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Scott of the Antarctic

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 22:16:00 +0000

A famous photograph of Scott, writing in his journal, at the expedition base camp.

Do you know what “centenary” means? It means the 100-year anniversary of something. This week is the centenary of the arrival at the South Pole of the first British explorers , led by Captain Robert Scott.

The English word “Arctic” means the area of the world around the North Pole. The Arctic is not land, but sea – frozen sea. However, the South Pole is in the centre of an icy continent, Antarctica, and 100 years ago Antarctica was still largely unknown. There had been expeditions to explore some of the coastal areas, and some of these expeditions had ventured inland. But the centre of the continent, and the South Pole itself, was unexplored. No-one had ever been there.

Robert Scott was born in 1868. He joined the Royal Navy at the age of 13. Over the years, he rose in rank, and became an expert in naval torpedoes. In 1899, he heard that the Royal Geographical Society in London planned to send an expedition to Antarctica. Although he had no previous experience of Antarctica, he was enthusiastic about the challenges of the expedition, and he volunteered to lead it.

The expedition left for Antarctica in July 1901, and spent two years in the frozen continent. It did some very useful scientific work, and a group led by Scott travelled far into the interior of Antarctica, to a point only 750 kilometres from the South Pole itself. But the extreme cold forced the party to turn back, and they returned to their base a month later ill and exhausted. The expedition had come to Antarctica with very little experience of cold climates. The explorers had to learn how best to travel over the ice and snow. They had brought dogs with them to pull their sledges, but they did not understand how to use the dogs effectively. Scott concluded that, although dog sledges could be useful, the only way that men could reach the South Pole was on foot, pulling sledges containing food and tents behind them.

The British government then decided that Scott’s expedition in Antarctica was costing them too much money, so two ships were sent out in 1903 to bring the explorers back to Britain. Scott returned home a popular hero. He was promoted to the rank of captain, and was invited to visit the King. He quickly decided to make a second expedition to Antarctica, and that this time he would reach the Pole. It took a long time, however, to find the money for the expedition, and a suitable ship, and to recruit the right people to go with him.

Scott’s second Antarctic expedition set out in 1910. Things did not go well. On the way to Antarctica, Scott received news that the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was also on his way to the South Pole. Scott’s ship, the Terra Nova, became stuck in the ice for 3 weeks before it could reach land. He had brought ponies and motorised sledges with him to transport men and supplies, and a few dogs. One of the motorised sledges fell into the sea, as did several of the ponies. The ponies proved to be not very useful. Some of them died, and others had to be shot. Scott was now convinced that he was right – the only way to travel to the South Pole was to walk.

In November 1911, the journey south began. Over two months later, on 17 January 1912, Scott and four others at last reached the South Pole. They found a tent, and a Norwegian flag. Amundsen had beaten them. He had reached the Pole 5 weeks earlier. Scott’s party were heartbroken as they turned to go back to their base, 1300 kilometres away. The weather got worse and worse, and their supplies of food ran low. Cold and hunger sapped their strength. Two members of the party died on the journey. The remaining three men set up camp only 18 km from a depot where the expedition had left food and other supplies for them. They got no further, and all three died of cold on about 29 March.

Why did Amundsen win the race to the Pole? The main reason was that he had previously led an expedition to find a sea route through the North-West Passage, the frozen sea to the north of Canada. He had learned from the Inuit people of northern Canada that clothes made of animal skins were the only way to keep warm in very cold climates. He also learned how to use dogs to pull sledges, and the whole of his journey to the South Pole was accomplished with dogs. Scott had been wrong to think that the only way was to walk.

Nonetheless, Robert Scott remained a very popular national hero in Britain for many decades. Nowadays, experts are more critical of Scott’s failings, and about some of the decisions he took. But his courage, and the courage of his fellow explorers, is beyond doubt. We love brave, fearless heroes in England, particularly heroes who fail. Our national football team, and our tennis players, are just like Scott – brave, the best in the world, except that they don’t win.

File download (7:33 mins | 4 MB)

The New Pandas

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:23:00 +0000

One of the new pandas at Edinburgh Zoo, enjoying a snack of bamboo shoots.

This is a new Listen to English podcast, the first for a very long time. No, I am not dead, as some of you seem to think. Nor am I ill, nor have I run away to the Caribbean with a beautiful film star. I have simply been busy. (However, if you know any beautiful film stars who would like to run away with me, perhaps you could let me know).

This podcast is about pandas. I am sure you know what a panda looks like, even if you have never seen one. There is a picture on the website. You will see that a panda is a type of bear, with a white coat and big black patches round its eyes, that make it look like a teenage girl with too much eye make-up. Perhaps you think that pandas are sweet and cuddly. However, people who know about them say that they are in fact smelly and do not like being cuddled at all.

Pandas live in mountain areas of China, and their main food is bamboo shoots. Unfortunately, there has been a lot of pressure on their habitat in recent years, and the number of pandas living in the wild has fallen to about 3,000. In addition there are about 250 pandas in captivity, mainly in zoos in China. For many years, pandas were used by the government of China for diplomatic advantage. If the government of China liked you, they might give you a panda to live in one of your zoos. And if they really liked you, they might give you two pandas.

In 1958, London Zoo acquired a panda called Chi Chi. Chi Chi was about a year old at the time, and in his short life he had lived in China, and in zoos in Moscow, East Berlin and Frankfurt. An American Zoo wanted him, but the American government decided that Chi Chi was a communist, so they refused to let him enter the country. So Chi Chi came to London, and for the next 14 years he was the star attraction at London Zoo. Naturally, the Zoo wanted to find him a lady panda, hoping that the two pandas would breed. They borrowed a female panda called An An from a zoo in Moscow. However, Chi Chi and An An never really hit it off, and there were no panda cubs. The trouble is that a female panda is fertile for only about two days in a year. So if Mrs Panda has a headache on the important two days, or Mr Panda is asleep, or out playing football with his friends, there will be no baby pandas. Chi Chi died in 1972, and we were all very sad. If you go to the Natural History Museum in London, you can still see Chi Chi, stuffed, in one of the exhibition rooms. He looks as if he wished he had stayed in China.

But now we have new pandas. The government of Scotland has been very nice indeed to the government of China, and two lovely pandas – a male and a female – arrived in Edinburgh Zoo late last year. They live in a newly-built panda house, which cost about as much as a house for humans. For the moment, the two pandas are still settling in. They are living separately, but the zoo hopes to put them together in a few months time and, who knows, this time next year there may be a baby panda. Lots of people seem happy to pay and stand in a queue in the cold of winter to see the new pandas. This is good, because keeping pandas is expensive. The new pandas are not a free gift from China. Instead, Edinburgh Zoo is paying the Chinese government £645,000 a year in rent. In addition, the two pandas cost £70,000 a year to feed. They eat for 14 hours a day, and can consume 18,000 kilos of bamboo in a year. There is not a lot of bamboo in Scotland, so the Zoo needs to import bamboo from an organic farm in the Netherlands.

Is it worth the expense and trouble of bringing pandas to Scotland? Some scientists say that keeping pandas in zoos does not really help to protect pandas in the wild. They say that pandas are difficult to breed in captivity, and that the real problem is the loss of the pandas’ natural habitat in China. But others say that keeping pandas in zoos helps us to understand more about these beautiful and fascinating animals. And the people queuing at Edinburgh Zoo to see the pandas have no doubt at all that it is worth it.

Quiz :: How well did you understand the podcast?
The pandas arrive in Edinburgh ::

File download (6:16 mins | 3 MB)

The Scariest Day of the Year.

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 13:18:00 +0000

Some very scary Halloween pumpkins. Photo by Pedro J Ferreira/flickr

Today is 31 October, and it is the scariest day of the year. Do you know the verb “to scare”? If you scare someone, you frighten them, you make them afraid. So, “scary” means “frightening” and today is a special, scary sort of day, as I shall explain.

Today is Halloween. “Halloween” means “the evening of (that is, the day before) All Hallows Day”, and “All Hallows Day” is an old Christian festival which takes place on 1 November, when special prayers are said for people who have recently died. But Halloween is not a Christian festival. Its origin lies in pre-Christian Ireland. It was a festival to mark the end of the summer and the start of the cold days of winter. It was a time when the world of the spirits and the fairies and the ghosts touched our world, and special magical things might happen. And magical things are frightening. So Halloween is a special scary day!

Kevin and Joanne have invited all their friends to a Halloween party. They have put orange and black decorations in their sitting room. They have bought some pumpkins and scraped the flesh and the seeds out of them. They have cut scary faces on the pumpkins and put candles inside. The pumpkins now look like the picture which you can see on the website, or on your iPod screens. I am sure that you think that they are very frightening!

Of course, their friends will come to the party in fancy dress. That means that they will all dress like evil witches, or like ghosts, or like spiders or other scary things. They will paint their faces, or wear masks, to make themselves look even more scary. To add to the scary atmosphere, Kevin has borrowed a DVD of an old film called Dracula. The film was made in 1931, and is about Count Dracula, who is a scary man who drinks human blood at breakfast time instead of coffee. Some of the guests at the party will come dressed as Count Dracula, with long teeth so that they can bite the necks of other guests and drink their blood. Joanne has made a special drink, made out of red wine and blackcurrant juice, so that the guests at the party can look as if they are drinking human blood even if they aren’t!

Everyone will have great fun at the party. They will laugh at each other’s fancy dress. They will turn the lights out and pretend to be ghosts. They will watch the Dracula film and pretend to be scared. The men will do what they always do at parties – they will drink beer and talk about football. And the women will do what they always do at parties – they will sit in the kitchen and discuss each other’s husbands and boy-friends. (I find that bit really scary!) They will even find time to play some games, like ducking for apples. This is a traditional game at this time of year. You get a large tub of water and float some apples on the top. Each guest has to kneel in front of the tub of water, with a blindfold so that they cannot see, and with their hands behind their backs, and try to get one of the apples out of the water with their teeth. Everyone will get very wet, and their special scary makeup will run.

Unfortunately, Kevin and Joanne have not invited me to their party. I shall have to stay at home and try to be scared by myself. During the evening, the doorbell will ring. I will open the door and see a group of rather small witches and ghosts standing outside. I will of course be very scared, until I see that they are actually some of the children who live nearby. They are “trick-or-treating” (or “guising” as people say in Scotland). They go from house to house asking for “treats” such as sweets or biscuits. If you don’t give them any, they will do evil magic to hurt you. And if you do give them some sweets or biscuits, the witches and ghosts will shout “Thanks, mister” and run off to ring the doorbell next door.

