Listen to English - learn English! : podcasts

Happy Birthday, M1!

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:19:00 +0000

This is what the M1 looked like when it first opened, 50 years ago.

That was Mr Chuck Berry. He was riding along in his automobile, and he is here to help us celebrate a special birthday. Yes, dear listeners, this week saw the 50th birthday of Britain's first motorway.

Germany and Italy built their first motorways before the second World War, but in Britain we waited until the 1950's. Our first proper motorway ran for about 100 km north from London into the centre of England. The government gave it the romantic name “M1” – the “M” stands for “motorway”, of course. And 50 years ago this week, the first cars and lorries started to use it.

A lot of things were very different then. There were no speed limits on the new motorway. You could drive as fast as you liked. There were no crash barriers in the middle of the road, and no lighting. And there were many fewer cars than today. The M1 was originally built for 13,000 vehicles a day. Today, it regularly carries 10 times that number.

There was lots of public interest in the new motorway. People stood on the bridges over the motorway and cheered and waved as the cars passed below them. Drivers enjoyed going as fast as they wanted – though often the cars did not enjoy it as much as the drivers, and there were lots of breakdowns from things like overheated engines. At weekends, families who were lucky enough to own a car used to get in the car and drive up and down the new motorway, just for fun. If they were really lucky, Dad might even stop at one of the new service stations to fill the car with petrol, and everyone could get out and get something to eat. It all seemed very new and modern and exciting.

Before the motorways were built, long-distance journeys by road were slow and difficult. Most of the main roads were narrow and twisting, and ran through the centre of towns, instead of round the edge. If people wanted to travel a long way, they normally took the train. But the trains were often slow and dirty, and the number of people using them was falling. So in the 1950's it seemed very sensible to build new roads and close old railway lines.

Today, the M1 often looks like this!

What is it like today? We have over 3000 km of motorway in Britain, and some of our motorways are the busiest in Europe. We also have huge traffic jams and pollution, and endless road works. When the M1 was built, there were only 2 million vehicles in the country. There are now well over 30 million vehicles on Britain's roads, and they all seem to be on the same road as me! In the 1950's, hardly anyone opposed the building of the first motorways. Today, many people say that if you build more roads, they will quickly fill up with more cars. And the motorway service stations, which once seemed so glamorous, are today crowded and expensive, with huge car parks full of Coca-Cola cans and empty crisp packets.

Happy birthday, M1.

File download (4:24 mins | 2 MB)

The River Thames is missing!

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:23:00 +0000

The London Underground map – with the river! Photo by Joe Bennett/flickr

What do we mean if we say that something is missing? We mean that it has disappeared, that it has gone! Suppose I put my car keys down on the table. A few minutes later, I look for them – but they are gone. I am sure they were on the table. They were on the table only a minute ago. But now they have disappeared. They are missing.

It is not just car keys that can go missing. Your luggage can go missing at the airport; and children can go missing in a busy shopping centre. And sometimes much bigger things go missing, as we shall discover in this podcast.

But first, some history. If you have visited London, I am sure that you have travelled on the London Underground. The earliest underground railway line in London was built in the middle of the 19th century. Steam engines pulled the trains, and smoke filled the stations and tunnels. Despite this, Londoners loved their new underground trains. They were a quick and convenient way to get to work. People could work in central London but live away from their work, often in better houses than before. New underground lines were built in the late 19th and the 20th century. They helped London to grow bigger and bigger.

Both Londoners and visitors needed to know which underground lines went to which places. They needed maps. Until the 1930s, maps of the underground were simply street maps with the underground railway lines added. In the centre of London, where there are lots of Underground lines and stations, the maps were crowded and difficult to read. But if you made the map so that you could see easily what the underground system in central London was like, the map had to be very big to cover all the underground lines in the suburbs.

The problem was solved by a man called Harry Beck. He drew a map which looks like an electric circuit diagram. He made central London big, so that you could see all the lines and stations, and the suburbs small so that the map was a reasonable size. He drew the underground lines so that they were either vertical, or horizontal, or at 45 degrees. He gave the different lines different colours. He said that people needed the map so that they could see how to get from one station – say, Victoria – to another station – say, Marylebone. People did not need to know the exact route of the railway line, or the exact distance between stations. So there were no streets on his map, and the stations are all about the same distance apart. But the river Thames was there, of course, like a blue snake through the middle of the city.

Harry Beck's map was a huge success. It made the complicated railway system easy to understand. Londoners and visitors loved it. Other cities in other countries copied the style of Harry Beck's map for their own transport systems. It became an icon – a symbol – of London.

Obviously, over the years the map has changed. New underground lines have been built, and new stations. Earlier this year, Transport for London – the body which runs the Underground – produced a new map. It looked just like the old map, but something was wrong. Something was missing. The River Thames was not there! It's OK, said Transport for London, you can't see the river when you travel on the Underground. So you don't need to know where it is! But Londoners were unhappy. The River Thames is not particularly beautiful; but it divides London into North London and South London. If you have lived in London, you will know that North London and South London are almost on different planets. South Londoners do not like going north of the Circle Line. North Londoners take their passports with them if they travel south of the river. So the river is important, and now it was missing from the Underground map.

The public outcry was so loud that Transport for London quickly decided to print a new map, with the river back where it should be. We English are deeply conservative about little things. We like Harry Beck's map the way it is, with the river, and we do not want to change it.

BBC News Report ::

File download (5:58 mins | 3 MB)

Tall stories

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:41:00 +0000

A tall building – the Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur. Photo by Storm Crypt/flickr

Today we discover the word “tall”, and we learn about “tall stories”.

I guess you know what “tall” means in your own language – if you don't, stop listening now and look the word up in a dictionary.

Here are some examples of the way we use “tall”. We can talk about a “tall man”. A tall man might be 1.9 or even 2 meters high. The tallest man who ever lived was called Robert Wadlow. He was 2.72 meters tall. He died in 1940, at the age of only 22.

We can talk about a “tall tree”. How high is a tall tree? Perhaps 20 meters. Or we can talk about a tall building. There is a photo of a tall building, in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, on the website. It is over 450 meters high.

Sometimes, we use the word “high” instead of “tall”. We can talk about a “high mountain” for example, or about a “high wall”. Ladies sometimes wear shoes with high heels. And small children sit in high chairs to eat their food. However, you cannot always use “high” instead of “tall”. We never use “high” for people or animals, for example. Robert Wadlow was the tallest man in the world, not the highest man.

I started this podcast by saying that we would talk about “tall stories”. What is a “tall story”, and how many meters high is it? Well, we say that a story is a “tall story” if it is hard to believe it. A tall story is often quite detailed, and it may even be true, but there is something about it which makes you think that it is probably false. Have you ever received an e-mail like this. It is from someone you do not know. The writer says that he has $50 million in a bank account. He explains how he got the $50 million, and tells you about his family, and why he now needs to move the $50 million to another country. Unfortunately, the bank regulations in his country will not allow him to move the money. But he has heard that you are an honest and trustworthy person, and he asks that you should help him. If you could just send him the details of your bank account, he will use it to move his money, and he will let you have $5 million for helping him.

Do you believe that story? No. You do not believe it and you do not trust the writer. It is a “tall story”. If you send him details of your bank account, of course, you will not get $5 million. Instead, you will find that your own savings disappear.

Recently, a documentary film company decided to show that it was easy to get some newspapers to publish tall stories about celebrities. They made up some stories, and then gave them to the newspapers. What sort of stories? Well, do you know the singer Amy Winehouse? She has lots of hair which she wears piled up on the top of her head in a style which in English we call a beehive. The tall story about her was that her beehive had caught fire during a party at her house. Another singer, Sarah Harding of the group Girls Aloud, is – how shall I say this ? – not well-known as an intellectual. The story about her was that in secret she reads books about quantum physics and that she had bought her own telescope so that she can observe the stars and the planets.

Amy Winehouse and her beehive hair style.

