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No trace of magic, no spells, wizards are absent and flying broomsticks are away! But emotion, heart and true life all through the novel.
"The Casual Vacancy" is the first novel written for adults from Rowling. Classified as “ a black comedy”
Published in the U.S. by Little, Brown and Company, in Britain by Little, Brown Book Group and in France by Grasset .
The Adult Novel has come out on Thursday, September 27th and has been kept top secret in publishing circles! The Associated Press signed an agreement.
Already at No. 1 on Amazon, the book is packed with references to sex and drugs and J.K Rowling's youngest "Potter" fans might find themselves shocked at the content, especially at the second half of the novel.
It is set in the small British village of Pagford, a pure fictional village in England's West country, in "Muggle-Land". It narrates the story of what happens after the unexpected death of a town official leaves a vacancy on the town's governing body, a chronicle of the political and personal fallout created by that sudden death of a member of the parish council, Barry Fairbrother.
No charming, winning hero but a hard story tackling big issues and where some graceless people just never had a chance but are unhappy in one way or another. A variety of people like Harry’s aunt and uncle, Petunia and Vernon and their son Dursley : meanness, pettiness, selfishness and violence. Some are over-damaged with not a chance to be saved. Even the most positive, moral force in the story is shown to have hurt his wife with his dedication to his cause that clearly came at her emotional expense.
The story :
Barry Fairbrother, a member of the town council, drops dead in a parking lot on his way to dinner with his wife.
Rowling introduces a cross-section of the town's residents as they learn about Barry's death. There are shopkeepers and lawyers, doctors and teachers, a social worker and a bunch of teenagers. They're variously nasty, deluded, selfish, pompous, petty, neurotic and annoying, and they don't seem to like each other very much.
We also meet a family from the Fields, a public housing estate on the outskirts of town. Terri Weedon is a heroin addict whose 16-year-old daughter, Krystal, can barely string two words together unless one of them has four letters and begins with "F." The Weedons aren't much fun to hang out with, but Krystal turns out to be the most sympathetic character in the book.
The town is divided between those who want the Fields to remain part of Pagford and those who want it split off and reattached to the nearby city of Yarvil.
Barry himself was born in the Fields and wanted the impoverished children living there to have the opportunity he did to attend the lovely Pagford primary school, enjoying "the tiny classes, the rolltop desks, the aged stone building and the lush green playing field."
Several candidates step forward to run for Barry's seat, with varying motives. Much gossip and back-stabbing ensue.
The characters (6 families)
The Fairbrothers
Barry Fairbrother: a local councillor in the parish of Pagford, Barry grew up in the housing estate called The Fields - a row over which drives the novel's plot. Liked by everyone except his right-wing enemies, Barry dies of an aneurysm in the first scene, leaving a vacancy on the council, and in people's lives.
Mary Fairbrother, his wife: Mary, the small blonde grieving widow, is the only person close to Barry who resents him. He spent so much time defending the disadvantged, she feels, that he neglected those at home.
Their four children: Fergus, Niamh, Siobhan, Declan - aged 18 to 12.
The Mollisons
Howard Mollison: the owner of the upscale local deli, Mollison and Lowe, Howard is morbidly obese, wears a deerstalker behind the counter, and considers himself to be the first citizen of Pagford. When Barry Fairbrother dies, he can barely conceal his glee over the opportunity to install someone from his camp on the council. The person he chooses is his son Miles
Shirley Mollison, his wife: If anyone hates Barry Fairbrother more than Howard, it's Shirley, who lives in continous denial of everything except her husband and son's marvellous nature
Miles Mollison, their son: Miles is a lawyer, a perfect son in thrall to his parents, and a terrible bore in the eyes of his wife
Samantha Mollison, Miles’s wife: Samantha is the epitome of a frustrated housewife, the source of much of the book's comedy (she owns a shops that sells outsize bras - it's called Over the Shoulder Boulder Holders) but two-dimensional nevertheless.
Lexie and Libby, Miles and Samantha’s children: the gilrs have been sent as weekly boarders to a private school, so they don;t have to keep company with the children from the Fields - in particular Krystal Weedon, who once beat one of them up.
Pat Mollison, Howard and Shirley’s estranged daughter: Pat turns up late in the book. The purpose of her appearance seems to be to add insult to the injury of Howard and Shirley's prejudice.
Maureen, a widow who has worked in Howard’s deli for decades, now his business partner and Shirley's nemesis.
The Jawandas
Parminder Jawanda: the ever-angry local GP, friend of Barry Fairbrother and his supporter on the council.
Vikram Jawanda, her husband: a handsome heart surgeon much swooned-over by Samantha Mollison.
Rajpal, Jaswant and Sukhvinder, their teenage children. Jaswant and Rajpal are straight-A students. Sukhvinder is the overweight, self-harming black sheep of the family, of whom her mother despairs, and who is the brunt of Stuart Wall's merciless taunts. She befriends the beautiful Gaia Bawden.
The Prices
Ruth Price: a nurse, who befriends Shurley Mollison when Shirley volunteers at the hospital in the hope of meeting the Queen on a royal visit.
Simon Price: her violent, abusive, corrupt husband. Simon decides to run for Barry Fairbrother's council seat on the basis of incorrect information about the possibility of kickbacks.
Andrew and Paul, their sons: Andrew hates his father with a vengeance, and pities his mother bitterly. Similarly to but independently from fellow teenagers, he engages in a scheme to bring his father down. This provides the whodunnit aspect of the book's plot.
The Walls
Tessa Wall: a guidance counsellor at the local school, Tessa finds Krystal Weedon in her office most days.
Colin – known as “Cubby” - Wall, her husband: Colin, deupty headmaster at the school, suffers from an obsessive compulsive disorder that leads him to believe he has committed crimes he hasn't. In adoring memory of his friend Barry Fairbrother, Colin plans to stand for his seat.
Stuart, their adopted son, known as “Fats”: Fats is Pagford's resident existentialist. In his quest for "authenticity", he seeks out Krystal Weedon's sexual favours.
The Weedons
Terri Weedon: Terri is a heroin addict and sometime prostitute who lives in the Fields. She has lost custody of two of her children, and rsisk losing custody of the remianing two.
Krystal Weedon, her daughter: Krystal, who lives in the Fields with her mother, is Pagford's foul-mouthed bully and school slapper. because Barry Fairbrother took her under his wing, she becomes the novel's unlikely heroine, and her life story a way of telling how society goes wrong.
Robbie Weedon, her son: Three year-old Robbie is smallest casualty and greatest hope of Terri's threatened and possibly unsalvageable life. He is the thing that keeps Krystal going, and that keeps Terri, as far as possible, off the drugs.