Now you know all about the crazy festival called Halloween. I hope you have a really scary time tonight.

File download (5:49 mins | 3 MB)

Greyfriars Bobby

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 17:09:00 +0000

Tourists from all over the world come to be photographed beside the statue of Greyfriars Bobby, outside Greyfriars Church in Edinburgh.

In the podcast today, we will talk about “fact” and “fiction”. A “fact” is something which is true; something which I, or someone else, can prove to be true. For instance, it is a fact that the earth is round.

And “fiction” is the opposite of fact. It means something which is invented, something which is made up something which comes from the imagination. In a bookshop, you will find a section called “fiction”. This is where you can buy novels, books of short stories and so on. Another section of the bookshop will be called “non-fiction”. This is where you can buy biographies, and books about cooking or gardening, books to help you play golf better, and books about learning English.

Now lets go to Edinbugh, the capital city of Scotland. Edinburgh is an old and beautiful city, full of fascinating places to visit. One of these is a church called Greyfriars Kirk. “Kirk” is a Scottish word for “church”. The church is built on land which was once a Franciscan monastery. The Franciscan monks wore grey clothing, hence the name “Greyfriars”. Greyfriars Kirk played an important part in the history of Scotland in the 17th century, and was a centre for Protestant opposition to the king. However, the reason that thousands of people visit Greyfriars Kirk every year has nothing to do with 17th century history. No, the visitors come to see a little statue of a dog, called Greyfriars Bobby.

Bobby belonged to a man called John Gray (or “auld Jock” as he was commonly known.) Auld Jock was a night watchman, and Bobby went with him everywhere. Then, in 1858 Auld Jock died of tuberculosis. He was buried in the churchyard of Greyfriars Kirk. For the next 14 years, Bobby sat beside his master's grave waiting for him to return, until at last in 1872 Bobby himself died. Soon after that, a wealthy lady paid for a statue to commemorate the dog, and tourists have come to visit the place ever since. There have been books and a film about Greyfriars Bobby, and in Edinburgh you can buy all sorts of Greyfriars Bobby souvenirs. Bobby is indeed one of the most famous dogs in the world.

What do you think about this story? Perhaps you find the story of Greyfriars Bobby very moving. Perhaps there are tears running down your cheeks as you think of the poor little dog waiting for his master who never returned. Or perhaps you are thinking, “What a stupid dog! Why didn't he go away and chase cats or chew bones or do other things that make a dog happy?”

Or perhaps you are wondering, “Is the story of Greyfriars Bobby true? Is it fact or fiction?” Unfortunately for the tourist industry of Edinburgh, there are reasons to think that it may be fiction. Jan Bondeson of Cardiff University has recently published a book about Greyfriars Bobby. Jan thinks that Bobby was a stray dog and that the man who looked after the graveyard invented the story about Bobby sitting beside his master's grave. People in 19th century Britain were often rather sentimental, and a stories like Greyfriars Bobby appealed to them. The man who looked after the churchyard used to tell the story to visitors, and the visitors would put their hands in their pockets and pull out a few coins to give to him. The owner of a nearby restaurant and other local businessmen helped to spread the story, in order to encourage more visitors to come. When the original “Bobby” died (probably in 1867), they even found another dog to take his place. In other words, Mr Bondeson thinks that the story of Greyfriars Bobby was a publicity stunt by the Edinburgh tourist industry.

So, fact or fiction? I cannot possibly say what I think. Scottish history is full of romantic stories. Wealthy American tourists who imagine that they have Scottish ancestors believe these stories – all of them. The Scottish tourist industry depends on them. It is one of the unwritten laws of our country that English people like me are not allowed to say that a Scottish story, no matter how implausible, is not true. So, if you want to believe that Greyfriars Bobby sat for 14 years beside his master's grave, you can believe it. I am not going to stop you.

The Greyfriars Bobby website :: the traditional tale of Greyfriars Bobby.

File download (6:19 mins | 3 MB)

Swimming in the River Thames

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 14:57:00 +0000

The River Thames at Lechlade. The swans are waiting to attack David Walliams as he swims past.

Listen to English has had a long summer break, but now I am back with a few more podcasts to help you improve your English listening skills.

I want to remind you of two words – “along” and “across”. I have a friend who lives in a house on the other side of the road where I live. If I want to visit her, I walk across the road – from my side of the road to her side of the road. On my road, there is a postbox. It is about 300 metres from my house. If I want to post a letter, I walk along the road to the postbox – I walk from one end of the road, where I live, to the other end, where the postbox is.

So, “across” means from one side to the other; “along” means from one end to the other. Note that “across” and “along” are prepositions – you need to put a noun after them. You need to say “across the road”, or “along the railway line” or “across the field”, not just “along” or “across”.

Now lets meet David Walliams. He is a comedian on TV. He appears in a show called Little Britain, which is one of those TV shows which you either love or you hate. It has a very English sense of humour. In the show, David Walliams and his co-star Matt Lucas often dress up in women's clothes and say “We're ladies!” You don't find that very funny, do you? Like I said, the humour is very English.

David Walliams has recently been swimming in the River Thames, and we have been watching him do it on television. If you have visited London, you will have seen the Thames. It is not a big river, like the Rhine or the Nile, because Britain is an island, which means that our rivers are short and small. What is remarkable about swimming in the Thames? It isn't far from one side to the other. You could probably swim across the Thames in a few minutes.

But wait, I did not say that David Walliams swam across the river Thames. No, he swam along the river Thames. He started in the little town of Lechlade, near the source of the river, and swam from there to Westminster Bridge in London. The total distance was 140 miles, or 225 kilometers. It was a “sponsored swim” to raise money for a charity which helps poor and disadvantaged people in many parts of the world.

His swim involved some interesting adventures. The water was cold. On the second day, he became ill with diarrhoea and almost had to give up. He was attacked by a swan, who clearly did not like this strange creature invading his home. An enthusiastic dog decided to join David in his swim, and David had to rescue it. Near London, the Thames becomes a tidal river – in other words, water flows up the river from the sea twice a day and then flows back again. At some times of the day there are strong currents which make swimming dangerous. But perhaps the worst thing to happen was a heavy rain storm. When there is heavy rain in London, the sewers are unable to handle all the water, and the water company has to pump raw sewage straight into the river. And David found that he was swimming in – well, you can imagine what he was swimming in.

However, 8 days later, David arrived in London to a hero's welcome. He had raised over £1 million for his charity. This is not his first long-distance swim – he has already swum the Channel (the sea between England and France). But, of course he swam across the Channel, not along it. David says that he has done enough swimming for the moment. I think he deserves a rest.

Guardian report and video ::

File download (5:14 mins | 2 MB)

I Go Without my Breakfast

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 16:35:00 +0000

This is Evan. He has a croissant and a cup of coffee for breakfast.

Today’s podcast is about breakfast. Probably most people think of “breakfast” as the meal you eat at the beginning of the day, when you first wake up. However, it is more complicated than that.

First, let’s look at what the word “breakfast” really means. As you probably know, the word “fast” has several, completely different meanings in English. One of the meanings of “fast” is a period when you do not have any food to eat. So, for example, Muslims fast during the month of Ramadan – they do not eat anything between sunrise and sunset. A “breakfast” is, literally, a meal which you eat at the end of a period of fasting. When you eat breakfast, you break – or end – your fast.

When I get up in the morning, I have not had anything to eat since about 7 o’clock the night before. Now that is not a very long fast – perhaps 12 hours, but not more. However, the meal which we eat first thing in the morning breaks our overnight fast, so we call it “breakfast”.

What do you eat for breakfast? I have a bowl of muesli with milk, two pieces of toast with marmalade, and two cups of coffee. Some people go for a run first thing in the morning, and then have a breakfast of fruit and orange juice. They are slim and fit and healthy and they make me feel guilty so I do not like them. Other people have no breakfast at all – they do not eat until the middle of the day. Nutritionists tell us that it is not a good idea to go without breakfast, because your concentration is poor if you have not had anything to eat. Other people eat huge breakfasts, with fried eggs and bacon, sausages, mushrooms and fried bread. In hotels and restaurants, a big cooked breakfast is called an “English breakfast”. Actually, very few English people eat a cooked breakfast every day. We do not have time. We are in a hurry to catch the bus or the train and get to work.

I am very interested in breakfast today, because I have not had any! The doctor has the silly idea that I may have too much cholesterol in my blood. So, later today, I have to go to have a blood test. The nurse will stick an enormous needle into my arm, and take out several litres of blood, and send the blood away to a laboratory to be tested. The laboratory will of course send back a report to say that my blood cholesterol is absolutely wonderful, and that they have never seen such magnificent blood before. But – and this is the terrible bit – the blood test is what the doctor calls a “fasting blood test”. That means that I must not eat anything for at least 12 hours before the test. So, no breakfast. Now, it would be sensible to have a fasting blood test early in the morning, so that I do not have to wait a long time to have something to eat. However, the nurse who takes the blood tests only works in the afternoon, so I cannot eat anything until about 3 o’clock. You have no idea how terrible this is. It is the middle of the morning, and I am hungry, really hungry. I cannot stop thinking about breakfast. Surely a very little bowl of muesli and one slice of toast with no marmalade would be OK. Surely a very small breakfast would not ruin the blood test. However, the nurse who does the blood tests is big and fierce, and so I stay hungry.

And now the telephone rings. It is the receptionist at the doctor’s surgery. She is very sorry, but the fierce nurse who does the blood tests is unwell and cannot come to work today. Please can she re-arrange the blood test for another day. How do I feel? What is my reaction to this news? First, of course, I am relieved. I can eat my breakfast! I do not have to fast until the middle of the afternoon. But I am also annoyed. Why? Because I will have to go without my breakfast on another day in a few weeks time.

Finally, I have an English expression for you to learn. I have talked about people who “go without” their breakfast, or “do without” their breakfast. If you “do without” something, or “go without” something, you decide that you do not need it – perhaps because you do not have time, or you do not have enough money. Here are some more things you might “do without”.

If you do not have enough money, you might have to do without new clothes or shoes.

If you are very busy at work, you might go without your normal lunch break.

If you feel tired and unwell, you might decide to do without your normal trip to the cinema, and go to bed early instead.

