The ice hotel

We love snow!

By Peter Carter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the weather forecast is – more snow. Good.

Download MP3 (4:27min, 2MB)

Christmas shopping

Oxford Street

By Peter Carter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Download MP3 (5:44min, 3MB)

Vocabulary Note

Look at these expressions and check in a dictionary. Then try the quiz bellow.

• to and fro
• in and out
• on and off
• now and then
• round and round
• up and down
• backwards and forwards
• from side to side
• upside down
• inside out
• back to front
• there and back

Quiz

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

By Peter Carter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Download MP3 (6:38min, 3MB)

Glamorous dancing

By Peter Carter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Download MP3 (5:58min, 3MB)

Aesop's fables

By The Brisish Council.

The ant and the dove

An ant went to the bank of a river to quench its thirst, and being carried away by the rush of the stream, was on the point of drowning. A dove sitting on a tree overhanging the water plucked a leaf and let it fall into the stream close to her. The ant climbed onto it and floated in safety to the bank. Shortly afterwards a birdcatcher came and stood under the tree, and laid his lime-twigs for the dove, which sat in the branches. The ant, perceiving his design, stung him in the foot. In pain the birdcatcher threw down the twigs, and the noise made the dove take wing.
And the moral of the story is: 0ne good turn deserves another.

The cat and the mice

A certain house was overrun with mice. A cat, discovering this, made her way into it and began to catch and eat them one by one. Fearing for their lives, the mice kept themselves close in their holes. The cat was no longer able to get at them and perceived that she must tempt them forth by some device. For this purpose she jumped upon a peg, and suspending herself from it, pretended to be dead. One of the mice, peeping stealthily out, saw her and said, "Ah, my good madam, even though you should turn into a meal-bag, we will not come near you."
And the moral of the story is: he who is once deceived is doubly cautious.

The Crab and the Fox

A crab, forsaking the seashore, chose a neighboring green meadow as its feeding ground. A fox came across him, and being very hungry ate him up. Just as he was on the point of being eaten, the crab said, "I well deserve my fate, for what business had I on the land, when by my nature and habits I am only adapted for the sea?'
And the moral of the story is: contentment with our lot is an element of happiness.

Better

By Peter Carter


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Download MP3 (3:57min, 4MB)

You had better do this quiz!

The Prefabs

The only remaining prefabs in Birmingham.

By Peter Carter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Download MP3 (4:28min, 2MB)

Quiz: how well did you understand the podcast?

Studying in the UK

Listen to 3 students talking about studying in the UK.

Listen and decide if the following statements are True or False.
(The answers are at the bottom of the post).

1. Lin already had Chinese friends in Bristol.
2. Lin has been to other parts of Europe.
3. Lin found it difficult when she had to speak in class.
4. Tomas chose his university because of the courses it offered.
5. Tomas enjoyed the social life.
6. Tomas had to work as well as study.
7. Syed is trying to get a job now.
8. Syed liked the way of teaching on the course.
9. Syed didn’t like the student accommodation.

Lin:

I’m from China and I’ve been studying in Bristol for 4 years. I’ve just finished my MA degree. When I first arrived in the UK I found it very difficult as I didn’t know anybody here, but I soon met other Chinese people studying at the university, and as my English improved I made friends with more people on my course.
Studying in the UK has been a very positive experience for me. I’ve met a lot of interesting people and travelled around Europe in the holidays. For me the most difficult aspect was having the confidence to take part in tutorials, and when I was told I would have to give a presentation to the rest of the class, I was very nervous.
My tutor helped me a lot, however, and said that for someone using their second language I did very well.

Tomas:

I came to Leicester on the Erasmus scheme a year ago. I had a choice of universities and I chose this one because it’s in a multicultural area. In the Czech Republic I had never come across foreigners, so I was interested in living in a place with people from many different cultures.
The social life here is great, and I will really miss the good friends I’ve made when I go back home next week.
There aren’t many other Czech people here so I’ve had to make friends with people from other countries.
That’s been very good for my English – some Erasmus students stay mostly with people from the same country and they don’t get the same experience. The worst thing has been that everything is so expensive. I had to get a part time job and borrow from my parents to afford to live here.

Syed:

I won a scholarship to do an MSc in Telecommunications at Manchester University. The course was excellent and enabled me to get a good job when I finished. Now I’m thinking of doing a PhD before I return to India.
I enjoyed the way the course was taught. We were encouraged to think for ourselves rather than read piles of textbooks. It’s a different approach to the way I’d studied before, and one that I would recommend. I would also recommend living in student accommodation – it’s the cheapest option and although the rooms are small they have everything you need, and you get to know other people very easily. For me, the only problem was that the social life centres around alcohol, and I don’t drink.