Nana Cath: Terri's grandmother has taken care of her diaspora of grandchildren and great-children. A benign but ultimately only temporary refuge.
Obbo: Terri's sinister and violent drug dealer.
Kay Bawden: a social worker who has recently moved to Pagford with her daughter, to be with her boyfriend Gavin. The Weedons become cases in her care.
Gaia, her daughter: Gaia is a beautiful 16 year-old, lusted after by Andrew Price, and befriended by Sukhvinder Jawanda. She is desperate to move back to London.
Gavin: Kay’s feeble and indecisive boyfriend – also a partner in Miles’s law firm, and formerly Barry Fairbrother’s best friend.
Critical
Lev Grossman for Time Magazine wrote in a positive review, "It’s a big, ambitious, brilliant, profane, funny, deeply upsetting and magnificently eloquent novel of contemporary England, rich with literary intelligence and entirely bereft of bullshit."The Wall Street Journal wrote a positive review stating, "Once you get your Mileses and Simonses straight and events begin to unfurl, it becomes a positively propulsive read. 'The Casual Vacancy' may not be George Eliot, but it's J.K. Rowling; and that's pretty good." Positive reviews have come from reviewers for the Associated Press and the Daily Beast, which remarked that the book was a "page turner." The Daily Mirroralso gave it a very positive review.Emma Lee-Potter of Express.co.uk called it "a highly readable morality tale for our times." David Robinson of The Scotsman praised the novel, saying, "It is far grittier, bleaker (and, occasionally, funnier) than I had expected, and — the acid test — I suspect it would do well even if its author's name weren't J.K. Rowling."The Telegraphlauded the novel as well, writing, "One marvels at the skill with which Rowling weaves such vivid characters in and out of each other’s lives, rendering them so complex and viscerally believable that one finds oneself caring for the worst of them." Andrew Losowsky of the Huffington Postpraised it, commenting, "Rowling is clearly a skilled writer. This book is more depressing than her previous work because it is set in a world without magic, where cruelty is less apocalyptic and more believably petty. Though some sequences feel a few drafts short of being ready, others are written with a fluency and beauty that suggest that there could be more and better works to come from her pen." The Guardian wrote, "The Casual Vacancy is no masterpiece, but it's not bad at all: intelligent, workmanlike, and often funny." The Economistopined, "This is a novel of insight and skill, deftly drawn and, at the end, cleverly pulled together. It plays to her strengths as a storyteller." Linda Herrick of the New Zealand Heraldgave it a glowing review, stating, "JK Rowling's first novel for adults, A Casual Vacancy, poses the big question: can she make the transition to writing for grownups? The answer, after whizzing through it in a single day, would have to be a resounding yes."
The New York Times'Michiko Kakutani panned the novel, comparing it unfavourably to Rowling's Harry Potter series and saying, "We do not come away feeling that we know the back stories of the 'Vacancy' characters in intimate detail the way we did with Harry and his friends and enemies, nor do we finish the novel with a visceral knowledge of how their pasts — and their families’ pasts — have informed their present lives." The Los Angeles Times criticized the book, stating that it "fails to conjure Harry Potter's magic." The Daily Mailcalled it "more than 500 pages of relentless socialist manifesto masquerading as literature."
Sales
Within hours of the book's release, it had reached the Number 1 position on the Amazon Book Chart in the United States, while William Hill suspected that the novel would outsell Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which was released in 2007 and sold over 2.6 million copies in Britain alone during its first day of sales.
'It was like trying to clean an Olympic pool full of oil while sitting on the side using Q-tips,' says the chronicler of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico
It was the world's worst offshore oil spill: 5m barrels spewing from the BP-run Deepwater Horizon rig into the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 people, marine life and devastating hundreds of miles of coastline. From a Cessna floatplane 3,000ft above the Louisiana coastline, photographer Daniel Beltrá captured the carnage. It was only from this height, he said, that the magnitude of the spill – and the futility of the clean-up operation – became apparent. "It was like trying to clean an Olympic pool full of oil while sitting on the side using Q-tips."
An environmental specialist who often works for Greenpeace, Beltrá prefers aerial photography, because it offers a humbling perspective, shrinking the scale of the planet to more human proportions and thereby revealing its fragility. This lofty viewpoint often shows the beauty of the natural world: in the case of a disaster, though, that can be unsettling. Here, the surface of the ocean is marbled with spectacular, iridescent blue and flashes of orange that resemble molten rock, and the rig, at first glance, might be a Hindu temple.
In the two years since the wellhead was sealed, the fallout has continued. BP has embarked on a selling spree of oilfields and refineries in an attempt to raise funds for the clean-up bill – estimated at $38bn. The company is working towards a settlement with the US government, with both sides trying to establish how much damage was done, and how much BP should pay.
The environment is counting the cost, too. Most recently, waves caused by Hurricane Isaac in August dumped oil from the spill on two Louisiana beaches. Beltrá, meanwhile, is documenting low levels of sea ice in the Arctic. He is one photographer unlikely to be out of work any time soon.
• Spill is on show at the Prix Pictet/Power exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, London SW3, from 10-28 October.
Dan LEPARD :There's something about the combination of bacon and dough that's impossible to resist!
Dan Lepard's beet bacon buns: Good for burgers, or flattened into baps. Photograph: Colin Campbell for the Guardian
Good bacon will shine in these recipes. But if you can get only the cheaper stuff, blanch it first (cover it in water, bring to a boil, remove from the heat, spoon off the white scum and drain), before frying with it. This process means the liquid added during a wet cure won't leach out into the frying pan, causing a sticky mess. You will lose some flavour, but then cheap bacon is rather thin and disappointing anyway.
Beet bacon buns
Good for burgers, or flattened into baps, or just as one big tin loaf for beetroot BLTs. Though the beetroot helps the texture stay soft, keep the baking time short, because the crumb will continue cooking for a few minutes once it's out of the oven and you don't want them drying out. Makes about nine.
400g diced bacon (smoked or not) 1 smallish bulb raw beetroot (about 125g), rinsed free of dirt 350ml warm water 1 tsp fast-action yeast 15ml vinegar (any sort) 25ml olive oil, plus extra for frying and kneading 1-2 tbsp fresh dill fronds, chopped (or use dried, if need be) 200g rye, spelt or wholemeal flour 450g strong white flour 1-2 tsp salt, depending on how salty your bacon is Beaten egg and poppy seeds, to finish
Fry the bacon until slightly crisp, drain on kitchen paper and cool. Grate the beetroot into a bowl (use rubber gloves to make it less messy), then stir in the water, yeast, vinegar, oil, dill and bacon. Add the flours and salt, mix to a smooth dough, cover and leave for 10-20 minutes. Oil a patch of worktop, scoop the dough on to it and knead lightly for 10 seconds. Return the dough to the bowl and leave for about 90 minutes, until puffed and slightly risen.
