TRIBUTO A PETER CARTER: Recent Episodes

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Charlotte Posted by Peter on 26 April 2006

Today I would like to introduce to you a poem by Allan Ahlberg. Allan is a well known writer of poems for children. He used to be a school teacher, and he understands the things that interest children, and also the way that children speak. The poem is called “Talk us through it, Charlotte”, which means “Tell us about it, Charlotte, one bit at a time starting at the beginning.” So Charlotte explains what happened. She went to a football match to watch her brother play. But his team was a man short – they only had 10 players instead of 11. So they asked her to play. They told her to stay on the wing, that is to play at the edge of the field. She says that for an hour no-one passed the ball to her. But then the ball bounced towards her; she ran with it past one player, then another. She ignored her brother shouting to her to pass the ball to him, but carried on, tricked the goalkeeper (the goalie) and scored “the winner”, that is the goal that won the match. The manager said she was very good and asked her to come to training next Tuesday. Charlotte comes from the Black Country, the old industrial area to the west of Birmingham. She speaks with a Black Country accent, and some of her English is not standard English. She says “they was” instead of “they were”, and “I run” instead of “I ran”. Sometimes she leaves out the first few words of her sentences, for example “Only there to watch me brother” instead of “I was only there to watch my brother.” Now, please click on the link on the podcast website. It will take you to a page in the children’s poetry archive, where you can read the poem. If you click on the little green arrow you can hear Allan Ahlberg himself reading it.

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Charity Shops Posted by Peter on 3 October 2007

In many towns in England, the main shopping street is called “High Street”. We often use the expression “high street” to mean the main shopping street of any town or suburb, no matter what its real name is. Or we talk about “the high street” to mean shopping facilities generally, particularly shops that people use every day like food shops. So, when a newspaper writes about “high street prices”, for example, they just mean the prices of everyday things that people might buy in high street shops. And we often complain that high street shops are the same boring shops everywhere in England. Many high street shops are branches of big national chains. For example, there is Next, and Marks and Spencer, which sell clothes; and WH Smith, which sells stationery, books and magazines; and Boots, the chemists; and Woolworths, where you can buy almost anything, provided that it is cheap and made of plastic. You can find these shops in most high streets in England. In most high streets, too, you will find one or more charity shops. Charity shops are shops which are run by charities to help them raise money. People bring things that they no longer want, and the charity shop sells them to other people. What sort of things? Clothes, shoes, hats, bags, children’s toys, books, CDs, crockery, kitchen things, mugs commemorating the wedding of Charles and Diana – all sorts of things, in other words.

The first charity shop was set up in 1947. Since then, charity shops have become very successful in England. There are over 7000 of them altogether. They raise well over £100 million each year for the charities that own them. They are cheap to run. Often they occupy shop premises that no-one else wants, and where the rent is low. Most of their staff are volunteers. The shops do not have to pay tax on their profits. The charity OXFAM, which helps people in developing countries, has the best-known charity shops in England, but there are many others, including shops run by small local charities. I enjoy visiting charity shops. They are all different, unlike the big high street shops. There is always a chance that I will find something really interesting or unusual. Here are some of the things I have learned about charity shops:

they have a special smell, of old clothes. women are much more likely than men to give used clothes to a charity shop, and more likely to buy clothes there. people who bought CDs of really bad bands ten years ago eventually give the CDs to a charity shop. if you go to a charity shop in an area where well-off people live, you can often find expensive designer clothes at bargain prices. it always takes three charity shop volunteers to operate the till.

Finally, here is another way in which charity shops are really useful to busy families in modern Britain. Your children arrive home. They tell you proudly that they are in a play at school. And they need costumes – before tomorrow. No problem. Give them £5 and send them to the nearest charity shop. They will come back with some amazing rubbish. They will take it to school next day to wear in the school play. Everyone will say they look wonderful. And when they come home again – why, you can take it all back to the charity shop, of course. Photo of charity shop window by World of oddy/flickr. There is a mug commemorating the wedding of Charles and Diana at the front of the window! Picture of Oxfam bookshop by Gary Charity Shops Posted by Peter on 3 October 2007

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Changing your name Posted by Peter on 24 November 2009