And if the blood test tells me that I have too much cholesterol in my blood, I might have to do without butter, and cheese, and chocolate, or all sorts of other nice things to eat. I might even have to go for a run first thing in the morning, and eat fruit and drink orange juice for breakfast. It is too awful to think about!

File download (7:03 mins | 3 MB)

Good manners, bad manners

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 13:40:00 +0000

This young lady has good manners. She will have no problems with her future mother-in-law.

We have a saying in English “Manners maketh man”. “Maketh” is an old form of “makes” or “make”. So the expression means that, if you want to be a real man, you have to have good manners.

“Manners” means the way that you behave to other people, particularly in public. If you have good manners you are polite and courteous. You remember to say “please” and “thank you”. You make people feel welcome and at ease. And if you have bad manners you are rude and discourteous. You say unpleasant things to people. You make them feel unwelcome and upset.

If someone has good manners, we can say that they are “well mannered”; and if they have bad manners, we can say that they are “bad mannered” or “ill mannered”.

Now let's meet Heidi Withers. She is 28 years old and works as a personal assistant in a company in London. She is engaged to be married to her boy-friend, Freddie Bourne. Freddie runs a business that sells bicycles and parts for bicycles on the internet. Recently, Heidi and Freddie went to visit Freddie's father and step-mother, who live in Devon in the south-west of England. Most people are nervous about their first meeting with their future father-in-law and mother-in-law. Most people would be polite and well mannered. They would try to create a good impression. Maybe Heidi tried to do these things. However, it did not work. Freddie's step mother, Carolyn Bourne, thought that Heidi was rude and bad mannered.

After the end of the visit, Carolyn thought that it was important to tell Heidi about her bad manners. She said to herself, “If I don't tell her, she will never know.” So she sent Heidi an e-mail. “?It is high time someone explained to you about good manners,” she started, “because it is obvious that you don't have any”.

She went on to talk about some of the terrible things that Heidi did:

Heidi stayed in bed too long.

Heidi complained about the food.

At meals, Heidi started eating before other people.

Heidi made jokes about Freddie's family.

Heidi did not send Carolyn a card to thank her for her hospitality.

Carolyn also had things to say about Heidi's plans for her wedding. Heidi and Freddie plan to get married in a castle. Carolyn does not think that this is a good idea. ? She wrote, “No one gets married in a castle unless they own it. It is brash, celebrity style behaviour.” Carolyn thinks that, because Heidi's parents do not have a lot of money, it would be better for Heidi and Freddie to have a smaller, less expensive wedding.

What would you do if your future mother-in-law sent you an e-mail like this? Perhaps you would burst into tears. Perhaps you would send a reply to say how sorry you were about your behaviour and how very much you wanted to have a good relationship with your husband's family. Heidi did not do this. Instead, she sent copies of the e-mail to her friends. And her friends sent the e-mail to their friends. And a few days later, the story was on lots of websites and in the newspapers, and we were all talking about it. Heidi's father told the newspapers that Carolyn was haughty and arrogant. (Actually, he said some rather ruder things than that, but it would not be polite to repeat them on a respectable website like Listen to English). Freddie's mother, and Heidi's friends, and all sorts of other people, told the newspapers what they thought. Only Freddie, Heidi's boyfriend, was sensible enough to keep quiet.

What do you think? Who has the worse manners – Heidi or Carolyn? And will Carolyn be invited to the wedding, and will there be a fight if she goes? It is all very exciting!

File download (5:16 mins | 2 MB)

Spotting Tigers

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 13:13:00 +0000

nutmeg66/flickr spotted these spotted ladybirds. She calls the photo “Spot the difference!” (ie “Look and try to see the difference!”)

In today's podcast, we are going to talk about spots and spotting!

If you look up the word “spot” in a dictionary, you will see that it has two meanings – two completely different meanings. First, a “spot” can be a mark, normally a small mark, roughly circular in shape. Look at the picture at the top of the webpage or on your iPod screen. It is a picture of some insects which in English we call ladybirds. There are three ladybirds, and they all have spots on them. But they are different colours, and they each have a different number of spots, which makes the photo so unusual and interesting.

Here are some more spots. A leopard has spots, and a handkerchief can have spots. In detective thrillers on the television, a spot of blood is sometimes the clue which helps the detective to catch the killer. And we can use “spot” to mean a place – a “beauty spot” is a beautiful place, perhaps with trees and a stream and a view towards the mountains; and thousands of people then come to visit the “beauty spot” and ruin it!

But “spot” can be a verb as well. To spot something means to see something, normally to see something which is difficult to see, something which most people would not see. For example, the person who took the photograph of the ladybirds “spotted” the ladybirds – most people would not have seen the twig with three different sorts of ladybird, but she did. If you like playing with words, you could say that she spotted the spotted ladybirds. (A play on words is called a “pun” in English, and because there are so many words in English that sound the same or nearly the same, puns are an important part of English humour. It is one of the reasons why foreigners find us so puzzling!)

When I was about 12 – many years ago – I used to take a notebook and a pencil and stand on the platform of a railway station in the middle of Manchester to watch the trains. I carefully wrote down the number of every railway engine that came past, with information about when I had seen it, and which engine shed it came from. I was a train spotter. By the time I was 14, I stopped being a train spotter. I had spotted girls, and they were much more interesting than trains. You can still see train spotters on the platforms of stations today. They are generally men in anoraks and trainers who still live at home with their mothers.

If you don't want to be a train spotter, you can be a bird spotter instead. You can go out into the country with a pair of binoculars, and a packet of sandwiches for lunch, to try to spot some really interesting or unusual birds. Or you can be an insect spotter. The woman who took the photo of the ladybirds is an insect spotter – there are some wonderful photographs of insects in her flickr photo stream. Or you can be a plane spotter, and take photographs of planes taking off and landing at airports. If you plane spot near military airfields, however, the police will start to be very interested in you, so be careful!

Here are some more things you can spot. You are standing in a crowded street. You are waiting for your friend. You look anxiously at all the people who are hurrying past to see if you can see him. Then you spot your friend in a crowd of people on the other side of the road. Or maybe you are in an exam. One of the exam questions is really hard. You sit and chew the end of your pencil. Then suddenly you spot the answer, and happily you write it down. Most of your friends fail to spot the answer, but you get full marks in the exam.

I spotted this story in the newspaper recently. A man in Hampshire in the south of England spotted a tiger. It was lying down in the grass so that you could hardly see it. No, it was not a spotted tiger – tigers have stripes, not spots. It is quite unusual to see a tiger in Hampshire because, well, there are no tigers in England. So the man did what English people always do when something strange or alarming happens – he phoned the police. And the police thought “Well, we had better look into this. It might be a tiger which has escaped from a zoo. And tigers are dangerous, and we the Hampshire police force need to protect the public from dangerous things like tigers.”

So the police sent a helicopter to look for the tiger. They also made preparations to close a nearby motorway and to evacuate people from their homes. Then a message came from the helicopter pilot. He had spotted the tiger. It was sitting still in some long grass, just like the man had said. The helicopter pilot decided to get closer to the tiger to see what it was doing. And as he did so, the down draught from the helicopter made the tiger fall over. This was really strange, because a real tiger would not do that. It would get up and walk away. It was not a tiger at all, of course. It was a toy tiger – a life-sized stuffed toy tiger. The police have asked the owner to come to the police station to claim it. I wonder if anyone has done so.

File download (7:01 mins | 3 MB)

Domesday

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Wed, 18 May 2011 10:20:00 +0000

A page from the Domesday Book

In March, I recorded a podcast about the census in this country – that is, the counting of everyone who lives here. Today's podcast is also about a census – the very first census to take place England.

In the year 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, defeated King Harold at the Battle of Hastings, and became King of England. It was one of the most important events in English history. It completely changed the way of government in England, and it had a big effect on the English language.

After a number of years as king, William became dissatisfied. He felt that he did not know enough about his new kingdom. Like all kings and governments, he was hungry for information. He did not know exactly how much land his nobles owned – indeed, he did not really know how much land he himself owned. More important, he could not work out how much tax his subjects should pay, or how many men could be made to become soldiers in time of war.

In 1085, he decided to find the answers to these questions. He sent trusted officials to every part of the country, to ask who owned which land, and how much they owned; how many ploughs they had to cultivate the land, and how many animals such as cows and sheep there were; how many serfs (unfree men) they had, and how many slaves; and how many corn mills and fisheries there were.

Compare this list of questions with the questions in the 2011 census, which I talked about in my earlier podcast. They are in many ways very similar questions. In 1086, King William wanted to know how many sheep I had. In 2011, the government wants to know how many bedrooms I have in my house and whether it has central heating.

King William's census was completed the following year. It covered most, but not all of England. A scribe then carefully copied the details of the census for each place in England onto parchment made out of sheep skin, and made them into a book (well, two books actually). For hundreds of years, the books were important legal documents. If there was a dispute about land ownership, for example, or about how much tax should be paid, the court would look at what the census said. It was impossible to argue with the book. For that reason, it became known as the Domesday Book. “Domesday” means the Judgement Day, when in traditional Christian thinking we shall all be judged on the lives we have led, and there will be no arguing with the court on Judgement Day!

The Domesday Book is one of the most remarkable documents in Europe. Nowhere else has such a detailed early record of land ownership. The Domesday Book is in the National Archives in Kew, near London, but it is now too fragile to display. However, all of the information in it is available online, and you can buy copies of any of the pages which you are particularly interested in. (However, unless you know Latin you will be unable to understand it!)

Let us now jump forward about 900 years, to the mid-1980s. The BBC was at that time very interested in the development of computing and in what we nowadays call “multi-media” technology. (“Multi-media” technology means, roughly, using computers to store and manipulate pictures, videos, text, music etc). The BBC, for example, made and sold their own computer, and for many families in Britain, the very first computer they had in their homes was a BBC computer.

The BBC decided to launch a new Domesday project. It asked schools and community groups all over Britain to write short articles and take photographs about everyday life in Britain, particularly about things which would be interesting to people 1,000 years from now. It divided the whole country into blocks, 3km by 4km, and it linked the articles and photographs to these blocks, so that it would be possible to find information about every place in Britain. Over a million people took part, in one way or another. Altogether, they sent the BBC more than 140,000 pages of text and 23, 000 photographs.

And then the BBC made a great mistake. King William had a scribe to write his Domesday book onto parchment with a pen and ink, and we can still read what he wrote hundreds of years later. The BBC put the information about the new Domesday project onto things called “laser discs”. Have you ever heard of laser discs? No, I haven't either. Within a few years, technology had moved on, and no-one had a computer which could read laser discs.