For buns or baps, split the dough into 150g pieces – you should have enough to make nine – and, using a little flour, shape into balls (round for buns, oval for baps). Leave, covered, on the worktop for 10 minutes, then lightly flatten with a rolling pin and place on baking trays lined with nonstick paper. For sandwich bread, liberally brush the inside of a loaf tin with bacon fat or oil (or line it with nonstick paper), pat the dough out into a rectangle, roll it up tightly like a scroll and squeeze seam-side down into the tin.
Cover and leave for 60-90 minutes, until risen by at least half. Heat the oven to 220C (200C fan-assisted)/425F/gas mark 7, dust dough with flour or brush with beaten egg and sprinkle with poppy seeds, and bake for 20-25 minutes for buns and 40 for the tin loaf, until golden (if you're making the loaf, reduce the heat towards the end if it's colouring too quickly). Leave to cool out of the tin, or off the tray, on a wire rack.
Bacon and cheese breadsticks
Makes about 15.
8 rashers of streaky bacon 50g unsalted butter, cold 100ml milk 1 tsp fast-action yeast 200g '00' or plain flour, plus extra for rolling 25g-50g grated grana padano or parmesan ¾ tsp salt
Fry the bacon in a dry pan until crisp and golden, then leave it to drain on a paper towel until cold. Shred with a knife and chop finely, then put in a mixing bowl with the butter. Boil the milk, pour this over the butter and bacon, stir and leave until barely warm. Add the yeast – remember, if the milk's too hot, it will kill the yeast – then the flour, cheese and salt, and mix to a soft dough, adding a dash of water if needed. Cover the bowl and leave for an hour. There's no need to knead this dough – just roll it out into a rectangle about 1.5cm thick, then cut into 1cm strips. Using your hands, roll these into long, pencil-thick rods and place on trays lined with nonstick baking paper. Heat the oven to 170C (150C fan-assisted)/335F/gas mark 3, and bake for 30-40 minutes, until crisp and golden.
It is a wonderfully oniony pizza from southern France, it is delicious, and you can make it from stuff you normally have knocking about in the cupboards. Serves four to six.
For the dough 125g plain flour 125g strong white bread flour 1 tsp fine sea salt ½ tsp fast-action yeast 160ml warm water 1 tbsp olive oil, plus a little more for oiling the bowl and tin
For the topping 3 tbsp olive oil 1kg onions (about 4 big ones), peeled, halved and very thinly sliced A pinch of salt 3 garlic cloves, peeled, halved and finely sliced 8-10 anchovy fillets in oil 1 small handful black olives – nyons are perfect 2 tsp capers, drained and rinsed (optional) 1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves Freshly ground black pepper
Combine the flours, salt and yeast in a large bowl, add the water and oil, and mix to a rough dough. Turn out on to a lightly floured surface and knead until silky and elastic, about 10 minutes. Put in a lightly oiled bowl, turn to coat, cover with cling-film and leave in a warm place to rise for an hour, until doubled in size.
While the dough is rising, make the topping. Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Add the onions and a good pinch of salt, and cook very gently, partially covered, over a very low heat, stirring occasionally, for about 50 minutes – they should be meltingly soft, golden and translucent, but not browned. Stir in the garlic for a minute or two, and remove from the heat.
Heat the oven to 220C/425F/gas mark 7 and lightly oil a shallow, rectangular baking tin or similar.
Punch down the risen dough and turn out on to a lightly floured surface. Knead it briefly, then roll out quite thinly and line the tin, pressing the dough up the sides. Brush with a little olive oil, then spread the onions over the base and scatter the anchovies, olives, capers and thyme over the top, before trickling over a tablespoon or two of oil from the anchovy tin. Grind on some pepper and bake for 20-25 minutes, until the crust is slightly browned. Serve hot, warm or cold.
Delicious on its own with bread or toast, but also a versatile ingredient to add an olivey bite to all sorts of other dishes. To make it vegetarian, leave out the anchovies. Makes 400g.
2 garlic cloves, minced Juice and grated zest of ½ lemon 2 tbsp salted capers, soaked in water for 10 minutes, drained and rinsed 6 anchovy fillets in oil, drained 2 tsp fresh thyme leaves, chopped ¼ tsp chilli flakes (optional) 400g oil-cured green olives, drained and pitted Up to 100ml extra-virgin olive oil Freshly ground black pepper
Put the garlic, juice and zest, capers, anchovies, thyme and chilli in a food processor and pulse until well blended. Add the olives and pulse to a coarse paste. Slowly pour the oil through the feed tube, pulsing as you go, until it's the texture you like – you may not need all the oil. Taste and add black pepper if necessary.
Five things to do with tapenade:
• Push under the skin of a chicken before roasting it.
• Mix a few tablespoons with breadcrumbs and spread over breast of lamb before rolling and roasting.
• Serve on crostini with some crumbled soft goat's cheese.
• Toss with just-cooked potatoes as a salad to go with grilled sardines.
• Brush over a sheet of bought puff pastry, roll up, cut into thin rounds and bake at 200C/400F/gas mark 6 for 12 minutes, until puffed and golden. Serve as a nibble with drinks.
Intouchables: 'Is this the new Amélie?, a critic asks.
It's the surprise French box office hit of the year: a caustic comedy about a quadriplegic aristocrat and his awkward, black home-help from one of Paris's poor, suburban high-rise ghettoes.
Intouchables – or the Untouchables – has confounded French critics who dreaded the possibility of a cliche-ridden, ham-fisted take on the poor suburban "banlieue", race and disability. Instead, the film has been hailed as a masterpiece, and the comedy of the year. It sold 2m tickets in under a week. Paris crowds are queueing around the block and pre-booking tickets. It is set to open in 40 countries, including the United States in March, where Harvey Weinstein has bought an option for an American remake.
"Is this the new Amélie?" asked the daily Liberation, comparing it to the whimsical French romantic comedy that captivated foreign audiences 10 years ago. Critics are drawing another comparison with the recent comedy hit about hard done-by French northerners, Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis.
