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When you learn a new language, often it is the little words that cause the big problems. I am learning German. The long words are not a problem, which is good because German has lots of long words. If I find a long word, and I don’t know what it means, I can look it up in a dictionary. No, it is the short words that confuse me in German – words like “doch” and “schon” – what exactly do they mean? How can I use them?

Mariano has sent me an e-mail. He asks, please can I make a podcast about two little words that cause him problems. The two words are “still” and “yet”. In this podcast, I shall try to explain how we use “still” and “yet”, and I will tell you a Christmas story.

First, I will tell you what I am not going to do. I am not going to give you dictionary definitions of “still” and “yet”. You can look the words up in a dictionary yourself. You do not need a podcast to do this for you. And I will not tell you about all the different meanings that “still” and “yet” have. The podcast would be very long, and use up all the spare memory in your iPod if I did that. Instead, I will take one of the common meanings of “still” and “yet” and explain to you how we use the words.

When I use the word “still”, I want you to think of the words “nothing has changed”. Like this. Kevin is unwell. He telephones his boss to say that he cannot come to work. The next day Kevin is still unwell. That means, he was unwell yesterday. He is unwell today. Nothing has changed. He is still unwell.

The summer holidays are over. People have returned to work. The children are back at school. And this is my first podcast since July.
So, what sort of summer has it been in Britain? Let’s start with the bad news. Our economy is in big difficulties. Prices are rising, especially prices for food. Petrol prices are now so high that people are using their cars less, and trains and buses more. Holidays abroad are now much more expensive, because the British pound has fallen in value. Our economy has stopped growing. Indeed, there may be a recession next year – that is, a period when the economy shrinks, or becomes smaller. Our Chancellor of the Exchequer (that means, our Finance Minister) certainly thinks that things are bad. He recently told a newspaper reporter that the economic position was the worst for 60 years.
Many British people own their own homes. They buy their homes with a loan from a bank. The last ten years have been a very nice time to own a house. House prices have risen steadily, and people felt that they were getting richer, so they spent more. In fact, Britain has had its longest period of economic growth for 100 years. But this has now stopped. House prices have fallen, and everyone expects that they will fall further. The fall in house prices has been the fastest for over 25 years. This is bad news if you own your house already; it is good news if you do not own a house but would like to buy one.
However, the really awful thing – the thing that makes British people really gloomy – is the weather. It has rained since the end of July. We have had the wettest August for many years. And there has been hardly any sunshine. In many places, August has been the dullest August (that is, the least sunny August) since 1927. It is still raining. And the weather forecast is – yes, more rain.
I am glad to say, however, that the summer has had one happy thing for Britain. At the Olympic Games in Beijing, British athletes won 45 medals. That is the highest number of medals since 1908. We even won more medals than the Australians, which is very satisfying. So, while the rain poured down, we could at least watch the Olympic Games on television. The next Olympic Games, in 2012, will take place in London. Will they be the wettest Olympic Games ever? Or will it stop raining before then?

You know what "afraid" means, don't you? If I am afraid, I am frightened or scared. If I am very afraid, I could say that I am terrified.

When we want to talk about the thing that makes us afraid, we say "afraid of". Some people are afraid of flying in aeroplanes. Some little children are afraid of the dark. My daughter is afraid of spiders.

Sometimes, however, we use the word "afraid" in a different way. We use it when we have to tell someone something which is unpleasant or unwelcome or upsetting to them. If we say "I am afraid that…" it makes what we have to say a little softer and less unpleasant. Let's look at some examples.

Kevin comes home from work. He wants to watch the world cup football on the television. But Joanne has bad news for him. First, the television has broken; and second, her mother is coming to supper. Joanne's mother doesn't like football, nor does she like Kevin.

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

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.

till

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

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

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

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

A Happy New Year, everyone. Many thanks to all of you who sent e-mails to wish me a speedy recovery from the flu. I am now much better – thank you.

Today’s podcast is a delayed Christmas podcast. I would have made it before Christmas, but I was unwell so I could not do so. I hope you will like it nonetheless. In the podcast, we meet the words “crack” and “crackers”, and we learn what you should do at a Christmas dinner in England.

