Have you come across the English expression “carrying coals to Newcastle”? This is what it means. For several hundred years, from the 16th century until about 50 years ago, the North-east of England was a major coal-producing area. There were literally hundreds of small coal mines in the area. Until the railways were built, most of the coal was taken to the city of Newcastle, which is on the river Tyne, close to the sea. From Newcastle, the coal went by ship to London and many other places in Britain and abroad.

Now, imagine that you are a coal merchant in, say, London. You have some coal to sell. Where might you take the coal to sell it? Where would you not take the coal to sell it? I think that you would not take it to Newcastle, because there is lots of coal there already.

So, if you say that something is like “carrying coals to Newcastle”, you mean that it is useless, it has no purpose, it is a complete waste of time and money. I am sure that there are equivalent sayings in other languages – “carrying owls to Athens” is an old Greek saying that means the same. You could even invent some of your own – “taking fridges to the North Pole”, for example. Or, “taking wine to Bordeaux”.

You may be wondering, why do we talk about “coals to Newcastle” and not “coal to Newcastle”? Surely, “coal” is a collective noun, like “water” or “sugar”. Well, in modern English we would indeed say “coal to Newcastle”, but the expression dates back to the 16th century, and at that time people talked about “coals” instead of “coal”.

And let us have a little pronunciation lesson too. If you want to sound like a native English speaker, you need to know how to pronounce the names of places in England correctly. We do not make this easy for you, and lots of English place names are spelled quite differently from the way they are pronounced. Now, you will hear many English people pronounce the name of the city in the north-east of England “NEWcastle”. But the people who live there say NewCAStle. My mother was born and brought up in Newcastle, and she made sure that her children knew how to pronounce the name properly!

I am telling you about “coals to Newcastle” because I read an interesting article in the newspaper this morning. As you know, a lot of English people have gone to live in France in the past 20 years or so. They like the climate, they like the wine, they like the food, they like the low prices for houses in rural areas of France. Some of them even learn to speak French! However, the British pound has fallen in value against the Euro, and this has caused problems for many of them. They have found that it is cheaper to buy food and groceries in England than in France. So they order groceries online from one of the big British supermarket companies. The supermarket delivers the groceries to a specialist delivery company, and five times a week the delivery company sends a van full of groceries to English people in south-west France. Most of the things they order are awful English foods that no respectable Frenchman would eat, such as tinned chicken curry. But among the items which they order are French products like wine and croissants. From England to France! Coals to Newcastle!

Finally, I should tell you that someone did once send coals to Newcastle. In the eighteenth century, there was an American businessman called Timothy Dexter. His competitors, who wanted to ruin him, told him that it would be an excellent idea to send a ship full of coal to Newcastle. So he did. His ship arrived in Newcastle in the middle of a miners' strike. There was a shortage of coal, and prices were very high, and he sold his coal at a great profit. Sometimes sending coals to Newcastle can be a good idea!

File download (5:39 mins | 3 MB)

Today we learn about how to get rid of things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Quiz - how to get rid of things. ::

File download (4:02 mins | 2 MB)

Do you know the English word “unearth”? If you “unearth” something, you dig it out of the ground. Perhaps you remember the podcast about the Staffordshire Hoard, a collection of gold and precious stones which had been discovered in a field. The man who found the hoard dug the gold and precious stones out of the field – he “unearthed” them. Or perhaps you remember the podcast about my hens. The hens scratch the ground. They hope to “unearth” a worm, or something else which is nice to eat. Nice if you are a hen, I mean.

We can use the word “unearth” in a figurative way. Imagine that you are a newspaper journalist. You are writing an article about a well-known politician. You talk to people, and you ask questions, and you discover, or “unearth”, some interesting things, for example that the politician has taken bribes from a big chemicals company. You have “unearthed” a scandal.

Today, we are going to unearth some bones, and we will learn something about the very bloodthirsty people – the Romans, the Saxons and the Vikings – who lived in England or visited this country over 1000 years ago.

For several years, archaeologists have been digging in the gardens of a group of houses in York, in the north of England. They have unearthed lots of bones, old bones, human bones. The bones date from the time, about 2000 years ago, when England was part of the Roman Empire, and York was an important Roman city. The bones are of strong, healthy young men. Many of them show signs of serious injuries. Many had been beheaded. Others had been killed by hammer blows to the head. Scientific tests show that the men came from many different parts of the Roman Empire.

The archaeologists think that the young men were professional fighters, called gladiators. The Romans, when there was nothing good on television, loved to watch gladiator fights. These fights often ended with the death of one of the gladiators. Sometimes, instead of fighting each other, gladiators fought with wild animals like lions or tigers, which the Romans brought at great expense from places like north Africa. And one of the skeletons found at York has the marks of the teeth of a large animal!

Some of the gladiators at York were buried with goods for them to use in the afterlife and there is evidence that great feasts were held at gladiator funerals. Gladiators were popular heroes in Roman times, like professional footballers are today. Professional footballers have short footballing lives – sometimes they have to retire after a few years because of injury. Gladiators had short lives too, because they often had their heads cut off during fights!

We have found some other interesting bones recently. In the south of England, near Weymouth, men who were building a new road found a large collection of bones from over 50 people. Like the bones at York, they were all young men and they had all been beheaded. These bones are later than the bones in York. They come from the time of the Saxons. The Saxons were the people who came to England when the Roman Empire collapsed. Their language is the ancestor of modern English. However, the bones are not Saxon bones. Scientists analysed the chemical composition of the bones and concluded that the men came from Scandinavia. In Saxon times, people from Scandinavia called the Vikings frequently raided England, to kill and steal, and Vikings settled permanently in some parts of the country. The Saxons tried paying the Vikings money to go away and leave them alone, but that simply made the Vikings more greedy.

So what happened to the young Vikings at Weymouth? Probably the Saxons captured a group of Viking raiders, stripped them naked and then executed them. However, if you come from Norway or Denmark, do not worry. We give tourists a much warmer welcome nowdays!

• Guardian newspaper report about the gladiator graveyard at York ::
• BBC report on the Viking bones found at Weymouth ::
• Quiz - how well did you understand the podcast? ::

File download (5:51 mins | 3 MB)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy birthday, M1.

File download (4:24 mins | 2 MB)

It is very cold here in England, and there is lots of snow on the ground. What do you think about snow? Yes, snow can be cold and wet and miserable. But it can also can change familiar things – our houses and gardens, our streets and our cities – into something strange and new and beautiful.