Pudsey Bear (the real one!) Every year the BBC asks its TV viewers to give money to a special appeal called Children in Need. The money is used to help charities which work with sick or disadvantaged children. The last Children in Need day was last Friday. For the whole evening, BBC television had programmes which asked people to give money to Children in Need, and appearances by celebrities who told us about all the wonderful things that Children in Need was doing, and news about special fund-raising events all over the country. Children in Need has been very successful. Since 1980 it has raised over £500 million to help needy children. Children in Need has a mascot. He is a large yellow bear called Pudsey. There is a picture of him on the website and, I hope, on your iPod screens. Pudsey has a bandage over one eye. Has he injured his eye? Or perhaps he is a pirate? I am not sure. Last year, a woman who lives in Wales, called Mrs Eileen de Bont invented a new and interesting way to raise money for Children in Need. She asked people to sponsor her to change her name – that is she asked them to promise to give money to Children in Need if she changed her name. She even allowed her sponsors to choose her new name. And the name they chose was – Pudsey Bear. In Britain, we often complain that we do not live in a free country any more. There are too many rules and regulations which prevent us from doing what we want to do. But in one area we still have perfect freedom – we can call ourselves by whatever name we want. There is a simple legal process called a Deed Poll which allows anyone who wants to change their name to whatever new name they like. Over 50,000 people change their name by Deed Poll every year. Many of these changes are connected to marriage or divorce. For example, when people get married they may decide that they want to use the woman’s family name (or surname) instead of the man’s name. Or they may decide to use both names . When John Smith and Wendy Brown get married they might want to be called Mr and Mrs Smith-Brown. And then, a few years later if their marriage breaks down, they might want to go back to their old names. These changes of name are not a problem in Changing your name Posted by Peter on 24 November 2009 Britain. John and Wendy just need to fill in a few legal forms, and they have new names. Naturally, a few people change their names for more frivolous reasons. Last year a football fan in Scotland changed his name to Motherwell Football Club. Another young man thought he would be more attractive to the girls if his name was Elvis Presley. And the former Mr Daniel Westfallen is now called Mr Happy Adjustable Spanners. These people are mad, of course, but in Britain you are free to be mad if you want. So, it was no problem for Mrs de Bont to fill in the forms to change her name to Pudsey Bear . No problem to get her employer, the gas and electricity companies, her bank and the tax people to change her name in their records and computer systems. Then she applied for a new passport. She received a bureaucratic letter from the Passport Office saying, no, they could not give her a passport with the name Pudsey Bear because …well, because it was silly. Mrs de Bont (or Mrs Pudsey Bear as we must now call her ) said that her sponsors had paid a lot of money to Children in Need for her to change her name; and that everyone now called her by her new name, and even her children called her Mummy Bear. Mrs de Bont (sorry, Mrs Bear) then told the newspapers what had happened, and for a few days we could read all about it. The newspapers were on Mrs Bear’s side (I got it right that time). The Guardian, for example, roared “The right to call yourself whatever name you please is one of the small but great British liberties. Who do the passport people think they are? If a citizen can change her name, she must have a passport in that name too.” And then we heard no more. The story disappeared from the newspapers. So we never heard whether Mrs Bear or the passport people won. Perhaps you can help. If you meet any British tourists in your country, ask to see their passports. And if you find a passport with the name Pudsey Bear on it, send an e-mail to Listen to English. In your country, are you able to change your name if you want to? And have you ever thought that it would be wonderful to have a new name? Please put a comment on the Listen to English website to tell us about it.

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A summer evening. Will we enjoy them more if we change our time? Photo by WhiteGoldWielder/flickr Last Sunday, in the early hours of the morning, a whole hour disappeared. It was the beginning of summer time. Every year, at the end of March, we change the time on our clocks and watches. We move the time forward by one hour, so that, for example, 1.00 am becomes 2.00 am. It is light for longer in the summer than in the winter. However, extra daylight early in the morning is not much use to us, because we are still in bed. We want the extra daylight in the evening, when we can go outside and dig the garden or take a picnic to the park. By changing the clocks, we move an hour of summer daylight from the morning to the evening, when we can enjoy it more. In winter, therefore, we have winter time, or Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). In summer we have summer time, or British Summer Time (BST) as it is officially called. Instead, we could of course all get up earlier in the morning during the summer. We could all start work, or school, or college, an hour earlier. And then we could go home an hour earlier as well. But we English do not like getting up early in the morning. In Germany, many people arrive at work at 7am or even earlier. We English are more sensible. We stay in bed. And it would be difficult to get everyone to agree to start work an hour earlier. So we change the time on our clocks instead. During the Second World War, we had a sort of double summer time – we moved the clocks forward by one hour in the winter and by two hours in the summer. We did this to save energy and increase productivity in the factories. But at the end of the war, we went back to the old Changing the time Posted by Peter on 30 March 2010 winter and summer times. Every few years, for the last 50 or 60 years, we have had a national debate in the press and in Parliament about permanently changing our time, in the same way that we did during the war. A new campaign to change our time has just started. It is called “Lighter Later” and you can read about it on its website. “Lighter Later” says that if we move our time forward by an hour, it will solve almost all the problems of the world:

it will save energy, because we will not need to use so much electricity for lighting in the evenings. our carbon dioxide emissions will fall. there will be fewer road accidents. it will be good for tourism, and help to create jobs in the leisure and tourism industries. it will be easier for us to play sport or go jogging in the evenings, so we will all be fit and lose weight. it will reduce crime. it will make everyone happy, rich and famous.

OK, I invented the last one about “happy, rich and famous”. But it is clear that there are some very strong arguments for changing our time by moving the clocks forward by another hour for the whole year. In particular, it would be a cheap and easy way of reducing our carbon dioxide emissions. In the past, two groups of people have argued against changing our time. The first group is people who have jobs where they have to start work very early in the morning. Farmers, for example, may need to milk their cows very early. If we changed the time, the farmers say, they would have to start work in the dark all year round, even in the middle of summer. The second group is people who live in Scotland. Scotland is further north than England, and this means that there is less daylight in the winter than in England. The Scots argue that changing the time would mean that Scottish schoolchildren would have to go to school in the dark for several months during the winter. What will happen this time? Will we finally change our time? Or will the old objections win? There are some signs that the campaign for a change in our time may succeed. There is an urgent need to find ways of reducing our carbon dioxide emissions. The organisation which represents British farmers now says that it is “neutral” about making the change. And the Scots? Well, British politics has changed in recent years. Scotland now has its own Parliament and its own government. Many people in England now say that the Scots can sort out their own problems, but they cannot block changes which are good for England. To finish, I should tell you that no-one has told the British weather that the clocks have gone forward and it is now officially summer time. The weather forecast for tomorrow is for snow in many places.