Let’s start with the word “crack”. Imagine that you drop a plate – a china plate – on the floor. It does not break into lots of pieces, but when you pick it up you see that the plate now has a line running across it. You know that soon the plate will break completely along this line. The line is a “crack”. You have “cracked” the plate. The plate is “cracked”. Here are some other things which you can crack. A piece of wood can crack if you hit it hard. Ice on a river or a pond can crack if you walk on it. A window can crack if you throw a stone at it. And an egg can crack if you tap it with a knife or a spoon.

We also use the word “crack” to describe the sound of something cracking – a sudden, short sound – “crack” – like that.

Here in Britain, we have been celebrating a birthday. Not the birthday of a person, however, but the birthday of a railway. One hundred and fifty years ago, in January 1863, the first underground railway in the world carried its first passengers. It ran for 6 kilometres from Paddington in London to a place close to the City, which is the name we call London’s main business district.

The new railway was controversial and unpopular with many people. The men building the railway dug up the streets and knocked down houses and other buildings. They dug a deep trench and put the railway track at the bottom. Then they covered over the new railway and remade the surface of the street. Not surprisingly, the construction work caused chaos in London for many months.

Steam engines pulled the first underground trains. Although the tunnels had vents in the roof to let the smoke escape, they were still full of soot and steam. The railway company bravely said that the atmosphere was invigorating and particularly good for people with asthma. I think that it must have been very unpleasant. Nonetheless, from the very first day the railway was popular with people who needed to travel to their work in London. About 26,000 people used the railway every day in its first six months of operation.

More underground railway lines opened in the following years. The railway companies found new ways to build and operate them. Instead of digging huge trenches in the streets, they bored holes deep under the city. People called these deep underground lines “tubes” because the tunnels had a circular shape like tubes. Nowadays, we say “the Tube” to mean all of the London underground system. It was of course impossible to use steam engines on the deep Tube lines; they had electric trains instead. By the beginning of the 20th century, electricity had replaced steam on all the underground lines.

Do you know the English word “dull”? “Dull” is the opposite of “bright”. Often it means “uninteresting”. We can talk about dull weather, which means cloudy weather, probably some rain and certainly no sunshine. We can talk about a dull book or a dull lesson. And we can say that someone is dull – a dull person is probably not very intelligent, and has nothing interesting or lively or amusing to say. We have a saying in English that “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. Do you know someone who works all the time and never relaxes and never goes out to enjoy themselves?

And I am sure that you all know the word “boring”. It means unexciting and uninteresting. It is a favourite word of English teenagers. If their parents suggest something to them, like “Shall we all go to the cinema tonight?”, the teenager will probably reply “boring”, because when you are 15 years old, any activity involving your parents is boring.

There is a village in Scotland called Dull. It is very small, with only a single row of houses. There is a church, but it has not been used for several years. There is a school too, but it is closed. In the past, Dull was quite interesting. It was an early Christian settlement, and there was an abbey where the church now stands. But nothing interesting seems to have happened in Dull for several hundred years, and today Dull seems to be a very dull place indeed.

Elizabeth Leighton lives in Dull. However, she is obviously not a dull person, because recently she went for a cycling holiday in America. And while she was there she discovered a town called Boring. Boring is in Oregon, in the north-west of the United States. The north west of the United States is a bit like Scotland – lots of rain, and snow in the winter. Boring has about 12,000 inhabitants, which means that it is quite a bit bigger than Dull. But is it any more interesting? It has a timber mill, and a place where they train guide dogs for blind people. But the railway line closed years ago, and I guess that many of the inhabitants of Boring commute to work every day to the city of Portland, which is not far away.

Are you planning a visit to England? Are you thinking to yourself, “What shall we do in England? Are there any really special places that we must go to when we are there?” You are? Good, then this podcast is for you.

