Exercises for the articles

National  Wear a Tea Cosy on Your Head Day

1.   What requirements must entrants meet?

2.  How will the money raised be used up?

3.  Which day does this event take place?

Morgan Spurlock: Britain is a Supersize Nation

Complete the words in the glossary with words or phrases from the article.

GLOSSARY

1.   a system for making products in a factory (noun):

2.  food which can be cooked in a microwave (adjective):

3.  lacking energy and not wanting to do anything(adjective):

4.  not to do a job as thoroughly as you should especially because you want to finis hit quickly or save money (verb):

5.  the movements of your heart when it beats faster than usual (noun):

6.  be convinced (verb):

7.  at the same level as sg (set phrase):

8.   being cheap enough for ordinary people (noun):

9.   avoid particular things such as food (verb):

10.               a traditional story which doesn’t exist any longer (set phrase):

Think you know Britain! Take the landmark quiz!

The Kitchen Table Talent Award Winners 2012 Best Writing

What is the skyscape phenomenon the short story reveals? Put it in a drawing or add a photo of it!

My Country Memories: David Attenborough

Decide if the statements are true or false based on the article.

1.   David Attenborough has always been a rotten botanist.

2.  He has still some difficulties to identify certain plants.

3.  The British adore their flora and fauna.

4.  A native variety called the sundew catches insects with its petals covered in some gooey substance.

5.  David Attenborough was fascinated by fossils from the very start.

6.  In his childhood he always carried the whole box of his finds from one place to another while he was cycling.

7.  On one of the family occasions her mother was caught getting rid of some of his finds.

8.   His adventure in Thor’s Cave frightened him off  from that spot forever.

9.   David Attenborough utterly tolerates pylons and wind turbines.

10.               David Attenborough can hardly be called green.

National Wear a Tea Cosy on Your Head Day

White Stuff is celebrating after raising £30,000 for charity, by running

 a ‘National Wear a Tea Cosy on Your Head Day’, held on Thursday 

22nd September. The money raised will be going to 75 local charities 
via the White Stuff Foundation.

Customers and charities supported the event by wearing tea cosies on 

their heads, hosting chari-tea parties and knitting their own cosies.
 Shopsheld fundraising events on the day and treated customers to 
Clipper Tea and special offers. The event was also enjoyed by a host 
of celebrities including Alexandra Shulman, Ben Shepherd, June Brown 
and Roxanne Pallett.

Lee Cooper, White Stuff’s Creative Director said ‘National Wear a 

Tea Cosy on Your Head Day was a huge success. We started the event 

in 2010 to raise money for our local charities and are extremely 
grateful to our customers for their generosity and for making this 
year’s event even better than before.

’White Stuff Kingston have chosen to support

 Rainbow Trust through in store fundraising and national campaigns 
like Wear a Tea Cosy on Your Head. To date the store have raised 
nearly £10,000! A big thank you from all at Rainbow Trust and the 
families we support for your incredible fundraising commitment!

For more information on White Stuff and thier charitable foundation 

please visit their website.

Sources: http://www.whitestuff.com/

Morgan Spurlock: Britain is a super-size nation

Super Size Me filmmaker Morgan Spurlock says our junk food habits are mega

Morgan Spurlock

Americans and Brits both love greasy, deep-fried things. It’s as if, when you deep-fry something, it automatically becomes more delicious.
But it’s not all negative. People like Jamie Oliver have helped inspire people, and the myth that all British cuisine is crap has now been shattered. It’s not all curry and chip shops. There is a tremendous tradition of great food in the country.
Still, while you Brits would argue that you’re healthier than Americans, I think we are pretty much on a par when it comes to bad eating habits.

Waste not, want not
However, I’ve had pleasant surprises. I wasn’t convinced about black pudding until I went to a factory in Bury and made it myself, mixing up all the bloody magic into sausages, and eating one right off the assembly line. I was never a big fan, but that day I was won over. But there are some foods you eat that I still don’t get – like tripe and haggis.
Brits are a little snobby about other countries’ diets, but the minute you walk outside, you’ll see that you’re really not that far off being a supersize nation. One of the things Jamie and I addressed when he came on my show is the argument of affordability. People often say they can’t afford fresh vegetables and meat, especially if you don’t know to cook.
The bigger problem in our society is that we don’t teach real skills to survive. We grow up in homes where our parents don’t cook and either order takeaway, eat out or buy microwaveable meals rather than teaching children how to prepare something cheaply.
My mum would buy a chicken on a Sunday. We’d eat that for a week, then she’d buy a joint of beef and do the same thing. That ability to make something last is gone because we’ve been taught that food is plentiful. But we’re setting ourselves up to spend a lot of time in hospital later on.
The debate will carry on for decades as people continue to make bad food choices. When you cut corners and try to create a cheaper product, something will be sacrificed and, usually, it’s the quality of the product.