At this point, dear listeners, I must say that I am disappointed that the company did not invent a story about the celebrity podcaster at Listen to English – something about a secret holiday on a Caribbean island with a 19 year old super-model, perhaps. I am sure it would have been much more interesting than the fire in Amy Winehouse's hair.

What adjectives can we use to describe these tall stories. They are untrue, or false, of course; they are also fabricated, or invented, or made-up; and they are far-fetched, or outlandish, or difficult to believe.

Nonetheless, the newspapers published nearly all of the stories. None of them tried to check whether they were true. Sometimes the papers even added little details of their own. And then the stories were repeated in other newspapers and on blogs and internet sites. People will believe almost anything about celebrities. Celebrities are manufactured; they are invented by the media. Sometimes they hardly seem to be real people at all. People do not want the truth about celebrities; they want entertainment. So does it matter if the media publish tall stories about them?

File download (6:44 mins | 3 MB)

How to get rid of an old sofa

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:31:00 +0000

How to get rid of an old sofa. Photo by Björn Sahlberg/flickr

Today we learn about how to get rid of things.

Kevin and Joanne have an old sofa. In fact, it used to be Kevin's sofa in the good old days when he was a student and before he had met Joanne. The sofa is dirty and stained, because Kevin has spilled beer on it, several times. The wooden frame is broken, because Kevin and about 10 friends sat on the sofa once to watch the World Cup final on television. The sofa is torn, because Kevin's cat used to sharpen his claws on it. Joanne has had enough. “That sofa has to go,” she says. “We have to get rid of it.”

“That is my sofa”, says Kevin. “We go back a long way. It is part of my history. We cannot get rid of it.”

“Yes, we can,” says Joanne. “We will go to IKEA on Saturday to buy a new sofa.” That was the wrong thing to say. Kevin does not want to get rid of his old sofa. And especially he does not want to go to IKEA on Saturday with hundreds of other people. He wants to go to a football match with hundreds of other people instead.

Kevin and Joanne reach a compromise. They will get rid of the old sofa. They will buy a new sofa on the internet. There will be no trip to IKEA. And Kevin can go to the football match.

“How shall we get rid of the sofa?” asks Kevin. “Perhaps we could sell it on eBay.”

“Don't be silly,” says Joanne. “No-one will want to buy a dirty, broken sofa on eBay.”

“Perhaps we can just take it outside and leave it in the street,” says Kevin. “Eventually the Council will take it away.”

“No they won't,” says Joanne. “And we will probably be prosecuted for dumping rubbish in the street.”

“I could take the sofa into the garden and set fire to it,” suggests Kevin.

“Now you are being ridiculous,” says Joanne. “George can borrow a van from his work, and you and George can put the sofa in the van and take it to the tip.” The “tip” is the place where people can take things they do not want in order to get rid of them. There are big containers for different sorts of rubbish – for paper and cardboard, for glass, for engine oil, for old fridges, for wood, for garden rubbish and so on. And there is lots of room for old sofas.

So George and Kevin put the sofa in the van and get rid of it at the tip. Then they go to the football match together, where they watch United lose 3-0 to the team at the bottom of the league. They are not happy. “They need to get rid of that useless manager,” says George. “They need to get rid of that useless goalkeeper,” says Kevin.

When they get home, they find that the new sofa has arrived. They sit down on it and open a couple of cans of beer. “If either of you spill beer on the new sofa,” says Joanne “you will both be dead. I will get rid of you both myself!”

Quiz - how to get rid of things. ::

File download (4:02 mins | 2 MB)

The Staffordshire Hoard

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:24:00 +0000

Two of the pieces of Anglo-Saxon metalwork found in a field in Staffordshire.

Before beginning today's podcast, I need to explain a few words. The first word is “treasure”. Treasure means things which are very valuable; generally, “treasure” means things made of gold or silver or precious stones. The second word is “hoard”. If someone collects a lot of valuable things, and then hides them or keeps them secret, we call that a “hoard”. And finally, a “find” is of course something which you find – but normally it means something very special or unusual or valuable which you find.

But that's enough vocabulary practice. On with today's podcast.

Terry Herbert is 55 years old. He lives in a small town called Bloxwich, about 16 kilometers north-west of Birmingham. His hobby is metal-detecting. A metal-detector is a tool which tells you when there is metal in the ground. You move the metal detector slowly over the ground, and it goes ‘bleep' if it finds anything made of metal.

In July this year, Terry went metal-detecting in a field in Staffordshire owned by a friend of his, and found something completely amazing. He discovered a large number of gold and silver objects. He told the authorities what he had found, and a team of archaeologists then explored the site carefully and found more objects. When they started to clean and examine the discovery, they realised that Terry Herbert had found over 1500 objects dating from about 700AD. It was the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasure ever found in England.

The Anglo-Saxons were people who invaded and settled in England as the Roman Empire collapsed in about the 4th century. They came from northern Germany and the language which they spoke – which we call Anglo-Saxon or Old English – was the ancestor of modern English. They were skilled metal craftsmen; they made delicate and intricate designs on gold and silver, and often inlaid the metal with precious stones, such as garnet, which is a dark red stone. After they arrived here, the Anglo-Saxons divided England into a number of kingdoms and spent most of the next several hundred years fighting each other, and the Danes and the Scots. The largest and most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms was called Mercia. It covered all of central England, including the area where the Staffordshire Hoard was found.

Gold inlaid with garnets, from the Staffordshire Hoard.

Almost everything in the hoard is connected with the Anglo-Saxons' favourite hobby, fighting. There are gold decorations from swords and knives, from shields and helmets, from belts and buckles. There are no “women's things”, like personal jewellery, and no household things like plates or cups. So what is the hoard? Many experts think that the treasure was collected after a battle. Quite simply, the victors went around and took all the gold and precious metal from the weapons and clothes of the enemies they had killed. Who were these victors and who were their enemies? We do not know. And afterwards, the victors hid what they had collected. Why? Again, we do not know. Nor do we know what happened later, and why the victors did not come back and collect the treasure which they had hidden.

In England, if you find gold or silver objects which are more than 300 years old, they belong to the Queen. Normally, however, a reward based on the value of the find is paid to the person who found it and to the owner of the land. Often a museum buys the treasure, and in this case the Museum in Birmingham together with other local museums want to acquire the Staffordshire Hoard so that it remains in the area where it was found.

We English are not generally very interested in museums or art galleries. We prefer zoos, pubs, theme parks and beaches. But there has been a lot of interest in the Staffordshire Hoard. Perhaps popular archaeology programmes on television have made people more aware of the importance of things from our history. There is a temporary exhibition of a few of the most important objects from the Staffordshire Hoard at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery until the middle of October. Yesterday, together with hundreds of other people, I stood in a queue for over an hour to see the exhibition. It is quite fascinating. Many of the objects still have dirt from the field in Staffordshire on them, because there has not been time yet to clean them. Suddenly, Anglo-Saxon England, 1300 years ago, seems much closer and more real.

The Staffordshire Hoard website ::

File download (6:50 mins | 3 MB)

I cannot bear it ....

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:39:00 +0000

I told you, I can't bear getting up in the morning…

This podcast is about “bear”. You all know what a bear is. It is a big, furry animal that likes eating honey. There is a picture of a bear on the website. He is from a zoo in northern Spain, where there are still some bears in the wild. However, that is not the sort of “bear” I want to tell you about today. If you are really interested in the big, furry sorts of bear, you may enjoy listening to Natasha telling you a story about bears – three bears actually – in another posting on Listen to English.

“To bear” is a verb. Its past tense is “bore”. Originally, “to bear” meant “to carry”. We still use it to mean “to carry” in some set expressions, but it sounds a bit old-fashioned. However, you will often hear people saying things like :

I cannot bear the noise which the children are making.
I cannot bear the hot weather in summer.