When you are in England, you could visit the Tower of London. But everyone visits the Tower of London. Or you could spend a day in Stratford-on-Avon, where Shakespeare was born. But everyone goes to Stratford. No, England’s newest tourist attraction is the M25 Motorway, which is the motorway that runs in a circle around London. It is 188 kilometers long; it is Britain’s busiest motorway, and one of the busiest roads in Europe. A bus company in Brighton now offers coach trips round the M25, and business is brisk. It seems that lots of people like nothing more than sitting in a coach on a motorway. So let us pay £15 for our ticket, and board the coach which will take us on this amazing adventure.

We head north from Brighton to the motorway, and then drive down the slip road. There are of course two possible ways that we can travel around the M25. We can turn left and travel clockwise, or we can turn right and travel anticlockwise. Today the driver decides to take us anticlockwise. As well as the driver, there is a guide on the coach who tells us about the interesting things we can see – things like “junctions” and “road signs”. The motorway today is busy, but not yet congested. We are a little bit disappointed by this. We hoped that we would find a traffic jam, because the M25 is famous for its traffic jams. Indeed, some people call the M25 the “largest car park in Britain”. Never mind, there is still a long way to go, and maybe we will find a traffic jam later.

Now the coach is taking us around the south-east edge of London. Soon we will come to the River Thames. Because we are travelling anticlockwise, we go under the river in a tunnel. Traffic going the other way crosses the river on a bridge. We have to pay a toll to use the river crossing. In the rush hour, there can be long delays at the toll booths, but today we only have to wait about 10 minutes.

Exterminate
Apr 7, 2006

One of the best bits of news in the past week has been that BBC TV is to show a new series of Dr Who.

Let me explain. Dr Who was a classic science-fiction programme on children’s television in the 1970s. Dr Who and his companions traveled the universe in time and in space, battling the forces of evil. The most frightening of these were the Daleks, who were killer robots that floated along as if they had little wheels underneath. Most of the time they shouted “Exterminate!” Someone once said that the Daleks would take over the whole universe as soon as they discovered how to climb stairs. A generation of British schoolchildren grew up watching Dr Who, fascinated and terrified, often hiding behind the sofa in the really frightening parts. Last year the BBC screened a new series of Dr Who. It was brilliant. And, yes, in one episode there was a Dalek – the last Dalek in the universe – and, yes, it still shouted “Exterminate!” And this was the really scary bit – it had learned how to float up stairs. Our blood ran cold. We hid behind the sofa.

The new 2006 series starts next month. We can hardly wait. You can read all about it, and see video clips, at the BBC website.

Today’s podcast is by Mark. He is a football coach in New Zealand.
New Zealand maoris versus British LionsHello everyone.
A few years ago, I moved from England to New Zealand to coach football to children in Auckland, the biggest city in New Zealand. I’d like to tell you about the differences between football in England and football in New Zealand.
I grew up in London in England and spent many hours as a child playing football with my friends in the park. We used to play football after school and at the weekend, and often all day long in the school holidays. One of the first things I noticed when I moved to New Zealand was that very few children play football after school or at the weekends. Even on a sunny day in New Zealand, many of the parks will be completely empty! In cities in England, children will arrange to meet their friends for a game in the park, but in New Zealand the children only ever play football when it’s organised for them by their parents or by their team coach.
If you’ve ever played football, you will know that it takes many hours of practice to get skilful and make the ball do anything you want it to. Sometimes it can take lots and lots of mistakes before a child gets it right! In New Zealand, children don’t spend a lot of time playing football on their own so they don’t try new things and make mistakes. Instead they spend an hour or two a week being told what to do by a parent or a coach. This means they don’t get to make their own mistakes and learn things for themselves. Imagine learning English and never being allowed to make a mistake? It would be very difficult, and not much fun either!
The best two football countries in the world are currently Italy and Argentina. England is eighth best, and New Zealand are at 132. In New Zealand, football in called soccer and although it is played by lots of children, most people prefer to watch rugby. New Zealand has a national rugby team called the All Blacks, and they will almost certainly win the rugby World Cup in France later this year. In New Zealand all the children want to grow up to be an All Black, and all their heroes and role-models are rugby players.
For those of you who haven’t seen a rugby game, let me explain how it works. The ball they use in rugby is not a round ball like in football, but is oval shaped – like an egg. Each team has 15 players, and the aim is to get the ball to the other end of the field. The players can do this by running with the ball in their hands, or by kicking it up the field. They can also throw the ball to each other but only if it goes backwards. It is very common in a rugby game to see huge kicks up the field so the team can advance together and get closer to scoring some points. As I said, New Zealand are very good at rugby and everyone in the country loves to see the All Blacks play.
I have coached football in New Zealand for three years now, and I think New Zealand’s love of rugby affects the way they play football, or soccer as they call it. Let me explain what I mean. In Italy or Argentina or England the most important thing in football is for the players to pass the ball to someone else on their team. If you are lucky enough to watch Italy play Argentina, you will see the players often pass the ball backwards or sideways to a team-mate. However, in New Zealand it is very common to see soccer players kick the ball up the field as far as they can and then chase after it, just like they do in rugby! And when a soccer child in New Zealand does a big kick up the field, it is very common for the parents watching the game to clap loudly and say ‘Well done! Nice kick!’ They don’t care where the ball goes, as long as it goes a long way!

