The World's smallest Pub

Language Ll: Basic

Source: Speak Up

Standard: British Accent and American 

The Nutshell in Bury St. Edmund in England claims to be the "smallest pub in the world." it measures just 9,7 square metres. Sam's in Colorado Springs, in the USA, is 10,12 square metres, but that's the one that you'll find in Guinness World Records. Now an even smaller pub, The signal Box Inn, only 5,95 square metres, has opened in Cleethorpes, England, and its owners have contracted Guinness to claim the title. The pub, which was once a railway signal box, has room for only six customers. Can the pub survive? Well, The Nutshell has survived as a popular tourist attraction since 1873, but it can accommodate 15 customers: 104 people crowded into the pub to set a record for charity in 1984. The Nutshell is also home to a dried black cat (it was discovered in one the walls) and the world's smallest dartboard and pool table.

INTELLECTUAL DRINKERS 

The Eagle in Benet Street, in the university town of Cambridge, appear to be just another English Pub: that is until you look up in the main bar. The entire ceiling is covered in hundred of signatures: during the Second World War it was popular with British and Americans airmen who burnt their signatures up on the ceiling with candles and lighters. Yet the pub is most famous as the place where the scientists Francis Crick and James Watson announced their discovery of the "double helix" structure of DNA in 1953.

From Scratch

Source: Sozo Exchange 

This is a phrase which means from the beginning or zero.

This expression is derived from the line scratched or drawn in the ground that people used as the starting line of a race. The phrase also means starting from raw ingredients.

For example, you can say, “My sister baked a cake from scratch for my birthday; she didn’t use any of those pre-mixed ingredients.”

Studying English, Pod English Lesson 77

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Words and Their Stories: Let's do business

Source: www.voanews.com

Now, the VOA Special English program WORDS AND THEIR STORIES.

There are many special terms in the world of business.

The following story is about a sweetheart deal which I made last week. I made the deal with a friend, and we both made a profit.

I had started a small company several years ago. I worked hard to make it successful. It was a sign-making business. It was a small company, not ablue chip company. It was not known nationally for the quality of its signs. It did not make millions of dollars in profits. And it was private. It was not a public company with shares traded on the stock market.

Still, I worked hard building up my business. I did not work only a few hours each day -- no banker’s hours for me. Instead I spent many hours each day, seven days a week, trying to grow the company. I never cut corners or tried to save on expenses. I made many cold calls. I called on possible buyers from a list of people I had never seen. Such calls were often hard sells. I had to be very firm.

Sometimes I sold my signs at a loss. I did not make money on my product. When this happened, there were cut backs. I had to use fewer supplies and reduce the number of workers. But after several years, the company broke even. Profits were equal to expenses. And soon after, I began to gain ground. My signs were selling very quickly. They were selling like hotcakes.

I was happy. The company was moving forward and making real progress. It was in the black, not in the red. The company was making money, not losing it.

My friend knew about my business. He is a leader in the sign-making industry – a real big gun, if you know what I mean. He offered to buy my company. My friend wanted to take it public. He wanted to sell shares in the company to the general public.

My friend believed it was best to strike while the iron is hot. He wanted to take action at the best time possible and not wait. He offered me a ball park estimate of the amount he would pay to buy my company. But I knew his uneducated guess was low. My company was worth much more. He asked his bean-counter to crunch the numbers. That is, he asked his accountant to take a close look at the finances of my company and decide how much it was worth. Then my friend increased his offer.

My friend’s official offer was finally given to me in black and white. It was written on paper and more than I ever dreamed. I was finally able to get a break. I made a huge profit on my company, and my friend also got a bang for the buck. He got a successful business for the money he spent.

(MUSIC)

This VOA Special English program, WORDS AND THEIR STORIES, was written by Jill Moss. I’m Faith Lapidus.

TRAVEL HIKING IN THE UK

LANGUAGE LEVEL: BASIC

STANDARD: BRITISH ACCENT

RAMBLERS ASSOCIATION

SOURCE: SPEAK UP

TRAVEL HIKING IN THE UK

Hiking, humbling or trekking both means...going for a walking it is a popular activity in UK surrounding by extremely beauty. It is a good suggestion for alternative Holydays. Rigorously by foot.

The Rambles Association (RA) has a reputation as a club for middle aged people, dressed in shorts and hiking boots, who spend their time walking through Rural England. Imagine an athletic version of Mr. Bean, with naked hairy legs and a huge rucksack, walking vigorously up a mountain path. In fact the Ramblers Associations in a registered charity with 140.000 members; and today rumbling or walking for pleasure, is one of Britain’s most popular leisure activities. Clubs throughout the country organise walks and festivals, while working to protect the countryside and to keep its pathways open to the public.