How the film ‘Super Size Me’ changed my body forever
During the making of my film ‘Super Size Me’, I gained nearly 2st eating nothing but McDonald’s food for 30 days. I was lethargic, had no energy and started having palpitations. The more you take care of yourself and what you are putting into your body, the better you will feel.
Afterwards, I got my blood pressure and liver function back to normal in eight weeks, but it took about 14 months for me to lose all the weight and keep it off.
Once you gain all that weight, all those fat cells just don’t go away when you get skinny again. They are swimming around your body just waiting for you to overeat, so that any time I eat more calories than my body will burn, I can put on 5 or 6lb quickly – I have to live with that every single day.

Sources: http://www.allaboutyou.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/

Think you know Britain? Take the landmarks quiz

Britain's famous landmarks are easily identifiable - or are they? Try the fun quiz and see how many you spot. By Adrienne Wyper

You're probably pretty confident that you could identify Britain's best-loved landmarks with no trouble at all. We're all familiar with where we live, aren't we?

So you might be shocked and horrified to discover that over half of Britons couldn't identify some of our most iconic structures, in a survey commissioned by Travelodge. Fifty-eight per cent of the people questioned got it spectacularly wrong.

However, before you dismiss the 3,000 Britons who took up the identification challenge, you might like to compare how many landmarks they correctly identified with your own performance.

So, here are the 10 landmarks that were most often misidentified in the survey. Identify each one then check the answers by clicking on page 2.

But don't forget that you've got an advantage over those surveyed - you know they're all in Britain!

Name that landmark!

At no.10:

A classical edifice...maybe a former colonial seat of power? - 47% of those surveyed didn't know what this building was.

At no.9:

That summit looks mighty high - can it really be in the UK?...reminiscent of Mount Fuji, maybe? 52% couldn't identify this mountain 

 At no.8:

With its jetting fountains and background of orderly columns, this square was unrecognisable to 51% of those surveyed, whose suggestions included a Spanish or Portuguese piazza.

At no.7:

Hmm, atmospheric shot, looks like something from a US gangster film. It's a bridge, but 54% couldn't say which one.

At no.6:

To be fair, this shot taken from above is not how we normally see this place of worship. Suggestions for this cathedral included the domes of St Peter's in Rome

At no.5:

Dark and vaguely sinister castle dominating the rugged landscape - somewhere in Transylvania? Well, it is a castle but 62% of those surveyed couldn't say where this stronghold is.

At no.4:

It wouldn't look out of place in a cutting-edge development in Dubai, and 64% of those surveyed failed to place this recently constructed tower in the near south, not the Far East.

At no.3:

The domes and intricately detailed towers of this view misled a third of those surveyed into thinking this vista was of the minarets of Istanbul.

At no.2:

Seventy-six per cent of UK residents were unable to identify this imposing high-rise skyline, with half mistaking it for Manhattan's prominent skyline

At no.1:

The title of most misidentified building goes to this Regency masterpiece. Over three-quarters of those asked drew a blank, and two-thirds mistook the iconic building for a palace in India's Rajasthan.

Sources: http://www.allaboutyou.com/

The Kitchen Table Talent Award Winners 2012

BEST WRITER: Catherine Bain

Catherine Bain

Come Down to the Harbour by Catherine Bain

So he said, “Come down to the harbour with me at dusk and I’ll show you a sight.”

I live now in the most easterly town in the UK. A town I have already come to love but a town that has largely forgotten its glorious past and has yet to glimpse its prosperous future, so I couldn’t imagine what that sight may be among the traffic, tugs and gas rig building sites in the ropiest part of town.

So I went. I met him on the bascule bridge at 4pm that February afternoon. We stood together peering through the six-foot-high spiky steel railings enclosing the working harbour, the air thick with diesel fumes from fishing boats before us and Friday rush-hour traffic on the bridge behind.

The sun was starting to sink behind the crumbly tall buildings on the waterfront, giving them an undeserved rosy glow and casting pink sky reflections across the oil floating on the surface of the harbour water. It was cold and more than breezy. Moored boats clinked and chinked in the wind, making familiar coastal music.

“Don’t talk,” he said. “Watch out to sea, look up and be patient.” So I waited, freezing.