Based on a true story, Intouchables tells how a millionaire left quadriplegic after an accident – played French arthouse cinema star, Francois Cluzet – hires the unlikely home-help, Driss, who is from the poor suburbs and just out of prison. It is described as "a feelgood buddy movie" of friendship across the race divide, but also as Le Monde put it, an uncomfortable reminder of modern France, "a society running at two speeds": white Paris bourgeoisie and the deprived, multiracial banlieues.
After less than a week on cinema screens, the film is already being saluted for revolutionising how French society views itself. Five years after riots ravaged the high-rise ghettoes and led to a state of national emergency, little has been done to assuage the hopelessness of a generation of young French people ghettoised and marginalised because of their skin colour or parent's immigrant origins. Mainstream French cinema has barely broached the subject since the 1995 acclaimed black and white film La Haine, or Hate, directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, with rare recent exceptions like the across-the-divide farce, Neuilly Sa Mère!, directed by Gabriel Julien-Laferrière.
Omar Sy, the wisecracking young actor taking his first big film role in Intouchables, has been championed by papers like Le Monde as one of the only black actorsin French cinema, which lags behind the US on providing racially diverse roles. "He is our Eddie Murphy," announced Le Figaro's critic Eric Neuhoff.
Sy, who is from a large family of African-origin, grew up on a high-rise estate in Yvelines outside Paris and for the past five years has been one half of a duo in a comedy sketch slot on the French premium pay television channel Canal Plus.
"I don't want to be seen as the only black. I'm just another guy," he has said. However, he claims that more than his race, he feels a sense of responsibility towards depicting the banlieue fairly. He felt the suburban ghettoes have got worse in recent years. "We knew it would be difficult, that we'd have to fight twice as hard as anyone else, but we had dreams. Now [the young people] don't even allow themselves that," he said.
Patrick Lozes, the former head of Cran, France's umbrella group of black associations, and now seeking to stand for president to defend diversity, said: "This film is a very rare, positive story which gives a favourable image of these estates, showing that they are part of little France like any other place, with their problems and difficulties, but happiness too. I know from my own story – growing up on an estate with a divorced, single mother, that this film can give hope. Omar Sy's character is a positive and a first. There will be a before and an after this character in French cinema."
The hit comes after a good run of French films inspired by real-life stories in recent months, notably La Guerre est déclarée, the acclaimed story of a young couple facing the cancer of their child, and Polisse, a Cannes film festival success about the daily life of a police brigade dealing with the protection of young children.
Christophe Narbonne, a film critic at the French magazine Premiere, said Intouchables was a sensation because of good writing, acting and directing but also its subtle, British-style humour.
"In France we're used to popular homegrown French comedy, specific French gags and easy laughs. This is very Anglo-Saxon slapstick, a humour which is both absurd and subtle, something which is working more and more in France today," said Narbonne.
pour vous encourager à réaliser les recettes en anglais de mon blog, je vous envoie deux fiches de vocabulaire
Pour avoir un document de meilleure qualité: cliquez sur la fiche du blog, puis faites copier-coller sur la 2ème image qui s'affichera, collez le document en format paysage. Enjoy your cooking!!!!
Flood waters submerge homes in the town of Ipswich, west of Brisbane, in this year's extreme flooding in Australia. Photograph: Dave Hunt/AAP/Press Association Images
There's a sound rule for reporting weather events that may be related to climate change. You can't say that a particular heatwave or a particular downpour – or even a particular freeze – was definitely caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. But you can say whether these events are consistent with predictions, or that their likelihood rises or falls in a warming world.
Weather is a complex system. Long-running trends, natural fluctuations and random patterns are fed into the global weather machine, and it spews out a series of events. All these events will be influenced to some degree by global temperatures, but it's impossible to say with certainty that any of them would not have happened in the absence of man-made global warming.
But over time, as the data build up, we begin to see trends which suggest that rising temperatures are making a particular kind of weather more likely to occur. One such trend has now become clearer. Two new papers, published by Nature, should make us sit up, as they suggest for the first time a clear link between global warming and extreme precipitation (precipitation means water falling out of the sky in any form: rain, hail or snow).
One paper, by Seung-Ki Min and others, shows that rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have caused an intensification of heavy rainfall events over some two-thirds of the weather stations on land in the northern hemisphere. The climate models appear to have underestimated the contribution of global warming on extreme rainfall: it's worse than we thought it would be.
None of this should be surprising. As Richard Allan points out, also in Nature, the warmer the atmosphere is, the more water vapour it can carry. There's even a formula which quantifies this: 6-7% more moisture in the air for every degree of warming near the Earth's surface. But both models and observations also show changes in the distribution of rainfall, with moisture concentrating in some parts of the world and fleeing from others: climate change is likely to produce both more floods and more droughts.
We still can't say that any given weather event is definitely caused by man-made global warming. But we can say, with an even higher degree of confidence than before, that climate change makes extreme events more likely to happen.
An environmental services worker picks up a dead bird in Beebe, Arkansas, after more than 1,000 dead birds fell from the sky. Photograph: Warren Watkins/AP
Wildlife experts are trying to determine what caused more than 1,000 blackbirds to die and fall from the sky over the town of Beebe in Arkansas.
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said it began receiving reports about the dead birds at about 11.30pm on Friday.
The birds fell over a one-mile area, and an aerial survey indicated that no other dead birds were found outside that area. Ornithologist Karen Rowe said the the birds showed physical trauma, and she speculated that "the flock could have been hit by lightning or high-altitude hail". The dead birds have been sent for testing. The commission said that New Year's Eve fireworks celebrations could have startled the birds from their roost and caused them to die from stress. The dead birds have been sent for testing.
During the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, many people sailed from England to America and started a new life there. New homes like this in other countries were called colonies. The King of England was still king of the people in the colonies, and so they had to send money (taxes) to England every year. But the thirteen American colonies wanted to be free from England; they wanted their government to be in America. They did not want to send money to England and were very angry about this.
In 1770 British soldiers fired guns at some of these pepople in Boston, and in 1773 there was the famous Tea Party. A tea-ship came to Boston and there was a fight about paying taxes on the tea. Three hundred and forty boxes of tea went into the water !Now King Geaoge III and his government were angry too.
On 4 July 1776, Thomas Jefferson and his friends wrote the declaration of Independence in Philadelphia.
The British and the Americans fought each other until 1781 in the American war of Independence. In 1773, both sides agreed to the independence of America, and so THE UNITED OF AMERICA was born.
The first Fourth of July celebration was in Philadelphiain 1777, the ships fired their guns and there was a lot of noise. Now every year on the Fourth of July, Americans celebrate Independence Day.