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Catch Posted by Peter on 2 March 2010

What a catch! Photo by RXAphoto/Flickr We are going to catch things in this podcast, and – yes – there will be a new phrasal verb as well – “to catch up with”. Like many common English verbs, “catch” is irregular. The past tense of “catch” is “caught”. So, I catch, I caught, I have caught. If you look at the picture on the website, or on your iPod, you will see what “catch” means. Someone has thrown a ball in the air. The little dog has run after the ball. He has jumped in the air with its mouth open. He wants to catch the ball in his mouth. So, “to catch” means to stop or hold something which is moving, like a ball which someone has thrown. Here are some other things you can catch:

a cat catches a mouse. a fisherman catches fish. the police catch a criminal. And, of course, we often use “catch” in a figurative way. For example:

you can catch a train, or a bus, or a plane. you can catch flu, or some other infectious disease. in the photo on the website, the photographer has caught the exact moment when the dog jumps in the air to catch the ball.

Now for our phrasal verb – “to catch up”. We can say “catch up with someone” or “catch someone up”. Imagine that you are running in a race. The leading runner is about 20 meters in front of you. If you run really fast, perhaps you can catch the leader up. Then you will be running beside the leader, and you might even win the race. And if the runners behind you run really hard, they may be able to catch up with you. This sounds very energetic, so let us instead join Kevin and George in their normal Saturday Catch Posted by Peter on 2 March 2010 afternoon activity, going to a football match. It is an exciting time. United are four places from the top of the Championship. Can they catch up with the top teams? Can they even win the Championship? However, George is late. He is a teacher, and he has lots of school books to mark. He needs to catch up with his marking before he can go to the match. He phones Kevin to explain. “You go to the match now,” he says. “I’ll catch up with you later when I have finished the marking”. So Kevin sets off by himself. He catches a bus into town. But there are problems. The famous punk rock group Futile Vendetta are in town. Thousands of people want to catch their last concert, and thousands more want to catch a glimpse of the band. The bus gets caught in the traffic. The minutes go by, and the bus does not move. Eventually, Kevin gets off the bus and walks, and runs, to the football ground. He arrives just in time to catch the start of the match. George is there already. He finished his marking and caught a train to the stadium. Unfortunately, the match is not very exciting and ends in a goalless draw. There is one thrilling moment when United’s striker nearly scores, but the goalkeeper catches the ball safely. Never mind. Football is like that. Maybe next Saturday will be different.

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Casper the Commuting Cat Posted by Peter on 18 January 2010

Casper the commuting cat. Today we meet a cat called Casper, and we learn about the English verb “to commute”. Let’s start with the verb. “Commute” has an interesting history, because its modern meaning is quite different from its original meaning. Originally, to “commute” meant to exchange one thing for another. It was a boring word and we used it mainly for technical, financial matters. Imagine that you work for the government’s tax office. Every day you go to work; you write letters, you fill in forms, you calculate how much tax people have to pay, and you do other interesting things. After 40 years, you retire, and the government gives you a pension. It is possible that you will be able to choose exactly how you want to receive the pension. You can choose to receive a payment every month; or sometimes you can choose to take some money now and receive a smaller monthly payment. This is called “commuting” – you have exchanged part of your regular monthly pension payments for a lump sum of money. You are probably asleep by now, or wondering why I am telling you this. But think of someone else who exchanges regular payments for a single payment. Someone who buys a season ticket on the railways or the buses pays a sum of money now, instead of buying a train or bus ticket every day. At some time in the 20th century, we started to call a person who bought a season ticket a “commuter”. And from there, we started to use the word “commute” to mean to travel from your home to work and back again, by any means of transport. Today, we can say “I commute by car”. That means, “I travel to work and back by car every day”. We can say that a railway station is crowded with commuters – that means that it is full of people travelling to work or back home again. We can say “I commute for 50 miles” or “My commute is 50 miles”, and this means that I travel a long way – 50 miles – to go to work every day. If I was a millionaire, I might commute from my home in the south of France to my work in London in my own private aeroplane. Casper the Commuting Cat Posted by Peter on 18 January 2010 Now that you understand about the word “commute” and how it has changed its meaning, it is time to meet the cat. His name is Casper, and he lives – or rather, he used to live – in Plymouth in the south west of England. Plymouth is famous for its naval dockyards, where military ships are built. Casper used to stand at the bus stop outside his home in Plymouth with the other bus passengers. He used to get on the bus and go to sleep on one of the seats. He would travel all the way to the terminus and then come back again. The bus drivers knew Casper, and made sure that he got off the bus at the right stop. Casper travelled on the buses in Plymouth for over 4 years. People called him “Casper the commuting cat”. Recently, however, and very sadly, Casper was hit by a car during one of his journeys around Plymouth, and he has now died. There is a notice at his bus stop about his death, and flowers. We are all very sad.

