Advanced English Listening: British English podcast (E116 Quirky not Turkey)

Hello.

Welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast, the listening resource

that's designed for intermediate to advanced level English learners.

My name is Anna, and in today's episode, you are going to hear

lots of wonderful vocabulary.

If, however, you find yourself a little lost, if you are not familiar with many

of the words and phrases that I use, then I highly recommend that you go

back a few episodes and listen to last week's English Five a Day episodes.

So, in Week 6 of the English Five a Day, I've been introducing and deep

diving into lots of the vocabulary you are going to hear today.

So, that should be helpful for you.

I'll put all the links to those episodes down in the show notes.

But for now, let's get on with the show.

The Christmas season is, once again, upon many of us.

It's not easy to escape, but after all, why would you want to?

The list of seasonal pleasures just goes on and on: getting to spend

more time with your family, rich food that you can only eat once a year,

several days off work, presents....

For a huge number of people, their day-to-day life is turned

upside-down by the holiday season.

Not literally upside-down, of course, but put into disorder, confusion and chaos.

You know what I'm talking about!

Everything seems to stop for precision shopping, mass-baking and plenty of

opportunities for a festive drink or two.

Or three.

I actually have some church-going friends who refuse to wish me or anyone

else a “Merry Christmas” because they associate the word merry with being drunk.

They and others believe that being happy is one thing but

being merry is quite another!

So it is that for several days during the last week and a half of December,

normality seems to come to a halt.

To come to a halt.

This expression means to physically cease moving, to stop, but also more

metaphorically to stop progressing.

There's a perfect example of this in my town at the moment, where they're

supposed to be converting an old lido, or open-air swimming pool, into a fun fair.

Well, the contractors seem to have removed most of the old interior, but after

starting on the new flooring, all actual construction work has come to a halt.

In fact, you could say that it's come to a grinding halt, as work was progressing

well until they suddenly stopped coming to work with no sign of resumption!

Right then, please don't be thinking that this is yet another podcast about

Christmas songs or turkey recipes..

I think that's all been done to death, you know?

Which means overdone.

So, to be done to death is overdone, talked about too much to the point

where we should just stop and consider another aspect of the festive season.

So, that said, let's have a look at a few unconventional ways to

spend Christmas, past and present.

We've got a Christmas cast for you today featuring Charles Darwin,

who introduced his famous theory of evolution by natural selection.

We have the first President of the USA, the face of the one-dollar bill,

George Washington; one of the Apollo space missions; and the slightly

less well-known Catalonian poo-log.

So, let's sail back almost 200 years for our first story.

On December 25th, 1833, Charles Darwin, author of On The Origin of Species,

at just 24 years of age, found himself aboard the HMS Beagle, anchored off

the coast of Port Desire, now known as Puerto Deseado, Argentina, as part

of his momentous five-year voyage.

Now the word momentous is a bit odd because if we think about the ‘moment’

part it doesn't sound significant at all.

But it is: momentous means very important because of its effects on future events.

So, if something is momentous it creates momentum.

And Darwin's voyage on the Beagle was a scientific expedition that

would eventually transform our understanding of the natural world.

So, setting out in December 1831, his goal was to explore the geological and

biological wonders of the lands he and the crew would visit, but this Christmas Day,

although he might well still have been working, he had time to record this in his

diary about how the crew spent their time:

" After dining in the Gun-room, the officers & almost every

man in the ship went on shore.

— The Captain distributed prizes to the best runners, leapers, and wrestlers.

— These “Olympic games” were very amusing; it was quite delightful to

see with what school-boy eagerness the seamen enjoyed them: old men with

long beards & young men without any were playing like so many children.

— certainly a much better way of passing Christmas day than the

usual one, of every seamen getting as drunk as he possibly can."

Darwin knew what he was talking about; the ship he was aboard, the HMS Beagle

was supposed to have set sail, that is, to say, disembark from its port,

from Plymouth, England on 26 December 1831, but the crew was still so drunk

from Christmas Day that the voyage had to wait until the twenty-seventh

when they had recovered sufficiently!

Fortunately for science, they did manage to disembark, and Darwin's experiences

in various locations, from the Galapagos Islands to South America, exposed him

to a vast array of unique ecosystems and species that challenged prevailing

beliefs and left an indelible mark on our understanding of life on Earth.

This wasn't a traditional Christmas celebration by any means, and there

is an added quirk, or peculiarity, to the story, which really distances

Darwin's experiences even further away from the packaged form that

Christmas comes in these days.

According to his diary, Charles Darwin actually hunted his own Christmas dinner.

In his entry for 24 December , he wrote that he actually shot and killed a 170lb,

which is around 80kg, guanaco, which is a relative of the llama, meaning all aboard

the ship would have meat on Christmas Day.

Now, we're going to embark on a different type of voyage next.

It's one thing to spend Christmas Day on the other side of the world

like Darwin in Argentina, but quite another to spend it in space!

That's exactly what the crew of the Apollo 8 mission did in 1968; in fact,

they travelled around the Moon and back.

The primary goal of these three astronauts: Frank Borman, James Lovell,

and William Anders, was to orbit the Moon, assess the lunar module's

performance, and test various systems in preparation for future lunar landings.

But, for everyone watching on TV, the most exciting aspect of the mission was its

live television broadcast from lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1968.

During this broadcast, the astronauts famously read verses

from the Bible and wished viewers on Earth a "Merry Christmas."