Happily, however, the BBC has recently completed the task of transferring everything in its Domesday survey onto a website. You can find little articles and photographs about almost everywhere in Britain in the mid-1980s. And now the BBC have invited us to send in new photographs and articles for the website so that we can see what has changed in the last 25 years.

Quiz : how well did you understand the podcast? ::

File download (7:08 mins | 3 MB)

The Grauniad

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Tue, 10 May 2011 14:28:00 +0000

The Guardian newspaper today.

In today's podcast, we are going to talk about a birthday, and learn the English words for some of the things which you may find in a newspaper.

First, the birthday. 190 years ago, on 5 May 1821, people in Manchester were able to buy the first edition of a new newspaper, the Manchester Guardian. It was a weekly newspaper, though it became a daily a few years later. It had 4 pages, and it cost 7 old pence (see the podcast on Old Money, New Money which explains what “old pence” were.) Seven pence was very expensive, but the high price was because there was a tax on newspapers. In fact, the government took 4 pence in tax for every copy sold.

Coincidentally, 5 May 1821 was also the day when the French Emperor Napoleon died, in exile on the British island of St Helena in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. But the new Manchester Guardian did not report this important event, because the news that Napoleon had died took several weeks to reach Europe. Instead, the front page of the new newspaper carried a notice asking for information about a lost dog.

In fact, until 50 or 60 years ago, it was normal for serious newspapers to have advertisements and notices on their front page, and news stories inside. It was only in 1952 that the Manchester Guardian started to print news stories on the front page. The editor of the paper did not like the change, but the paper's owners thought that the newspaper needed to be more up-to-date.

As well as news, most newspapers contain editorials – that is, articles where the editor of the paper or his staff tell us what they think about important issues and events. The Manchester Guardian generally supported liberal and progressive policies in its editorials. This was in contrast to most of the other serious newspapers in Britain, which supported moderate or right-wing policies.

The Manchester Guardian became famous for typographical errors – or “typos” as we sometimes call them. Sometimes, there were sentences where the letters were so mixed up that it was impossible to understand them. People made fun of the typos by calling the paper the “Grauniad” (which is “Guardian” with the letters mixed up). Unfortunately, modern technology means that there are many fewer typographical errors today than there used to be, but you can relive the good old days in the quiz attached to this podcast, where there are some typographical errors for you to decipher.

In 1959, the paper dropped “Manchester” from its title and became simply “The Guardian”. And in 1976, it moved its headquarters from Manchester to London. The paper believed that it could not be a proper national newspaper unless it was in London. Nowadays, unfortunately, London dominates the political and cultural life of England, and it seems that few important things happen anywhere else. (Scotland however is different. Scotland has a life of its own!).

I read the Guardian every day. My parents used to read it too, in the days when it was still the Manchester Guardian. I read the news stories, both the national news and the international news. There is also a section of financial news, and of course there are the sports pages. There are advertisements for jobs, and a section called “Lonely Hearts” with little advertisements from people who are looking for partners. (I see that there is a lady who is looking for a charming and mature man in his 40s. I would reply, but I think my wife might object).

Then there is an important section called “Comment and Debate” which contains articles about politics, and a page of letters from readers. There are obituaries, which means articles about the lives of people who have died recently. And of course there are reviews – of new books, films, plays and music. Some people go straight to the crossword . There are in fact two crosswords in the Guardian, an easy one and a cryptic crossword. In a cryptic crossword, the clues are indirect and often play with the different meanings which English words can have. If I can solve two or three of the clues in the cryptic crossword, I think I am doing well.

However, my very favourite bit of the Guardian, the bit that I turn to first every morning, is the Sudoku. Sudoku is a Japanese puzzle where you have to fit the right numbers into a grid of squares. Ten years ago, no-one in Britain had ever heard of Sudoku. Then suddenly, almost overnight, Sudoku arrived. Today, all our newspapers have Sudoku puzzles, but the Guardian Sudoku is definitely the best.

If you have to wait a long time for the next podcast, it will be because I have found a particularly difficult and interesting Sudoku to solve.|

File download (6:56 mins | 3 MB)

A Nice Cup of Tea

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 18:22:00 +0000

A nice cup of tea. Photo by James Shade/flickr

That was Miss Binnie Hale, singing a song called ‘A Nice Cup of Tea', which she recorded 70 years ago, in 1941.

We British love tea. We drink more tea per head of population than any other country in the world, except for Ireland. If you go to the Tea Council website, you will see a counter at the top of the page which shows how many cups of tea we have drunk so far today. By the end of the day, the counter will reach 165 million – that is three cups of tea per person per day. Coffee has become more popular in Britain in recent years, but even today we drink more than twice as much tea as coffee.

However, tea drinking is not an old tradition in Britain. We made our first cup of tea sometime in the middle of the 17th century. We found that we liked it, that it refreshed us and made us strong and happy, and we have continued drinking tea ever since. In the 19th century, tea became popular among working-class people, and it has remained the favourite drink of ordinary British people ever since. And it is well-known that the Queen likes a nice cup of tea, as well.

Tea drinking has a much longer history in China, where people have drunk tea for thousands of years. But British tea is not pale and delicate like tea in China. It has a rich brown colour and a strong taste. Nearly everyone in Britain puts milk in their tea, and about a third of people add sugar to make the tea sweet. (Yukk! I cannot stand tea with sugar!) It is well known that no-one outside Britain knows how to make tea properly. When we British go on holiday in, for example, France or Spain, and we ask for a cup of tea in a hotel or cafe, the waiter brings us a cup of lukewarm water and a tea bag on the end of a piece of string. This is wrong, completely wrong, and in the interests of international harmony and understanding I shall now explain how to make a nice cup of tea, British style.

First, you put some water in a kettle and put it on the stove to boil. When it is nearly boiling, you pour a small amount of the hot water into a tea-pot, and swill it round, and pour it out again. This warms the tea pot. Then you put tea or tea bags into the tea pot. How much tea? Well, my mother used to say that you should put in one teabag for each person, plus one for the pot. So, if you are making tea for two people, you should put three teabags into the pot. Then you pour boiling water onto the tea, and let the tea stand for about three minutes. If you have milk in your tea, put the milk in the cup first and pour the tea onto the milk, not the other way round. After you have poured the tea, and offered sugar to those strange people who like sweet tea, you should pour some more boiling water into the tea pot. Why? Because the one thing which is nicer than a nice cup of tea is another nice cup of tea.

We use the word “nice” all the time in spoken English. “It's nice weather today. Did you have a nice time on holiday? It was so nice of you to come and visit us. Did you meet Jane's mother? She is such a nice person. Please sit down. I'll make us a nice cup of tea.”

In fact, “nice” is probably the most overused word in the English language. We use it so much that it has become almost meaningless. It is a good idea to find other words to use instead of “nice”, if you can.

Did you notice something else about the song at the beginning of the podcast? I am talking about the names of different meals. “At half past eleven, my idea of heaven is a nice cup of tea,” sings Binnie. We have a special word in English for a snack in the middle of the morning, which you will hear sometimes, though it is now a bit old-fashioned – ‘elevenses', because of course we have our snack at about eleven o'clock.

After elevenses, Binnie has her next cup of tea with her dinner. Until perhaps 30 years ago, most working people in Britain had their main meal in the middle of the day. They called it “dinner”, and many older people still do. Later in the day, people had a light meal at five or six o'clock and they called it “tea”. And, like Binnie, they had a cup of tea with their tea!

Today, most people have a light meal in the middle of the day – perhaps a sandwich and an apple, which they eat at their desk in the office. We call this meal “lunch”. People eat their main meal of the day in the evening, when they get home from work, and they call this meal “supper”. “Dinner” nowadays means a formal evening meal for a special occasion, where we dress up in smart clothes, and have nice food and wine and candles!

So, a lot has changed since Binnie Hale recorded her song seventy years ago. But a nice cup of tea is still a nice cup of tea! I am going to make one now.

Some quizes and other activities about tea. :: Thanks to Renee Maufroid

File download (8:11 mins | 4 MB)

The launch

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 19:32:00 +0000

Launch of the liner Kenya Castle at Harland and Wolff, Belfast, in 1951.

Last weekend I visited Belfast, the largest city in Northern Ireland. When I was a child, I lived in Belfast for several years, and the reason for my visit was a re-union of the pupils who – many years ago – were in the same class at school as I was. They all looked so old – but not me of course.

You probably know about the problems in Northern Ireland between the Catholic and Protestant communities, but if you get an opportunity to visit, you should definitely go. It is a very attractive place, and the people are very welcoming. Belfast is an old industrial city, with some fine buildings and a beautiful position beside the sea. It has a long history of shipbuilding. At one time, the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast was the largest shipyard in the world. The most famous Belfast-built ship was Titanic, a huge liner which hit an iceberg and sank during its first voyage across the Atlantic in 1912.

Today's podcast, inspired by the Belfast shipyards, is about the word “launch”. “Launch” means to send something from the land into the sea. The traditional way of building a ship was to build it on dry land close to the sea. When the hull of the ship was finished, the ship was “launched” – that is, the ship slipped or was pulled from the land into the sea for the first time. There is a picture on the website of a ship being launched in Belfast in the early 1950s. It was normal to have a special celebration when a new ship was launched. The owners of the new ship would invite a Very Important Person to perform the launch ceremony. The Very Important Person would say something like “I name this ship ‘Podcast'. God bless her and all that sail in her”. He, or she, would then break a bottle of champagne on the bow (that is, the front) of the ship; and the ship would slide gracefully into the water. The Very Important Person and the owners of the shipyard and of the new ship would then go and have a nice lunch. If the management of the shipyard was feeling kind, there would be beer for the shipyard workers too.

There are a few things to note in what I have just said. First, in English we have two special ways of talking about things which happened many times in the past, like the launching of a ship. First, we can say “used to..”, and I made a podcast about “used to..” in May 2006. But instead we can use the word “would”, like I did when I was talking about launching a ship. “The owners of the ship would invite a Very Important Person.. The Very Important Person would break a bottle of champagne over the bows of the ship… The ship would slip into the water..” and so on.

Second, I am sure that you noticed that the Very Important Person who was launching the ship said, “God bless her and all who sail in her.” Ships are “she/her” in English, not “it”. Don't ask me why because I don't know.