If I say that “I cannot bear” something, I mean that I cannot tolerate it, it is awful, it is too much, it makes me very unhappy, it makes me want to scream and run away and hide! Here are some more examples :

I cannot bear travelling by air, because you have to wait so long at the airport.
George cannot bear getting up early in the morning.
I cannot bear it when you are angry.
Kevin cannot bear it when Joanne's mother says that there are more important things in life than football.

There are some other expressions which mean almost the same as “I cannot bear..”. Here are some of them:

I like classical music, but my children cannot stand it.
I cannot put up with the pop music which my children like.

Now suppose you want to say the opposite of “I cannot bear..”. Suppose you wanted to say that you are OK with your children's pop music. It is not a problem for you. How would you say that? You could say :

I don't mind my children's pop music.
My children's pop music does not bother me.

So, now you know all about the word “bear”. And some of you will remember that there is another word “bare” in English, spelled B-A-R-E. The B-A-R-E sort of bare is an adjective, and it means uncovered, not covered with anything. So, you can say that someone has bare arms, which means that they are wearing a short-sleeved shirt or blouse which leaves their arms uncovered. Or you can say that someone has a bare head, which means that they are not wearing a hat. You can talk about the bare earth, which means ground where there is nothing growing; or about a bare mountainside, where there are no trees, just rocks.

Near where I live, there is a man who never wears any shoes. He says that his feet smell if he wears shoes, so for the last 30 years he has walked the streets of the city with no shoes. People call him Pete the Feet, and there is an interview with him on YouTube. Pete the Feet has bare feet; he goes bare-footed.

Now you are all experts on “bear” (the animal), and “to bear” (the verb) and “bare” (the adjective). So you can try the quiz on the website and see how good you are!

Quiz - if you can bear it! ::

File download (4:59 mins | 2 MB)

The Islands on the Edge of the World

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:19:00 +0000

St Kilda. The old houses are in a long row in the centre of the picture. The modern buildings on the left are a small military installation. Photo by the Croft/flickr

Today we are going to visit St Kilda. St Kilda is a small group of islands in the north Atlantic, far to the west of Scotland. It is the home of tens of thousands of sea birds. In fact, St Kilda is one of the most important places for sea birds anywhere in the world. And for thousands of years, people lived on St Kilda, but they do not live there any more, as I will explain.

The traditional way of life on St Kilda was simple and hard. The people kept sheep and grew a few crops like barley. They hunted sea-birds for food. They did some fishing, but the sea around St Kilda is often very bad and fishing was dangerous. The people of St Kilda had little contact with the outside world. Once a year the representative of the landlord visited the island to collect rents. If the islanders needed help, they would light a big fire on the top of the main island, and hope that a passing ship would see it. Sometimes, they wrote messages and put the message inside a piece of wood. They threw the wood into the sea, and several weeks later someone walking on the shore in Scotland might find it.

Some big changes happened in the 19th century. A school opened on the island, where the children learned Gaelic (which was their own language), and English (which was a foreign language for them) and arithmetic. Small numbers of tourists started to visit the islands during the summer. The tourist boats brought things which the islanders needed, and the islanders made simple souvenirs to sell to the tourists. Some of the islanders left the islands, to go to Australia, and later another group emigrated to Canada. The number of people on St Kilda had never been more than about 180. By the end of the 19th century, the number had fallen to less than 100.

During the First World War, the British Navy had a wireless station on St Kilda, and on one exciting day a German submarine arrived and shelled the island. No-one was killed, but the Navy's wireless station was destroyed. The Navy base on St Kilda made communication with the outside world easy, and Navy ships were able to bring supplies to the island. But when the war ended, the Navy base closed and life for the people of St Kilda became hard again. There were shortages of food in some years, and there was no way to get seriously ill people to hospital. By 1930, there were only 36 people left on St Kilda. They all signed a letter to the government saying that they wanted to leave before the winter storms made it impossible for a ship to reach St Kilda. And on 29 August 1930, they all left and went to mainland Scotland, and their houses, and the tiny church and school were empty.

Today, the National Trust for Scotland owns St Kilda. During the summer, a warden and volunteers carry out conservation work on the old houses. You can visit St Kilda during the summer by boat from Scotland. The trip takes 14 hours, or longer in bad weather, and sometimes the boat cannot reach St Kilda at all. When you get there you will find no cafes or restaurants, no cars or tourist coaches, no public toilets or souvenir shops, just the ruins of the houses where the St Kilda people used to live, and sheep, and thousands and thousands of sea birds. The islands of St Kilda are still the islands on the edge of the world.

File download (5:11 mins | 3 MB)

Making a comeback

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 18:17:00 +0000

The red kite is making a comeback…

Hello, and welcome back to Listen to English. I hope you all had a good summer break.

Today, I will tell you about an expression which you often see in the newspapers – “making a comeback”. What does it mean, to “make a comeback”?

Imagine that you are a pop singer. Your records sell really well. Your concerts are a sell-out. You earn millions of dollars, or pounds, or euros, every year. Then your fans get bored. They want something new. They stop buying your records. They stop going to your concerts. There is a new band, composed entirely of 13-year olds, which is now top of the charts. People have forgotten about you. Then perhaps 10 years later, people rediscover you. They thought you were dead, and are surprised and happy to find that you are still alive. You make a new record and people buy it, because it reminds them of the old days. You are invited to sing at some big music festivals. You have made a comeback.

Here is another example. Kevin, as he generally does on Saturdays, goes to a football match to watch his team, United. The first half is a disaster. The other team score two goals. The crowd is sure that United will lose. The second half starts badly – the other team score again. And then, in the last 15 minutes, United start to play proper football. They score a goal, and then another one, and finally a third goal in the last minute. The newspaper report of the match talks about “United's big comeback in the second half “. And Kevin is very happy!

The newspapers are very fond of writing about “making a comeback”. Here are a few of the things which the newspapers tell us have made a comeback, or are going to make a comeback:

1. sewing machines. Because of the economic recession, people think it would be good to make their own clothes, and sales of sewing machines have gone up. Sewing machines are making a comeback.
2. ripped jeans. Do you remember when you could buy jeans which already had holes in them? Well, they are making a comeback, or so the newspapers say!
3. bow ties. I have no idea why bow ties are making a comeback. Indeed I don't think they are.
4. English cricket. After several years of despair, the English cricket team has beaten the Australians, and we are all very happy. English cricket has made a comeback.
5. red kites. The red kite is a bird of prey, which became extinct in England over 100 years ago. Over the last 20 years, conservationists have released red kites into the wild in several parts of England, and there are now several hundred of these beautiful birds. The red kite is making a comeback.
6. cider. Cider is an alcoholic drink made from apples. For years, sales of cider have been falling, as people preferred beer or wine. Now people are interested in cider again. I went to a pub last week which sold 20 different sorts of cider. Cider is making a comeback.

ï»¿

..so is Vera Lynn!

But the most amazing comeback is this.

That was Vera Lynn. She was a very popular singer during the Second World War, when her sentimental songs on the radio helped to keep people's spirits up. But that was a long time ago. You have to be in your 70s to remember Vera Lynn on the BBC in wartime. Now a CD of some of her songs has just been re-released, and it is in the Top Twenty. Who is buying it? Are there queues of old people outside the record shops? Or do people buy the CD for their grannies? Or is it just that we English are in love with the past? I don't know, but Vera Lynn – who is now 92 years old – has definitely made a comeback.

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

File download (6:30 mins | 3 MB)

I meant to ...

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:49:00 +0000

I didn't mean to make a mess… Photo by Stuart Woodfin/flickr

Today we meet the English expression “I meant to”. “Meant” is the past tense of “mean”, and I know you all know what “mean” means. (Sorry, there are a lot of “means” in that sentence!) I guess you often ask, “What does this word mean?” or you say “Now I understand what the sentence means”.

Now look at these sentences:

I meant to go to the supermarket, but I did not have any money with me.

I meant to do my English homework, but my friend visited, and we talked all evening.

I meant to speak to my mother, but she was not at home when I telephoned.