The broadcast was viewed by millions of people around the world, perhaps as many

as a quarter of the world's population.

From this mission, we also have the first photographs of planet Earth taken by human

hand, including the famous “Earthrise”.

What really leaves me a little breathless about this event though, is something

which happened completely out of sight and out of earshot of anyone on our planet.

Although we know that on the 27 December 1968, Apollo 8 splashed down safely

in the Pacific Ocean, this was far from being a guarantee at the time.

In order to break out of their lunar orbit, the crew had to perform

“trans-Earth injection”, which is a propulsion manoeuvre designed to set

Apollo 8 back on course to Earth.

But, they had to do this from the so-called dark side of the moon, out

of radio contact with mission control.

A failure in the system, would have meant that Apollo 8 would have been

stuck in orbit of the moon with no means of escape and no hope of rescue.

The anxious hours passed, until voice contact returned, and, on

Christmas Day, astronaut Lovell announced to Houston: “Please be

informed, there IS a Santa Claus.”!

The crew had got the spacecraft out of orbit and a couple of days later,

they were all safely delivered home.

Phew!

This sort of thing doesn't happen every Christmas!

But I want to finish with something that does, at least in one part of the world.

We are going to get traditional, yes, but of course with a difference.

I think it's fair to say that the city of Barcelona is world-famous for its

successful football team, modernist architecture, and beautiful beaches.

Christmas in the Catalan capital, and the rest of Catalonia, though, gives us

something even more remarkable: “Caga Tió”, or "Poo log", a cherished custom

featuring a unique festive character in the form of a smiling wooden log.

There are some logs that you can throw onto the wood-fire, but not this one.

In early December every year, families in Catalonia go into the woods,

or maybe just into the garden if they have a large one and they look

to see if their Tió has arrived.

Perhaps the first thing that they'll see is the tip of its

traditional beret, called a or it could be it's painted smile, large

white eyes, or short stick legs.

As all Catalan children know, it's best to check under large piles of leaves first

as Tió needs to keep warm in order to be able to carry out its very important role.

Tió comes to the same family every Christmas, but only if

they treat it well enough.

You see, Father Christmas doesn't traditionally come to Catalonia;

the children actually have to wait until the night of the 5th of January

when the Three Wise Men come to town, bringing presents to open on

the morning of the 6th of January.

In the meantime, it's Tió role to provide them with small

presents to tide them over.

To tide someone over can be a very important act if they don't have

enough money or enough of something that they need in order to be able to

sustain themselves or their family.

So, you tide them over, you keep them going, you sustain them.

Now, I don't know about you, but as a child I celebrated Christmas on 25

December, so I feel sorry for these poor Catalan children that they have to

wait until they're almost back at school before opening their Christmas presents.

I think they definitely need something to tide them over until then!

So, throughout the weeks leading up to Christmas, children take care of

Tió, placing it in the living room and providing it with fruit, nuts and other

small treats on a plate within easy reach.

Tió won't eat while people are watching, though, but if it feels at home then

every morning the family will find the plate empty and Tió still smiling.

It's the children's responsibility to keep Tió warm, too, typically by

covering it with a small blanket.

So what about the “poo” part?

Well, the grand finale of “Caga Tió” takes place on

Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

In a joyous and light-hearted family ceremony, children gather around the log

and, while tapping it gently with long sticks from the forest or the garden,

they urge it to “poo out” something that they like, such as ‘turrons’,

which is a type of nougat-based based confectionary, which is typically eaten

with various fillings in Catalonia during the festive season, or small toys.

If Tió doesn't poo anything out, then everyone has to sing louder and hit

harder, before checking under its blanket to see what it has produced.

It's essential, too, that after every session of hitting and singing,

someone takes the children to the bathroom or the kitchen to clean

their sticks and allow Tió a few moments to recover from its exertions.

Finally, because this podcast is an English language learning resource,

I want to give an honourable mention to George Washington.

An honourable mention is a form of recognition given to signify that

the recipient's work, performance, or contribution was noteworthy and

praiseworthy, even though they did not win a top prize in a competition.

Well, during a critical stage of the American War of Independence, the

then General George led a crossing of the Delaware River in the early

morning hours of December 26, 1776, which was critical in revitalising

the then dejected American side.

Facing bitterly cold weather and an ice-filled river, Washington and

General John Sullivan directed the arduous and dangerous crossing, somehow

transporting all their troops, artillery, and horses across before embarking

on a nine-mile march through snow and freezing rain to reach Trenton.

There, they launched a surprise attack on the unsuspecting Hessian

garrison, who were actually German soldiers fighting on the British side.

Unsuspecting means that they didn't suspect or have any idea

that something was about to happen, but it was, and it did.

The battle was a resounding success for the Americans, and it

gave hope and renewed confidence in the fight for independence.

The war was far from over, but the Americans had turned

the tide, so to speak.

Things were not going their way, but through a great effort they were

able to change the course of history.

What do you think things would be if America had remained a British colony?

What would the English language be like?

So, there we have a few unconventional ways of spending

Christmas past and present.

How will you spend yours this year?

Hopefully you won't have to cross a freezing river or perform an

extremely rare propulsion manoeuvre.

It might be a good idea to play a few games or do a bit of exercise,

but my bet is that if you are anything like me, you'll end up

singing and eating like the Catalans.

Whatever you do, whenever, wherever, and however you do it, I hope that

you have a wonderful Christmastime.

Happy holidays to you all!

Until next time, take very good care and goodbye.