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You know how to talk about the future in English. You use words like "will" or "shall" or "going to".

In English, we also have a way of talking about things which are in the future but very close to the present – perhaps only a few minutes into the future. We use the expression "about to", like this:
Kevin and Joanne are going to Spain for a holiday. They have packed their suitcases and bought some euros. Now they are waiting by the door for the taxi to come and take them to the airport. They are about to leave for their holiday.

It is 10.30 in the evening. Joanne has had a shower and washed her hair and put her nightdress on. Then the telephone rings. It is her mother. "Mum", says Joanne, "I can't talk for long. I am about to go to bed".

It is the middle of the afternoon, and my children are about to come home from school. And when they get home, they will be hungry, so I am about to make them something to eat.

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.

Many English learners find that they get confused between words like "ago", "since" and "for". Today's podcast gives you lots of examples of how to use these words; I hope it will help you to use them correctly.

Suppose that we want to talk about when we did something, or when something happened. We can use the word "ago". We can say, for example, "it happened two weeks ago" or "a year ago" or "five minutes ago" or "a long time ago". With "ago" we always use words which describe a period of time – a week, a month, 10 minutes.

If we want to say for how long we did something, or how for how long something happened, we can use the word "for" – "for about a week", "for 10 years", "for a short time". And, like "ago", we use "for" with a period of time – a week, a year etc.

Another way of talking about how long we have done something is to use the word "since" – "I have been ill since Monday", "since Christmas", "since I got up this morning". With "since" we always have to use words which describe a point in time – words like "last week" or "Winter" or "1998". We do not say things like "since a week" or "since 10 minutes". Everybody clear? Then let's begin.

A couch is a sofa, such as people have in their sitting-rooms, often in front of the television. Some people spend a lot of time sitting on the couch watching television, and probably getting fat for want of exercise. We have a name for such people in English – couch potatoes. And, as British people are well known for watching TV a lot, perhaps we are a nation of couch potatoes.

Google, the company that runs the internet search engine, has just published a survey which claims that British people now spend more time on the internet than they do watching television – 164 minutes a day on average on the internet, 148 minutes watching television.

It was only about 10 years ago that people first started to access the internet from home computers. Now, according to Google, everyone in Britain spends the equivalent of 41 days a year surfing the net. Of course, this figure includes net access at work as well as at home. Still, if true, it is astonishing. Moreover, the time that Google says we spend watching TV and the time we spend on the net, added together, comes to over 5 hours a day. Can this really be true? Are we British now a nation of couch-and-computer potatoes? If I search the web, can I find a website with more information about this?

Have you a dream? I mean, is there something that you would really like to do in your life – such as travelling round the world, or writing a best-selling novel, or climbing Mount Everest, or learning a new language. Good. It is important that we have dreams like these.

But what would you do to achieve your dream. Would you, for example, walk out of your job so that you could do the thing you really want to do? Hmm. That might be difficult. How would you get the money you need to live on? And suppose you had a well-paid and very important job. Would you give that job up to pursue your dream?

This morning's newspapers tell us about someone who has done just that. His name is Paul Drayson. He is 47 years old. He started his career as a businessman, and he was very successful. He made a fortune as boss of a company which makes equipment for giving people medical injections without sticking a needle into them. Then he became interested in politics. He gave a lot of money to the Labour Party. The government made him a member of the House of Lords, which is the upper chamber of the British parliament. (This means that he is now Lord Drayson, and not plain, ordinary Mr Drayson.) Then Lord Drayson became a minister in the government, at the Ministry of Defence. He was responsible for buying equipment for the British armed forces. Both the government’s supporters and his opponents said that he was good at his job. He obviously had a bright political career ahead of him.

But Lord Drayson had a dream. It was a dream about driving motorcars very fast. He bought a 6-litre Aston Martin racing car. He drove it around race tracks. He competed in races; then he started to win some of the races, and this year he came third in the British GT championship. (The GT championships are for cars which are nearly the same as cars which you can drive on normal roads). People who know him say that, as a racing driver, Paul Drayson is both brave and intelligent. He is particularly interested in racing cars which run on bio-fuels, that is fuel which is made from plants like maize instead of from crude oil.

Suppose you are planning a holiday in England. Your friend in England might say to you, "Please let me know when you are going to arrive."

Or suppose I am talking to a friend who is planning to move to another town. I might say, "Please let me have your new address."

What do these expressions mean – "let me know", and "let me have"?

You have probably guessed the answer. "Let me know" means "tell me" and "let me have" means "give me". Easy. Simple.

"Litter" means things that people throw away in a public place, like a street. Things like cigarette ends, crisp packets, old newspapers or Coca-Cola cans. Litter makes a place look untidy and dirty. We ought to put our litter in a litter bin, or take it home with us. In towns and cities there are street cleaners. Their job is to sweep up the litter that other people leave in the streets. And in some places in the country where there are many visitors, we also have people who clear up litter.

A group of volunteers have just finished picking up litter on Ben Nevis, which is the highest mountain in Britain. In good weather, many visitors climb the mountain. In bad weather, however, it can be a very dangerous place. The volunteer litter-pickers collected bags full of old paper, orange peel, plastic bags and drinks cans from the path which leads to the top of Ben Nevis. Then they saw a piece of wood sticking out from a pile of broken rock near the top of the mountain. They pulled the rocks away and found… a piano.

Why was there a piano near the top of Britiain's highest mountain? It turned out that a Mr Kenny Campbell had carried it up the mountain 35 years ago to raise money for charity. It also turned out that it wasn’t a piano at all, but a small church organ. Mr Campbell told the newspapers that he had played Scotland the Brave on the organ at the top of the mountain. He said that he was planning another stunt to raise money for charity later this year, to mark his 65th birthday. We really are mad in this country!

Vocabulary note: "it turned out that…" At first people thought that it was a piano. Later they found out it was really an organ. It TURNED OUT to be an organ. At first people did not know who had carried it up the mountain. Then Mr Campbell said that it was him. It TURNED OUT that it was Mr Campbell.

In English, if we say that something HAS GONE, or that something IS GONE, we mean that it has disappeared. If I say that my money has all gone, I mean that I don't have any money any more. Maybe someone has stolen it. Maybe I have spent it all. If I say that the biscuits are all gone, I mean that someone, probably my children, has eaten them all. If I say that the light has gone, I mean that it has become dark, that it is night time.

A few days ago, Heinz Stücke arrived in Britain, and someone stole his bicycle. Heinz Stücke is a remarkable man. He comes from Hövelhof in Germany. In 1962, when he was 22 years old, he left Germany on his bicycle. He has been travelling the world ever since. On his bicycle, he has covered about half a million kilometers, and visited over 200 countries. He has ridden his bike over mountains and glaciers, and though deserts and jungles. He has taken over 100,000 photographs. He lives on almost no money. He sells postcards and booklets about his travels to raise the money he needs. He still rides the same 3-speed bicycle that he started with, over 40 years ago (though I imagine that most of the parts have been replaced in that time).

He travelled to Britain on a ferry and arrived at Portsmouth, on the south coast of England. He found somewhere to camp for the night. He woke up at 3am and looked out of his tent. His bike was gone. Someone had stolen it.

In Britain we have the finest bicycle thieves in the world. They steal about 100,000 bicycles every year. In Britain, you need a strong lock for your bicycle. It is also a good idea to ride a bicycle which is old and dirty, because this makes it less attractive to thieves. My own bicycle is old, scratched and rusty. No-one has ever stolen it. Sometimes I wish they would.