“I meant to..” means “it was my plan, or my intention to..” do something. And it is an expression we often use when we have to explain why we have not done something! “I meant to send her a postcard, but I could not find a stamp.” “I meant to meet my daughter in town, but I had to stay late at work for a meeting.”

Why am I explaining about “I meant to..” in this podcast? Well, quite a lot of you have sent me e-mails to ask why there have been no new podcasts for the last few weeks. I have been busy. I am the Trustee of a Charity which helps children who have emotional or family problems. Unfortunately we have run out of money, and have had to close the Charity, pay all the bills, make the staff redundant and find other organisations to help the children. This has taken a lot of time, so I have not been able to make as many podcasts as I would like. I meant to make several new podcasts, but I did not have the time. I meant to explain to you, but I forgot. I did not mean to leave you in the dark, but I had so many other things to do.

Here in England, it is nearly the school summer holidays. I am going to take a break, but I will be back with new podcasts early in September. Also in September, I want to redesign the Listen to English website, and add several new features. Listen to English is now on Twitter, and there is also a Listen to English page on Facebook. You can find links on the website. I shall use Twitter and Facebook to tell you when there are new podcasts, and to send you other news. You can use the Facebook page to send messages to me and to other listeners. So, please follow Listen to English on Twitter, and become a fan of the Listen to English page on Facebook.

There is an exercise about “I meant to” on the website. Have a good summer!

Listen to English on Twitter :: - follow me!
Listen to English on Facebook :: - become a fan!
Quiz about "mean to.." ::

File download (3:40 mins | 2 MB)

Royal Ascot

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:35:00 +0000

Hats at Royal Ascot. Photo by Lizi G/flickr.

Today we go horse racing, and we meet people with lots of money and no dress-sense!

Ascot is a small town, south-west of London, and close to the royal castle at Windsor.
In 1711, Queen Anne went horse-riding from Windsor, and “discovered” Ascot. She decided that it was exactly the right place for horse races. So the poor folk who grazed their cows or their pigs on the land had to move, and there has been a race-course at Ascot ever since.

There are race meetings at Ascot throughout the year. In the summer, the races are “on the flat”, which means that the horses simply run round the race course. But in the winter, the racing is “over the fences”, which means that the poor horses have to jump over fences as well as race round the course.

The greatest race meeting of the year is called Royal Ascot, and it is one of the grandest social occasions of the year, at least for people who care about grand social occasions. Royal Ascot is taking place this very week, from Tuesday to Saturday, and I see from the Royal Ascot website that there are still a few tickets left. Before you rush off to buy a ticket, however, here are a few things which you should know about Royal Ascot:

One, it is expensive. You will pay about £60 per person per day for a grandstand ticket. You cannot actually buy a ticket for the poshest area, the Royal Enclosure. To get a ticket for the Royal Enclosure, you have to know the right people.

Two, the Queen will be there, and lots of other royals and celebrities, and if you are lucky you may see some of them.

Three, Ascot racecourse is very concerned that people should wear the right clothes. Morning coats and top hats are good. Jeans, t-shirts and trainers are bad – very bad. (If you do not actually own a morning coat or a top hat, you can hire them from a company called Moss Brothers. In other countries, do you have to hire clothes in order to watch a horse race?)

Four, the hats are more important than the horses. Ascot is famous for the extraordinary hats that the ladies wear. Many of these hats are masterpieces of structural engineering. There is a link on the website to photos of some of this year's finest hats.

Five, eating and drinking is almost as important as the hats. Last year, race-goers at Royal Ascot drank 60,000 bottles of champagne and ate 11,500 boxes of strawberries.

Six, the horse racing does not really matter, but if you are interested an Irish horse called Yeats won the Ascot Gold Cup yesterday. Second was another Irish horse, and third was a French horse. English horses don't win at Ascot, just as English tennis players don't win at Wimbledon.

But I had forgotten. Our economy is in recession. People are feeling poorer. Many people have lost their jobs. Surely, this year people will not spend lots of money on champagne and silly hats?

And, yes, there are fewer people at Ascot this year than last year. Champagne sales are down. And one newspaper reports that the Queen's granddaughter, Princess Beatrice, was seen at Ascot wearing a £90 jacket from Topshop and a pair of shoes which cost only £65. Oh, horror! Times are definitely hard!

Hats at Ascot! ::

File download (4:57 mins | 2 MB)

Travelling slowly is best

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:22:00 +0000

Boat on a canal near Worcester. Picture by juggzy_malone/flickr.

We have more about canal boats in today's podcast.

It was late afternoon when we arrived at the boatyard to find our canal boat. One of the staff took us round the boat, to show us how things worked. Then he gave me the keys. The boat was ours, for the next week, at least.

The first thing you learn about an English canal boat is that it is slow. It is, in fact, almost the slowest form of transport you can think of. Small children riding bicycles overtake you. People walking their dogs on the towpath overtake you.

Perhaps you think that sailing a canal boat is easy. It must be easier than a car, you think, because it goes so slowly. Wrong. Sailing a canal boat is difficult.

To start with, there are no brakes. “If you want to stop,” the man in the boatyard told us, “you put the engine in reverse.” OK – I put the engine in reverse. The boat takes no notice. It keeps going forward. In a panic, I increase the engine revs [ie I made the engine go faster]. Gradually, the boat slows down, and eventually stops. It takes me about 50 meters to stop a canal boat travelling at walking pace. Amazing.

Then the trouble starts. You can only steer a canal boat if it is going forwards. If the canal boat stops or goes backwards, it goes where it wants to go, not where you want to go. Generally, the canal boat wants to drift in front of a boat coming the other way. If there is no boat coming the other way, the canal boat will probably want to drift to the side of the canal where it will run aground in the mud. You then have to spend several minutes pushing the boat off the mud.

Now, suppose you want to turn the boat round, to go the other way. Turning round is no problem in a car. However, the canal boat is 15 meters long, while the canal is only 10 meters wide. You need a special wide bit of canal, called a “winding hole”, to turn the boat round. You look at the map. No problem, there is a winding hole only 5 kilometers down the canal. Then you remember. The canal boat will take an hour to travel 5 kilometers.

You sometimes hear car drivers say that “parking is a nightmare”. They know nothing. They should try mooring a canal boat. (“Mooring” is the proper word for parking a boat). First you have to stop the boat. Then you have to persuade it to move towards the bank and not towards the middle of the canal. Everyone on the canal boat, except you, the driver, has to jump onto the canal bank. You throw them ropes to tie the boat to the bank. The ropes fall in the canal. You pull them out of the water and throw them again. A group of people watch with interest as your helpers make the boat fast. (The word “fast” has two completely different meanings in English – generally, it is the opposite of “slow”; but sometimes it means “cannot move”. So, if I “make a boat fast”, I mean that I tie it to the bank with ropes so that it cannot move. English is a crazy language!)

The people who built the canals liked to play tricks on canal users. A favourite trick is to put a canal bridge just before a bend in the canal. That makes it impossible to see whether another boat is coming the other way. Another trick is to make some bits of canal so narrow that two boats cannot pass each other. When you find a narrow section, you have to stop (if the boat is in a good mood), and send someone to walk along the towpath with a mobile phone, to phone you when they can see that there is no boat coming the other way.

But at least there are no traffic jams on the canal, you say. Wrong. At busy times, you may have to wait an hour or more to take your boat through a set of locks. But it is not like a traffic jam on a motorway. On a motorway, you sit in your car getting more and more tense and angry. You look out of the window at other drivers who are also getting tense and angry. But on a canal, when you find a traffic jam, you park – sorry, “moor” – your boat and go and talk to the people in the other boats. You swap stories about your adventures on the canal, and then help each other take the boats through the locks.