Good poetry is like snow – it too can change familiar things into something strange and new and beautiful. So I looked for a poem about snow to read you, and I have found one by a poet called Brian Patten.

Brian Patten was born in Liverpool in 1946, which means that he is nearly as old as I am! In the 1960s, he was one of a group of young poets from Liverpool whose poems became very popular and widely read. It is easy to understand why – the poems are direct, simple and often funny. Brian Patten is today one of Britain's leading poets, and he has written lots of poems both for adults and for children. There are links to some of his poems, and to more information, on the website. I sent him an e-mail, to say that I would like to use this poem in a podcast, and he has kindly agreed that I can. So here it is, Remembering Snow.

I did not sleep last night.
The falling snow was beautiful and white.
I dressed, sneaked down the stairs
And opened wide the door.
I had not seen such snow before.
Our grubby little street had gone.
The world was brand-new, and everywhere
There was a pureness in the air.
I felt such peace.
Watching every flake
I felt more and more awake.
I thought I had learned all there was to know
About the trillion million different kinds
Of swirling frosty flakes of snow.
That was not so.
I did not know how vividly it lit
The world with such a peaceful glow.
Upstairs my mother slept.
I could not drag myself away from that sight
To call her down and have her share
The mute miracle of the snow.
It seemed to fall for me alone.
How beautiful our grubby little street had grown!

(Copyright Brian Patten. Used here with permission.)

• Brian Patten's website ::
• Brian Patten reading his poem 'A Blade of Grass' ::
• More poems by Brian Patten ::
• Books by Brian Patten on Amazon ::

File download (3:19 mins | 2 MB)

We have a saying in English that an Englishman's home is his castle. What exactly does it mean? Some people say that it means that you can do anything you like in your own home. But that isn't true. You are not allowed to kill people in your home, for example. Perhaps it means that you can decide whom to allow into your home. If you say no, then they have to stay outside. But that isn't true either. The police, for example, sometimes have the right to come into your house even if you don't want them to.

So perhaps the saying just means that English people like to think about their home as a castle. It is safe, secure and private. It is my place. It is not anyone else's place!

Robert Fidler is a farmer in Surrey, which is a county south of London. He wanted to build a castle on his farm as a home for himself and his family. Unfortunately, in Britain you cannot build a castle, or any other building, anywhere you want. You need to get planning permission (sometimes called planning consent) first. So Robert Fidler applied for planning permission. The local authority said no. Robert Fidler's farm is in the Green Belt, which is the area around big cities where new houses and other buildings are generally not allowed. The Green Belt stops towns and cities from getting too big and destroying the open countryside. So Robert Fidler could not build his castle.

However, Robert decided to build the castle anyway, without planning consent. First, he built a high wall with bales of straw. If you are a farmer, like Robert was, you can do almost anything as long as it is agricultural, and bales of straw are definitely agricultural. Behind the wall of straw, where no-one could see, Robert Fidler built his castle, or rather his house which looked like a castle. There is a picture of it on the website. It has two round towers, with ramparts on the top. The newspapers said that the castle also had cannons, but I cannot find a picture of them.

Robert finished his house in 2002. He moved in with his wife and small son. When they looked out of their windows, all they could see was the wall of straw, but they did not mind. Birds built their nests in the straw, and it was fun to watch them. Besides, it was vital to keep the castle secret. They hoped that after four years, they would be allowed to keep the castle, even without planning permission.

In 2006, Robert removed the wall of straw, and now everyone could see the remarkable house which he had built. The local authority were horrified. They told Robert that he had to demolish the house. He refused. The local authority started legal action. Last week a judge agreed with the local authority and said that Robert's castle had to go. But Robert Fidler will continue fighting, and says that he will go to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary. He told the newspapers, “This house will never be knocked down. This is a beautiful house that has been lovingly created. I will do whatever it takes to keep it.”

So, should Robert be allowed to keep his castle, or should it be knocked down? Some people say that it is a really nice building and that it would be wrong to demolish it and leave Robert and his family with nowhere to live. Other people say that everyone else has to obey the planning laws, and it would be unfair to make an exception in this case. What do you think?

Our phrasal verb this week is “to knock down”. If you knock down a house, or a wall, or a building, it means that you demolish it. You use a big hammer, or a machine, to hit the walls until they fall down and there is nothing left except a pile of bricks and stones. The local authority have told Robert Fidler that he must knock his house down. He says that it will never be knocked down. OK?

There is a quiz on the website. Have fun.

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

File download (6:01 mins | 3 MB)

Martina Lopez has sent me an e-mail. She suggests that every week, I should tell you about a phrasal verb. Good idea, Martina. There are hundreds of phrasal verbs in English, and there is, I am afraid, no easy way to learn them. You just have to remember what they mean! So, in every podcast, I will try to introduce a new phrasal verb. Today's phrasal verb is “to take over”.

Kevin has just changed jobs in his company. His job title used to be “Sales Analyst”. Now he is “Assistant Sales Manager – South East England”. Wow, it sounds exciting, doesn't it! The man who used to be the “Assistant Sales Manager – South East England” is called Jimmy. He has resigned from the company. He has decided to open a bar on an island in Greece. It will be called “Jimmy's Bar”, and it will sell English beer to English tourists. So Kevin has taken over the job of Assistant Sales Manager. That means – Jimmy used to be Assistant Sales Manager, but now Kevin has the job.

“Take over” has another, related meaning. If a company buys another company, we can say that it has taken over the other company. It has made a takeover offer, or a takeover bid; that is, it has said that it is willing to buy all the shares. So, the company where Joanne works, Global News, has recently taken over another company called Media Design. It now owns Media Design.

In Birmingham, where I live, people have been very worried in the past few weeks about a takeover bid for the Cadbury chocolate company. George Cadbury founded the Cadbury company in the 19th century. His father was a tea and coffee merchant in Birmingham, and when he was only 22 years old, George and his brother Richard took over the running of the tea and coffee business. George expanded the business into chocolate. This was a very natural thing to do, as in the 19th century chocolate was something to drink – like tea or coffee – and not something to eat, like we eat a chocolate bar today.