And finally, I know that some of you – particularly if French is your first language – find it difficult to hear the difference between a long “ee” sound and a short “i” sound in English. So the word “slipping” sounds the same as “sleeping”. Here are a few examples of long “ee” and short “i” for you to practice:

“heat” – “hit”
“seat” – “sit”
“feet” – “fit”
“reach” – “rich”
“sheep” – “ship”

Now lets get back to the word “launch”. Ships are not the only things that you can launch. You can launch a rocket or a space ship, for example. And we can use “launch” figuratively as well.

For example, one of the clients of the company where Kevin works has produced a new sort of washing powder. It is in fact the same as the old washing powder, but it smells different, and it has a new name and new packaging. The company wants everyone to know about their wonderful new washing powder, so it buys lots of advertising time on television and has a special “buy-one-get-one-free” offer for the first two months. We can talk about the company “launching” the new washing powder, and about its “launch offer”.

Sarah has just written a novel. It has taken her about 10 years. Her friends are pleased that the book is now finished, because they were very bored of Sarah telling them about it all the time. Sarah's publishers want to get some good publicity for the book, so they organise a “launch party” to launch the book. They invite journalists, and other authors, and people who write book reviews, and a few minor celebrities who are always happy to go anywhere where there are free drinks. Sarah talks to the guests about her new book, and the guests all say how wonderful it is. Unfortunately, it is not a very successful book launch – the book shops have sold only 153 copies of Sarah's book, and you can now buy it for half price!

And a final example. Joanne is angry because the local authority want to close the public library near her home. She decides to launch a campaign to make them change their mind. She contacts other people who use the library; she writes letters to the newspapers and she organises a public meeting.

And that it all about “launch”. In the next podcast, I will tell you how to make a nice cup of tea. Until then, goodbye.

File download (8:27 mins | 4 MB)

How many of us are there?

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 17:39:00 +0000

A postman delivering a census form. The forms have been sent to every household in the country.

Let's start today's podcast by looking at the title – “How many of us are there?” The title is asking a question – “How many people are there in Britain?” But instead of talking about “people in Britain”, I have used a pronoun – “us”. And when we use a pronoun after “how many” or “how much”, we have to use the little word “of” as well. So “How many of us are there?” – not “how many us are there?”

Here are some more examples. Suppose that you and a group of friends go to the cinema. You go to the ticket desk to buy the tickets, but you are not sure how many tickets you need to buy. So, you shout to your friends, who are busy buying popcorn, “How many of us are there?” One of your friends counts, and shouts “Six”. So you buy six tickets.

Imagine a class of children at school. They are doing a project about how they travel to school each day. The teacher asks “How many of you come to school on the bus? How many of you walk to school?”

And finally, two small boys are collecting cards with pictures of famous footballers on them. The cards are free inside packets of sweets. There are 50 different cards, with 50 different footballers, altogether. “I have got 20 different players”, says one boy. “How many of them have you got?”

Once every 10 years since 1801, our government has carried out a census of people in Britain, so that it can count how many of us there are. The first British census wanted only very simple information, such as how many people there were altogether, and whether the population was increasing or not. It counted how many young men there were, because young men could be made to become soldiers or sailors in a time of war. Government officials went to every part of the country, to count how many houses there were, and how many people lived in each house, how old they were and what occupations they had. They counted the number of baptisms, marriages and deaths in church records. They concluded that there were 8.87 million of us; plus further number of perhaps half a million soldiers. sailors and convicts whom the census had been unable to count.

Our latest census has just started. It will count the number of people in the country on 27 March 2011. Instead of government officials visiting each house, the government have sent a form to each household. The form is 32 pages long. It asks how many people stayed in the house overnight on 27 March, and how many of them lived there permanently, and how many were visitors. It asks about family relationships, dates of birth and what jobs people do. It asks where we were born, what nationality we are, and what educational qualifications we have. The government also wants to know how we travel to work, whether we speak English as our first language, and if not how good our English is. There are questions, too, about our house – what sort of house is it? how many bedrooms does it have? who owns it? and what sort of central heating is there?

Some of the questions in the census are controversial. One asks “How would you describe your national identity?" We can choose whether we would describe ourselves as British, or English, or Scots, or Welsh or something else. The form has a space where we can write in our own description of our national identity if we wish. If I write “Martian” (a Martian is someone from the planet Mars), will that be OK, or will I get a visit from the police?

There is a question, too, about religious identity. Religious identity is controversial in Britain for two reasons – first, there is, I am afraid, a lot of hostility to Muslims, at least in some parts of Britain. And second, some people claim that our government gives faith groups such as the Christian churches too much influence, particularly in education. A pressure group is urging people to tick the “no religion” box on the census form, to prove that most people don't want religious groups to have a lot of influence.

In the last census, in 2001, many people resented the question about religion and wrote “Jedi Knight” in the “other religion” box – you probably know that the Jedi were characters in the Star Wars films. According to the 2001 census results, “Jedi Knight” was the fourth largest religious group in Britain. Will it be the same this time?

The 2011 census will cost our government 482m GBP. Some people, including some ministers in the government, say that it is a waste of money. They say that the information in the census will quickly be out of date, and that the government could find better ways of counting how many people live in Britain. And the census may not even be accurate. Filling in a census form is compulsory, but nonetheless some people will avoid doing it. The last census for example failed to count about 900,000 men under the age of 40. The census may therefore understate the number of people in the country, particularly in poor urban areas.

The Post Office has now delivered the census forms to every house in the country. In homes all over Britain, it is lying uncompleted on the kitchen table. Over the next few weeks we will lose it, find it again, spill coffee on it, write telephone numbers and shopping lists on it, and finally fill it in and send it back. It may be our last ever national census. So let's enjoy it!

Quiz : how well did you understand the podcast? ::

File download (8:09 mins | 4 MB)

This and that

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 14:03:00 +0000

‘Can you walk in those?' Photo by hh_g/flickr

We have lots to do in today's podcast. First, we will learn something about the words “this”, “that”, “these” and “those”. Then we will go shopping with Kevin and Joanne. And finally, we will hear about Ms Nancy Sinatra, and what she is going to do with her boots.

“This” and “that” are what I call “finger pointing words” – as if you were pointing your finger at something to show exactly what you mean. We use “this” when we point to something close to us, and “that” when we point at something further away. So “this book” means the book that I have in my hand or on the desk in front of me; “that book” is further away, perhaps in the bookshelf on the other side of the room. “These” is the plural form of “this” and “those” is the plural form of “that” – so we say “this book” but “these books”; “that car” but “those cars”. Unless I have forgotten something, they are the only English adjectives with different singular and plural forms.

We can use “this” and “that” as pronouns as well as adjectives. For example, we might say “Could you give me that, please.” And what is “that” – is it a book, or a sandwich, or a railway ticket? Well, the listener knows from the context what “that” means. Perhaps you are pointing to the thing you want.

Now lets go shopping, and while we are shopping, think about the way I use the words “this”, “that”, “these” and “those” in the podcast. Joanne needs to buy some new clothes, and she asks Kevin to come with her. This is not something that fills Kevin with joy and enthusiasm. He would prefer to go to a football match, but unfortunately his team lost their last match and have been knocked out of the football cup competition this year.

So Kevin goes shopping too. Joanne tries on several pairs of jeans. Each time she comes out of the changing room and says “Do you like these”, or “What do you think of these?” (Why does she say “these” and not “this”? It is because, in English, things that you wear on your legs are always plural – trousers, shorts, jeans, tights etc. ) Then Joanne tries on another pair, and asks Kevin, “Tell me honestly, does my bum look big in these?”

Careful, Kevin. It is never a good idea to tell a woman that her bottom looks big, even if it is true. “No, those are fine”, says Kevin. Good, Kevin. That was the right answer. So Joanne decides to buy that pair of jeans, and they move on to look at shoes. Joanne sees some high-heeled shoes, with straps around the ankles – you can see a picture of them on the website. “I want these!” she says, and tries them on. Kevin is appalled. “Can you walk in those?” he asks. “Of course I can,” says Joanne, and she takes a few unsteady steps. “No, I can't. I think we should leave these shoes in the shop.”

Nancy Sinatra has also been to the shops to buy footwear. She has bought some boots, and in this song she tells us, “These boots are made for walking, and that's just what they'll do. One of these days, these boots are going to walk all over you!” Obviously, she is having a bit of man trouble. Do you want Nancy Sinatra to walk on you in her boots? No, I thought not.

File download (7:45 mins | 4 MB)

Old money, new money

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 16:10:00 +0000

The government printed this leaflet to tell us about the new coins and how much they were worth in ‘old money'.

There was an important anniversary this week. Forty years ago, on 15 February 1971, Britain changed its currency, that is, its money system. This is what happened.

When I was a child in the fifties and sixties, Britain had a wonderfully complicated currency system. We had pounds, like we do now, but each pound was divided into 20 shillings, and each shilling was divided into 12 pence, or pennies. So, at school we learned that “12 pence make one shilling, 20 shillings make a pound”. We had to learn our 12 times tables (that is our multiplication tables) very carefully, because we needed to be able to change pence into shillings and the other way round. So, we used to chant things like “seven sevens are forty-nine, forty-nine pence is four and a penny”. (“Four and a penny” was a common way of saying “four shillings and one penny”. ) There was even a special unit of currency called a guinea. A guinea was 21 shillings, or one pound and one shilling. Posh shops sometimes gave their prices in guineas instead of pounds.

We had a complicated set of coins to go with our complicated currency. The smallest coin was a farthing. It was worth a quarter of a penny, and I remember that it had a picture of a little bird – a wren – on one side. Of course a farthing was worth very little and we stopped using it in 1960. Then there was a half-penny, or a ha'penny as we called it. There was a one penny coin, and a strange coin for three pence – it was not round, but had 12 straight sides. We called it a “thru'penny bit”. There was a little silver 6 pence coin, and a bigger shilling coin. There was a coin for two shillings which we called a ‘florin' and another one for two shillings and six pence which we called a ‘half crown'. Then there was a bank note for 10 shillings, as well as banknotes for one pound and for larger amounts.

Because we had had the same system of coins for many years, it was quite common to find 19th century coins, from the reign of Queen Victoria, in our change. (“Change” means the money which a shop-keeper gives back to you when you pay too much for something). The Queen Victoria coins were often worn almost smooth with use, though you could still see Victoria's head – she looked cross and bad tempered. The inscription on the coins told us (in Latin) that she was Queen of Britain and Empress of India!

