British Music Week

For all you music lovers here's a great page to visit while you still have time during the Christmas holidays.

www.britishmusicweek.com

There's lots to see and plenty of information about your favourite singers, groups and bands. They go from the newest releases to the classics like the Rolling Stones.

You can see the results of 2009 Rising Star finalists before the year ends. There are bands from as far away as Canada and as close as Spain. Check it out! You'll love it

Who Invented Powered Flight?

The year 2003 was the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ invention of the first powered airplane. The first successful flight occurred on December 17th, 1903 at Kill Devil Hills in Kittyhawk, North Carolina.
Hey, Wait a minute!
They may have made ‘the first successful flight’ but could you say they ‘invented' the first powered airplane?
Before the Wright Brothers across the Atlantic Ocean…..in Britain……
Percy Pilcher was born in Bath, England in 1867. He designed a powered triplane and built it in 1899. By the end of September 1899 his triplane was nearly ready to fly (except, that is, for mounting the engine), but while gliding in his previously reliable “Hawk”, there was a structural failure. Pilcher fell and died two days later. His triplane was never flown but the “invention” beat the Americans by 4 years.
Or could it have been Bill Frost, a Welsh carpenter, who patented the aeroplane in 1894. He flew his powered flying machine the following year in 1895 that was 8 years before the Wright brothers!
Think about it….before the famous flight in America some 55 years earlier John stringfellow took flight in his steam propelled twin engines at Chard in Somerset.

British Poetry

LOSS

The day he moved out was terrible -
That evening she went through hell.
His absence wasn't a problem....
But the corkscrew had gone as well.

By Wendy Cope

I had a really good laugh when I first read this poem. Such sentiment in the first two sentences to then realize it was directed to a corkscrew. Ha, ha, ha, ha; what a giggle.

If you like contemporary poetry you can take a look at this site. It will first show you Wendy's biography and you could possible go on and on....

www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth174

How Eight Minutes Changed British Time

Well, this has to do with the Railway and a court case that set time keeping in Britain. On November 24, 1858, at 10:04 a.m by Dorset clocks a Dorchester judge found against a man involved in a land battle because he was late for the 10 a.m hearing. Two minutes later the man arrived and claimed he was on time according to the Railway station clock in his home town of Carlisle in Cumberland.
The case had to be retried because of this discrepancy, and in 1880 Parliament ended the confusion by ordering the whole country to set its clocks by the Greenwich Mean Time.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (usually shortened to United Kingdom or UK) is a country situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe and is surrounded by the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea, the Irish Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.

The UK is composed of four constituent parts: three constituent countries England, Scotland and Wales on the island of Great Britain and the province of Northern Ireland on the island of Ireland. The border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland forms the United Kingdom's principal international land border. There is also a frontier with France at the Channel Tunnel with the French border control being on the English side of the English Channel (La Manche)!

The UK has several overseas territories throughout the world, relationships with several Crown dependencies and Commonwealth realms.

If you would like to find out more here is a good website:http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbreviations/timezones/eu/gmt.html

Burton Agnes Hall in Yorkshire

Burton Agnes Hall is an Elizabethan manor house in the village of Burton Agnes, near Driffield in Yorkshire. It was built by Sir Henry Griffith in 1601–10 to designs attributed to Robert Smithson.[1] There is an older Norman Manor House, originally built in 1173 on an adjacent site; both buildings are now Grade I listed buildings.
The Hall contains a number of fine seventeenth century plaster ceilings and chimney pieces. The ceiling of the Long Gallery was restored in two stages by Francis Johnson between 1951 and 1974.
Frances Griffith heiress of the estate married Sir Matthew Boynton the first Boynton Baronet and on her death in 1634 the estate was bequeathed to her son Francis ( later the second Baronet). On the death of the eleventh Baronet in 1899 the house passed to his daughter, and on her death to her son Sir Marcus Wickham Boynton. He operated a successful stud farm on the estate for many years. He died in 1989 and left the property to a distant cousin, Simon Cunliffe-Lister, (then aged twelve), grandson of Viscount Whitelaw and son of the 3rd Earl of Swinton. Today, the estate is kept and owned by the Burton Agnes Preservation Trust and is managed by Cunliffe-Lister and his mother Hon Susan Whitelaw.
The walled flower garden has a games motif with a central chess board played on black and white paving stones. Other games include draughts, snakes and ladders and hoop toss. Each of these games is in a separate garden surrounded by plants selected by flower colours. There is also a market garden area with attractively planted seasonal vegetables.
Whimsical statues abound throughout the grounds. A woodland walk is well known locally for abundant snowdrop blooms in February.

This is a great family activity for the weekend, and if you like history, why not do some research before you go.

Have a great weekend!

One of Britain's favourite Poems

TIDES

The evening advances, then withdraws again
Leaving our cups and books like islands on the floor.
We are drifting you and I,
As far from one another as the young heroes
Of these two novels we have just laid down.
For that is happiness: to wander alone
Surrounded by the same moon, whose tides remind us of
ourselves,
Our distances, and what we leave behind.
The lamp left on, the curtains letting in the light.
These things were promises. No doubt we will come back to
them.

By HUGO WILLIAMS 1942


There is a great write up in the Guardian it is well worth reading.

www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/mar/26/poetry.features

I am sure you will find this poet so very interesting, as well as his poems, of course!

A Delicious Autumn Treat

THE TOFFEE APPLE

The Toffee Apple or Candy Apple (U.S.A) are delicious apples covered with a hard crunchy toffee and served on the end of a stick. They are usually made for the winter festivals, especially on November 5th which is Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire night. This is probably due to the fact that it is the apple harvest anyway. They are eaten during the autumn months and even during winter. If a travel fair comes to town there will always be Toffee Apples as well as many other delicious things to eat.

There is a great page by Jamie Oliver with this great tradition recipe if you want to give it a go but please be careful. Hot sugar can cause serious burns, make sure children and pets are kept away while you try your hand at making Toffee Apples.

Check out Jaime's page: www.jamieoliver.com/foodwise/article-view.php?id=1673

I'm sure you'll really enjoy this delicious but simple treat.