The chocolate business was very successful, and it became too big for the factory in the centre of Birmingham. George bought land in the countryside south of Birmingham, in a place which today is called Bournville, and built a new chocolate factory there. He thought that it was important that his workers should have good housing, so he built houses for them, close to the factory. They were much better than most working-class houses at the time, and had big gardens where the children could play and where the family could grow flowers and vegetables. He built a school, and a training college, and a swimming pool and sports facilities for his workers. The Bournville village which George Cadbury built still exists today, and is a very pleasant part of the city.

In the 20th century, Cadbury became the biggest chocolate company in Britain, and expanded into many other countries. The company is no longer owned by the Cadbury family. It has shares, which people can buy and sell on the Stock Exchange, just like most other big companies.

However, now an American company called Kraft wants to buy Cadbury. Kraft are famous for making a processed cheese that looks and tastes like plastic and may even be made of plastic. Kraft have made a takeover bid for Cadbury, and it seems likely that the people who own shares in Cadbury will agree to sell them to Kraft. So Cadbury will no longer be a independent company, but a subsidiary of a big American corporation. People in Birmingham are very worried that in a few years, Kraft will close the famous chocolate factory in Bournville, and move chocolate production to another country. People are angry, too, that investment bankers have made large profits from the takeover, at a time when many people have no jobs.

But lets end with something a bit more cheerful about takeovers. One day, perhaps, someone may want to take over these podcasts. Perhaps Google would be interested, or Apple, or Microsoft. But they will need deep pockets. Unless their takeover offer is at least $100 million, I will not even return their telephone calls.

• Cadbury website. ::
• Visit Cadbury World! ::
• BBC news item about the Kraft takeover of Cadbury ::

File download (6:15 mins | 3 MB)

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.

• 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 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.

• Quiz - all about the verb "to catch". ::

File download (4:43 mins | 2 MB)

Today's podcast is about the names of different occupations, and about Harry and June and their new house.

Harry is a retired school head teacher. He and his wife June want to move from London to live in Devon in the south-west of England. Devon is a place where lots of retired people go to live. Devon is warm (well, warmer than most of the rest of England) and it is beside the sea. In Devon towns like Paignton and Torquay there are lots of little bungalows where retired people like Harry and June live.

However, Harry and June do not want to live in a bungalow in Paignton or Torquay. They want to build their own house. So this is what they do. First they go to an estate agent, who sells houses and land. The estate agent has information about some suitable land where Harry and June could build their house. Then they ask a solicitor to handle all the legal matters connected with buying the land. Harry and June know what sort of house they want, but they need an architect to design the house and make plans for them. Unlike Robert, whom we met a few weeks ago, they know that they need planning permission for their house. So they fill in application forms and spend several weeks arguing with the planning official in the local authority about interesting things like where the drains will go.

Now they are ready to start building the house. They find a builder to supervise and organise the work. The builder digs the foundations for the house, and a local authority building inspector then comes to check that he has built the foundations properly. A bricklayer builds the walls of the house with bricks and mortar, and a carpenter builds the wooden framework for the roof. A roofer then puts the tiles on the roof and makes it watertight.

Meanwhile, inside the house a plasterer is busy putting plaster on the new walls. An electrician arrives to install the electric wiring, and makes holes in the new plaster, so the plasterer has to plaster some of the walls again. A plumber installs the water pipes. He drills through one of the new electric wires; there is a bang, and all the lights go out. The electrician has to come back to mend it. A gas fitter puts in the gas pipes for the central heating and the cooker in the kitchen. He knocks more holes in the plaster, so the plasterer has more work to do. A joiner comes to install the doors and cupboards inside the house. He puts a nail through the new gas pipe.

Now Harry and June's house has walls and a roof, it has doors and windows, and gas and water and electricity. But there is more to do. A painter comes to paint the outside of the house. Inside the house, a decorator paints the woodwork and puts wallpaper on the walls. In the kitchen, a kitchen fitter is busy installing kitchen cupboards and work surfaces, and a carpet fitter is putting carpets in the living room and the bedrooms.

Inside, the house is looking good, but outside it is a mess, because the builder has left piles of broken bricks and other rubbish in the garden. A skip lorry driver places a skip in the road outside, and the builder spends the next two days putting all his rubbish in the skip. Finally, a gardener is able to dig the garden and plant grass and flowers to make it look beautiful.

Harry and June are, I am happy to tell you, very pleased with their new house. June is busy sewing curtains for the living room, and Harry is arranging his model railway in the spare bedroom.

So, how many different occupations were involved in building the new house? I can count 20 – how many can you count? Also, have you noticed that most occupation names in English do not tell us whether the person doing that job is a man or a woman? Unlike many other languages, we do not have separate words for, for example, a male architect and a female architect. In fact, Harry and June's architect was a woman, and so was the electrician. There are very few cases in modern English where we need to use different words for men and women – policeman/policewoman is one of these, and another is waiter/waitress. Post a comment on the website if you can think of any more.

• Quiz - how many occupation names do you know? ::

File download (6:12 mins | 3 MB)

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 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.

• The "Lighter Later" website. ::
• Quiz : how well did you understand the podcast? ::

File download (6:24 mins | 3 MB)

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.

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.

• Report about Casper from the Plymouth Herald ::
• The tragic story of Casper's death ::

File download (4:38 mins | 2 MB)

There is a well-known line in Shakespeare's play “A Midsummer Night's Dream” which goes, “The course of true love never did run smooth”. It means that when you fall in love, there are always complications, and accidents and difficulties. That is the theme of today's podcast. And there are plenty of phrasal verbs as well, and there is a separate Grammar and Vocabulary note to explain some of them.

Kevin and Joanne invite about 20 friends to a party. Among the guests are Jimmy and Carole. They have never met before. Kevin introduces them to each other, and they get talking. And they keep talking all evening, except when Kevin plays music by his favourite punk band “Futile Vendetta” so loudly that no-one can make themselves heard. It is obvious that Jimmy and Carole get on well with each other. Before they leave at the end of the evening, Jimmy asks Carole if she would like to go to the cinema with him the next weekend, and Carole says yes. Isn't that romantic!

Now Jimmy is outside the cinema. It is 7.30. Carole agreed to meet him at 7 o'clock. But perhaps he did not hear her properly (Futile Vendetta were singing their all-time hit “I Loathe the World” at the time). Perhaps Carole actually meant 7.30 or even 8 o'clock. So Jimmy waits and waits. But still no Carole. Perhaps she has forgotten. or perhaps she has decided not to come. It seems that Carole has let him down. She promised to go to the cinema with him, and now she has not turned up.

