..to Listen to English, the podcast website for people learning English.
The podcasts on this site will help you to improve your English vocabulary and pronunciation and your listening skills. There are two short (3 to 5 minutes) podcasts every week, in clearly spoken English. Many of them are linked to grammar and vocabulary notes, or to exercises or quizes. You can download the podcasts to your computer, or subscribe using a programme such as iTunes or Yahoo, or simply listen to them by clicking the Flash player on the web page beneath each episode. You can put the podcasts onto your iPod or MP3 player, and listen to them on your way to school or work. The full text of each podcast is on this site (and will also appear on your iPod screen), so you can look up the meanings of words that you do not understand in a dictionary. Then close your eyes and listen! Have fun!
We go to the seaside. We sit on the sand and eat ice-cream…. Photo by crunchcandy/flickr
Irene, who lives in Germany, is a regular listener to these podcasts. She has sent me an e-mail to suggest that I make a podcast about “bank holidays” in England and the way that we celebrate them.
Most countries have public holidays at various times of the year – that means, days when schools, offices and many businesses are closed, so that most people do not have to go to work. In England, our public holidays have the rather strange name “bank holidays”. The name comes from an Act of Parliament in 1871, which required the Bank of England to close on certain days during the year. The idea was that, if the Bank of England was closed, many other businesses would close as well, and that their employees could have a day off work. And that is in fact what has happened – the “bank holidays” have become general public holidays.
Some of the “bank holidays” are at the times of the important traditional Christian festivals at Easter and Christmas. But the other holidays are not religious, they are secular. Unlike public holidays in many other countries, they are not on a fixed date every year. Instead they are all on Mondays, so that people can take a long weekend break if they wish. Tomorrow, for example, is the May Day Bank Holiday, which is on the first Monday in May every year. We have another bank holiday, the Spring Bank Holiday, on the last Monday in May; and another bank holiday on the last Monday in August.
In Scotland and Ireland they have bank holidays on the feast days of their patron saints – St Andrew’s Day (30 November) in Scotland, and St Patrick’s Day (17 March) in Ireland. But although we poor English have a patron saint, St George, we do not get a holiday on St George’s Day on 23 April. This is not fair.
So, what do we English do on our bank holidays? We visit friends and relatives. Or perhaps we stay in bed until lunch-time. We dig our gardens and we mow our lawns. We go to football or cricket matches. We go to huge out-of-town superstores to buy curtains and things for the kitchen. We do DIY jobs around the house, like painting the bedroom or putting up a new shelf in the bathroom. And if the weather is good, we get in our cars and we go to the seaside. There we sit on the sand and eat ice-creams. At the end of the day, we get back into our cars and drive home. We get stuck in enormous traffic jams on the motorways. The children argue and fight in the back of the car. We arrive home tired but happy late in the evening. A perfect bank holiday! It’s such a pity we have to get up in the morning and go to work.
“DIY” means “do it yourself”. A “DIY job” is something like decorating a room, or installing a new shower. At one time, people generally employed a professional decorator, or a plumber, to do these things. Nowdays many people do these jobs for themselves. A “DIY” store is a store which sells paint, wallpaper, wood, tools, and everything else you need if you want to “do it yourself”.
“A day off work” – a day when you don’t go to work eg because you have a holiday, or because you are sick. You can ask your boss, “Please can I have a day off tomorrow”.
“A long weekend” is when you take a day off on Friday, or on Monday, or even on both Friday and Monday, in order to have three or four consecutive days when you do not have to work. We can say, for example, “I am going to take a long weekend and go and visit my brother in Scotland”.
“A break” means a short holiday. “A weekend break” is when you go away just for the weekend.
“It is [such] a pity that…” or “It is [such] a shame that …” These expressions mean “unfortunately”. Here are some examples:
“It is my birthday tomorrow. It is such a shame that my sister cannot come to my party.”
“I enjoyed my holiday in France. But it is a pity that I forgot to take my camera.”
“The football was great fun. It’s a pity our team lost!”
“It is a shame that we arrived too late to see the film.”