LOCAL HERO

April 24^th is the 750^th anniversary of “ The Battle of Kinder Scout.” In 1932 a young idealist called Benny Goodman led a group of 400 protesters along a path in the heart of northwest England’s Peak District. The local Landowner refused to allow the public on his land, and send his men to stop the trespassers. Goodman and five others where sent to prison in a case that became a national scandal, and marks the beginning of the long fight for open footpaths throughout Britain. This month thousands of ramblers will return to the nine-mile path, which passes through some of England’s finest scenery. The area is now a National Park and part of the country’s oldest long-distance footpath: the 429 –kilometre Pennine Way.

DRESS SENSE

Why is walking so popular?

It’s a low-cost way to a healthy lifestyle: it helps reduce stress, lose weight and offers the chance to meet new people. The RA is working to break down barriers everywhere, even launching new clubs in cities London’s recent Get Walking programme encouraged ethnic minorities to take part. Rambler Caroline Watson says: “Some of my group haven’t been to the River Thames before; they didn’t know you could walk there.”

Rezwana Choudhury, one of the new ramblers, says: It’s great. We get good exercise without wearing one of those embarrassing leotards

Romantic Trails

1)  Rambling in the New Forest is the perfect way to spend a spring day; walk quietly though the trees and there’s a good chance you will see deer.

2)St. Cuthbert’s Way in Northumberland is a beautiful walk which follows the pilgrims’ path to Holy Island (Lindsfarne). When the tide is out, visitors can cross over to visit the Island and its castle.

2)  Another popular choice is the Ridgeway, a national trail across the Chiltern Hill. The trail lakes your through lovely countryside to Wallington Hill, where visitors can appreciate the incredible view across the Cotswolds, Berkshire Downs and Oxford.

3)  Finally, there’s the South West Coast Path; here yo’ll find the famous Smugglers Coast. Walk the paths that coastguards created many years ago in their attemps to catch smugglers at work.

Rambling Holidays

Ramblers Holidays which is run by volunteers, offers organised group holidays throughout the world. You can join the RA (membership cost 24,00 pounds) and find out more about in services on their website www.ramblers.org.uk Adress: 2^nd Floor Camelford House, 87 -90 Albert Embankment London SE1 7TW, UK Tel +44 (0) 20 7339 8500 e-mail: ramblers@ramblers.org.uk

Office Tour

Thanksgiving day - Part II

   Source: www.ingvip.com

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1. GORDON GEIGER: "Gordon Geiger from Tucson, Arizona. We used to get together at my parents' house and all of my relatives would come over and we'd have a big dinner. And after dinner we would watch football games on the television.

2. I think it's probably really the most important holiday in the United States because it is a day that is not tied to a particular religion. It is not tied as much to commercial activities. It's more a reflection of the fact that we've had a good life and we appreciate it."

3. This Thanksgiving, Americans can be thankful that the Great Recession may be over. But the job market faces a long recovery.  Unemployment is now above ten percent. And if the underemployed are added, the rate is seventeen and a half percent. The underemployed are people no longer searching for work or only able to find part time jobs.

4. Last week, the United States Department of Agriculture released its "household food security" report for two thousand eight. The study found that families in seventeen million households had difficulty getting enough food at times during the year. That was almost fifteen percent -- up from eleven percent in two thousand seven. It was the highest level since thecurrent surveys began in nineteen ninety-five.

5. The Agriculture Department says poverty is the main cause of food insecurity and hunger in the United States. President Obama, in a statement, called the report unsettling. Especially troubling, he said, is that there were more than five hundred thousand families in which a child experienced hunger multiple times during the year.

6. He said the first task is to renew job growth, but added that his administration is taking other steps to prevent hunger. These include an increase in aid for people in the government's nutrition assistance program, commonly known as food stamps.

7. The Continental Congress wrote the first national Thanksgiving proclamation in seventeen seventy-seven, during the Revolutionary War. George Washington issued the first presidential Thanksgiving proclamation in seventeen eighty-nine. Here is part of what he wrote.

8. Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor -- and whereas both houses of Congress have by their joint committee requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness."

9. Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the twenty-sixth day of November next to be devoted by the people of these states to the service of that great and glorious being, who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be ...

10. Sarah Josepha Hale was a magazine editor and writer who campaigned for a Thanksgiving holiday. That way, there would be "two great American national festivals," she said, the other being Independence Day on the Fourth of July. In September of eighteen sixty-three, Sarah Josepha Hale appealed to President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln had made proclamations in the spring of eighteen sixty-two and sixty-three. But these gave thanks for victories in battle during the Civil War.

11. Then came another proclamation on October third, eighteen sixty-three. It gave more general thanks for the blessings of the year. This is part of what it said:

12. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

13. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of oursettlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. ...

14. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.

15. Lincoln's proclamation began a tradition. Presidents have issued Thanksgiving proclamations every year since eighteen sixty-three. All can be found on the Web site of the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth.

16. In nineteen forty-one, Franklin Roosevelt was president. Roosevelt approved a resolution by Congress. It established, by law, the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.