Meanwhile, outside a different cinema, Carole is looking at her watch. She agreed to meet Jimmy at 7 o'clock. So where is he? Has Jimmy stood her up? She too feels disappointed. She rather liked Jimmy and was looking forward to seeing him again.

Then Jimmy has a bright idea. The modern world contains things called mobile phones. Perhaps Carole has a mobile phone. Unfortunately, Jimmy does not know her number. He tried to ask her at the party, but Futile Vendetta prevented effective communication. But Kevin and Joanne will know, so Jimmy rings them to find out. Kevin answers the phone. Yes, he can help. He looks at the list of phone numbers on the wall beside the telephone, and reads out Carole's number. “Thanks”, says Jimmy, and rings off. Unfortunately, Kevin has given him the phone number of Joanne's Aunt Carole, who is a large lady in her 50s with three dogs and six cats. Jimmy has an interesting telephone conversation with Aunt Carole, in which he asks her what she is doing, and she says that she is watching television and eating a box of chocolates, and – no – she does not remember agreeing to go to the cinema with him.

Meanwhile, Carole also thinks about telephoning, and she too rings Kevin and Joanne. This time Joanne answers, and tells her Jimmy's number. Except that it is the number of Jimmy the hairdresser, and not of Jimmy who is standing in the rain outside the cinema wondering where Carole is. Jimmy the hairdresser tells Carole that she would look simply divine, darling, if he could cut her hair and dye it green.

Jimmy and Carole are now both very fed up. Jimmy thinks that Carole has let him down. Carole thinks that Jimmy has stood her up. Jimmy decides to get a bus back home. Carole starts to look for a taxi. Then Jimmy turns a corner and sees Carole on the other side of the road, getting into a taxi. He shouts and waves but Carole does not hear. So Jimmy jumps into another taxi and says to the driver, “Follow that cab!” The taxi driver, who watches bad spy movies in his spare time, has always wanted someone to jump into his taxi and shout “Follow that cab!” He rises to the occasion, drives through three red traffic lights and pulls up behind Carole's taxi just as Carole is getting out.

So Jimmy and Carole finally meet up. They have a “where were you – no. I was there, where were you” sort of conversation. And they laugh, and go to the pub round the corner for a drink, and agree to go to the theatre next week to see a play by Shakespeare called, very appropriately, “All's Well That Ends Well”.

And Kevin says to Joanne, “I still don't understand why Jimmy the hairdresser is going out with your Aunt Carole.”

• Grammar and Vocabulary Note ::

File download (6:10 mins | 3 MB)

Some of you have e-mailed me to say that you would like more podcasts about life and politics in Britain. The subject of the podcast today is a difficult and serious one. It is about a small boy who was murdered 17 years ago. The murder and what happened afterwards are still very controversial and arouse strong emotions in this country.

In February 1993, James Bulger was nearly 3 years old. He lived in Bootle, which is a town north of Liverpool in the north-west of England. One day he went shopping with his mother Denise. She went into a butcher's shop to buy some meat. James stayed outside. When Denise returned a few minutes later, James was gone.

Some children found James's body on ground beside a railway line a few days later. He had been beaten to death with bricks, stones and an iron bar. Whoever had killed him then placed James's body on the railway line, so that it would look as if he had been killed by a train.

There were CCTV (closed-circuit television) cameras in the shopping centre where James had disappeared. The police found pictures of James. He was holding the hand of an older boy or a young man. Together with another boy, they were leaving the shopping centre. The police published the photos in the press, and a member of the public was able to identify the people who had taken James. They were two 10-year old boys, called Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. The police arrested them, and they were later found guilty of the murder of James Bulger.

The story was headline news for many weeks. The whole country was horrified, both by the mindless murder of a small child, and also by the fact that the killers were themselves children. In Liverpool, feelings ran particularly high and the families of the two 10-year old killers were forced to go into hiding.

After the trial, Jon and Robert spent 8 years in secure children's homes, where they received an education. Then, when they were 18 years old, they were let out, but with strict conditions about where they could live and what they could do. They were given new identities (new names etc), to protect them from the media and from people who might want to kill them. Was this the right punishment for them?

James's mother, Denise, describes Jon and Robert as pure evil. She says that they have never been sorry for what they did, and that the justice system let them off lightly. She, and many others, think that it was wrong to release the two young men so soon; they should have been sent to prison for many years when they were 18. At one point, indeed, the government tried to have Jon and Robert kept in prison at least until they were aged 25, but the courts said that the government had no power to interfere.

Now the case is back in the news. A few weeks ago, the police arrested Jon Venables and he is now in prison. The government have refused to say why, but the press have reported that it is connected with pornographic images of children. Immediately, the old controversy started again. Many people say, “I told you so. It was a mistake ever to release Jon and Robert. They are dangerous and ought to be in prison for many years. And it was a mistake too to give them new identities. People should know who they are and what they have done.”

What does this tell us about the sort of country which Britain is? We send a lot of people to prison – in fact, we have more people in prison in relation to population than anywhere else in Europe. But we still do not feel safe. Sometimes it seems that crime is a national obsession. At the same time, we know that many prisoners, when they leave prison, go back to a life of crime. A government minister once remarked that prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse. A recent survey showed that most people agree that it is important to help people who have committed crimes to re-organise their lives,to stop using drugs,to get an education and a job. But cases like the murder of James Bulger create a very strong emotional reaction, and this make rational discussion of how best to deal with crime and criminals much more difficult.

There are some new phrasal verbs in this podcast. I have posted a separate grammar and vocabulary note about them.

• Grammar and vocabulary note ::

File download (6:24 mins | 3 MB)

Today we will meet the imperative form of English verbs, and learn how to bake a cake.

English verbs are difficult. There are so many verb forms, and so many irregular verbs. But let's not worry about complicated verbs today. Let's think about the simplest verb form of all – the imperative. The imperative is the form of the verb which we use when we want to tell someone to do something. Imagine a teacher talking to a class at school. “Stop talking. Open your books. Write your name and the date at the top of the page. Then start exercise number 1.”

‘Stop', ‘open', ‘write' and ‘start' are all imperative verbs. They give orders or instructions. The great thing about imperative verbs is that there is only one imperative form. You don't have to worry about past tense or future tense, you don't have to think “Am I talking to one person or to lots of people?” Imperative verbs do not change.