People who visited Britain were very puzzled by our money. Almost everywhere else in the world had a big unit of currency (like the US dollar, or the French franc or the German mark) which was divided into 100 smaller units (like cents, centimes, or pfennigs). By the mid-1960s, our government had decided that we had to do the same. Multiplying and dividing by 12 and by 20 was too complicated. We had to fall into line with the rest of the world, and have a decimal currency (that is, a currency with units of 10, 100 etc).

So, the government designated 15 February 1971 as D-day, or “decimal day”, when we would start to use the new currency – a pound, divided into 100 pence. The Royal Mint (the government department responsible for issuing coins and bank notes) issued shiny new coins, and for several months we used the old coins and the new coins together. There were, of course, some problems. Some people found it difficult to convert from old money to new money – for example, to remember that the old half-crown was now worth twelve and a half new pence. Other people complained that shopkeepers had used the new decimal currency as a way to put up prices. Small boys discovered that the new half-penny coin was exactly the same size as the old six-pence coin, and that they could use it in slot-machines which sold bars of chocolate. But the problems were only temporary, and we quickly got used to the new currency, and we found that it was after all easier to count in 10s.

After we had changed our currency, it was natural to think about changing other things, like our ways of weighing things or of measuring distances. We have traditional weights and measures in Britain which are even more complicated than our old currency. Gradually, over the last 30 years, we have changed to using metric measures like kilos and metres, partly because the European Community wants a common system in all European countries. We are still allowed to use some of the old measures, however. If you go into a British pub, for example, you should ask for a pint of beer, not half a litre of beer. Few people now regret “decimal day”. It is only really old people like me who remember when half a crown was a lot of money!

File download (6:39 mins | 3 MB)

I am lucky

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 15:32:00 +0000

Lucky's cafe. Photo by it's d-lo/flickr

Like lots of people, I have Google as the home page on my web browser. On the Google page, there is a search box where I can type what I am looking for. For example, I can type “English lessons” if I want to find web sites which teach people English. Underneath the search box, there are two buttons. One says “Search”. If I click this button, I get a page of Google search results about “English lessons”. The other one says “I'm feeling lucky!” I have often looked at this button and wondered what it did, and whether I really had to feel lucky before I could click on it.

So, today I decided to make a podcast about the word “lucky”, and to click on the “I'm feeling lucky!” button, just to see what happens.

“Lucky” means “fortunate”. If I say, “I am lucky” it means that good things have happened to me. Maybe I have won the lottery. Maybe I have just met the most beautiful girl in the world. Maybe bad things have happened to other people, but not to me. I have escaped. I am lucky.

So now I will click on the “I'm feeling lucky” button. What will happen? Will I win a lot of money? Will I enjoy good health and happiness and live to be 100? No, actually. The click takes me to a Google page about the Google logo. I am disappointed. I expected something much more exciting. I do not feel very lucky at all.

Kevin does not feel lucky either. Last Saturday was the worst day of his life. Or, at least the worst day this football season. Last Saturday, Kevin's team, United, lost 4-0 to their old rivals, Albion. “How can this happen?” says Kevin. Now, most people who were at the football match know why it happened. It happened because United played really badly. But Kevin cannot agree. “It was luck,” he says. “Albion were lucky. The referee did not see a foul against United's striker. And United were unlucky that the referee disallowed their only goal.” If you are a football fan, you will know how Kevin feels. Your team never loses because they are bad. They lose because they are unlucky.

But now let us meet someone who is really lucky. His name is Adam Potter, and he lives in Glasgow in Scotland. He is a keen mountaineer. A mountaineer is someone who climbs mountains as a hobby. Mountaineering can be great fun, but it can also be very dangerous, particularly in Scotland in winter. A week or so ago, Adam and some friends and his dog set off to climb a mountain near Ben Nevis, which is the highest mountain in Britain. As they climbed higher, snow and ice covered the ground. They stopped, and Adam suggested that they should take out their ice axes and put crampons on their boots, to stop them from slipping. And at that very moment, he slipped on the ice. He fell down the side of the mountain, over rocks and cliffs. He finally stopped falling and slipping and sliding 1000 feet (about 300 metres) down the mountain. Now, if you or I had fallen 300 metres down an icy Scottish mountain, we would probably be dead. In fact, more than 20 people are killed every year in falls on Scottish mountains. But Adam was lucky. He was unconscious for a minute or two when he stopped falling. Then he stood up and took a map out of his rucksack to work out where he was. He looked up to see the mountain rescue helicopter looking for him. The mountain recue team expected to find a dead body. The leader of the rescue team said, “He is a very, very lucky man.”

Adam is in hospital, recovering from his injuries, but he does not intend to stay there for long. In 8 weeks time, he plans to travel to the area around Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain, for a ten week expedition. Lets wish him lots of luck.

Guardian newspaper story about Adam Potter. ::

File download (5:43 mins | 3 MB)

The Ghost Village.

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 11:55:00 +0000

The old school at Tyneham. Photo by Adrian Purkiss/flickr.

Today, we will visit a little village on the south coast of England. Its name is Tyneham, and it is a “ghost village”. What does ‘ghost village' mean? It means that the village is deserted, there is no-one there. Many of the houses, the church and the school are still standing, but no-one lives in Tyneham any more. If you believe in ghosts, perhaps you feel that the ghosts of the people who used to live there still haunt the village. It is a “ghost village”. Tyneham is a very ancient place. People lived there in Roman times, and probably long before. For centuries, the people farmed the land and caught fish in the sea. In the 13th century, a stone church – St Mary's church – was built, and in the middle of the 19th century the village got its own school. Tyneham lies in a very attractive part of England. Many of the other villages nearby have cafes, and souvenir shops and car-parks. They are crowded with visitors in the summer, and well-off people from London buy the pretty houses as weekend cottages. Why is Tyneham not like that? During the Second World War, shortly before Christmas 1943, the people in Tyneham all received letters from the government. The army needed the land in Tyneham as a place to train soldiers. All the inhabitants had to leave the village in less than a month's time. Of course, this would only be temporary. When the War was over, the people could return home. But they never returned. After the War, the army decided that it still needed the land for training. They erected targets on the hillsides, and soldiers in tanks practised firing shells at them. Sometimes they missed the targets, and hit houses in Tyneham by mistake. The whole area around Tyneham was closed to the public. It was not safe to walk on the roads or the footpaths because of unexploded shells from the guns. The people of Tyneham complained and pressed the government to let them return home. Tourists complained that they could not visit this beautiful area of England. The army took no notice, and in the 1960s even demolished the ancient manor house in Tyneham. Eventually, in 1975, the army – with great reluctance – agreed that people could visit Tyneham and the area around it at weekends and during the month of August. So today, on days when the area is open, you can park your car at the car park at the top of the hill, and walk down to the old village. You can see the ruined houses, and visit a museum in the old church. You can walk down to the sea, to where the fishing boats used to be. You can see the village telephone box, which was erected only months before the villagers left – unfortunately, the telephone in it does not work! You can visit the old school. Inside, it is almost exactly as it was in the 1930s. The children's books are still on the desks, and their names are on the pegs where they hung their coats. It is almost as if the children had just gone outside to play. A “ghost school”! I do not know how many of the 252 people who left Tyneham in 1943 are still alive – probably not many. It is now very unlikely that they will ever return home – indeed, probably they no longer think of Tyneham as home. So Tyneham will be left as a place where the army can shoot its guns, where the wildlife can flourish, safe from people and modern agriculture, and where tourists can come for a glimpse of what life in rural England used to be like. The last person to leave Tyneham left a note pinned to the door of the church. It read: Please treat the church and houses with care; we have given up our homes where many of us lived for generations to help win the war to keep men free. We shall return one day and thank you for treating the village kindly.

File download (5:47 mins | 3 MB)

A Bossy Podcast

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 14:02:00 +0000

I'm Bossy, by F.Lady/flickr

Before we begin, I have an apology to make. In the last podcast, about the Archers, I talked about a woman whom I called “Helen Carter” and her new baby. I should have said “Helen Archer”. I do not know why I got her name wrong. Perhaps I am getting old. When you get old, you do things like walking into a room and then forgetting why you are there. Some people call this a “senior moment”. Perhaps I had a “senior moment” while I was making the podcast.

Do you know the English word “bossy”? Your manager at work is your “boss”. He or she tells you to do things. Someone who is “bossy” is a person who is always telling other people what to do. We can say that a bossy person “bosses other people about” or “bosses other people around”. I am sure you know someone who is bossy. Are you a bossy person yourself? Of course not!

It is easy to be bossy in English, because we have lots of different bossy words. Here are some of them:

must
have to (sometimes we say “have got to”)
need to
ought to
should

“Must” and “ought to” are incomplete verbs. That means that they exist only in the present tense. You can say “I must go to the shops today”. You cannot say “I musted go to the shops yesterday”. Instead, you should say “I had to go to the shops yesterday”.

Here is Joanne's boss at work. She is an incredibly bossy person, and she uses the bossy words all the time.

“You need to finish writing your report by tomorrow. You must show me the report before you show it to anyone else. When I have agreed the report, you should send copies to everyone else in the Department. You will have to make about 10 extra copies. You ought to arrange a meeting next week so that everyone can discuss the report.”

Joanne smiles brightly at her boss. She has already finished the report. She knows that her boss will agree it, so she has already made the copies, and arranged the meeting.

When Joanne gets home, she finds that Kevin is already there. She switches the TV off (“But the film had just started”, protests Kevin), and makes Kevin sit down and talk to her. Kevin and Joanne are planning a party for their friends to celebrate Kevin's birthday.

“First, we need to write a list of people to invite. Then we have to think what food and drink we will need and write a shopping list. Oh, and I must tell the people next door about the party – last time they objected to the noise! We ought to invite my mother (“No!” says Kevin in horror.) Alright, we won't invite my mother, but we have got to go and see her soon, perhaps next weekend.”

When Joanne talks to Kevin, she uses the same “bossy” words as her boss used. But Joanne is talking about herself. She says “I must….we have to…..” and so on. So she doesn't sound bossy, unlike her boss at work. In fact, it is not a good idea to talk to other people in English in the way that Joanne's bossy boss does. We have lots of ways of telling people what we want them to do, without using the bossy words. Perhaps you could rewrite what Joanne's boss said so that it sounds more polite and less bossy.