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Carols Coffins Posted by Peter on 21 March 2006

I have another video for you today. It has been made by Carol. She paints coffins. She tells us that she started about ten years ago. People ask her how she GOT INTO painting coffins. She woke up one morning and knew that she wanted to paint coffins for the rest of her life. The first coffin that she painted was her own. She has painted it with her favourite wild flowers (foxgloves, bull rushes, cow parsley), and also a poem by John Keats called “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”. Her coffin has a burgundy coloured lining, because a COMFY lining is important. People ask her to paint all sorts of things – countryside scenes, hobbies, pets, flowers, football colours, angels – her Mum wants angels on her coffin. One person has asked for a PAGE THREE GIRL to be painted on the inside of his coffin lid. “Whatever TURNS YOU ON!” she says. Some vocabulary notes. How did Carol GET INTO painting coffins – this is a colloquial expression which means how did she first become interested in painting coffins, or how did she first start. COMFY is a colloquial word which means comfortable. A PAGE THREE GIRL – well, some of our newspapers – not the newspapers I read, naturally – contain pictures of young ladies with few if any clothes on. Traditionally, these are on page three. So a page three girl is a model posing naked or near naked. Finally, whatever TURNS YOU ON means whatever makes you excited. Now view the video. Go to the podcast website (http://www.listen-to-english.com/). There is a link from this podcast to a BBC web page. Click on the link, and then on “View the Video”.

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Captain Calamity Posted by Peter on 20 June 2008

I could not find a picture or Forwick, but here is one of another part of the Shetlands, so that you can see what the landscape looks like. It was taken by tigernuts/flickr In the past year, we have had two podcasts about English people who have gone to Scotland to do slightly crazy things. We had Andy Strangeway, who has spent a night on every island in Scotland. Then we had Steve Feltham, who has spent the last 17 years looking for the Loch Ness monster. Today we meet Stuart Hill. He lives on a tiny island in Shetland (a group of islands to the north of Scotland), and he has just declared his island to be an independent state. This is not the first time that Stuart Hill has been in the news. He has a nickname, “Captain Calamity”. (A “calamity” is another word for a “disaster”). This is why. He comes from Essex in eastern England. Several years ago he bought himself a small boat. His boat became his main interest. He took a sail from a wind-surfing board and fixed it to his boat. He started to go for sailing trips. Then, in 2001, he decided to sail his boat single-handed all the way round Britain. His wife and his children thought he was mad. The distance around Britain is over 3,000 kilometers, and there are dangerous rocks and currents, and the waves and the weather are often dangerous too. Stuart Hill set off. Within minutes, he hit another boat, and his sail collapsed into the water. He found he had forgotten some important equipment, and a friend had to swim out to his boat with it. Over the next few weeks, he had more problems with his boat, and he had to be rescued five times by lifeboats and twice by helicopter. Finally, in August 2001, his boat turned over in a storm near the Shetland islands. He was rescued again, but he had lost everything – he had no boat, and no money and nothing but the clothes he stood up in. So he stayed in Shetland, and got a job there, working in a fish-processing factory. This week, Stuart Hill was in the news again. He now lives on a tiny Shetland island called Forewick Holm, where he is the only inhabitant (apart from lots of sheep and sea-birds). He is 65 years old, which means that he is able to get a state old-age pension. Most pensioners want a Captain Calamity Posted by Peter on 20 June 2008 quiet life, but not Stuart. He has declared that Forwick is now an independent state, and that it is no longer part of Britain or of the European Union. There will be no taxes in Forwick, he says, and his state will soon issue its own currency. Why is he doing this? He wants to draw attention to an argument that Shetland is legally not part of Scotland (and therefore not part of Britain). Many centuries ago, Shetland was ruled by the king of Norway. But in 1469, the king of Norway needed some money in a hurry, so he gave Shetland to the king of Scotland in return for a loan. So, says Stuart Hill, Shetland is not part of Scotland. It should be an independent state, able in particular to control oil production from the oil fields around its coast and to collect revenues from the oil companies. Some Shetlanders probably agree with him, though I doubt if they want Captain Calamity as their ruler. Stuart Hill has spent much of the week being interviewed by the newspapers. “It’s all jolly good fun,” he says. “Every pensioner should do something like this.”

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Cans and Bottles Posted by Peter on 10 November 2008