Sometimes, of course, imperative verbs are too direct and can sound impolite. So we can use words like “please” with imperative verbs – “Please stop talking. Please open your books.” Or we can use indirect ways of telling people what to do, such as “Perhaps you could give me your report tomorrow morning”.

However, there is one place where you will always find lots of imperative verbs – a recipe book. A recipe is a set of instructions about how to cook something. In English we always write recipes using imperative verbs. Here is my recipe for lemon cake. How many imperative verbs can you find?

• Put 175 grammes of self-raising flour, 125 grammes of sugar, 125 grammes of butter and one-and-a half teaspoons of baking powder into a bowl.
• Take two lemons. Grate the rind from the lemons and add it to the flour.
• Break two eggs into the mixture.
• Add three tablespoons of milk.
• Beat the mixture with an electric mixer for 2 minutes.
• Pour the mixture into a baking tray.
• Bake the cake in the oven for about 20 minutes.
• Take the cake out of the oven and put it on a wire rack to cool.
• Squeeze the lemons and add about 50 grammes of sugar to the juice.
• Put the juice into a pan and heat it until it boils.
• Prick the top of the cake with a fork.
• Pour the lemon juice over the cake.
• Serve the cake while it is still warm.

I counted 18 imperative verbs. How many did you find?

Here is something to practice. Write your favourite recipe in English, using only imperative verbs. Or write instructions on how to do something, like how to recharge your mobile phone. There is a quiz about instructions and imperative verbs on the Listen to English website, and there is also a vocabulary note with some words about cooking and baking which you may find useful.

• Quiz - giving instructions with imperative verbs. :: A drag and drop exercise.
• Making a cake - vocabulary note. ::

File download (4:37 mins | 2 MB)

Have you ever thought that the English are mad? Of course you have. And after today's podcast, you will know that it is true.

But first we must meet the English verb “to tumble”. “Tumble” means, simply, to fall down. For example, if you are coming down some stairs and you trip, you might tumble to the bottom. You would fall, perhaps you would roll over, and two seconds later you would be on the ground at the bottom of the stairs, wondering whether you had broken any bones. We can use “tumble” in a figurative way too. We can talk about a stream tumbling down the side of a mountain. Or if a supermarket reduces its prices, it might put notices in the window saying “Prices tumble throughout this store!”

Now for the story in today's podcast. Last week, we read in the newspaper that an important sporting event will not take place this year. It is not a football match or a horse-race. It is much more important than that; it is the great Cooper's Hill Cheese Rolling event.

Cooper's Hill is not far from the town of Gloucester. It is a very steep hill, covered in grass and trees. Every year at the end of May there is a cheese rolling at Cooper's Hill. About 15 competitors stand in a line at the top of the hill. Many of them wear batman suits or other fancy dress. A man with a big hat, called the Cheese Master, throws a 3 or 4 kilo cheese down the hill. The competitors run after the cheese. The rules say that if one of the competitors catches the cheese, he or she can keep it. In practice, no-one ever catches the cheese, because it goes too fast. And the competitors do not run after the cheese, because the hill is too steep. Instead, they fall, they roll, they slide on their bottoms – they tumble, in fact.

At the bottom of the hill, there is a line of stewards. They catch the competitors before they can tumble all the way to the M5 motorway. And there is a line of ambulances too, for those competitors who break their ankles on the way down.

There are several races, some for men and some for women, and for the really crazy there are some uphill races too (though, obviously, the cheese cannot go uphill). After the races, those competitors who are not actually in hospital gather at a local pub to drink beer and tell stories of the heroic events of the day.

Obviously, for an important event like the Cooper's Hill Cheese Rolling, you could not use just any sort of cheese. The cheese is of a type called Double Gloucester. It is made locally by a lady called Diana Smart. She is 83 years old. The cheese rolling is an important part of her business. She is fed up that it has been cancelled this year.

So, why has it been cancelled? For hundreds of years, the only people who came to watch the cheese rolling were local people. But the event is now internationally famous, and lots of people want to come. Last year there were 15,000 spectators, from many different countries. The police and organisers of the event are worried about the safety of the spectators, and about car-parking, and about the fact that there are no toilets, and other problems of having so many people. The organisers think that they can solve the problems for next year, so the Cheese Rolling should take place again in 2011.

My own proposal is that cheese rolling should become an Olympic Sport. Then it could be included in the London Olympic Games in 2012. We could build a super stadium on Coopers Hill, with room for 50,000 spectators, lots of toilets and a car park for thousands of cars. The stadium could have a roof in case it rains. But this year you will have to find a hill in your own country, and throw a cheese down it, and tumble after the cheese. Happy cheese rolling!

• BBC News Report. ::
• More news about cheese rolling. ::
• The official cheese rolling website. ::

File download (5:41 mins | 3 MB)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

File download (6:44 mins | 3 MB)

This week's phrasal verb is “to carry on”. I shall explain it in a minute, but first here is a story about a typical Monday morning for Kevin, in his new job as Assistant Sales Manager (South East England).

It is 6.30. Time to get up. The alarm clock rings. Kevin ignores it. He carries on sleeping. The alarm clock carries on ringing. Eventually, Kevin wakes up. He turns the alarm clock off, and falls out of bed.

Kevin has a shower and gets dressed. He turns on the radio. The radio presenter chatters cheerfully, and plays cheerful music. But Kevin carries on eating toast and drinking coffee. The radio presenter carries on being cheerful. Kevin thinks, “It is Monday morning. It is not a time for being cheerful.”

Kevin travels to work by train. Today, there are problems on the railway. and the train is late. It is crowded with people. On the way into the city, it stops at a red signal and waits. The passengers on the train do what English people always do in a crisis – they ignore it. They carry on reading their newspapers. They carry on typing on their computers. There is silence, except for one man who is talking loudly on his mobile phone. He carries on talking. He has forgotten that the train has stopped and that everyone on the train can now hear him.

Eventually, the train moves a little bit, then it stops again. It carries on like this – stopping and starting and stopping again – until it reaches the main station. Because the train is late, Kevin arrives late at work. But everyone else has had problems getting to work as well, so perhaps it doesn't matter. Monday has begun!

I have used “carry on” several times in this story, and I hope you can now understand what it means. It means “to continue”. Kevin continues sleeping. The people on the train continue reading. Another common expression which means almost the same as “carry on” is “go on”. The alarm clock goes on ringing. The man with the mobile phone goes on talking.