That is the end of this bossy podcast. To finish, here are some bossy messages from Listen to English:

You must learn 10 new English words every day.
You have got to do your English homework.
You ought to read an English newspaper or listen to the radio in English.
You need to revise English irregular verbs.
You should listen to Listen to English podcasts – the fun way to improve your English listening skills.

Miss Bossy :: A YouTube video of a children's TV programme from 1983.

File download (5:06 mins | 2 MB)

The Archers

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:17:00 +0000

Nigel and Elizabeth Pargetter with their (fictional) children. Nigel fell from a roof and was killed.

The music which you have just heard is a signature tune. A signature tune is the music which you hear at the beginning of a radio or TV programme. This signature tune is the signature tune of a radio soap opera called The Archers. The BBC describe The Archers as “an everyday story of country folk”. It is about the lives of a farming family, the Archers, and their friends and neighbours in the fictional village of Ambridge, somewhere in the middle of England.

The Archers is the most popular radio programme in Britain, except for some news programmes. It has been running since 1950, which means that it is the longest-running soap opera in the world. Originally, the programme tried to bring new ideas in agriculture to farmers. But it developed into a soap opera which appealed to townspeople as well as to country folk. Indeed, you could say that the Archers signature tune is one of the authentic sounds of urban, middle-class Britain. At 7 o'clock every evening, all over the country, people switch on their radios to listen to a news summary, followed by the Archers. It is a very special time of day. Never, ever, telephone an Archers fan between 7 and 7.15 in the evening.

The Archers is not normally an exciting programme. Its characters are just ordinary people doing ordinary things. Of course, there have been some extraordinary moments. Older listeners still talk about the time in 1955 when Grace Archer died in a fire. And people of my generation remember when a pregnant Elizabeth Archer was abandoned by her awful boyfriend Cameron Fraser in 1992. But most of the time, the Archers characters are just people living their lives in parallel to our own lives. Their problems are like our problems. They are interesting because they are ordinary, not because they are extraordinary. Many of the actors in the Archers stay with the programme for years . They grow old with their characters, and we feel as if we know them.

Last week the Archers celebrated its 60th birthday. The BBC told us that something special would happen. It would be something which would “shake Ambridge to the core". For weeks, the internet forums and chatrooms for Archers fans were abuzz with rumours. People assumed that one of the characters would die – or perhaps more than one character. After all, only a few weeks earlier, the TV soap opera Coronation Street had killed off several of its characters in a spectacular tram crash. People made lists of which characters they would most like to go, and how they would like them to die.

So, what actually happened? First, Helen Carter had a baby. And second, Nigel Pargetter fell off a roof and was killed. A lot of Archers fans are not happy. Helen Carter is an odious egotist who was on most people's “death list” of Archers characters. And Nigel Pargetter was a really nice man and we shall all miss him. But most of all, Archers fans complained that this is small stuff – we were promised something which would shake Ambridge to the core, and all we got was poor Nigel falling off a roof. Coronation Street killed three characters in a tram crash. Surely the Archers could do better.

Well, we have to wait until we see what happens next. Helen Carter is still an odious egotist. Probably the new baby will make her even worse. And we, the listeners, know why Nigel Pargetter was on the roof. He was there because David Archer persuaded him to climb the roof to remove a “Happy New Year” banner. And David Archer is the brother of Nigel's widow, Elizabeth (yes, the same one who was dumped by Cameron Fraser in 1992). Elizabeth is a strong-minded woman. When she finds out why Nigel was on the roof, what will she do?

You are now well on the way to becoming an Archers expert. The BBC have an Archers website for you to explore, and you can listen to the Archers on the BBC World Service(*) or download the Archers podcasts from the BBC website. Happy listening!

(*)Sorry, this is wrong. The Archers is not on the BBC World Service.

File download (6:22 mins | 3 MB)

Bootifull!

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 11:09:00 +0000

Bernard Matthews. Great Witchingham Hall, his first turkey farm, is in the background.

This podcast is about turkeys. I don't mean the country Turkey, of course. I mean the big birds that many people eat at Christmas. There is a picture on the website if you want to know what a turkey looks like.

A few days ago, the newspapers reported that a man named Bernard Matthews had died. He was 80 years old, and he was the biggest turkey farmer in Britain, and possibly in the world.

There is an English expression “a self-made man”. A “self-made man” is someone who starts with nothing and goes on to make a lot of money, or to achieve a lot in some other way, entirely through hard work and enterprise. Bernard Matthews was a “self-made man.” He left school when he was 16 years old, without any formal qualifications. When he was 20, he bought some turkey eggs in a market, and a second-hand incubator. (An incubator is a device for keeping eggs warm, so that the little birds inside them can hatch.) His career in turkey farming had begun. A few years later, his business had grown and he needed a bigger space to keep his turkeys. He bought an old mansion house, Great Witchingham Hall. It was cheap because it was in very bad repair. He and his wife lived in two of the rooms of this enormous house. The turkeys lived in all the other rooms.

This is what a turkey looks like!

Most families in Britain eat turkey on Christmas day (and cold turkey for about two weeks afterwards!) You may think that this is an old tradition, but it is not. Sixty years ago, turkey was a luxury which only a few people could afford. It was Bernard Matthews who made cheap, frozen turkeys available for ordinary families, and persuaded people to buy them. Then he persuaded them that turkey was not just for Christmas, but for any time of the year. His company started to make other products containing turkey meat, and persuaded people to buy them as well. He became famous by appearing in the TV advertisements for his products. There is a link to one of these advertisements on the website. He told us that his turkey was “bootifull, really bootifull”. (“Bootifull” is how you say “beautiful” in Norfolk, which is where Bernard Matthews lived). People loved his TV adverts, and sales of Bernard Matthews' turkeys went higher and higher. Today, about one third of all the turkeys sold in Britain are Bernard Matthews' “bootifull” turkeys. By the time he died, Bernard Matthews was a very wealthy man; and today his company provides work for several thousand people.

Bernard Matthews transformed turkey from a luxury which only a few people could enjoy into a food for everyone. Of course, he had to cut the costs of turkey farming, and find ways of rearing turkeys in huge numbers. He perfected what we call “factory farming” of turkeys in which thousands of birds are kept in huge sheds. He bought several old military airfields, and covered them with turkey sheds. He also perfected ways of turning turkey meat into “convenience foods” for busy people.

In recent years, people have begun to criticise “factory farming” methods. They say that the birds are overcrowded and kept in near-darkness; and that they do little except eat and put on weight, until they are about six months old, when they are taken to be slaughtered. The birds require large doses of antibiotics and other medicines, because they are so crowded. Some of these chemicals remain in the turkey meat, and critics say that this is dangerous for human health. Processed turkey products, like other “fast foods”, often contain water, added chemicals and low-grade meat. They may be cheap, critics say, but they have low value as food, and help to make people overweight.

So, what do you think? Are Bernard Matthews' turkeys really “bootifull”? Leave your comments on the website.

Quiz : how well did you understand the podcast? ::

File download (5:31 mins | 3 MB)

William and Kate are engaged!

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 10:54:00 +0000

Prince William and Kate Middleton are engaged to be married.

Last week, the newspapers and television told us about an engagement. An “engagement” is when two people decide to get married. We say that the couple are “engaged to be married”, or simply that they are “engaged”. The engagement which was announced last week was between a helicopter pilot and a buyer for a well-known chain of clothing shops. So why was it on the front pages of the newspapers? You probably know the answer already. The helicopter pilot is Prince William, the grandson of our Queen; and the buyer from the clothes shop is Kate Middleton, who has been his girlfriend for several years.

Prince William is second in line to the throne. What does that mean? Well, when our present Queen dies, Prince Charles – William's father – will become king. And when Charles dies, William will become king. He probably has a long time to wait, however, and in the meantime he is making himself useful by flying helicopters for the Royal Air Force.

A hundred years ago, a Prince who was likely to become king was expected to find a wife from one of the other European royal families. Thankfully, however, things have changed. Kate Middleton is not a Princess, nor even the daughter of an old aristocratic family. Her parents used to work for British Airways – her mother was an air hostess. Later, they built a successful business which sells things for children's parties. The press have described Kate as “middle class” and “an ordinary girl”, but this isn't really true. She grew up in an expensive house in a nice area, and her parents paid for her to attend an exclusive private school.

Kate and the Prince met when they were at University, in St Andrews in Scotland. They were obviously following the great British tradition of going to a University as far from their parents as possible. At the end of their first year at St Andrews, Will wanted to leave University, but Kate persuaded him to stay. And Kate has been the Prince's girlfriend ever since, except for a period a few years ago when they decided that they were “just good friends”. It sounds just like a million other boy/girl relationships all over the world.

How do British people feel about the forthcoming royal wedding? Some people say that they don't care. They say that they have more important things to worry about. Others say that they don't like our royal family, and that Britain should become a republic. Yet other people are a bit sceptical. They say that the members of the royal family lead very artificial lives. They are constantly in the public eye, and journalists and photographers give them little peace or privacy. Too many royal marriages nowadays end in divorce. How will Kate cope? Will she find it too stressful?

However, I think that most people regard our royal family as a sort of national soap opera. Like any good soap opera, the royal family has weddings, and babies, and divorces, and sometimes even funerals. We want our royal family to entertain us, just as television soap operas do. For years, we have read gossip in the newspapers about Will and Kate. We have never actually met either of them, of course, but we feel that we know them. And we are thrilled that they are now getting married. It is the happiest news we have had for a long time.

The wedding will take place on 29 April next year. For the next 5 months, we will read everything that newspaper reporters can discover or invent about Will and Kate. We will discuss what style of wedding dress Kate will wear, who the bridesmaids will be, and where the happy couple will go for their honeymoon. We will buy “Kate and Will” souvenir mugs. Some of us will hang flags out of our bedroom windows. The wedding day will be a public holiday, so we can all sit at home and watch the wedding on television, or get in our cars and sit in traffic jams on the motorways. The people who are not interested in the royal family will secretly turn on their televisions to watch for a few minutes. For a short time we will forget the economic crisis, and our own personal problems. We will be a nation united in front of our television screens. It will be good entertainment, which is what our royal family does best.

File download (6:08 mins | 3 MB)

The Lighthouse Man

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 14:51:00 +0000

Henry Winstanley's wood and stone lighthouse on the Eddystone Rocks.

Britain is an island. We are surrounded by sea. Nowdays, you can get here by plane, or by train through the Channel Tunnel. But before planes were invented, and the Channel Tunnel was built, the only way to come to Britain was by sea.