There are special church services at this time, but most of the celebrations are outside because it is in summer. Many families barbecue, eat and play games outside, in their gardens or in a park.
In many towns there are parades through the streets with loud music and bright colours.
The red, white and blue American flag flies everywhere. It has fifty stars and thirteen stripes ( seven red, six white). The fifty stars are for the fifty states in the United States, and the thirteen stripes are for the first thirteen states. The flag has changed many times, every time a new state join the USA, but the flag which you can see today goes back to the Fourth of July 1960.
Independence Day usually ends with lots of fireworks. it is like one big party.
South Africa beyond the World Cup: hiking in the wild east
Gavin Bell reveals South Africa's wild east coast, on a hiking trip to villages unchanged since Nelson Mandela grew up there
The Guardian, Saturday 5 June 2010
South Africa's wild east coast. Photograph: Heinrich Van Den Berg/Getty Images/Gallo Images
The man who became a legend recalled the carefree days of his youth, gathering wild honey and fruits, drinking warm milk from the udder of a cow, and swimming in clear, cold streams. "From these days I date my love of the veld, of open spaces, of the simple beauties of nature, the clean line of the horizon." Thus wrote Nelson Mandela in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, of his childhood in Transkei, where Xhosa tribes have lived, hunted and fished among green hills between the Drakensberg mountains and the Indian ocean for 1,000 years.
Not much has changed. Some hilltop villages now have electricity, most have running water, and a few people have cars that jolt along dusty, unpaved roads. But the rural heartland of the Eastern Cape is much as Mandela left it, a patchwork of subsistence farming communities scattered over a land of tumultuous beauty. The hills rear and plunge in endless vistas of ridges and river gorges.
The few tourists that venture here are drawn by hiking trails along the well named Wild Coast, and by end-of-the-road backpackers' hostels favoured by the beads-and-bangles brigade. There are no big resorts or shopping malls, and the rare paved roads are obstacle courses of people, pot-holes and livestock. Once there was a network of hikers' huts, but in the 90s they fell into disrepair and gradually became derelict. So when my wife proposed a five-day trek along the coast I was less than enthusiastic. "We can stay in Xhosa villages," she announced, "in traditional rondavels, and eat local food."
I'll be honest. I didn't fancy it – lugging a rucksack for upwards of eight miles a day over serious hills, and who knew what dinner would be like? As a journalist I'd covered bloody conflicts in the final days of apartheid, and now South Africa had one of the world's highest rates of violent crime, right? Well, yes, she said, but we'll have guides, and anyway these people are farmers, not muggers. We'll be fine.
One thing about wandering off the beaten track is the characters you meet. Thea Lombard is a single, white 59-year-old Afrikaner woman who sold an award-winning guesthouse in the Western Cape to buy a dilapidated fruit farm off a dirt track near the end of a dead end road in the middle of nowhere. The last bit is not strictly true. The farm is actually in the hills about six miles from Port St Johns, our departure point, overlooking a bend in the mighty Umzimvubu river, the third-biggest in South Africa. With the help of an odd assortment of waifs and strays, Thea has transformed these rooms with a view into a funky lodge and culinary haven in harmony with the subtropical forest around it. Just ask the sunbirds which turn up for breakfast.
"I've nearly had four head-on collisions here today," Thea laughs as she steers us up the dirt track to her Wild Coast Kitchen & Country Lodge. "I keep thinking this is my driveway, but it's actually a road. My poor neighbours," she cackles again, hooting and waving at one in an oncoming 4X4 who swerves and waves back.
Character number two turns up next morning. Sebenzile "Jimmy" Selani is a local boy who won a national tourist guide award and set up his own hiking and canoeing business. He is our guide and interpreter on the first day's hike, and along the way he fills us in on life in post-apartheid South Africa.
It's not all good news. "Mr Mandela stayed in prison for 27 years for a good cause. Now some politicians, instead of taking the baton from Mr Mandela to continue the race, are just sitting under trees enjoying the fruits of his misery. If you go to the townships you see nothing much has changed."
Jimmy affirms that racism is alive and well in the Rainbow Nation, and doesn't expect it to disappear in his lifetime. "I think whites are beginning to come out of their shells, but it takes time to gain trust. Freedom is not for our generation. It is for our children and their children."
The wind catches his words and carries them over sand dunes above a deserted beach pounded by huge Atlantic rollers. This is the domain of humpback whales and fish eagles, and thousands of dolphins feeding on an annual migration of sardines.
Jimmy sportingly volunteers to carry my pack, and mentions that I can probably hire a porter in the next village for the remainder of the hike. It's a good way for the locals to earn a bit of extra cash, he says. My social conscience gratefully accepts this opportunity to contribute to the local economy, and my wife enters into the communal spirit of the thing by allowing me to carry her day pack.
Our porter's name is John Mbuzeni, a truck mechanic who is spending the new year holidays in his home village of Madakeni. We are introduced to his mother, Sophelina, who lives in her compound of thatched huts with 19 children and grandchildren, and a menagerie of dogs, goats, chickens and three cows. By her front door is a vegetable patch where she grows enough maize, pumpkins, spinach, bananas, guavas and paw-paw to feed them all.
"Life is better than before," she assures us. "Then it was very difficult to come close to white people. We would go to sell fish, but they didn't want to come close to us. It was unheard of for white people to live in our homes, but they have changed a lot and now they are welcome among us. This
Our beds in Madakeni are mattresses on the floor of a spotlessly clean rondavel, a traditional circular dwelling of mud and straw that is airy and cool, with a window looking out to sea. Next door is a simple hut with toilet and shower, and a kitchen where a young woman prepares us a fine meal of chicken with rice.
It may feel like the end of the world, but it isn't. Every village has a spaza, a store selling basic provisions including, happily, cold beer. We sit on plastic chairs by our door, slaking our thirsts and watching the village and the sun winding down for the day.
There are similarities to Scottish crofting townships – smallholdings with rough pastures, old fences in need of repair, livestock grazing by the shore, odd bits of disused machinery, and a sense of life reduced to simple necessities. As night falls there is a comforting buzz of humanity, the refrain of shared lives.
The hills are not so tough, especially when a strapping lad is shouldering your pack. For the next four days we wander over hill and dale, following the coast over rocky headlands and along beaches deserted save for cows lolling in the warm sand. There are broad river estuaries to be crossed, and ferrymen waiting with rickety old wooden rowing boats. We take our turn, with local women carrying sun umbrellas, and sometimes children swim beside us for the fun of it.