In a week on the canal, I think we travelled 60 kilometers. It is good to travel slowly. You relax and notice things which otherwise you might not see, like the wild flowers on the towpath and a heron standing completely still in a field. At night, we moored in peaceful quiet places, and in the morning the singing of the birds woke us up. We met several people who live on the canal permanently. They call themselves “live-aboards”, because they live aboard their boats. They have a simple life, because there is no room in a canal boat for many possessions. Some of them make souvenirs which they sell to other people on the canal. Some of them stay in one place for most of the time. Others move their boat to somewhere new every day. The “live-aboards” think they are the luckiest people in the world. What do you think?

File download (7:19 mins | 3 MB)

Canals and narrowboats

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:05:00 +0000

Canal narrowboats. Photo by welshdan/flickr

In the podcast about Mr Speaker, I told you that I was going on holiday. I said that I would be the captain of a ship and sail away to new and interesting places. So, where did I go on my ship? Perhaps I sailed across the Atlantic. Perhaps I visited the islands of Greece.

But, no. Actually, my wife and I hired a canal boat and we went for a holiday on one of Britain's beautiful canals.

We have lots of canals in Britain, especially in England. Most of them were built in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Boats on the canals carried coal, iron, pottery, stone, lime, salt and many other goods needed by the new industries which grew during the Industrial Revolution. Until the railways came, the canals were one of the most important forms of transport in the country.

The centre of the canal system in England is here in Birmingham, where I live. We like to tell visitors that there are more canals in Birmingham than in Venice! (This is true, but the canals in Venice are probably more beautiful!)

Originally, horses pulled the boats on the canals. The horses walked along a path at the side of the canal. Do you know the English verb “to tow”? It means to pull something which cannot move by itself. If your car breaks down, you may need to use another vehicle to tow the car to a garage. So, the horses towed the boats along the canal, and we still call the path beside a canal a “towpath”. In the 19th century, however, some canal boats had steam engines instead of horses, and today, most canal boats have diesel engines.

Compared to the great canals of the Netherlands or Germany, English canals and canal boats are tiny. The traditional boats of the English canals are only about 2 meters wide and between 10 and 20 meters long. A bigger boat could not fit through the bridges or the locks. We call these boats “narrowboats”. Why are they so small? Well, the canals are narrow, because it was cheaper and easier to build a narrow canal than a wide canal. And the boats are small because, originally, they were towed by a single horse. Traditional English narrowboats are brightly painted in red, blue, green or yellow, or all of these colours. Often they are decorated with pictures of flowers or castles.

When the railways arrived, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the canals began to decline. It was much quicker to move goods on a railway than on a canal. And in the 20th century, road vehicles took traffic from the canals as well.

Here is a typical story about the decline of the canals. There was company with a factory which made feed for animals. It was beside a canal, and the company had 11 narrowboats which brought grain and other things which it needed from a sea port. The narrowboats took 3 or 4 days to make the journey from the factory to the sea port and back. In 1923, the company bought a lorry. The lorry could make two return journeys each day. Naturally, the company scrapped the narrowboats and used the lorry instead.

And so, everyone thought, that is the end of the old canals. The narrowboats disappeared, many canals were abandoned, weeds grew in the water so that boats could not pass, the towpaths collapsed into the canals, the locks would not work any more. It was all very sad.

Then, shortly after the Second World War, people started to think that the canals could have a new use, for recreation i.e. for leisure and holidays. They saw that many canals went through beautiful, quiet countryside, where people could relax and enjoy nature. Gradually, people started to use the canals again. Abandoned canals were cleaned and re-opened; locks were repaired; and in one or two places new canals were built. Today, you can see large numbers of brightly-painted traditional narrowboats on our canals again. But they are carrying holiday-makers, not coal, or lime or pottery.

There will be more about canal boats in the next podcast. There is a quiz on the Listen to English website so that you can test how well you have understood what I have said.

Quiz - how well did you understand the podcast. ::

File download (6:09 mins | 3 MB)

Black Jumper Day

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:59:00 +0000

A black jumper shows everyone that you are big and important!

Today, I will tell you about “black jumper day” , and we will meet the English expression “to leave for” somewhere.

In a podcast a very long time ago, in November 2006, I told you that most English children wear a school uniform to go to school. My daughter, who is 15 years old, goes to a girls secondary school. [Sorry – I say “11 years old” in the podcast, but this is wrong. It should be “15 years old”]. She has to wear a dark green skirt or trousers, and a white blouse and a dark green jumper.

She is in year 10 at school. In year 11, the girls sit their GCSE exams. GCSE stands for “General Certificate of Secondary Education”. After their GCSE exams, the girls leave the secondary school to go to sixth-form college, or to a further education college, to continue their studies or to learn practical skills. By tradition, in my daughter's school, the year 11 girls are allowed to wear black jumpers, instead of dark green jumpers. They like their black jumpers, not because the jumpers look beautiful, but because they show everyone that year 11 are the senior girls, the most important girls, in the school.

However, the year 11 girls do not have to come to school any more. From today, they are on “study leave”, a time when they can stay at home and work and revise for their GCSE exams. Some of them, of course, use “study leave” as a time to go shopping or have parties, but perhaps we had better not talk about that.

This means that, from today, the year 10 girls are the most senior girls in the school. It is now their turn to wear the black jumpers, to show the rest of the school how big and important they are. They have looked forward to this day for weeks. They have all searched the local shops to find a black jumper in a style which they like. And today, they have all left for school, wearing their new black jumpers.

They have “left for school”. That means, they have left home to go to school. Here are some more examples. Do you understand what they mean?

At eight o'clock, Kevin leaves for work.
At half past eight, Harry leaves for college.
George has left for a meeting with some clients.
Sarah has left for lunch.
At the end of the day, Kevin will leave for home.
Tomorrow, Joanne will leave for her mother's (ie she will go to her mother's house).
George has a business trip to America. On Thursday, he will leave for New York.
The train leaves for London in 10 minutes.
And, of course, the girls leave for school wearing their black jumpers.

File download (4:00 mins | 2 MB)

Goodbye, Mr Speaker

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Sat, 23 May 2009 09:01:00 +0000

The Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin.

Who is Mr Speaker? Mr Speaker is the chairman of our House of Commons, in Parliament. He is called the Speaker of the House of Commons because, several hundred years ago, it was his job to speak to the King, to tell the King what Parliament wanted, and to bring the King's reply back to Parliament. Generally, the King's reply was “no”, so the Speaker did not have an easy job. In the 15th century, several Speakers made the King so angry that he had them arrested and executed. Politics was fun in those days.

Since then, life for the Speaker has been more peaceful. Yes, there was a Speaker at the end of the 17th century who was sacked because he had accepted a bribe from businessmen in the city of London. But generally, the Speaker's life has few problems. He, or she, chairs debates in the House of Commons, and makes sure that the House of Commons obeys its rules. The only real disadvantage is having to wear old-fashioned black clothes with gold embroidery, and having to listen to so many boring debates.

But things have changed. To understand what has happened to Mr Speaker, you need to know that Members of Parliament (MPs) in Britain receive a salary, and are also able to get other money, or “allowances”, to pay for things like an office, a secretary, travel and the cost of having a second home in London, if they do not live in London already. MPs make a list of their expenses – we say that they make a claim – in order get this extra money. They give their claim to the finance office in Parliament. If the finance office is happy with the claim, the MP gets the money he or she has claimed.

Until very recently, information about MPs allowances was a state secret. But now, the newspapers have found information about the allowances, and published it. It is clear that some MPs have behaved dishonestly. One MP claimed money to pay interest on a loan to buy a flat in London – which was fine, except that he had already repaid the loan and there were no interest payments. Other MPs claimed for the cost of repairing houses, which they then sold at a profit. One MP, who lives in a castle, claimed for the cost of cleaning the moat – that is, the water around the castle. Another MP, who has a country estate, keeps ducks on the lake on his estate. But foxes kept killing the ducks, so he claimed for the cost of building a little island for his ducks in the middle of the lake, so that the foxes could not catch them

All this has made people very angry. There are demands for big changes in the way that Parliament is run – for changes in our election system, changes in the way MPs do their jobs and the way they are paid.