When I was thinking about what to say in this podcast, I did a Google search for “carry on” and found an interesting story. In 1939, at the outbreak of the Second World War, the British government printed millions of posters to send simple propaganda messages to the people. The posters appeared on billboards, and in shop windows and railway stations and places like that. They tried to encourage and cheer people in the face of bombing raids, food rationing and other hardships. However, one of the posters was never used. It was the poster which would tell people what to do if the Germany army actually invaded Britain. At the end of the war, the government destroyed all the copies. Well, not quite all, because in the year 2000 a second-hand book seller found a copy in a box of old books which he had bought. The poster said simply, “Keep calm and carry on”. In other words, do not panic, carry on as normal – go to work, look after your families, and so on. This was the very British message that our government wanted to send to the people if our country was invaded.

Since it was rediscovered, the poster has become very popular. You can buy copies on line, and mugs and t-shirts with the slogan “Keep calm and carry on”. Perhaps people feel that this simple slogan means as much today as it did 70 years ago. We have so many problems today – economic crisis, environmental problems and wars in many parts of the world. What can we do? Keep calm and carry on!

File download (5:34 mins | 3 MB)

I am sorry that there has not been a podcast for the last two weeks. We have been very busy in this country. We have had a General Election and now we have a new government.

Many countries have electoral systems that we call, in English, “proportional representation”. In these systems, the number of seats which each political party has in the Parliament reflects the number of votes which they get in the election. So, if the Red Party gets 50% of the votes, it will get 50% of the seats; if the Green Party gets 20% of the votes, it will get 20% of the seats, and so on. But in Britain we think this is too easy. Our arrangements are much more fun. We have a system called “first past the post”.

“What is he talking about?” I hear you say. “What is this first past the post?”. Imagine a donkey race. The donkeys run round the race track. Some of them fall over. Some of them decide that donkey races are boring and stop running. But the other donkeys keep going. At the end of the race course, there is a post stuck in the ground. The first donkey that passes the winning post is the winner. All the other donkeys are losers. That is what “first past the post” means. It means that British elections are like donkey races.

Or, rather, they are like 650 different donkey races, all on the same day. Britain is divided into 650 constituencies. In each constituency, the candidate who gets most votes becomes the new Member of Parliament. It doesn't matter whether he or she gets 90% of the votes or only 25% of the votes – if they get more votes than anyone else, they have won.

This is what happened in the constituency where I live. Several donkeys decided to run. There was a red donkey, who was the Member of Parliament in the old Parliament, a blue donkey, a yellow donkey and a green donkey, and a few other donkeys who knew they couldn't win but thought it might be fun to take part. The yellow donkey was the one who made the most noise. He was sure that he would win. Every day he sent us leaflets or letters to say that he was the only donkey who could beat the red donkey. Voting for the blue donkey was a waste of time, he said. She could not win. And the other donkeys? He ignored them. They did not matter.

On election night, the votes were counted. The red donkey had won again. And close behind him was – big surprise! – the green donkey, and a long way behind that was the yellow donkey. The supporters of the red donkey cheered. The supporters of the green donkey were pleased that she had done so well. And people who had bet that the yellow donkey would win had lost their money, and felt cross and foolish.

Now, I am sure that you will agree that this way of holding an election is much more fun than proportional representation. Unfortunately, it is also not at all democratic, because the “first past the post” system favours the big political parties. So, for example, in this election the Liberal Democrat party (the yellow donkey party) won 23% of the votes across the country as a whole, but has only 9% of the seats in Parliament. But, say the big parties, the “first past the post” system gives us strong, stable governments with a majority of seats in Parliament.

This election was different, however. No party will have a majority in the new Parliament. So, what would happen? The different parties started to negotiate with each other, and this gave us several more days of fun and excitement. The leader of the yellow donkeys (Mr Nick Clegg) talked first to the leader of the blue donkeys (Mr David Cameron) and then to the red donkey party and then to the blue donkey party again. (The blue donkey party and the red donkey party never talk to each another – that is a fundamental rule of British politics). Then the blue donkeys and the yellow donkeys announced that they had reached an agreement, and they would be the next government.

Will they be happy together in the same stable? Or will they soon start kicking each other? We shall see!

• Election Results :: the results of donkey races throughout the country.

File download (5:50 mins | 3 MB)

For the last two weeks, our newspapers have been full of stories about “the Big Freeze”. Like many other places in Europe, the weather in Britain has been very cold. We have had lots of snow, and the roads are covered with ice. There are shortages of gas, and of salt to put on the roads. As you know, we English love to talk about the weather, or – rather – we love to complain about the weather. So we have had a lot to talk about, and complain about, recently.

When water gets very cold, it “freezes”, that is, it turns into ice. “Freeze” is an irregular verb, and I know how much you love irregular verbs! The past tense is “froze” and the past participle is “frozen”. “Freezing” and “frozen” can also mean simply “very cold” – we can say that the weather is freezing, or that my fingers or toes are frozen.

When the weather gets warmer, the snow will melt, that is it will turn into water. Another word that we can use is “thaw”, which means a slow, gradual melting of the snow and ice. The weather forecast says that the snow in many parts of England will thaw slowly over the next week. Instead of the “Big Freeze”, the newspapers will probably have headlines about the “Big Thaw”.

When you visit a city in a foreign country, you can often learn quite a lot about the language of that country by looking at advertisements, or at notices in shop windows, or at the signs on public transport, and trying to translate them. There is a picture on the website and, I hope, on your iPod screens. It is a picture of a Birmingham bus, and on the front of the bus are the words “Our bus fares now frozen”.

What does this mean? Well, the bus company should have written “our bus fares are now frozen”, but they probably wanted the words to sound like a newspaper headline, and newspapers often leave out words like “is” and “are” in their headlines. But what does it really mean? The heating in British buses is not good, so many of the passengers are frozen, but how can the fares be “frozen”?

Well, as you probably guessed, “to freeze” can have a figurative meaning as well as a literal meaning. Water can move, but when it freezes to become ice, it cannot move. So if we say that something is “frozen”, we often mean that it stays the same, it cannot move or change. So, a shop may say that its prices are frozen, meaning that the prices are unchanged. A company may tell its employees that their pay is frozen, in other words that they will not get a pay increase. And if you are very frightened by something, you may be unable to move, and you can say that you are “frozen with fear”.