If you visit upland areas of Britain – places like the mountains of Scotland, or Wales, or the Pennine Hills in northern England – you will see a lot of sheep. Many of the sheep are in places where there are no walls or hedges to keep them in their fields. So the sheep can wander where they like, over the hills, and of course on the roads as well. Sheep do not take much notice of cars. So, imagine you are driving along a little road in northern England. The sun is shining. You look at the beautiful views across the hills and the valleys. You turn a corner. And you find a flock of sheep on the road. The sheep look at you. You look at the sheep. You toot your car horn. The sheep look at you some more. Then slowly, they move and let you past.
The sheep particularly like the road in the evening, because it is warm. During the day, the sun shines on the road. If you try to walk across a sunny road in bare feet, you will know how hot the road can be. When evening comes, the road is a nice warm place for the sheep to go to sleep. And the sheep do not want to move, just because a car comes round the corner. Well, you would not like getting out of bed to let a car come past.
What is the point of this little story about sheep? It is that roads are very good at absorbing heat from the sun. A laboratory in England wants to see if it can use this fact to keep roads free of ice and snow in the winter. It wants to place pipes filled with water underneath the road. When the sun shines, the road will become hot and the water in the pipes will become hot too. A small pump will pump the hot water into a tankburied in the ground at the side of the road. The tank will be heavily insulated. That means that the heat will not be able to escape, and the water will stay warm for a long time. And on cold winter nights, the pump will pump the warm water back into the pipes underneath the road. The warm water will heat the road surface and keep it free of ice.
The scientists and technologists call this technology “Interseasonal Heat Transfer”, or IHT. It is of course a very simple technology, but many people think that intelligent use of simple technology will be very important in the future. Climate change and the rising prices of fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil make it urgent to find new ways of doing things which will not damage the environment. If we can store heat from roads, car parks, airport runways, roofs, school playgrounds etc in summer, we could use the heat during the winter – not just for keeping roads free of ice, but for heating buildings and providing hot water.
In the last podcast, I asked you to imagine that you were very rich, and had lots of servants. Naturally, you have a tennis court and a swimming pool – probably you have three tennis courts and two swimming pools. How will you keep your swimming pools warm in winter? Easy – place pipes filled with water under the tennis courts to collect heat from the sun in summer. Store the hot water in insulated tanks and use it to heat the swimming pools in winter.
We get our milk delivered. Photo of a milkman with his milk float by Hembo Pagi/flickr
My car does not go. I don’t know what is wrong with it. The engine won’t start. The car will not move. What shall I do?
I will get the car repaired. That means – I will not repair the car myself. I will ask someone else to do it, and they will repair the car for me. Look at the way we can talk about this in English.
I will get my car repaired.
I will have my car repaired.
I will get the garage to repair my car.
I will have the garage repair my car.
Now here is something which we all need, but which we cannot do for ourselves – cutting our hair. (What? You cut your own hair? How? Would you like to send me a photo so I can put it on the website?) So what do you do?
You get your hair cut.
You have your hair cut.
You get the hairdresser to cut your hair.
You have the hairdresser cut your hair.
Do you know what a milkman is? In England you can have your milk delivered to your home. Our milkman comes at about 3am. He leaves two bottles of milk and one bottle of orange juice outside our door. He drives a little electric van (we call it a “milk float” in English), so he makes hardly any noise. The milk bottles are made of glass, and when they are empty, we leave them outside the door for the milkman to collect. So :
We get our milk delivered.
We have our milk delivered.
We get the milkman to deliver our milk.
We have the milkman deliver our milk.
Now imagine that you are very rich. No, not very rich – very, very rich indeed. You do not have a luxury sports car. You have three luxury sports cars, and a yacht, and a private aeroplane, and a home in Monte Carlo where your friends are all very rich too. And you have servants – people to do things for you. Here are some of the things you get your servants to do:
You get your food cooked.
You have your finger nails polished.
You get your butler to pour your champagne.
You have your gardener mow the lawn.
If you like, think of other things which your servants can do for you. Use the expressions we have used in this podcast -“I get something done”, “I have something done” etc – and put them on the Listen to English website as comments. Or perhaps you can get someone to put them on the website for you.