Youths before and after their initiation rite. Photograph: Gavin Bell
The landscapes conjure illusions. Look one way and there is a vision of Brazilian rainforest; look the other and it could be the Yorkshire Dales. Then from a ridge there is a panorama of hills dotted with villages like an illustration of Africa in a children's storybook. This is Pondoland, home of the Amapondo people, neighbours to the Thembu tribe of Mandela, where traditional lifestyles are still valued. We meet two young men, naked save for woollen blankets, painted head to toe with white clay. They are in the final phase of an initiation ceremony to manhood, involving circumcision and rituals aimed at ensuring prowess as hunters. Minutes later we encounter another group of youths, this time in smart check suits and hats. They have just completed the initiation process, and for the next six months will strut around in their finery to celebrate it.
The next day we pass women walking to the sea to collect mussels, and watch young boys diving for crayfish. Then we hear sharp whistles and see a man with a pack of dogs hunting springbok. For lunch, our guide buys freshly caught crayfish and sea bream from a fisherman and cooks them over a wood fire on the beach. Nearby, a gaggle of children splash in a rock pool like happy brown seals.
Later my wife offers a greeting in Xhosa to a woman as we approach a village where we are to spend the night and is rewarded with a laugh and a cheery reply in English: "You are very welcome. There is no crime in this place – just feel free and enjoy yourself."
We do. The highlight is a song and dance performance by girls from the village school, choreographed by an older girl blowing a whistle and accompanied by another banging sticks on a plastic fuel can. The foot stomping, high-kicking routines have passed down through generations.
Electricity has not reached this village, so we go to bed by candlelight, lulled by the sea and a low murmur of voices. Our alarm call is crowing cocks, a lamb bleating, and an inquisitive monkey scratching at the door. Other memories linger: of tame zebras grazing in a nature reserve, the best spicy fish stew I've ever tasted, cooked on an open fire, and barefoot children running on the veld, free as the wind. Mandela would have loved it. is good for us all."
Deepwater Horizon: Guardian web users' solutions to the oil spill
The best of the ideas for tackling the Deepwater Horizon disaster, assessed by Professor Geoffrey Maitland of Imperial College London
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 June 2010 20.37 BST
Gas from the damaged Deepwater Horizon wellhead is burned by the drillship Discoverer Enterprise in a process known as flaring. Photograph: Reuters
We asked Prof Geoffrey Maitland, from Imperial College London, to assess the best of the ideas our web users submitted, and which we sent to BP.
Magnetic plug: Powerful fixed magnets to hold magnetic particles in the pipe (Michael C Geraghty, pipework expert).
Advantage: Particles could form into a plug rapidly compared with cement and be a good seal to metallic pipe wall.
Disadvantage: Getting powerful enough magnets in place; only possible on a small part of the exposed wellhead, not under the seabed.
Screw top: Fit a threaded sleeve around the pipe, then screw on a closed valve. (Jeffrey Roddy, patent practitioner).
Advantage: Does not rely on existing pipework and its connections.
Disadvantage: Holding the split pipe by clamps against the high well pressure of oil and gas will be very difficult.
Big shot: An explosively inserted copper plug, shot from a crude cannon (William Jeffrey Jorgensen, rigging, petrochemical and mining worker).
Advantage: Rapid insertion of plug at pressure greater than oil and gas in well.
Disadvantage: Access to well is limited to top of the blowout preventer (BOP), and high risk of blowing off the BOP.
Freeze out: Wrap the pipe with a heat exchanger, then pump in cryogenic fluid to form an ice plug (Michael Cunningham, mechanical engineer).
Advantage: Removal or addition of heat to pipes at the top of the well is easier than injection of fluids.
Disadvantage: Cooling the well fluid with water. Ice may be ejected by flowing oil and gas before it forms a plug.
Snap shut: Use explosives to pinch pipe closed (Rich Pryor, physicist).
Advantage: Fast-acting.
Disadvantage: Pipe leaks too close to the well head to pinch, and has now been cut off. Also risk of further damage.
Burn, baby, burn: Inject oxygen before oil exits and create a giant acetylene-like torch (Walter Vaughan, biochemist).
Advantage: In principle, converts all oil and gas to CO2, water and tar.
Disadvantage: Poor mixing of oil and air/oxygen would allow only partial combustion; high risk of more damage.
Inflatable collar: Insert another pipe into the fractured pipe with an inflatable collar, then inflate to create a seal (Geoff Harris, marine engineer).
Advantage: Rapid sealing mechanism not dependent on setting material or pressure in hole.
Disadvantage: Limited access to the well only the BOP or top kill lines. The gap between drill pipe and the riser will also need to be sealed.
Bubble curtain: Use perforated hoses to create a bubble curtain around the oil slick and contain it for pumping to the surface (Scott Fischer, diver).
Advantage: Not limited by availability of mechanical booms.
Disadvantage: Bubbles unlikely to remain stable, and dispersant will migrate to form oil/water emulsions as with the current slick treatment.
Saint Patrick is believed to have been born in the late fourth century, and is often confused with Palladius, a bishop who was sent by Pope Celestine in 431 to be the first bishop to the Irish believers in Christ.
Saint Patrick was the patron saint and national apostle of Ireland who is credited with bringing christianity to Ireland. Most of what is known about him comes from his two works, the Confessio, a spiritual autobiography, and his Epistola, a denunciation of British mistreatment of Irish christians. Saint Patrick described himself as a "most humble-minded man, pouring forth a continuous paean of thanks to his Maker for having chosen him as the instrument whereby multitudes who had worshipped idols and unclean things had become the people of God."
Saint Patrick is most known for driving the snakes from Ireland. It is true there are no snakes in Ireland, but there probably never have been - the island was separated from the rest of the continent at the end of the Ice Age. As in many old pagan religions, serpent symbols were common and often worshipped. Driving the snakes from Ireland was probably symbolic of putting an end to that pagan practice. While not the first to bring christianity to Ireland, it is Patrick who is said to have encountered the Druids at Tara and abolished their pagan rites. The story holds that he converted the warrior chiefs and princes, baptizing them and thousands of their subjects in the "Holy Wells" that still bear this name.
There are several accounts of Saint Patrick's death. One says that Patrick died at Saul, Downpatrick, Ireland, on March 17, 460 A.D. His jawbone was preserved in a silver shrine and was often requested in times of childbirth, epileptic fits, and as a preservative against the "evil eye." Another account says that St. Patrick ended his days at Glastonbury, England and was buried there. The Chapel of St. Patrick still exists as part of Glastonbury Abbey. Today, many Catholic places of worship all around the world are named after St. Patrick, including cathedrals in New York and Dublin city
Why Saint Patrick's Day? Saint Patrick's Day has come to be associated with everything Irish: anything green and gold, shamrocks and luck. Most importantly, to those who celebrate its intended meaning, St. Patrick's Day is a traditional day for spiritual renewal and offering prayers for missionaries worldwide.