Suddenly, with a whoosh and a rhythm of beating wings, the first few starlings swooped in close over my head from behind and started to dance in front of me. A second squadron approached quickly from the south, then a third and a fourth from the north. Each arriving bird cloud joined with those already there and melded into the performance. Diving, rising, mixing, separating and growing and growing until the air above us was full of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of starlings, each knowing its place in the shape-shifting spectacle. “It’s called a murmuration,” he said. “It happens every evening in the wintertime.”

A few passers-by looked up, stopped and joined us. Others, heads down, weekend plans on their minds, didn’t notice that anything was happening at all.

Spellbound for long, darkening minutes, we cricked our necks and watched, oblivious to all else but the urban ritual before us.

Just as suddenly as it began, it changed. One last huge coming together, then, on the next descent, one group peeled off to the right, as if to a silent command, and dived under the harbour boardwalk to noisily sort out a night-time roosting agreement. To be followed quickly by a second group and then a third, each dropping out of the main chorus, seemingly randomly choosing port or starboard, and settling to roost. On and on as darkness fell, until the last dozen or so fell from the sky and joined the now invisible and quietening cacophony.


Sources: http://www.allaboutyou.com/

My country memories: David Attenborough

An early fascination with fossils drove the great naturalist to explore the British countryside by bike

David Attenborough

'I was always a rotten botanist. At 14 I knew I wanted to be a natural scientist and so my father sent me to see Uncle Harry, a friend of his and a senior lecturer in botany at the University of Cambridge. Uncle Harry took me outside to a ditch where he pointed at a plant, “What do you think that is?” he asked. “Well, it’s a flower,” I replied. “Right,” he said. “And what do you think that is?” he said pointing at a different one. “Well that’s another flower,” I said. Uncle Harry turned to me and said: “You’re going to have to do better than that, David, if you’re going to be a naturalist”. So I went on some of his field trips and learned a few of the Latin names for plants and, although I can get by these days, I remain a rotten botanist.

'The life of plants can be breathtaking and one of the most astonishing things about British flora is how much it is overlooked by us. There is one native variety called the sundew that is relatively common in bogs on the moorlands of north Wales and the Lake District. Its leaves are covered with erect hairs, each of which carries a glistening droplet of a sticky residue on which it catches insects. It was only when I recently filmed one in 3D using time-lapse photography that I truly appreciated its beauty, though.

'Fossils were my first love. As a boy, I’d be out on my bicycle until nightfall; in fact, at 14 years old I’d get on my bike and not come home for three days, staying in youth hostels as I explored the countryside. I had a geological map of Britain and would look at all the wonderful colours and plan my routes in search of fossils. We lived in Leicester, but I’d cycle all over, to the beautiful carboniferous territory of Derbyshire, for example, where I could hunt for coral fossils. I made myself canvas panniers which I attached to my bike, and then would take my huge fossil box to the railway station and address it to the Goods Manager of Market Harborough station (or wherever else I would next be headed), before cycling my way to meet it. Then I deposited my latest finds and redirected the box to my next stop.

'On family holidays I’d always ask if we could stop at any quarries along the way. Everybody would groan, but on one occasion I insisted and, returning to the car earlier than expected, caught my mother emptying out some of the specimens I’d already found along the way. One discovery that stands out for me was a large, very smooth boulder of carbonated limestone on a beach in Penmon, Anglesey, because on its top was a beautiful coral fossil. I spent every day of that two-week holiday chipping off all the bits around the fossil until, by the time we left to go home, I was able to take a lump of rock with me, my treasured fossil at its centre.

'The Manifold Valley in Derbyshire is one of the most magical parts of the British Isles. On one of my bicycle journeys as a boy, I remember spotting a great peak with a naked rock face there which, according to the Ordnance Survey map, was called Thor’s Cave. I left my bicycle at the bottom of the valley and walked up a little bridle path towards the peak, before climbing up inside the cave. There on the floor were stalagmites which, once split open, revealed some incredible insect wings. I will never forget it – there wasn’t a human on earth who’d laid eyes on them before. It’s one of those places that holds an almost storybook quality for me.

 I actually don’t find wind turbines as ugly as many people do. I think it’s amazing how we’ve just accepted pylons marching across the countryside – because we understand that there is a price to pay for everyone in Britain being able to switch on an electric light – and yet turbines are met with such resistance. We need to realise that we’ve reached an energy crisis. People seem to think that you can wave a magic wand and we’ll have all the power we need, but we won’t. I’m a great supporter of alternative, renewable energy.'


Sources: http://www.allaboutyou.com/