A discarded drinks can. Photo by Joanna Young/flickr There was a story in the newspapers recently about a couple called John and Ann Till. They live near a town called Petersfield in south-east England, and earlier this year they got married. They wanted to go on a honeymoon to the United States after the wedding. The difficulty they had was that it was going to cost too much. They could not afford it. The cost of their air fares, of hotels and travel and car-hire while they were in America – all of these things were too expensive. What could they do? Then they saw that their local supermarket had started a scheme to encourage people to recycle cans and bottles. For every four cans or bottles that you returned to the recycling centre at the supermarket, the supermarket would give you 1 reward point. What is a reward point? Well, some supermarkets, garages and other shops give their customers reward points every time they buy things at the shop concerned. You can collect these reward points, and when you have enough, you can exchange them for, for example, a weekend break in a country hotel, or a new MP3 player. I have been collecting reward points from my local supermarket for years. Soon I will have enough to get an electric toaster! So, John and Ann decided to collect cans and bottles, and take them to the recycling centre. For three months, they went out every evening, looking for cans and bottles. At first they thought that they might not be able to find enough. But they were amazed by the amount of rubbish that people throw away – in the streets, in their gardens (or other people’s gardens), in the parks and in the countryside. John Till told the newspapers, “There was enough rubbish out there to fly us to the moon and back.” John and Ann spent hours putting cans and bottles into the machines at the recycling centre. Eventually, they found enough cans and bottles, and collected enough rewards points, to pay for their air fare to America, where I am sure they had a wonderful honeymoon, and went to lots of interesting places. Cans and Bottles Posted by Peter on 10 November 2008 John and Ann Till collect cans and bottles to pay for their honeymoon in America. Are you thinking to yourself, that’s a nice heart-warming story about two people who wanted to do what they could to help the environment? I am afraid that I do not feel that way, for three reasons. First, as I told you in an earlier podcast, we in England are really bad at recycling. We are better than a few years ago, but many countries in Europe recycle a lot more domestic waste than we do. On the other hand, we are very good at throwing things away and generally making a mess. We throw away newspapers in the street and on the buses; we throw away food packaging and beer cans in the parks, and plastic bags and bottles in the countryside. John and Ann were able to collect all those cans and bottles only because other people had so carelessly thrown them away. Second, the idea that it is good to pay people to recycle things is still very new in Britain. In other countries in Europe, it is normal to return cans or bottles to the supermarket and to get money in return. In Germany and Scandinavia, they have done this for years. But in Britain, we are only starting to experiment with them. John and Ann were lucky. Their local supermarket was one of only a handful of places where they pay you to recycle things. And finally, what did John and Ann do with the rewards points which they got for all those cans and bottles? They bought air tickets to America. Unfortunately, air travel generates large amounts of carbon dioxide, the main gas responsible for climate change. Trying to be green is not easy!

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Canna Posted by Peter on 8 November 2006

Caroline is eight. And like other eight year olds, she goes to school. But there are no other children at her school. Caroline is the only pupil. Caroline and her parents live on an island called Canna, which lies off the west coast of Scotland, south-west of Skye. People have lived on Canna for thousands of years. The remains of some of the earliest Christian settlements in Scotland are on Canna. In the early 19th century, over 400 people lived there. Today there are only 15 inhabitants. Their nearest town with shops and other facilities, is Mallaig. It is between two and a half and four hours away by ferry. Tourists visit Canna in summer, particularly to enjoy the remoteness and quiet of the island, and to watch the birds. But in winter, life on Canna can be lonely and difficult. Canna is owned by the National Trust for Scotland, a conservation charity which owns and manages many beautiful places and buildings in Scotland. The Trust have recently advertised for people to go and live on Canna. They warn that life on Canna can be hard, and that people who live there need to be tough, self-reliant and practical. Nonetheless, they have received hundreds of applications from all over the world. And while the Trust wants to increase the number of people who live on Canna, it also wants to exterminate some of the other residents. Thousands of brown rats have seriously damaged colonies of breeding sea-birds, by eating their eggs. The Trust have employed specialist rat-catchers. They hope that the rats of Canna have now been wiped out. Let us hope so, and that the Trust can find suitable new families to live on the island, with children to go to school with Caroline. The islands of Scotland are exceptionally beautiful and interesting. But they are not just places for tourists; they need thriving communities as well. Photo of Canna by PeterVan den Bossche/flickr

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Canals and narrowboats Posted by Peter on 10 June 2009

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 Canals and narrowboats Posted by Peter on 10 June 2009 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.

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Can you tell the difference? Posted by Peter on 17 November 2008

An avatar – young, tall and handsome, just like me! Image by Brian Gray/flickr. Today we visit Second Life, and we learn the English expression “to tell the difference”. My daughter likes chocolate cake. Last week I made a chocolate cake. I also bought a chocolate cake at the supermarket. I gave my daughter a little piece of each one. “Can you tell the difference?” I asked her. I meant, if you taste both bits of cake, can you say which one is mine and which one is the supermarket’s? So she tasted, and she said that she could tell the difference. The supermarket cake was much better. Oh dear! There was a story in the newspapers last week about two people who cannot tell the difference – the difference between real life and a fantasy world. Their names are David and Amy. They first met each other in an internet chatroom. Then they met in real life, and got married. After they got married, they started spending a lot of time on Second Life. I am sure that you know about Second Life. It is an internet programme which contains a virtual world – not the real world of your job and your family, but an imaginary world. You can go and live in this virtual world. You make an avatar, which is a sort of virtual you. You decide what your avatar will look like, what it will wear and what it will be called. You learn how to move your avatar to different places in Second Life, and how to make things, and how to meet other avatars and talk to them. There was a picture of the real David and Amy in the newspapers. The real David and Amy seem to eat a lot of chips and doughnuts. But, like a lot of other people, David and Amy chose avatars which are young, tall and handsome. They explored Second Life with their avatars. David’s avatar became a night-club owner who travels in a helicopter gunship. Amy’s avatar became a disc jockey. In real life, neither David nor Amy had a job. Perhaps they spent too much time on Second Life to be able to work. Then the trouble started. David’s avatar started meeting other women on Second Life. The real Amy was not pleased, but she gave David a second chance. Then David’s avatar met a young, tall, handsome lady avatar called Modesty McDonnell. They started to spend a lot of time together. The real Amy was furious. Now the real Amy and the real David are getting divorced. And now the real David is engaged to the real woman whose avatar is Modesty McDonnell. The newly-engaged couple have never actually met in the real world. This is because David lives in England while the real Modesty McDonnell lives in Arizona in America. But perhaps this does not matter. Perhaps the only important thing is that the two avatars love each other. So, there is a real world where real people live, eat, have children and die. And there are imaginary worlds like Second Life. Sensible people can tell the difference between them. David and Amy, it seems, cannot tell the difference. Can you tell the difference? Posted by Peter on 17 November 2008 I once spent an afternoon in Second Life. I chose an avatar – young, tall and handsome, just like the real me, of course. Then I had to teach my avatar how to walk and to drive a car. He was useless. He kept walking into walls and into the sea. When he drove a car, he hit people and other cars. So I never went back to Second Life. But perhaps I should try Second Life again. Because last night something really terrible happened. The British television viewers – who cannot tell the difference between a beautiful woman and a baby elephant – voted the incomparably lovely Ms Cherie Lunghi off Strictly Come Dancing. My dreams are in ruins. So – Cherie – if you are listening, get an avatar on Second Life and meet me there, and we will dance together the whole night long.