And Mr Speaker? Well, the present speaker – Michael Martin is his real name – has opposed changes and many MPs think that he is not the right person to lead the House of Commons. So they have forced him to resign. He has become the first speaker for over 300 years to be forced out of office. Next month, Members of Parliament will elect a new Speaker to wear silly clothes and listen to their boring debates.

I will be on holiday next week, so there will be no podcast. I am going to be a captain of a ship, and will sail far away to new and interesting places. I shall tell you about it when I get back.

File download (5:07 mins | 2 MB)

The Poet Laureate

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Fri, 08 May 2009 12:06:00 +0000

Carol Ann Duffy

Britain has a new Poet Laureate. Already, I hear you asking, “What is he talking about? We know what a poet is – it is someone who writes poetry. But what is this ‘laureate' thing?”

You may know that the ancient Greeks used to place a crown made of laurel leaves on the head of someone as a very special honour. Laurel is a type of bush, with sweet-smelling leaves. Normally nowdays we call it ‘bay', and we use bay leaves as a flavouring in cooking. So, that is the literal meaning of ‘laureate' – ‘crowned with laurel leaves, as a sign of special honour'.

Since about the 17th century, English kings and queens have appointed a poet as their own, special, private poet. The king paid the poet a small salary, and the poet wrote poems for special royal occasions, like births or marriages in the royal family. The poet appointed by the king became known as the poet laureate. Over the years, some very famous English poets have been appointed as poets laureate – William Wordsworth, for example, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. The latest poet laureate has recently retired, and the Queen, advised by the Prime Minister, has just appointed a new one. Neither our Queen nor our Prime Minister know very much about poetry. But they have made a very good and popular choice for the new poet laureate.

Her name is Carol Ann Duffy and she is the first woman to hold the position of poet laureate. Her poetry is simple and direct, and easy to understand. Perhaps for that reason, pupils in many English schools study her poems. Recently, indeed, there was controversy about one of her poems – it is a poem about the feelings of an angry young man who wants to kill and destroy things. The first few lines are:

ï»¿Today I am going to kill something. Anything. I have had enough of being ignored and today I am going to play God.

Some people argued that reading the poem would make some young people pick up a knife and go and kill someone. One of the organisations which runs school exams in England even asked schools to destroy copies of the poem. This is ridiculous, of course. People kill because they are very angry inside, not because they have read a poem. Also, as Carol Ann Duffy herself pointed out, Shakespeare's plays are full of angry young men who murder other people. Should we ban Shakespeare's plays in schools?

Here is one of Carol Ann Duffy's poems. It is a love poem – but a rather unusual one. She is going to give her love a present – a present that represents love. And what is the present? An onion! Listen.

ï»¿
Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

File download (5:08 mins | 2 MB)

Without hesitation, repetition or deviation

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:29:00 +0000

Clement Freud. Artwork by mediamolecule/flickr

Two weeks ago, a man called Clement Freud died. He was 84 years old. He was a remarkable man, and very well-known and liked in Britain. He made us laugh, and I thought I would make a short podcast about him.

Clement was born in Berlin in Germany. His father was an architect and his grandfather was the famous psychologist Sigmund Freud. His elder brother is the famous artist Lucian Freud. Clement's family were Jewish, and they left Germany in 1933 when Hitler came to power, and moved to London. Clement went to school in London, even though at first he spoke hardly any English. When he left school, he became an apprentice cook in the kitchens of one of London's grandest hotels.

That was the start of Clement's first career. How many careers do most people have? Many people – perhaps most people – do the same sort of work for the whole of their working lives. They are a teacher, or a farmer, or an engineer, or a driver, or a civil servant. Clement Freud had five different careers.

First, he worked in restaurants. He learnt about good food and good cooking. He opened his own night club.

Second, he became a writer. He wrote books for children. He wrote books about food. (We British, as you know, do not understand how to cook properly, but we love books and TV programmes about food.) For many years, he wrote articles for newspapers, about food, sport and life in general. he was particularly keen on horse racing.

Third, Clement Freud went into advertising. He advertised dog food, in a series of TV ads in the 1960s and 1970s. The advertisements became classics, and most people who were alive and watched TV at that time remember them. There is a link to one on the website, and a transcript. His co-star was a dog called Henry. Clement and Henry looked very alike – they both had long faces and a mournful expression.

Clement Freud and Henry in one of their TV ads. Clement is the one on the right.

Fourth, Clement Freud became a politician. He surprised everyone except himself by winning a seat in Parliament for the Liberal Party. He remained an MP for 14 years.

And fifth, he became a very well-known radio personality. For over 40 years, he appeared regularly on a BBC radio game called Just a Minute.

The rules of Just a Minute are simple. The contestants are each given a subject and immediately they have to talk about it, for a minute. Easy, you may say. Anyone could do that. However, they have to talk without hesitation, repetition or deviation. “No hesitation” means that you are not allowed to stop and say “um – er” when you cannot think what to say next. “No repetition” means that you are not allowed to use the same word twice. And “no deviation” means that you must stick to the subject, you are not allowed to talk about something else. If you hesitate, or repeat, or deviate, one of the other contestants will challenge you, and if the chairman agrees with the challenge, the other contestant takes up the subject and tries to talk – without hesitation, repetition or deviation – for the rest of the minute.

It really is very difficult to speak without hesitation, repetition or deviation for a whole minute. Try it some time! You could even try it in English!

File download (5:04 mins | 2 MB)

Help - the hens are on the point of taking over the world.

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:08:00 +0000

The flower is on the point of opening. Photo by Dezz/flickr

I am sorry it has been so long since my last podcast. Thank you to all of you who sent me e-mails to ask what had happened and when would my next podcast be. No. I am not ill. No, I am not dead. No, I am not bored with podcasting. No, I have not run away with a beautiful blonde model 40 years younger than me. I have simply been busy.

In the last podcast, I told you about my hens. I am watching them as I write this. They are running round the garden, eating grass and anything else they can find. Soon there will be no garden left. However, the hens are happy, and they lay an egg each every day; and the fox has stayed away.

Last time, I told you that the hens were “point of lay” hens. I want to explain properly what “point of lay” means. Perhaps you know the English expression “to be on the point of doing something”. For example, if I am “on the point of” going to bed, it means that I will go to bed very soon. I have locked the front door. I have put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, I have cleaned my teeth. The next thing I do will be to go to bed. I am “on the point of” going to bed.

Or, look at the picture on the website. It is a picture of a flower. The flower is still closed and there is snow on the ground. But you can see that very soon the flower will open. It is on the point of opening. It is on the point of flowering.

Recently, some builders came to do some work on our house. Before they came, a scaffolding company came and erected scaffolding so that the builders could reach the roof. After the builders had finished work, I waited for the scaffolding company to come and take the scaffolding away. I waited for days, then weeks and they did not come. Then I found their telephone number, and picked up the telephone. Just then the doorbell rang. It was the men from the scaffolding company. I said to them, “I was on the point of telephoning you to ask you to take the scaffolding away.”

The English language is never simple. We always have more than one way that we can say something. Here are two other ways of saying “I was on the point of” doing something. We can say “I was about to do something”. I was about to telephone my mother. I was about to get into the car.

Or we can say, “I was just going to do something”. I was just going to visit my friend. I was just going to buy a train ticket.

Here are a couple more examples:

I have written a shopping list. I have found my money and a shopping bag. I am about to go to the shops.

My car is making strange noises. Perhaps it is on the point of breaking down!

You are sitting in an aeroplane. The cabin crew have shut the doors and told everyone to fasten their seatbelts. The plane is about to leave. It is on the point of departure. It is just going to take off.

So, now you understand why our hens were “point of lay” hens. They were on the point of laying their first eggs.

Now they are on the point of completely destroying my garden. Soon they will take over the world!

File download (4:35 mins | 2 MB)

The fox and the hens

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:37:00 +0000

Our hens – two Black Stars and a Bluebelle.