And Birmingham's bus fares? It is a long tradition that the bus company increases its fares every January. Since I arrived in Birmingham 15 years ago, my bus fare into the centre of town has increased by 150%. Train fares throughout Britain also go up in January, every year. It is not surprising that people in this country use their cars so much. But this year is different. This year the bus company has decided not to increase its fares. Its fares are frozen. This is something to be happy about, when we are not complaining about the weather.

Of course, the bus fares will not stay frozen for ever. When they go up again, will there be a notice on the buses saying “Our bus fares now unfrozen”? I don't think so.

There is a quiz about irregular verbs on the website. Have fun!

• Quiz about irrregular verbs. ::

File download (5:19 mins | 2 MB)

I think I told you in an earlier podcast that my daughter, who is 16 years old, attends a secondary school for girls. She has now completed Year 11, and has finished her GCSE exams. In September she will start at a sixth form college. Most of the other girls in her year at school are in the same position. Naturally, they all want to celebrate the end of their time at secondary school.

So, one day last week was “Dress to Impress Day”. All the girls dressed up in party dresses, high heels and too much make-up. First they went to school for a leaving ceremony and to say goodbye to their teachers. Then they left in cars, taxis or (in some cases) pink stretch limos, to go to parties or restaurants. I am sure that they all had a good time, and that many of them found it difficult to get out of bed the next morning.

“Dress to Impress Day” has given me the idea for this podcast – the word “impress” – what does it mean and how do we use it? If you want to impress somebody, it means that you want that person to think good things about you. When you sit an exam, you want to impress the examiners. You want them to think that you are a good student with an excellent understanding. If you go for a job interview, you want to impress the people who are interviewing you. You want them to think that you are exactly the right person for the job. And if you go on a date, you want to impress the boy or girl you are with.

Kevin has a friend called James. For years, Kevin and his friends have been trying to find James a girlfriend. The trouble is that James is not very good at impressing girls. He has recently been on a date with Sarah. This is what happened. He arrived late. He had been watching football on the television, and the match went to extra time. He forgot to have a shower or to change his clothes. He talked to Sarah all evening about his hobby – computer games. And, when they went to a restaurant, he ordered spaghetti. That was a big mistake. No-one looks good when they are eating spaghetti.

James tells Kevin about his date with Sarah. Kevin sighs. “So, she wasn't impressed, then,” he says. “Well, she must have been a bit impressed,” says James. “She is coming with me to the computer games exhibition on Saturday. She is a great fan of Manic Street Racer 2. And she likes spaghetti.” Kevin is amazed. Women can be very strange sometimes.

So James, surprisingly, has impressed Sarah. She has never before met a man who shares her passion for Manic Street Racer 2 and spaghetti. She thinks good things about James, even though he was late and forgot to have a shower. James has made a good impression on her. If the date had been a disaster, we could say that James had made a bad impression on Sarah.

You will sometimes hear the expression “to have the impression that …” For instance, you might say “I have the impression that James is keen on football”. Why do I have this impression? Why do I think this? Because James stayed to watch the football on TV instead of meeting Sarah.

Or I could say, “I have the impression that Sarah likes men who play computer games and eat spaghetti”. This means, simply, that “I think that Sarah likes men of this sort. I am not completely sure. There are a lot of things about Sarah that I do not know. But, from what I have seen so far, I think that she likes men like James.”

There is an adjective impressive as well. If something is impressive, it is big, or beautiful, or clever – it impresses you. For example, the Eiffel Tower in Paris is very impressive – it is over 300 meters high. The Tate Gallery in London has a very impressive collection of 20th century art. And Sarah's top score in Manic Street Racer 2 is 436,117, and that really is impressive!

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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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• BBC News Report ::

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Today we will learn some words connected with volcanoes; and we will find out that volcanoes are bad for aeroplanes, and why people in west London can now hear the birds sing.

Volcanoes are mountains, or other places, where the inside of the earth comes to the surface. Volcanoes sometimes throw a large amount of hot gas and ash high into the atmosphere, or they spill very hot melted rock, called lava, over the land. We call events like these “eruptions” and we can say that a volcano “erupts”. An active volcano is a volcano that erupts from time to time, like Mount Etna in Italy. An extinct volcano is one which does not erupt any more, like Kilimanjaro in Africa. And a dormant volcano is, well, just sleeping and might wake some time and erupt again.

There are several active volcanoes in Iceland, and last week one of them erupted. It sent a huge cloud of gas and ash into the air. The ash has drifted south-east-wards towards Britain and the rest of Europe and for the last several days, there has been a cloud of volcanic ash over most of north-west Europe. We cannot see it from the ground, but it is visible on satellite pictures.

If an aeroplane flies through a cloud of volcanic ash, the engines may suck the ash in. The ash may then cause corrosion and abrasion. (“Corrosion” is when the ash reacts chemically with the steel and other materials in the engine; “abrasion” is when the ash scratches and wears the surface). Aircraft engines are very hot, and they may melt the volcanic ash into a material like glass. So, altogether, volcanic ash is bad news for aircraft engines. In the 1980s there were some frightening cases where an aeroplane flew through a cloud of volcanic ash, and all the engines stopped working.

At the end of last week, therefore, the air-traffic control authorities in Britain and other European countries decided that it was not safe to let aeroplanes fly through the volcanic ash. The airlines which normally fly businessmen to meetings in New York or Hong Kong, or holidaymakers to sunny places in the Mediterranean, have stopped flying. They have cancelled all their flights. To cancel something means to decide that it will not happen. An airline might cancel a flight; a railway company might cancel a train. Recently the lead singer in Kevin's favourite group, Futile Vendetta, had a sore throat – poor man! – and the band had to cancel two concerts.

Because all flights in and out of Britain have been cancelled, people who were visiting Britain as tourists or on business are stranded. And many British people who are away from home are stranded as well. If you are “stranded” it means that you cannot leave somewhere. If you miss the last bus home, you may be stranded until the next morning. If you run out of money while you are on holiday, you may be stranded. Other words which mean almost the same as “stranded” are “stuck”, “trapped” and “marooned”. There are no flights and I am stuck in Berlin. I have lost my money and my passport and I am trapped in Greece. I arrived at the airport too late and now I am marooned in Spain.

The volcano in Iceland is still erupting, and the cloud of volcanic ash shows no signs of clearing. No-one knows when it will be safe to fly aeroplanes again. Life without air travel is a bigger problem for Britain than for other countries because Britain is an island and you cannot simply drive your car over the border into a neighbouring country. All the ferries and the Eurostar train service are fully booked with people trying to get home. Our government has decided to help British people who are stuck abroad by flying them to Spain (where the airports are still open) and bringing them home by coach or by ship.