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Busy, busy, busy... Posted by Peter on 10 July 2006

Today’s podcast is about words and phrases which we use to talk about being very busy. Kevin’s boss wants his staff to prepare a new report. As usual, he wants it straight away. His staff explain that they can’t write the report instantly. So the boss says OK, but he wants it on his desk tomorrow morning. He sets a deadline of 9am – that means, he wants the report to be ready by then. So Kevin and his colleagues set to work. They rush around trying to find all the material that they need for the report – facts, figures, pictures, tables, charts, diagrams and so on. In the middle of the morning, Joanne telephones Kevin. Kevin says, “I can’t talk to you now. We’ve got lots to do. Everyone here is rushed off their feet.” Joanne says, “But we were going to meet for lunch.” Kevin replies, “Sorry, Joanne, we’re too busy. I’ve got no time for lunch. I will probably need to work late this evening, too. Sorry, I must go, the boss wants to talk to me immediately.” Kevin skips lunch, and eats a sandwich and drinks coffee while working at his computer. He and his colleagues stay working in the office after the rest of the staff go home. At last, at about 8 pm the report is finished. It will be on the boss’s desk when he comes in in the morning. Alas, when Kevin’s boss sees the report, he finds several mistakes which his staff had overlooked in their hurry. So they need to rewrite the report – as soon as possible. There is an English saying “More haste, less speed.” It means that if you try to do something too quickly, it will in the end take longer than if you had taken a little more time. There are some vocabulary notes on the website. In the meantime, here is Alice Leon, and she is So Busy! Vocabulary: immediately, straight away, at once, instantly – these all mean the same. And here are more words and expressions about being busy – in a hurry, in a rush, no time, as soon as possible, busy, deadline, can’t stop, rushed off my feet, it’s crazy round here, skip lunch, work late.

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Bumping into People Posted by Peter on 12 January 2006

To bump into something means to collide with something, or to knock against something. But in colloquial speech, it also means to meet someone unexpectedly. For instance. Today I went to the supermarket. Unfortunately, as I was parking my car, I bumped into a lamp-post. When I went into the supermarket, I bumped into Harry Johnson. I hadn’t seen him for years, so we had a long chat beside the cat food. Now a joke. A short-sighted man walked into a supermarket. Guess who he bumped into? EVERYBODY!

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Budget Posted by Peter on 11 March 2008

On Budget Day 2007, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, leaving 11 Downing Street with the red box containing his budget papers. Gordon Brown is now the Prime Minister. The new Chancellor, Alastair Darling, will take the red box to Parliament later today. Today we are going to find out about the English word “budget”. But first, I asked you a question at the end of the last podcast. I told you about the supermarket check-out for people who are buying only a few things. I asked you whether the sign above this checkout should say “10 items or less” or “10 items or fewer”. Well, I think it should say “10 items or fewer”. We can count items – one item, two items etc – and “fewer” is a word which we use with things we can count, while “less” is a word we use with things we cannot count. But many people – and several supermarkets – say “10 items or less”. That is the problem with English – English people don’t speak it properly. But now lets talk about budgets. What is a budget? Suppose you make a list of everything you need to spend money on in the next month – rent, food, clothes, bus fares etc. Then you work out how much money you will earn. And then you compare these two – your income and your expenditure – to see whether you will have enough money. This is a “budget” – a look into the future to see how much money will come in and how much will go out. It is a financial plan, in other words. We use the word “budget” in other ways too. For example, suppose you want to buy a new computer. You work out how much money you have, and how much you will need to spend on other things. Then you calculate that you could afford to pay £450 for a new computer. £450 is Budget Posted by Peter on 11 March 2008 your “budget” for the new computer. We can use the word “budget” as a verb. “To budget” means to plan what you will spend money on. You might say, for example “I don’t have a lot of money. I need to budget carefully”. Sometimes “budget” just means “cheap”. The problem with the word “cheap” is that it implies poor quality as well as low price. So shops don’t like to advertise their goods as “cheap”. They look for other words instead. They talk about “our value tinned tomatoes”, “our bargain sofas” or “our budget range of computers”. You see how much better it sounds to say “budget” instead of “cheap”. I should be an advertising executive, not a podcaster. And why are we talking about budgets in this podcast? Well, today is “budget day”, one of the great events of British politics. This afternoon our Finance Minister (or “Chancellor of the Exchequer” as we call him) will leave his home at number 11 Downing Street, next door to where the Prime Minister lives, carrying a red box. He will travel in his official car to Parliament, which is about 200 meters away. (I don’t know why he cannot walk, like a normal person.) When he gets to Parliament, he will open the red box and take out a file of papers. He will then tell Parliament about the government’s budget for the next financial year – how much the government will spend and how much it will take from us in taxes. He will tell us about tax increases and tax cuts, and say how wise and careful the government is, and how the British economy is doing really well. And then the opposition parties will say that the government is spending too much, or too little, or that taxes are too high, or too low, and that the British economy is in a terrible mess. And by this evening, we will all be able to work out whether the budget has made us better off or worse off. I can hardly wait.