I like hens. When I was a child, my grandmother kept hens. When we visited her, we could help her feed the hens. We thought she had hundreds of hens, but actually I think she had 40 or 50. They lived in hen houses in her garden, and during the day they ran around in hen runs. Every week, a man with a lorry stopped at her house to collect the eggs for sale.

A “hen” is, of course, a female bird. A male bird is called a cock, or a cockerel. His job is to look beautiful and make lots of noise. Just like a man, in fact. Very often, people say “chickens” when they mean hens, though strictly a chicken is a baby bird. Hen meat which you buy in a supermarket is always called “chicken”. It sounds so much better than “hen meat”!

My grandmother, however, did not call her hens “hens”. She talked about her “fowl“. Fowl is an old word meaning birds which are kept or hunted for their meat or their eggs. Another word which you may hear is “poultry“. Poultry just means birds kept for their meat or their eggs. A poultry farm is a farm where they keep large numbers of birds, sometimes in big sheds, or sometimes in tiny cages called “battery cages”.

My wife and I have our very own poultry farm, only a few kilometers from the centre of Birmingham. Last summer, we bought three hens, a hen house and a little hen run. The hens grew big and fat, they wandered round our garden and they laid big, brown eggs. The hens were happy. We were happy.

Then disaster struck. A fox killed one of our hens, and then another one. We gave the last hen to some friends who also keep hens, because she was lonely by herself.

Last weekend, we went to a poultry breeder to buy three new hens. There is a photo of them on the website, and – I hope – on your iPod screens. Like my grandmother, the poultry breeder does not call them “hens”. She describes them as “pullets”, which means a hen which has not started to lay eggs yet. In fact, they are what the breeder calls “point-of-lay” pullets – that is, birds of about 16 weeks which will shortly start laying.

What are our new hens or pullets like? They are all hybrid hens, that is they are a mixture of different types or breeds of hen. Many hen-keepers like hybrid hens because they are strong and lay lots of eggs. two of our hens are of a hybrid type called Black Star. The third hen is a Bluebelle. She is very aristocratic. Like human aristocrats, she is big, beautiful and slightly stupid. Yesterday, we found our first egg. Well done, hens!

We shall have to keep our hens in their hen run for most of the time, and not let them wander in the garden, otherwise the fox will get them too. There are foxes in most British cities. Indeed there may be more town foxes today than country foxes. There is an old English sport called fox hunting. Special dogs called fox-hounds find a fox, and chase it across the fields and through the woods, until they catch and kill it. The hounds are followed by people riding horses. There has been a lot of controversy in recent years about fox-hunting. Some people say that it is cruel to let fox-hounds chase and kill foxes. Other people say that it is important to reduce the number of foxes. There have been some changes in the law about fox hunting in the last few years, which restrict the sport but do not prohibit it.

At one time, I thought that fox hunting was very cruel. Now I am a hen keeper again, I think that it should be legal to hunt foxes with tanks and machine guns if you want to.

What sound does this animal make? :: A drag-and-drop exercise.

File download (5:16 mins | 2 MB)

What does your ring tone say about you?

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:55:00 +0000

Leave me a message! Photo by couleurs gm/flickr

Do you know the word “impact”? “Impact” means the action of hitting something with a lot of force. So, if two cars hit each other, we can talk about the “impact” of the collision. But generally we use “impact” in a figurative way – we use it to mean “a big effect”. For example, if someone loses their job, this will probably have a big impact on their lives and on their families. Or we might say that cars have a big impact on the environment.

What piece of modern technology, do you think, has had the biggest impact on the way we live? Perhaps modern medical technology – like drugs to treat cancer. Or computers – I wrote this podcast on a computer. Now I am recording it on a computer, and soon I will put the recording onto another computer, so that you can download it to your computer! Or maybe modern means of transport, like aircraft and cars – maybe they have had the biggest impact on the way we live.

I think, however, that the piece of modern technology which has had the biggest impact is something which most of us carry with us almost everywhere. You probably have one in your bag or your pocket. I am of course talking about mobile phones.

I remember the first mobile phone that I ever saw. It was about 25 years ago. The phone was the size of a brick. You needed to be quite strong to carry it. I asked the owner if I could make a call on it, and he agreed. It felt strange to be standing in a field in the country, talking to someone on a telephone.

Today, over half the population of the world either own or use a mobile phone. At the end of last year, there were over 4.1 billion mobile phones in use in the world. In most countries in Europe, in fact, there are more mobile phones than people.

You might think that mobile phones would have the biggest impact in those countries where most people have one. However, I do not think this is true. In Africa, for example, mobile phones have made a huge difference to people's lives, because so much of Africa does not have a network of fixed telephone lines. In Gambia, for example, there are only 50,000 fixed telephone lines. But there are 800,000 mobile phone users – so, roughly, 16 times as many Gambians can use a mobile phone as can use a conventional telephone. A few years ago, in many parts of Africa, it was very difficult to send money from one person to another, because most people did not live near a bank, or did not have a bank account. Today, many Africans are able to send money to their families, or to pay for things, by mobile phone.

The mobile phone has given us more freedom. We can contact other people, when we need to, wherever we are. But it has also given us less freedom. The boss can talk to you at any time, wherever you are and whatever you are doing. A few years ago, people travelling by train sat quietly and read a book or a newspaper. Now they talk on their mobile phones. They tell everyone, “I'm on the train.” They discuss private affairs in loud voices. When they get off the train, they plug an earphone into their ear and carry on talking. Once, if you saw someone talking to themselves in the street, you assumed that they were slightly mad. Now you know that they are using their mobile.

Because of mobile phones, teenagers live different lives from when I was their age. At one time, parents would sometimes allow their teenage children to call their friends on the ordinary telephone. “Only a short call,” they would say. “Telephone calls are very expensive.” Now, teenagers send text messages to each other from their mobile phones, all the time. They have developed new ways of using their hands. They use their thumbs to press things like the keys on a mobile phone, while older people use their fingers. Is this how evolution happens? They have developed a new sort of texting language. As you know, the spelling of words in standard English is sometimes very strange. If you are texting in English, however, you can ignore normal spelling completely. You spell words exactly as you pronounce them. You use all sorts of strange abbreviations as well. In twenty years time, texting may have changed the English language completely! The quiz this week is about texting, to see if you can guess what some texts mean.

My mobile phone is about 8 years old. Several museums want to buy it from me. I hardly ever switch it on, and it refuses to send texts any more. I do not care, because I love its ring tone. It is a short piece of music by Franz Schubert. It tells the world that I am a sophisticated and cultured person.

Other people too have ring tones that tell the world what sort of person they are. Sometimes the ring tone says, “I am a witty and intelligent person”. Sometimes it says, “I am ignorant and uncivilised.” What does your ring tone say about you?

Quiz - do u no how 2 txt? ::

File download (7:15 mins | 3 MB)

Missing

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:32:00 +0000

Missing tooth! Photo by starfire/flickr

Today we are going to “miss” things!

“Miss” is a word which we can use in several different ways. Here are some of them.

Kevin is at a football match. United, the team which he supports, is losing 1-0, and there is only five minutes before the final whistle. Then United’s star striker gets the ball. He runs down the field, past one, two, three of the players from the other team. Now he is only 10 meters from the goal. He kicks. Does he score a goal? No, he misses. The ball goes over the cross-bar. Kevin groans and buries his head in his hands. United have scored only three goals since Christmas.

You can miss other things too. You can miss your English class – that means, you do not go to your English class. Perhaps you are ill. Perhaps you forgot to do your homework. You can miss a meal. If you wake up late, perhaps you rush out of the house without eating anything. You miss your breakfast. And, of course, you can miss a bus or a train, if you arrive too late at the station.

Here is another way of using the word “miss”. Imagine you have come to England for three months to learn English. There are probably lots of things about England that you like. But there are probably some things as well that make you sad or anxious. Perhaps you miss your friends – you would like to be able to meet them and chat to them. Perhaps you miss the food of your country – English food is awful! And perhaps you miss hearing people speaking your own language.