Our podcast today is about weddings. I hope you will learn some new English words. There is a quiz attached to the podcast today so that you can test how much you know.

In England, you can get married in a church, or you can have a civil wedding (that is, a non-religious wedding). Until about 10 years ago, civil weddings always took place at a Registry Office. Nowadays, however, you can get married in all sorts of places – in hotels, in country houses, and in many mosques and Hindu temples, for example.

A wedding can be very expensive. One website that I have seen says that the average cost of a wedding in Britain is over £11,000. Here are some of the things that many couples will want for their wedding:

• a wedding-dress for the bride, and dresses for her bridesmaids;
• wedding rings for the bride and the bridegroom;

We have an expression in English “going to the dogs”. If something is “going to the dogs”, it means that everything seems to be getting worse and worse. There is a special sort of English person – perhaps you have met one – who will tell you that England is going to the dogs. He means that he doesn’t like the sort of clothes that young people wear, that he doesn’t like computers, that he doesn’t understand what an iPhone app does, that there are too many foreigners, that the Australians have just beaten England at cricket and that beer doesn’t taste like proper beer any more. It wasn’t like this when he was young. The country is going to the dogs!

We are going to the dogs today. We are going to visit Crufts, which is the largest dog show in the world. Every year, about 28,000 dogs and their owners come to a big exhibition centre near Birmingham for a four day celebration of dogs and everything connected with dogs. They (the dogs, that is) compete in lots of tests and competitions, to see which is the best dog in each breed, and which is the best dog in the whole show. The best dog in the show wins a prize of £100, which does not sound much to people like you and me, but perhaps it is a lot of money if you are a dog. Also at Crufts there are races for dogs, obedience competitions for dogs and something called “heelwork to music”, which essentially means people dancing with their dogs.

Dogs that go to Crufts are special dogs. They are all pedigree dogs, which means that each dog comes from a pure breed and that there is a proper record of its ancestors. Some are working dogs, which have been bred for hunting or for working on farms. Others are just pretty dogs. There are big dogs and little dogs, noisy dogs and quiet dogs, dogs from Britain and dogs from other countries too.

Why is this dog show called Crufts? It is named after a Mr Cruft, who worked for a company that made dog biscuits. In 1886, he organised a dog show in London. Six hundred dogs took part. Since then, the dog show which he started has grown and grown. In 1991, it became so big that it had to move out of London to a huge exhibition centre in the middle of England.

Today we will learn something about the word "arrive". I will tell you when to say "arrive at" and when to say "arrive in". And I will also tell you that you must never say "arrive to"! Kevin and Joanne are going to visit their friend Amy, who lives in Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland. They arrange when they will come, but then need to decide how to travel. Kevin does not want to drive. It is a long way, and there are roadworks on the M6 motorway which will cause delay, frustration and bad temper. (There are always roadworks on the M6 – it is part of the traditional British way of life).