So, why is it celebrated on March 17th? One theory is that that is the day that St. Patrick died. Since the holiday began in Ireland, it is believed that as the Irish spread out around the world, they took with them their history and celebrations. The biggest observance of all is, of course, in Ireland. With the exception of restaurants and pubs, almost all businesses close on March 17th. Being a religious holiday as well, many Irish attend mass, where March 17th is the traditional day for offering prayers for missionaries worldwide before the serious celebrating begins.
In American cities with a large Irish population, St. Patrick's Day is a very big deal. Big cities and small towns alike celebrate with parades, "wearing of the green," music and songs, Irish food and drink, and activities for kids such as crafts, coloring and games. Some communities even go so far as to dye rivers or streams green!
VALENTINE'S Day is a holiday celebrated on February 14. In the West, it is the traditional day on which lovers express their love for each other. They do this by sending cards, presenting flowers or offering confectioneries. The celebration is named after two among the numerous early Christian martyrs called Valentine (St. Valentine). These were Valentine of Rome, a priest who was martyred about AD269, and Valentine of Terni, Bishop of Interamna, about AD197, who was executed during the reign of Emperor Aurellian.
The festival was marked with exchange of love notes. In modern times, Valentine symbols include heart-shaped outlines, doves and the figure of the winged cupid (the Roman god of love). But in the 19th Century, mass-produced greeting cards replaced hand-written notes. However, nothing romantic was found in the biographies of either of these saints. St. Valentine of Rome was linked with romance in the 14th Century, but by then there was no distinction between him and Valentine of Terni.
A version has it that St. Valentine was persecuted as a Christian and interrogated by Emperor Claudius II. Being impressed by Valentine, the Emperor had a discussion with him and wanted to convert him to Roman paganism in order to save him. But Valentine wanted to convert the Emperor instead. For this reason, the Emperor had him executed before which time he was said to have miraculously healed the blind daughter of his jailer. But this had no connection with romantic love. In modern times, it is believed that St. Valentine was against the Emperor's order that young men should remain single so that they could serve in the army. St. Valentine secretly performed wedding ceremonies for young men and so incurred the wrath of the Emperor who jailed him.
On the eve of his execution, St. Valentine was said to have written the first "Valentine" to the blind girl. The letter was closed with "From your first 'Valentine'. They had become friends during his time in jail. Today, a lot of vices are associated with the celebration of this sacred feast. Many forms of sin and/or crime are committed that day. Our youths engage in sexual immorality as a way of expressing their love for their "Valentine." Love is being expressed in a way that portrays hatred for both parties.
People kill and commit suicide as a result of jealousy for a love that is not genuine. Sexual promiscuity is not without its negative effects, ranging from the use of contraceptives (pills and condoms) to the so-called "unwanted" pregnancy and resultant abortion. It must be pointed out that love and life are inseparable, and any act of love must lead to life, otherwise it is not worth undertaking. With the use of contraceptives, you are saying you accept sex but not its natural, in-built consequences; you do not want to be responsible for your action and to face the consequences; you do not want what it was created for; you want to get what you want from it and not allow it do what it ought to do. This is quite illogical. Pre-marital or extra-marital sex is more about holding back than self-giving (some people believe that sex is the ultimate act of self-giving).
It is believed by many that on February 14, you show your partner how much you love him/her through sex. But this actually shows how little you love each other. Sacrifice is what makes a couple great lovers. It is an integral part of love. Therefore, any love relationship that is devoid of sacrifice is not love at all. To sacrifice, you think of the consequences of your action on your partner, not on yourself. Sex outside marriage says, "I love it" instead of "I love you."
Another misconception is the belief that sex is freedom. But sex is bondage in all its ramifications. It instills fear into the partners - Will I get pregnant? Will he stay or leave me? Should we use pills? How about the side effects? What if our condoms burst or leak? How about our parents? What happens to school? ...You are worried about one thing or the other. Extra-marital sex is guilt-laden. It is an action that is always hidden due to the sense of guilt that goes with it.
It is a widely held view that the highest incidence of venereal disease transmission occurs on each year's Valentine day. Among these is the HIV. It is a proven fact that condom does not prevent the transmission of the virus due to its porosity. It can easily tear, leak or pull off, with holes through which many viruses can pass easily. It, therefore, has not been able to stop the spread of venereal diseases and countless "unwanted" pregnancies.
The most unfortunate among these is that many young girls lose their virginity (the pride of womanhood) to men who entice them with their seductive "You are my Valentine." Any young girl who hears this becomes conceited. The men lure them into sex under the guise of celebrating Valentine for them. People with multiple sex partners would actually spend a very busy February 14, doing "ward round" to let each partner think he or she is the only Valentine. What an easy way of circulating diseases; what a terrible way of caring for the beloved; a very nice package for the Valentine?
Love between married, courting, dating (or otherwise) couples is worth celebrating. Our co-existence is nurtured and lubricated with love, without which it loses its meaning. The feast on February 14 should be celebrated with wisdom, rationality, caution and genuine love, both for oneself and others. St. Valentine, being human, could not have known that his noble action would be so misconceived years later. Otherwise, who knows, he could have either kept to himself or not express his sincere, innocent affection for the blind girl, or could not have cared for the girl at all.
The good gesture of St. Valentine should guide February 14. The expression of his love for the blind girl did not involve erotic feelings, infatuation or lust. Our youths and some wayward adults, on February 14 and the days surrounding it, express carnal love to those who have no marital relationship with them. St. Valentine, on that fateful February 14 he was executed, dropped those parting words for the jailer's blind daughter purely without any carnal feelings or an expression of such feelings.
One worrisome fact about this celebration is that people behave as if something terrible will happen to them if they fail to sleep with their sex partners on that day. We should then try to learn from the person we are imitating. To enjoy the fruits of that noble celebration, we have to follow the footsteps of St. Valentine. Virginity is worth protecting. It is so precious one cannot afford to lose it. Parents should, therefore, protect their children from this contagious act of pre-marital sex. When married, one can give self totally, entirely, wholly and guilt-free to one's spouse. If I were to see St. Valentine today, I would tell him to come to our aid; to help us understand his intention, his action and how he expressed it. I would tell him to help us out of this vicious cycle.
New Year’s Eve is on December, the last day before the New Year begins. In many places, people go to parties, bars or restaurants with friends in the evening.
