there will be some magnificent ski-ing, but there will be no-one like Eddie the Eagle. 

New Year 

Wednesday 02 January 2008 

It is 2008. Happy New Year, everyone. What did you do during the Christmas and New Year holiday? How did you celebrate New Year? 

Traditionally in England, Christmas was our big winter celebration. Scotland was different. In Scotland, New Year was the more important celebration. On New Year's Eve, on 31 December, Scotsmen wore kilts, and had parties where they danced traditional Scottish dances and welcomed the New Year with bagpipes. And we English? What did we do? Well, we either watched television programmes about Scottish people having a great party on New Year's Eve; or we went to bed early. 

But it isn't like that today. The Scots still party on New Year's Eve, but so do we in England. The Scots still have a huge street party in Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland, with bands and singers and fireworks. But so do we in many cities in England. In London, for example, 700,000 people watched a great fireworks display on the river Thames. Of course, not everyone went to a New Year's Eve party. But many of those who stayed at home watched other people having a party on television. Millions of people watched the London fireworks on television, for example. It is as if we all want to be part of a big national New Year's Eve party. 

Here are some other things which are typical of England at New Year. People visit friends and relatives. They go for walks in the country, or in the parks in towns. Some brave folk go for a swim in the sea or a river on New Year's Day. People read books, or go to football matches, or write thank-you letters for the gifts they received at Christmas. Travelling at during the holiday is a particular adventure. There are traffic jams on the roads, and long queues at the airports, and our railway system is in chaos, because Christmas and New Year is the time when major engineering works take place. And we go shopping. 

Traditionally, all the big stores had sales in January. They cut the prices of many of the things they sold, especially things like winter clothes or goods which they had not managed to sell for Christmas. There were lots of special offers, and people used to queue all night outside some of the stores, in order to get to the bargains first when the store opened. So what is different today? Only that the sales now begin immediately after Christmas. Indeed some stores begin their sales before Christmas Day. And now we can hunt for bargains on the internet as well as in the shops. The newspapers have reported that we British spent \u00a384m buying things on the internet on Christmas Day. 

But now it is January. The weather is dark and wet. The long Christmas and new Year holiday is over. It is time to go back to work. Time to lose some weight. Time to give up smoking. Time to pay our credit card bills. Happy New Year.