So they decide to take the train. Now, in Britain train fares are often very expensive unless you buy your tickets at least a week before you travel. Kevin is lucky – he finds some cheap tickets on the internet.

On Friday, Kevin and Joanne set off; they take a bus and arrive at the railway station. Miraculously their train is on time. Four hours later they arrive in Glasgow. They take a taxi and arrive at Amy's flat at about 4pm.

On the way home they are not so lucky. When they arrive at Glasgow Central station, they find that their train is late. Moreover, one of the carriages is missing, so the train is overcrowded and some passengers have to stand for their journey. The train arrives in Birmingham, at New Street Station, about an hour late.

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.

How to start your car
Sep 27, 2006

As you know, many modern cars have electronic systems for locking and unlocking the doors, and for starting the engine. Generally the car key contains a computer chip and a little battery. If the computer chip is not there, the car engine will not start.

The following story appeared on the BBC website recently. A motorist needed to change the battery in her car key. But when she had finished, she found that she could not start the engine in her car. I desperation, she called the AA. The AA man arrived and found that there was no computer chip in the key. It must have fallen out when the woman changed the battery. The woman and the AA man searched
the car but could not find the chip. Then the woman remembered that her dog had been in the car, and had eaten something when she was changing the battery. That was it! The dog must have eaten the chip. The AA man put the dog in the driver’s seat of the car, and turned the key in the ignition. The engine started immediately!
Now the woman can use her car again, provided that her dog is in the front seat. What will she do when the chip is no longer in the dog? I have no idea.

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

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

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

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

Today I am going to tell you about Lord Lucan. But first we need to talk about the verb “to cope”.

Helen has three children. They are all less than five years old, which means that none of them is yet at school. Her husband often has to travel for his job, so he cannot help to look after the children. Helen’s mother lives in the next road, and Helen often has to go to visit her, and cook food for her, and clean her house. So, as you can see, Helen has some big difficulties in her life. She is under a lot of pressure. But Helen never lets her three children and her elderly mother get her down. She is always cheerful and smiling.

Often her friends ask her “How do you cope? How do you cope with three small children, a husband who is away, and an elderly mother?” “To cope” means to deal successfully with some big difficulties and pressures. We use the word “with” with “cope” – Helen copes with three small children and an elderly mother.

Here are some more examples. One of Kevin’s colleagues at work, Jack, is ill. So Kevin has to cope with 20 or 30 telephone calls every day which Jack would normally deal with. “I can’t cope”, Kevin says. “The telephone is always ringing and I don’t understand what they are talking about. I have no time to do my own work.” His boss however understands his problem. “You are coping fine,” he says. “It is only for a short time until Jack is back at work. I will ask someone else to do some of your work to help you to cope.”

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!

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.

No Clothes Day
Nov 17, 2006

Most British children wear school uniform to go to school. They have to. The school rules say that the children have to wear school uniform at school. What sort of school uniform? Well, my younger children are both at secondary school.

My daughter has to wear a dark green skirt or trousers, a white blouse, a dark green jumper, and black shoes and socks or tights. The Moslem girls at her school may wear a head-scarf, but it must be dark green or white or black.

My son wears black trousers, a white shirt, a school tie and a dark blue jumper. At some schools, the pupils wear blazers – that is, a jacket in school colours with the school badge on the pocket. In most other European countries, children do not wear uniform to go to school. They just wear their normal clothes.

There was an important anniversary this week. Forty years ago, on 15 February 1971, Britain
changed its currency, that is, its money system. This is what happened.
When I was a child in the fifties and sixties, Britain had a wonderfully complicated currency
system. We had pounds, like we do now, but each pound was divided into 20 shillings, and each
shilling was divided into 12 pence, or pennies. So, at school we learned that “12 pence make one
shilling, 20 shillings make a pound”. We had to learn our 12 times tables (that is our
multiplication tables) very carefully, because we needed to be able to change pence into shillings
and the other way round. So, we used to chant things like “seven sevens are forty-nine, forty-nine

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

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

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

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

If you are as old as I am, you probably remember a Hollywood film called Singing in the Rain. That was Gene Kelly singing a song from that film. In the film he was indeed ‘singing in the rain’, and ‘dancing in the rain’ as well, and fooling around with an umbrella in the rain. Of course, you probably noticed that he says ‘singin’ in the rain’ instead of ‘singing in the rain’. That is the way that many Americans, and quite a lot of English people too, pronounce words that end in “-ing”.