Answers: 1F, 2T, 3T, 4F, 5T, 6T, 7F, 8T, 9F

Spaghetti Junction

By Peter Carter

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

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

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

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

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

Download MP3 (4:56min, 2MB)

How much does the Queen cost?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Download MP3 (6:02min, 3MB)

Here are the missing numbers from the podcast “How much does the Queen cost?” You can download a pdf version of the exercise and the answers by clicking the link at the foot of the page.

(a) the second (normally we write Queen Elizabeth II)
(b) 1952
(c) the sixth (King George VI)
(d) 82
(e) 56
(f) 40th
(g) 1066
(h) 440
(i) 60
(j) 2006
(k) 260
(l) 126
(m) 100th
(n) 1952
(o) 100,000 (note that in English we use a comma to separate thousands in big numbers)
(p) 280,000
(q) 60th
(r) 2007
(s) £40,000,000 (generally, in written English we would normally write £40 million)
(t) £2 million
(u) 6.1% (in English we use a full-stop, not a comma, when we write decimals)
(v) 2006
(w) 3.1%
(x) 7
(y) £40 million
(z) 61 million
(aa) £40 million
(bb) 66 pence
(cc) 66 pence
(dd) £6.2 million
(ee) 19
(ff) £18,916
(gg) £32 million
(hh) £16 million
(ii) 50
(jj) 60
(kk) £2.4 million
(ll) 020 7930 4832

Amazing, Stonehenge!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Download MP3 (5:14min, 2MB)

The Loch Ness Monster - Part 2

In the last podcast, we talked about the Loch Ness monster, and we met Steve Feltham, who has spent the last 17 years living beside Loch Ness, looking for the monster.

On the website today, you will find a YouTube video. In the video, Steve Feltham tells us about what he does. I will not give you a transcript of what he says, but here are some of the main things, to help you understand.

He introduces himself and tells us where he lives, how long he has lived there and what he does. He mentions a place called Dores where he now lives permanently.

He tells us about “the best thing he has seen” (ie the best sighting of something that might be the Loch Ness monster). It was near Fort Augustus, is at the southern end of Loch Ness.

He has also been out on Loch Ness in boats with sonar equipment. The sonar shows “little blobs”(ie little shapes) and sometimes some “big blobs”. Steve tells us what these “blobs” might be.

He tells us about the different theories that people have about the monster.

He tells us what he does when the water is flat and calm;and what he does when it is choppy.

He gets to hear about sightings which other people have made, and people often show him their photos and videos.

There are fewer good sightings of the monster today than there used to be. Steve puts forward a theory on why this might be.

There is a quiz on the website, so you can test how well you understood Steve’s video.

Quiz: How well did you understand the podcast?

The Loch Ness Monster

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Worst Poet in the English language

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

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

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

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

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

Beautiful railway bridge over the silvery Tay!
With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array,
And your central girders, which seem to the eye
To be almost towering to the sky.

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

Beautiful railway bridge over the silvery Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879
Which will be remembered for a very long time.

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

Beautiful new railway bridge over the silvery Tay!
With your strong brick piers and buttresses in so grand array,
And your thirteen central girders, which seem to my eye,
Strong enough all windy storms to defy.

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

Download MP3 (5:27min, 3MB)

Bank Holiday

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

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

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

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

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

Download MP3 (3:59min, 2MB)

Languages die too

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

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

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

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

• We talk about native or indigenous plants or animals – that means the plants and animals which live naturally in a place, and have been there a long time. Similarly, we talk about native or indigenous languages, like English in England, or Irish Gaelic in Ireland.
• We can say that modern horses are descended from wild horses. Similarly, we can say that modern Welsh is descended from an old Celtic language.
• We can say, for instance, that wolves have died out in Britain. Similarly, we can say that the Eyak language has died out.
• We can say that an animal like the rhinocerous is endangered; and we can also say that a language is endangered, if the number of people speaking it is very small.
• Of course some species of animals are flourishing – probably their numbers are growing and they are not likely to die out. Similarly, we can say that today the Welsh language is flourishing.
• And some species of animals or birds die out, but are then re-introduced into the wild. We have several examples of this in England, particularly a bird called the red kite. Similarly, we can say that the Cornish language has been re-introduced.

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