The seas around Britain can be very dangerous. The Romans, who conquered England in 43 AD, knew this. They built lighthouses at Dover in England and Boulogne in France to guide ships across the Channel. However, the lighthouses fell into disuse after the Romans left at the beginning of the 5th century. For hundreds of years, the seas around Britain were completely dark at night. There was nothing to help sailors find their way, or to warn them of dangers.

Among the most dangerous rocks around our coast are the Eddystone Rocks. They lie about 14 kilometers from the shore of south-west England, in other words at exactly the place where ships crossing the Atlantic reach England. Over the centuries, hundreds of ships have been wrecked on the Eddystone Rocks and thousands of sailors have lost their lives.

Now let us meet a man called Henry Winstanley. He was born in 1644, and as a young man he became interested in architecture and engineering. Later he became a merchant, and bought five ships. Within a few years, two of the ships had been wrecked on the Eddystone Rocks. He asked the government why nothing was done to protect ships from the rocks. The government said that the rocks were far too dangerous and too far from land to build a lighthouse there. “Nonsense,” replied Henry Winstanley. “I will build a lighthouse there myself”.

And he did. He started work in 1696. However, England and France were at war, and the following year a French ship arrived at the rocks and took Winstanley and his men back to France as prisoners. The French King, Louis XIV, ordered that they should be released immediately. “I am at war with England, not with humanity”, he said.

In November 1698, the lighthouse was ready. It was built of stone and wood, and candles provided the light at the top of the lighthouse. During the first winter, it was damaged by a storm, but Winstanley repaired it and made it stronger. Winstanley's lighthouse was the first lighthouse anywhere in the world to be built on a rock far out at sea. During the next five years, its little light sent its warning to passing ships, and not a single ship was wrecked on the Eddystone Rocks.

In November 1703, however, a great storm struck southern England. It completely destroyed the lighthouse. Winstanley himself was in the lighthouse at the time, supervising some repairs, and he was killed.

There is a lighthouse on the Eddystone Rocks today. It is the fourth lighthouse on the rocks, and it has kept sailors safe since 1882. Until 1982, a lighthouse keeper lived in the lighthouse to maintain and operate the light. It must have been the loneliest job in England. Today the lighthouse runs automatically. A maintenance crew visit occasionally by helicopter. It is very different from Winstanley's wood and stone lighthouse, with candles to warn ships to keep away from Eddystone.

File download (4:44 mins | 2 MB)

Beware

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 14:50:00 +0000

Beware of the cat! Photo by Enrique Mendez/flickr.

Today's podcast is about taking care!

I want you to imagine that you are visiting England. You and some friends decide to go for a walk in the country. The sun is shining, the birds are singing and all is right with the world. You walk through a pretty village, and then through a wood. You climb over a fence into a big field. “This would be a good place for a picnic,” you say. So you sit down on the grass under a tree, and unpack your picnic.

Then your friend sees something. “There is a notice on the fence over there,” he says. “can you read what it says?”

You look hard at the notice. You can hardly see the writing. “I think it says – beware of the bull!” you say. “What does ‘beware' mean?”

You find your English dictionary at the bottom of your rucksack, You have just started to look for ‘beware' when you hear a snorting noise. You look up to see a large bull standing about 10 metres away.

Now, some bulls are kind and “hospitable“http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/hospitable. They are pleased when visitors come to their field, and they try to make them welcome. One look at this bull, however, tells you that this is not the kind and hospitable sort of bull. He is, rather, the unkind and inhospitable sort of bull. There is only one thing to do. You and your friend run to the fence and climb over it. The bull runs after you, snorting angrily. He stares at you for a few minutes; then he goes back to the tree where you were sitting and starts to eat your picnic.

Now you know what “beware” means. It means “danger! be careful!” “Beware” is actually a shortened form of “be aware”. You can use “beware” as an imperative verb – that means, a verb which gives orders or instructions. You can tell somebody “beware of the bull” or “beware of the dog”. But you cannot say “I beware of the bull” or “you beware of the the dog.” So, “beware” is an incomplete verb – you can only use it to warn someone to be careful.

You will often see “beware” on notices that warn people about dangers. Near a railway line, there might be a notice “Beware of the trains”. Beside a river – “beware – deep water”. Or near a road junction – “beware of traffic from the right”.

And here are some other words or phrases which you can use to tell somebody that something may be dangerous.

danger!
warning!
caution!
be careful!
look out!
take care!
mind out!

There is a little quiz on the website about warning notices and the places where you might find them. Take care!

Quiz : beware of the dog! ::

File download (4:02 mins | 2 MB)

Getting the hang of it!

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 14:59:00 +0000

This dog has got the hang of swimming! Photo by rich renomeron/flickr.

Today, we meet the English expression “to get the hang of”. If you “get the hang of” something, it means that you have started to do it properly. You are not an expert yet, but you have understood the basic idea.

For example, imagine that you are learning to swim. You have never been swimming before. You are a complete beginner. The other people in your swimming class are complete beginners too.

The swimming instructor stands at the side of the swimming pool and shows you what to do. You have to reach forward with your arms, and kick your legs in the water. You try it. You splash wildly with your legs, and the poor swimming instructor gets very wet. A lot of water goes up your nose. But you do not move. You try again, and again. By the end of the swimming lesson, you can swim about 2 meters without your feet touching the bottom of the swimming pool. “Well done,” says the swimming instructor. “You are getting the hang of it.” He means that are beginning to understand how to swim.

Kevin is learning to cook. Ever since he was a student, Kevin has lived off food which comes in tins or packets, plus takeaway pizzas, of course. Then he met Joanne, who is a good cook. But she is not willing to do all the cooking. She thinks that Kevin should do his share. So Kevin buys a cookery book, with beautiful pictures of delicious food. He sits in bed and reads it. The first day he cooks some chicken. However, the oven is too hot and the chicken is burnt. The second day, he makes some curry. The recipe said to add “half a teaspoon“ of salt. Kevin misunderstood, and used half a tablespoon of salt. Then the rice stuck to the bottom of the pan, and the meal was inedible. But on the third day, things were better. Kevin made a chocolate cake, and it was really quite good. “This is delicious”, said Joanne as she ate a third slice of cake. “You are getting the hang of cooking. Perhaps you should cook every day.”

Joanne has a nephew. His name is Jack and he is three years old. He has learnt to talk, and indeed he talks all the time. But, like most other English three year olds, he does not understand about English irregular verbs. He thinks that you can talk about things in the past by adding “-ed” to the end of a verb – any verb! When Joanne went to visit her sister, her conversation with Jack went like this:

“Hello Jack. What did you do today?”

“I goed to nursery.”

“Oh, you went to nursery. And what did you do at nursery?”

“We singed a song. Then we sitted on the mat and the teacher readed a story.”

“I see. And what did you do after nursery?”

“Me and mummy goed to the shops. We buyed some sweets.”

“You bought some sweets. What happened to the sweets, Jack?”

“I eated them.”

As you can see, Jack has not got the hang of irregular verbs. English would of course be much easier if we all spoke like Jack, but unfortunately English has lots of irregular verbs, and you (and Jack) just have to learn them . Have you got the hang of irregular verbs? There is a quiz on the website where you can test your skills.

Quiz about irregular verbs. ::

File download (4:51 mins | 2 MB)

Is it a horse or a dog?

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:28:00 +0000

The White Horse of Uffington – or is it a dog?

A long time ago, I made a podcast about graffiti, and the graffiti artist called Banksy. ‘Graffiti' means pictures or writing painted illegally on a wall or a building, or the side of a train or a bus. Many people think that graffiti are unsightly.

We have a very special sort of rural graffiti in England. Over a large part of southern England, the rock underneath the ground is chalk. Chalk is a sort of limestone. It is made of the bodies of tiny sea creatures which lived millions of years ago. If you take away the grass and other plants from a chalk hillside, you will reach the white chalk rock underneath. Someone, a long time ago, discovered that you can remove the grass to make a picture or pattern on the chalk hillside.

We call a picture on the side of a chalk hill a “hill figure”. A “figure” here just means the shape of a body of a man or an animal. There is also a scientific term “geoglyph” which means a hill figure. “Geoglyph” is not a word we use every day, but you might like to remember it to impress your English teacher! There are nearly 60 surviving hill figures in England. Many of them are horses, though there are also human figures and military badges. There was also at one time a hill figure in the shape of a map of Australia, but it has now disappeared. Among the human figures are the Long Man of Wilmington, and the Cerne Abbas Giant. There is a picture of the Cerne Abbas giant on the website – he is naked, and .. oh, children, look away now!

The Cerne Abbas Giant

Some people like to think that the hill figures are very ancient. You will find web sites which say that they were made by the Celts, the people who lived in this country 2000 and more years ago, and that they were part of the Celts' magical religion. However, the truth is that most hill figures are quite recent. Many date from the 19th century, and often we know the name of the person who made them. Some are older, but with one important exception which I will talk about in a minute, experts think that they are not more than about 400 years old.

Hill figures need to be maintained. In time, the grass grows over them and they disappear. We know of at least 57 more hill figures which existed at one time but are now lost. Hill figures have survived only because local people have been willing, every few years, to repair the figure and remove the grass which has grown on it.

The hill figures are fun and interesting, but they are not generally great works of art. They look as if a horse or a man has laid down on the side of the hill while people cut away the grass around them. They are a bit like children's drawings. The White Horse at Uffington is different. There is a picture of it on the website. It has lines which suggest the shape of the horse – its back, its legs, its head. The horse looks as if it is moving – galloping across the hillside. The person who made it was obviously a talented artist. Perhaps it will not surprise you to know that the Uffington White Horse really is old. We think it was created in the Bronze Age, between 2,500 and 4,000 years ago. Why did the Bronze Age people make the horse? Does it have a religious meaning? Or did the artist just look at the empty hillside and say – like a graffiti artist today – “I want to fill that empty space with a really big horse!”

But is it a horse? Recently, a retired vet called Olaf Swarbrick has argued that the figure cannot be a horse, because it is too long and thin. Mr Swarbrick says that it is probably a dog, perhaps a hunting dog. This has caused a fuss in the press. We English have fixed ideas about our history and we do not like it when someone has new ideas. The National Trust, who own the land on which the horse or dog is situated, say it is definitely a horse. But what do you think? Horse or dog? You can vote on the website.

web survey

Quiz : how well did you understand the podcast? ::

File download (5:49 mins | 3 MB)