And this podcast is about words which end in “-ing”. Your English teacher may have a special name, like “gerund”, for these words. But I am just going to call them “-ing” words. You can make an “-ing” word by adding the letters ING to the end of any English verb – any verb at all, no exceptions. OK, sometimes you have to change the spelling a bit, because as you know we English love to make spelling difficult. But the sound is the same – “ing” (or “in’” if you are Gene Kelly). Go on – make a few “-ing” words now, while I am talking – yes, “talking”, that’s an “-ing” word, so are running, jumping, standing, sleeping, reading, eating…..and so on.

So now we have some “-ing” words, what can we do with them? The exciting answer to this question is that we can do almost anything with an “-ing” word. We can use it as an adjective, for example. If we see a child who is asleep, we can call her “a sleeping child”. If we see a baby who is crying, we can call it a “crying baby”. If we see a car that is going too fast, we can call it a “speeding car”. And if you want to swim, you go to a “swimming pool”.

We can also use our “-ing” word as a noun. We can say, for example, “I like reading”, or “I think that spelling is very difficult”. “Reading” is a noun; it is the name of the thing that I do when I read a book or a newspaper. But “-ing” words are not ordinary nouns. They never forget that they were once verbs. What do I mean by that? Well, think about these sentences. “I like reading” and “I read books”. We can combine these sentences like this – “I like reading books”. So, can you see that “reading” is a bit like a verb? Just like the verb “read”, you can put the word “books” after it, to say what you like reading. We can also say “I like reading books slowly”; we can add the word “slowly” to explain how we read.

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

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

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

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

Today, we will visit a little village on the south coast of England. Its name is Tyneham, and it is a “ghost village”. What does ‘ghost village’ mean? It means that the village is deserted, there is no-one there. Many of the houses, the church and the school are still standing, but no-one lives in Tyneham any more. If you believe in ghosts, perhaps you feel that the ghosts of the people who used to live there still haunt the village. It is a “ghost village”. Tyneham is a very ancient place. People lived there in Roman times, and probably long before. For centuries, the people farmed the land and caught fish in the sea. In the 13th century, a stone church – St Mary’s church – was built, and in the middle of the 19th century the village got its own school. Tyneham lies in a very attractive part of England. Many of the other villages nearby have cafes, and souvenir shops and car-parks.

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They are crowded with visitors in the summer, and well-off people from London buy the pretty houses as weekend cottages. Why is Tyneham not like that? During the Second World War, shortly before Christmas 1943, the people in Tyneham all received letters from the government. The army needed the land in Tyneham as a place to train soldiers.

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All the inhabitants had to leave the village in less than a month’s time. Of course, this would only be temporary. When the War was over, the people could return home. But they never returned. After the War, the army decided that it still needed the land for training. They erected targets on the hillsides, and soldiers in tanks practised firing shells at them. Sometimes they missed the targets, and hit houses in Tyneham by mistake. The whole area around Tyneham was closed to the public. It was not safe to walk on the roads or the footpaths because of unexploded shells from the guns. The people of Tyneham complained and pressed the government to let them return home. Tourists complained that they could not visit this beautiful area of England. The army took no notice, and in the 1960s even demolished the ancient manor house in Tyneham. Eventually, in 1975, the army – with great reluctance – agreed that people could visit Tyneham and the area around it at weekends and during the month of August. So today, on days when the area is open, you can park your car at the car park at the top of the hill, and walk down to the old village. You can see the ruined houses, and visit a museum in the old church. You can walk down to the sea, to where the fishing boats used to be. You can see the village telephone box, which was erected only months before the villagers left – unfortunately, the telephone in it does not work! You can visit the old school. Inside, it is almost exactly as it was in the 1930s. The children’s books are still on the desks, and their names are on the pegs where they hung their coats. It is almost as if the children had just gone outside to play. A “ghost school”! I do not know how many of the 252 people who left Tyneham in 1943 are still alive – probably not many. It is now very unlikely that they will ever return home – indeed, probably they no longer think of Tyneham as home. So Tyneham will be left as a place where the army can shoot its guns, where the wildlife can flourish, safe from people and modern agriculture, and where tourists can come for a glimpse of what life in rural England used to be like. The last person to leave Tyneham left a note pinned to the door of the church. It read: Please treat the church and houses with care; we have given up our homes where many of us lived for generations to help win the war to keep men free. We shall return one day and thank you for treating the village kindly.