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Broken Posted by Peter on 10 November 2006

In our lives we have lots of machines and electrical equipment – things like cars and washing machines, video recorders and mobile phones. Most of the time they work OK. But sometimes they do not. Today’s podcast is about the words we use when something does not work. No, not those sorts of words!. I mean the vocabulary we need to talk about things that don’t work. So, imagine that you have a washing machine and it doesn’t work. There is water all over the floor and a smell of burnt rubber. What might you say?

The washing machine has broken it has broken down it is not working properly it is not working at all it won’t work it won’t go or, as people say in America, the washing machine is bust . So what do we do? The first step is :

to diagnose the problem or, in more normal speech, we find out what is wrong Then we need to get the washing machine working again. We:

fix it mend it repair it

And if we cannot mend it ourselves:

we get someone to mend it for us or, we get the washing machine repaired

OK? Everything clear? Kevin and Joanne get into the car. They plan to drive to a nice pub in the country for lunch. Kevin puts the key in the ignition and turns it. But the engine will not start. The car has broken down. It will not go. Kevin and Joanne get out. They look under the bonnet. “It could be the carburettor,” says Kevin, “over here.” “Kevin, that’s not the carburettor. Its the bottle with water for washing the windscreen,” says Joanne. “The carburettor is here.” “Right”, says Kevin. “The trouble is, I don’t know how to repair it. What can we do?” They get back into the car. “I know”, says Kevin. “I’ll get the AA man to come and fix it”. “Kevin,” says Joanne, “are you sure there is petrol in the tank?” “Of course I am sure, “says Kevin, looking at the fuel guage. “Oh no. Where’s the petrol can?”

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Britain today Posted by Peter on 1 March 2006

This podcast is about listening to numbers. I have left the numbers out of the written text, so you will have to listen carefully to understand. Send me an e-mail if need help. What is Britain really like? How do British people really live – when we are not growing giant pumpkins or walking naked from Lands End to John O’Groats. This is of course a difficult and complicated question. We can find some answers in a book published by the government last week. It is called Social Trends, and it contains statistics on many different aspects of life in Britain. It shows, for example, that the population of Britain is growing. There are now nearly people in the United Kingdom. But, compared with years ago, there are now million fewer people under the age of , and more people over the age of . Nearly % of people in Britain are now aged over . So we are living longer than we used to, but have fewer children. About of the population of Britain is from an ethnic minority. The largest ethnic minority group is Indian, followed by Pakistanis, Black Caribbean, Black Africans, Bangladeshis and Chinese. In addition, about % of the population are white people of Irish descent. Many people from ethnic minorities live in London, which is now one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world. In one major city, Leicester in the English Midlands, the majority of people are from ethnic minorities. Over the last years the number of households in Britain has grown by over %. And % of households are now single people. Many of these are older people whose partner has died. But over % of men (and a smaller number of women) aged between and live alone. Altogether, about people in Britain live alone. At one time it was socially unacceptable for a unmarried people to have babies. But today % of births are outside marriage. years ago the figure was only %. You can find a lot more information on the Social Trends website. There is a link from the podcast website.

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Break up Posted by Peter on 21 July 2008

This car is being broken up in a scrap yard. Photo by Olly Clark/flickr There is an English phrasal verb “to break up”. It means to break into pieces. Here are some examples of ways in which we can use it. Imagine a storm at sea. The wind and the waves drive a ship onto the rocks. The waves smash the ship into pieces. The ship breaks up. Or, think about the great ice sheets in the Arctic and the Antarctic. Many scientists say that, because the world’s climate is getting warmer, the ice sheets are starting to break up. Or, think about a really old car. You have had it for many years. You and it have had some fine adventures together. But now the engine does not start. And when, eventually, it does start, there are horrible clunking sounds and a cloud of black smoke comes out of the exhaust pipe. The car is finished. You take the car to the scrap yard where they break it up, so that the metal and some of the parts can be re-used. And sometimes we say that a relationship breaks up. For instance, Joe and Mary have been going out together for a few months. They are boyfriend and girlfriend. But then they disagree and argue. Joe starts to think that he really doesn’t like Mary very much. Mary starts to think that Joe is selfish and boring. They break up. They decide that they are not going to be boyfriend and girlfriend any more. You may be thinking that “break up” is a rather sad expression. We use it to talk about shipwrecks, and cars that have reached the end of their lives, and relationships which come to an end. But there is at least one really happy use of “break up”. We can say that a school breaks up. That means, simply, that it is the end of term. It is the beginning of the holidays. There is a primary school behind my house. The school breaks up today. Today is the last day of the school term. The children are very happy. They are making even more noise in the school playground than they usually do. After today, there will be six weeks with no school. Six weeks to stay late in bed. Six weeks to play in the garden. Six weeks to watch rubbish programmes on daytime television and to play on the computer. Six weeks to visit your grandparents, or to go on holiday. Six weeks to argue with your older sister. Six weeks to drive your parents mad. Listen to English is going on holiday too. This will be my last podcast for this term. But don’t worry – I will be back with a new podcast on 10 September. I am going to spend part of the holiday in Wales, so here is some Welsh music for you to listen to. It is played on the Welsh harp by Cheryl Ann Fulton. I will put an extra posting on the website with a flash player where you can listen to more of her music if you like it. Until September, goodbye.

