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)

Vintage postcards

I want to give you a glimpse of the many and interesting things you can learn through postcards. My favourite ones are vintage postcards, specifically, those about children and art. They are always in fashion. It's an entertaining way of having some knowledge of past times: history, clothes, holidays, and so on. But above all, they are an invaluable way of approaching historic reference to society and usages.
Did you know that postcard collecting is currently the third largest collectable hobby in the world?

The popularity of post cards can be attributed to their broad subject appeal. Almost any subject imaginable has been, at some time, portrayed on a postcard. The broad subject range comes as a result of the social usage cards were designed for. Postcards continue today to be the most popular form of souvenir for travellers as well as economical means of communication both personal and business related.

The first postal card was suggested by Dr. Emanuel Herrmann, in 1869, and was accepted by the Hungarian government in the same year. The first regularly printed card appeared in 1870, a historical card, produced in connection with the Franco-German War. The first advertising card appeared in 1872 in Great Britain. The first German card appeared in 1874. Cards showing the Eiffel Tower in 1889 & 1890 gave impetus to the postcard heyday a decade later. A Heligoland card of 1889 is considered the first multi-coloured card ever printed.

One of the dearest postcards are those from the British Victorian Times because they are really elaborated and tender.

I will show you some of them with text, so that you can practice your English by reading them or just for the pleasure of looking at them.
I hope you like it.

Planning a school trip around English castles

Another interesting webquest by Galli Giuditta, Alta Scuola Pedagogica and

Larghi Ramona, Alta Scuola Pedagogica

Are you good at planning? Can you prepare an interesting travel? Here is a challenging task for you! Your class is going to England for a five-days trip, visiting castles and you need to organize travel, accomodation and interesting activities linked to castle life.

Introduction

Your class is preparing a school-trip to England, visiting castles in the south.

Your task is to organize a detailed and interesting plan!

Will you be able to do it? Let's start!! Click ON THE ELEPHANT and follow me.

London weekend

What's a webquest?

"A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet" (Dodge, 1995)

El modelo de Webquest fue desarrollado por Bernie Dodge en 1995 que lo definió como una actividad orientada a la investigación donde toda o casi toda la información que se utiliza procede de recursos de la Web.


We're going to follow this webquest about London. I hope you will learn a lot and enjoy it.

A Gruesome Discovery

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

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

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

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

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