But it is not all bad news. In Britain, we have a General Election at the beginning of May. Normally, the newspapers and television would be full of politicians telling us why we should vote for them, but for the moment the volcano is the big news. And people who live near airports have been able to do something very unusual – they have been able to sit in their gardens in the sunshine and listen to the birds singing.

If you have been stranded, by the volcano or for some other reason, why not tell us about it by leaving a comment on the website.

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Today, we are going to run out of things.

“To run out of” something is a phrasal verb. It is one of the hundreds of phrasal verbs in English, and I know you love phrasal verbs! Like most of the other English phrasal verbs, there is no easy way to remember what “to run out of” means. You just have to learn!

Of course, sometimes when we say “run out of” we mean the words literally. For example, at the end of the school day, the children run out of school. They, literally, run out of the school gates. It is freedom time – no more school, time to go home to have something to eat, time to watch television, time to go to the park to play football. The children run out of school.

But imagine this situation. Every morning at about this time I make myself a cup of coffee, and I have a biscuit with my coffee. But today, I cannot find any biscuits. The biscuit tin is empty. I have eaten all the biscuits (or my children have eaten them, perhaps.) There are no biscuits left. I have run out of biscuits.

Kevin and Joanne are going to the supermarket. Kevin is writing a shopping list, and Joanne is telling him what they need to buy. “We have run out of sugar,” says Joanne. “And we have nearly run out of eggs,” she adds, looking in the fridge, “yes, there is only one egg left. And butter, we have used up all the butter which I bought on Wednesday.”

Kevin writes “sugar, eggs, butter” on the list. But he has thought of something much more important. “Pizza,” he says. “We have no pizza left. And beer. We have run out of beer.”

At the supermarket, Kevin and Joanne push the shopping trolley along the aisles, and find all the things on their shopping list. Except the apples – there are no apples in the shop. The shop assistant says, “Sorry, we ran out of apples yesterday. There will be a new delivery this afternoon.”

At the checkout, Joanne pays for the shopping with her debit card. Then she remembers that she has run out of cash – she has no coins or banknotes in her purse. She asks the assistant at the checkout for £20 cashback – that means, the assistant adds £20 to the bill which Joanne pays with her debit card, and then gives Joanne two £10 notes.

On the way home, Kevin and Joanne stop at the DIY shop. Kevin is painting the bathroom, and he has run out of paint.

Then, disaster! Kevin returns to the car with the can of paint and tries to start the car engine. The engine will not start. “Look at the fuel gauge,” says Joanne, “the car has run out of petrol.”

So Joanne goes and sits in a cafe with a nice cup of hot chocolate and a newspaper, while Kevin walks a kilometer to the nearest petrol station. After about 30 minutes, he returns with a can of petrol. He puts the petrol in the car, and the engine starts.

“Can we stop at the Post Office on the way home”, says Joanne. “I have run out of stamps for the Christmas cards.” But it is getting late, and Joanne's mother is coming to lunch. They have run out of time. The stamps for the Christmas cards will have to wait until tomorrow.

• Quiz : how well do you know your phrasal verbs? ::

File download (4:40 mins | 2 MB)

Today, we meet the English word “worth”, and a famous cosmetics company that tells us that we are “worth it”.

“Worth” means simply the value that something has. Sometimes we use it in a literal way, to mean “how much money would people pay?” But often we use it figuratively, to mean “how much time and effort and energy would people pay?” Here are some examples:

Kevin is, as I am sure you know, a fan of the loudest punk rock group in the world “Futile Vendetta”. He has all their records and CDs. His collection of records and CDs is worth about £300, which means that – if Kevin sold them – he might get £300 for them. But he is not going to sell them. They are worth much more than £300 to him.

Kevin's friend George lives in a flat. George owns the flat – he does not rent it from a landlord. George wants to move to another flat, closer to his work. The first thing he does is to ask an estate agent to look at his flat and tell him how much it is worth – that is, how much somebody might pay for it. When he knows this, George can work out how much he can afford to pay for a new flat.

Last summer, Kevin and Joanne went for a holiday in the Lake District in the north-west of England. They climbed a mountain called Scafell Pike. Scafell Pike is less than 1,000 metres high, but it is still the highest mountain in England. It was a long climb. After about an hour, their legs were tired and their feet were sore. They were out of breath and it had started to rain. Their clothes were wet, and Kevin had water in his boots. Eventually, they reached the top. Suddenly, the sun broke through the clouds. They could see all the way to the sea, far away to the west and the south. They could see the other mountains around, and the valleys and lakes far below. It was magic. It was worth the aching legs and the wet clothes. Or, as we often say in English, “it was worth it”.

If you say that something is “worth it”, you mean that that thing has a bigger value than the money you paid, or the work you did, or the time you spent, or the emotional upset which you had, in order to get that thing. Here are some other things which are “worth it” (or “not worth it”):

Kevin's football team, United, has paid £10 million for a new striker. The first time he played for United, he scored twice. He was worth it.

Joanne wants to see a new film. But the only cinema which is showing it is on the other side of town. It would take nearly an hour to get there. “Is it worth it?” wonders Joanne.

George's Dad grows vegetables in his garden. It is hard work, but George's Dad says that fresh, home-grown vegetables are worth it.

Jimmy and Carole, whom we met in an earlier podcast, and who were doing fine the last time we saw them, have had a row. Joanne finds Carole in tears. “Don't get so upset,” says Joanne. “He's not worth it.”

And finally, we come to the French cosmetics company L'Oreal. L'Oreal sells industrial chemicals that people put on their bodies to make themselves look younger or smell sweeter. Some of their products are quite expensive. But, as L'Oreal tells us in their advertisements on TV, “You're worth it.” They mean, “You are wonderful and beautiful. You want to stay wonderful and beautiful. So, it is worth spending lots of money on our products, and worth spending time putting them on your face and taking them off afterwards. Trust L'Oreal. You are worth it.”

There is a quiz on the website about the word “worth”. And that is the end of today's podcast. I hope you think that it was worth it.

• Quiz :: Are you worth it? A drag and drop exercise.
• Because I'm worth it! :: Jennifer Aniston tells us that she is worth a can of L'Oreal hair spray.

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