Now lets look at the word “missing”. If something is missing, it is not where it should be. It is gone.

Joanne’s niece Sarah is seven years old. Her milk teeth (that is, her baby teeth) have started to fall out and her adult teeth have started to grow. At the moment, she has a big hole where her front teeth should be. She has two front teeth missing.

Joanne is shopping in the supermarket. At the till, she gets out her purse to pay. She looks in her purse. “That is strange,” she says to herself. “I am sure that I had a Â£10 note. The Â£10 is missing. Did I loose it? Did someone steal it?” Then she remembers. She spent the Â£10 note yesterday.

It is not just money or teeth which can be missing. People can be missing, too. Every year in Britain, the police deal with over 200,000 cases of missing people, or missing persons.

What sort of people go missing? Many of them are children or young people. Perhaps they had an argument with their parents, and ran away from home without saying where they were going. Perhaps they were frightened, or badly treated.

Adults can be missing too. If you are an adult, you can leave home if you want to. You can run away from your family and your job without saying where you are going. It may not be a responsible thing to do, but it is not illegal. Some adults gradually lose touch with their friends or family – they never write or telephone, and after a time the family does not know where they are. Some missing adults are people with drugs problems or mental health problems.

Happily, most missing persons are not missing for ever. Angry young teenagers calm down and return home. Adults get in touch with their families again, or send a message to say that they are safe and well. There are charities that help to find missing people, and which help people who have left their homes and families. There are only a very few missing persons cases which end with the police finding a body on a railway line or in an abandoned house.

So now you know all about the words “miss” and “missing”. Listen to the podcast again, to make sure that you did not miss anything! Then do the quiz on the website, which is all about missing words.

Quiz - missing words ::

File download (5:32 mins | 3 MB)

Lauren's eyes

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:17:00 +0000

Eye make-up – but why do women do it? photo by bluewinx15.

Britain has a new celebrity. Her name is Lauren Luke, and she is …how shall I describe her? Not a film star, exactly. No, she is a video star, a YouTube video star in fact.

Lauren is 27. She lives with her mother, her 10 year old son, her sister, two nieces and five dogs in a little house in South Shields, in the north-east of England. Lauren used to work in a taxi office. She answered the telephone, and sent the taxis to people who wanted them. It was not work that she enjoyed. She found it very boring.

Lauren had always been interested in make-up. In fact, people told her that she was good with make-up – she understood what sort of make-up would look good on a particular face; or what sort of make-up to wear for different occasions. She decided to give up her job at the taxi company. Instead, she started to sell make-up on eBay, the internet auction site.

Now, men like me find make-up a complete mystery. Why do women want to paint their faces? Do they think that it makes them more attractive to men? Or do they do it to impress other women? I don’t know. I am only a man.

Lauren found a cheap video camera. She put it beside the mirror on her dressing-table, and she started to make short films of her putting on her eye make-up. She put the videos on YouTube, and people started to watch them. At first there were only a few downloads, then hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of people watched her videos. She is now probably the most-viewed make-up artist in the world.

Who watches her videos? I guess that many of them are teenage girls, who want to know how to look like Britney Spears or Kate Winslet. Perhaps they are women who want to know how to put on liquid eye-liner without getting it all over their face. Or maybe they are men, who want to know why women paint the skin round their eyes. Lauren probably knows why women paint the skin round their eyes, but she does not tell us in her videos, she just shows how to do it.

And now Lauren has a weekly column in a national newspaper, and an American cosmetics company will soon start selling a range of Lauren Luke cosmetics. Lauren has come a long way from the taxi office. She is now famous. She is a celebrity.

There is a link on the website to Lauren’s YouTube videos. Lauren speaks with a north-east of England accent, what we call a Geordie accent, but I think you will be able to understand quite a lot of what she says. In the background in the videos, you may hear the sound of snoring. That is one of Lauren’s dogs, fast asleep.

Now, as I have told you before, Listen to English has an ambition to become a celebrity. If I am a celebrity, I might be invited to be on Strictly Come Dancing where I could dance with Cherie Lunghi and other beautiful ladies. Maybe I should get a video camera, and make videos of me cleaning my teeth in the mornings. I could put the videos on You Tube, and dentists everywhere in the world would see them. They would tell their patients to watch the videos, and before long I would be as famous as Lauren, and I would have my own brand of toothpaste. What do you think?

File download (4:44 mins | 2 MB)

Golliwog

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 19:32:00 +0000

A golliwog . Photo by frozenmeat/flickr

Today’s podcast is about a child’s toy, and a TV journalist.

The child’s toy is a golliwog. A golliwog is a soft toy, a sort of doll. There is a picture of a golliwog on the website, and – I hope – on your iPod screens. The Golly in the picture is wearing black and white striped trousers and a red coat. He has a bow-tie and a white shirt. And his skin is black, and he has curly black hair. Golliwog is intended to look like black minstrel singers and musicians in America in the late 19th century.

Golliwog first appeared in a children’s book in 1895. The book, which was called “The Adventures of two Dutch Dolls and Golliwogg”, was very successful, and lots more books about Golliwog followed.

Naturally, toy manufacturers noticed the popularity of the Golliwogg books, and they started to make golliwog dolls. And the dolls were popular with children too. In the first half of the 20th century, many British children had a golliwog. Sometimes they loved their golliwog and took him everywhere they went. And sometimes they threw their golliwog into the corner or under the bed and forgot about him.

Robertson’s, a company which makes jam, used the golliwog as their trademark (what we would call a logo today, I think). For many years, children collected little golliwog stickers from the labels on jars of Robertson’s jam.

Then things started to change. Immigrants arrived in Britain, especially from former British colonies. Gradually, Britain became a racially diverse country. And people started to wonder, is it OK for children to have golliwog dolls? Surely a golliwog is an out-of-date stereotype of black people. Golliwogs in short are racist.

Now, it was of course adults who worried about whether golliwogs were OK. I doubt if most children thought of their golliwog as representing real black people. Nonetheless, golliwogs gradually became less popular. Children wanted Action Men, and Barbie Dolls, and computer games, not an old-fashioned golliwog doll. Eventually, even Robertson’s stopped putting the golliwog on the labels of their jam jars.

Now we turn to our TV journalist. Her name is Carol Thatcher. Where have you heard the name “Thatcher” before? Yes, Carol is the daughter of the former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Carol has done various reporting jobs for the BBC. After a TV show about 10 days ago, Carol was talking to a group of BBC colleagues. They were discussing an international tennis player – a black international tennis player. Carol referred to him as a “golliwog”. Some of the people who heard her were shocked. They told the producer of the TV programme. She in turn told the BBC’s senior management. A few days later, Carol Thatcher was sacked.

There has been a storm of controversy in the newspapers and on radio and television. Some people said that it was an unacceptable racist insult to refer to a black person as a “golliwog”. Other people said that when Carol called the tennis player a “golliwog”, it was only a bit of fun. They argued that Carol was having a private conversation, and that the BBC were wrong to sack her.

Personally, I think it is very insulting to call a black person a “golliwog”, but I know that lots of people think differently. English people do not all agree about what is acceptable language in a multiracial society. You are learning English, and I guess that sometimes you too find it difficult to know which words are acceptable, and which are not.

Poor Golly. He never meant to cause so much trouble!

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

File download (5:08 mins | 2 MB)

We love snow!

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:30:00 +0000

Fisher Street, London, in the snow. Photo by Danny McL/flickr

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the weather forecast is – more snow. Good.

Thee BBC report on 'snow chaos' ::
My last podcast about the snow :: - nearly three years ago!

File download (4:27 mins | 2 MB)

Massive reductions - up to 50% off!

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:59:00 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Kinks :: all about massive reductions (in the workforce, rather than in prices) and very topical!

File download (6:01 mins | 3 MB)

How to keep track of the kids

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 12:08:00 +0000

Kiri:D/flickr has called this beautiful photograph “I lose track of time…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

File download (5:16 mins | 2 MB)