Sometimes they meet outside in a square. In New York, thousands of people go to Times Square. Just before midnight, people look at the clock, and together they count the last ten seconds before The New Year begins : “Ten,nine, eight .. .”
At midnight they stand in a circle, join hands and sing an old song called “Auld Lang Syne”. A Scottish man called Robert BURNS wrote the words of this song about two hundred years ago. It is about remembering old friends. Many people drink a glass of champagne, light some fireworks or dance until the sun comes up.
In Scotland, New Year has a special name : Hogmanay. At Hogmanay, there is a tradtion called the first footing. The first person to come into the house in the New Year is the first foot : if he is tall, dark man, and someone you do not know, he will bring good luck. He must carry some food, some money, or a piece of coal for the fire.
In Edinburgh, there are house parties, Scottish music and dancing, parades and lots of fireworks.
People often eat special food at this time. The traditional Scottish food for festivals is “haggis”, which is like a large sausage, usually made from sheep meat. New Year’s Day is January 1st, the first day of the New Year. It is a holiday for most people, the banks and many shops do not open. Many people go back to work on January 2nd, but in Scotland they have two days’ holiday and go back to work on January 3rd .
At this time of the year, a lot of people make New Year’s Resolutions. They decide to do something different to be a better person. For example, they say :
“I’m going to stop smoking”
“I’m going to learn something new”
“I’m going to work harder”
The shops are very busy in January with January sales. This means things are cheaper than before Christmas, so it is a good time to buy winter clothes.
The first time people see friends in the New Year, they usually say “ Happy New Year!”
In 1604, the king of England was James I and a Protestant. Many people did not like him because they were Catholics and wanted a Catholic king. A Catholic called Guy Fawkes, and his friends, had a plot (a kind of plan) to kill King James and his government, when he opened Parliament in London on 5 November 1605.
They put thirty-six boxes of gunpowder in a room underneath the Houses of Parliament. They wanted to kill everyone at the same time.
But the plan did not work. One of Guy Fawkes’friends wrote a note to someone about it. At about midnight on 4 November, the King’s soldiers found Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder. They sent him to prison but he did not want to give the names of his friends. They did terrible things to him for eight days until he said all their names.
Parliament decided that Guy Fawkes and the other plotters had to die. In January 1606, when people heard the news that the plotters were dead, they made many fires in the streets to celebrate. King James was alive and well !
Every year on 5 November, in most parts of Britain, people build a big fire outside, with all the dead leaves and old pieces of wood they do not want. The fire is called a bonfire. They make a dummy, called a “guy”, of Guy Fawkes, from old clothes.
Sometimes children carry the guy around the streets to show people. They say : “Penny for the guy”, and ask people for money for fireworks. Some people have a bonfire with fireworks in their garden, but fireworks are expensive, so often people club (get together) and have one big party in a park or a field. It is usually very cold in November, so they have hot food and drinks to keep warm.
Many children learn these old words about Guy Fawkes’Day :
The pagans who lived in Britain two thousands years ago celebrated their New Year on November 1st. Then the Christians came and people celebrated “Hallowmas” a three-day festvival between 31 October and 2 November.
October 31st was called All Hallow’s Eve, and slowly the name changed to Hallowe’en.
In November, winter is near, and hundreds of years ago people believed that bad spirits, like ghosts, came in the winter. They wanted the bad spirits to go away, so they made fires outside and used a big autumn fruit or vegetables to make Jack o’ lanterns. The name of “ Jack o’ lantern’ means “Jack of the lantern”. The lantern is a kind of light, and some people think Jack was a nightwatchman who had one of these lights.
To make a jack o’ lantern, people cut a hole in a large fruit – usually a pumpkin – then , they put a candle in the hole and with four holes, they cut a face in the side (two eyes, the nose and a mouth) so the light was more visible.
Another thing people did, to make the bad spirits go away, was to dress like witches and ghosts.
Children still do this if they go to Hallowe’en parties. People often put up decorations ‘pumpkins, spiders webs, ghosts, skeletons, witches ...) for Hallowe’en parties and play games. The decorations are usually black ( symbols of dark nights and death) and orange ( for the autumn vegetables).
One Hallowe’en party game is called “bobbing for apples”. Many apples fall off trees in October so they are easy to find : someone puts water and apples in a big bowls. The apples stay on top of the water. Often someone puts something (a bag) round the first player’s head so he cannot see. The playermust keep his hands behind his back and take an apple out of the water with his teeth. Then the next player tries. The game is sometimes very difficult and players usually get wet !
In Canada and the USA, and sometimes in Britain, children go “trick or treating”. They dress like witches and ghosts, and go to the houses around where they live, often in a small group. When someone answers the door, the children say : “Trick or treat ?”, this means that the person in the house must decide : either they give the children a treat – like fruit, sweets or chocolate – or the children will play a trick on them. For a trick, children sometimes throw something like an egg at the house !
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 13 September 2009 21.45 BST
In order to succeed at Bestival, you need to remember one thing: make people dance. Rob Da Bank's summer swansong is the quintessential product of a decade in which festivals waxed while clubs waned: nightclub flamboyance mutates into fancy dress (space-themed this year) and house music's pleasure principle is encoded into many performers' DNA. Florence and the Machine's stirring version of house anthem You Got the Love supplies the weekend's first big moment, while Lily Allen shoves Smile into full-tilt drum'n'bass and Soulwax's DJ-minded live set recycles great chunks of Justice and Daft Punk.
Bands with less visceral appeal, such as MGMT, are hobbled by dreadful sound and malfunctioning video screens on Friday night. Massive Attack, meanwhile, are reduced to tiny silhouettes generating a distant rumble.
Aside from the headliners, youth dominates. Little Boots arrives for her ebullient techno-pop set dressed as Lady Penelope, backed by Thunderbirds and driving a pink toy car, while Jack Peñate crowns his remarkable reinvention with a triumphant performance: pan-global carnival music shot through with a curious, jittery intensity.
But the festival hits a mesmerising peak with a band who were blueprinting electronic music before most of the other headliners were even born. Rigid as mannequins behind their keyboards, Kraftwerk radiate a powerful anti-charisma, and their music pivots on similar contradictions. They mapped the future by looking extraordinarily closely at their present: tracks are illustrated by video images of such now-quaint wonders as a boxy early 1980s computer. Above the crisply engineered rhythms arc melodies of meditative simplicity and poignant tendresse – love songs to machines. The fancy-dress theme crystallises into a kind of homage: it's not often you get to see robots dancing to The Robots.