In the city of Leicester, in central England, a group of archaeologists has been busy. They have been digging up a car park. Last week they announced that they had found a human skeleton. Of course, archaeologists often dig up human remains. Human bones can tell us interesting things about the past – what people ate, how tall they were, what diseases they suffered from, and how they died. The car park skeleton, however, is much more interesting. It is the skeleton of a man. He suffered from a deformed spine. He had a severe head injury, and part of an arrow was found in his back. The bones may be those of King Richard III of England.

Richard was born in 1452 and became king in 1483, after the death of his older brother Edward IV. The 15th century was a very troubled time in English history. There was almost constant civil war between powerful families who wanted to control the country. A few months after Edward’s death, his two sons – aged 12 and 9 – disappeared. Many people are convinced that Richard ordered their deaths so that neither of them could ever challenge his position as king.

Richard was king for only two years. In 1485, Henry Tudor led a rebellion against him. Richard’s army was defeated at the battle of Bosworth, and Richard himself was killed. (He was in fact the last English king to die in a battle. After him, English kings got other people to do the fighting and the dying for them!) His body was displayed in public for several days. Then it was taken and buried at Greyfriars Church in Leicester, which is quite close to the site of the battle. The victorious Henry Tudor became King Henry VII, and he and his children and grandchildren ruled England for the next 120 years.

Grefriars Church disappeared in about 1540, when the king seized all the monasteries in England and expelled the monks. Over the years, people forgot where Greyfriars Church had been. For a time there was a garden on the site; and later buildings; and then a car park in the busy centre of Leicester. No-one knew what had happened to the body of Richard III. Indeed, until recently, many historians believed that it had been dug up and thrown into a river at about the time that the monks left Greyfriars Church.

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:

The 14th of April 2012 was the centenary – the 100th anniversary – of the sinking of the passenger ship Titanic in the north Atlantic. This podcast is about Titanic. I hope it will help you to learn some new words and expressions about ships and the sea, and that you will learn about “unsinkable” words. (Don’t know what “unsinkable” words are? Then listen carefully to the rest of the podcast!)

Titanic has appeared in one of these podcasts before. Just over a year ago, we visited Belfast in Northern Ireland and the shipyard where Titanic was built. When she was launched, Titanic was the biggest ship in the world, and one of the most comfortable and luxurious. One hundred years ago last week, she set sail from Southampton on the south coast of England on her maiden voyage to New York.

On board, there were over 1300 passengers. About 300 of these were First Class passengers, who enjoyed facilities such as restaurants, cafes, a library, a gym, a swimming pool and a telegraph office which could send radio messages back to families and business colleagues on shore. The First Class passengers included some of the wealthiest and most influential people in the world. Most of the passengers, however, travelled Second or Third Class, in much more humble conditions. Then there were 885 crew members, including 300 men to look after Titanic‘s huge steam engines and feed them with coal. There were also large numbers of cooks, waiters, cleaners and other people to look after the passengers. There was a cat too, with her kittens.

Titanic called first at Cherbourg in France and then at Cobh in Ireland before setting out across the Atlantic. Then, shortly before midnight on 14 April 1912, when she was 600km south of Newfoundland in Canada, she struck an iceberg. Slowly the ship filled with water. The crew launched the ship’s lifeboats, but there were not sufficient places in them for everyone. Over 1500 of the passengers and crew died in the freezing waters of the Atlantic; only 710 were saved.

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.

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.