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Bootifull! Posted by Peter on 30 November 2010

Bernard Matthews. Great Witchingham Hall, his first turkey farm, is in the background. This podcast is about turkeys. I don’t mean the country Turkey, of course. I mean the big birds that many people eat at Christmas. There is a picture on the website if you want to know what a turkey looks like. A few days ago, the newspapers reported that a man named Bernard Matthews had died. He was 80 years old, and he was the biggest turkey farmer in Britain, and possibly in the world. There is an English expression “a self-made man”. A “self-made man” is someone who starts with nothing and goes on to make a lot of money, or to achieve a lot in some other way, entirely through hard work and enterprise. Bernard Matthews was a “self-made man.” He left school when he was 16 years old, without any formal qualifications. When he was 20, he bought some turkey eggs in a market, and a second-hand incubator. (An incubator is a device for keeping eggs warm, so that the little birds inside them can hatch.) His career in turkey farming had begun. A few years later, his business had grown and he needed a bigger space to keep his turkeys. He bought an old mansion house, Great Witchingham Hall. It was cheap because it was in very bad repair. He and his wife lived in two of the rooms of this enormous house. The turkeys lived in all the other rooms. Bootifull! Posted by Peter on 30 November 2010 This is what a turkey looks like! Most families in Britain eat turkey on Christmas day (and cold turkey for about two weeks afterwards!) You may think that this is an old tradition, but it is not. Sixty years ago, turkey was a luxury which only a few people could afford. It was Bernard Matthews who made cheap, frozen turkeys available for ordinary families, and persuaded people to buy them. Then he persuaded them that turkey was not just for Christmas, but for any time of the year. His company started to make other products containing turkey meat, and persuaded people to buy them as well. He became famous by appearing in the TV advertisements for his products. There is a link to one of these advertisements on the website. He told us that his turkey was “bootifull, really bootifull”. (“Bootifull” is how you say “beautiful” in Norfolk, which is where Bernard Matthews lived). People loved his TV adverts, and sales of Bernard Matthews’ turkeys went higher and higher. Today, about one third of all the turkeys sold in Britain are Bernard Matthews’ “bootifull” turkeys. By the time he died, Bernard Matthews was a very wealthy man; and today his company provides work for several thousand people. Bernard Matthews transformed turkey from a luxury which only a few people could enjoy into a food for everyone. Of course, he had to cut the costs of turkey farming, and find ways of rearing turkeys in huge numbers. He perfected what we call “factory farming” of turkeys in which thousands of birds are kept in huge sheds. He bought several old military airfields, and covered them with turkey sheds. He also perfected ways of turning turkey meat into “convenience foods” for busy people. In recent years, people have begun to criticise “factory farming” methods. They say that the birds are overcrowded and kept in near-darkness; and that they do little except eat and put on weight, until they are about six months old, when they are taken to be slaughtered. The birds require large doses of antibiotics and other medicines, because they are so crowded. Some of these chemicals remain in the turkey meat, and critics say that this is dangerous for human health. Processed turkey products, like other “fast foods”, often contain water, added chemicals and low-grade meat. They may be cheap, critics say, but they have low value as food, and help to make people overweight. So, what do you think? Are Bernard Matthews’ turkeys really “bootifull”? Leave your comments on the website.

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Blessed Posted by Peter on 15 June 2007

In a podcast last week, I talked about a pop group called the Zimmers. The Zimmers are all elderly people, who want to show the world that old people can be fun and creative. A few days ago I found a short poem about being old. It is by Barbara Beuler Wegner, but I am afraid that I have not been able to find out anything more either about the poem or about the writer. Here it is: Blessed are they who understand My faltering steps and shaking hand. Blessed are those who know my ears today Will strain to catch the words they say. Blessed are they who with a cheery smile Stop to chat for a little while. Blessed are those who never say “You’ve told us that story twice today”. Blessed are those who make it known That I’m loved, respected and not alone. The word “blessed” is a religious word. It means being favoured by God. In modern English we would normally say “blest”, rather than “blessed”. But the writer was thinking about a famous passage in the Bible in which Jesus tells us what sort of people are closest to God. They are not the rich people, or the powerful people, or the famous people. They are poor people, people who carry great sorrow, people who show mercy, people who suffer, and so on. In a modern English Bible, the word that Jesus uses for these people is “blest”. But older people like me remember a much older English translation of the Bible. In England we call it the Authorised Version of the Bible. In America, they call it the King James Bible, because it was translated into English at the beginning of the 17th century, in the reign of King James I. (Do you remember the podcast about the Fifth of November? King James was the king whom Guy Fawkes tried to blow up.) The Authorised Version of the Bible is sometimes difficult to understand, because it uses English which is very different from modern English. But it is very beautiful and poetic, and it was the version of the Bible used in churches in England for more than 300 years. And in the Authorised Version, the word which Jesus uses to talk about people who are close to God is “blessed”. And that is why the word “blessed” is used in this poem.