Today, The Morgans and The Grandma visited Neverland to search for the greattreasure that legend says maybe is hiddenon this island.
Neverland is a fictional islandfeatured in the works of J. M. Barrie and those based on them. It is an imaginary faraway place where PeterPan, TinkerBell, Captain Hook, theLost Boys, and some other imaginary beings and creatures live. Although not all people who come to Neverland cease to age, its best-known resident, Peter Pan,famously refused to grow up. Thus, the term is often used as a metaphor for eternal childhood (and childishness), as well as immortality and escapism.
The concept was first introduced as the Never Never Land in Barrie's West End theatre play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, first staged in 1904. In the earliest drafts of the play, the island was called Peter's Never Never Never Land, a name possibly influenced by the Never Never, a contemporary term for outback Australia. In the 1928 published version of the play's script, the name was shortened to the Never Land. Although the caption to one of F. D. Bedford's illustrations also calls it The Never Never Land, Barrie's 1911 novelisation Peter and Wendy simply refers to it as the Neverland, and its many variations the Neverlands.
Neverland has been featured prominently in subsequent works that either adapted Barrie's works or expanded upon them. These Neverlands sometimes vary in nature from the original.
The novel says that the Neverlands are compact enough that adventures are never far between, and that a map of a child's mind would resemble a map of Neverland, with no boundaries at all. Accordingly, Barrie explains that the Neverlands are found in the minds of children; although each is always more or less an island as well as having a family resemblance, they are not the same from one child to the next. For example, John Darling's Neverland had a lagoon with flamingos flying over it, while his little brother Michael's had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it.
The exact situation of Neverland is ambiguous and vague. In Barrie'soriginal tale, the name for the real world is the Mainland, which suggests Neverland is a small island, reached by flight. Peter -who is described as saying anything that came into his head- tells Wendy the way to Neverland is second to the right, and straight on till morning. In the novel, the children are said to have found the island only because it was out looking for them. Barrie additionally writes that Neverland is near the stars of the milky way and it is reached always at the time of sunrise.
In Barrie's Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906), a proto-version of Neverland, located in the Serpentine in Kensington Gardens, is called the Birds' Island, where baby Peter reaches by flight, or by sailing in a paper boat or thrush's nest.
Walt Disney's 1953 Peter Pan adds a star to Peter's directions: second star to the right, and straight on till morning. From afar, these stars depict Neverland in the distance.
The 2003 live-action film repeats this representation, as the Darling children are flown through the Solar System to reach Neverland.
In the 1991 film Hook, Neverland is shown to be located in the same way as the 1953 Disney film. While flying is the only way to reach it, the film does not show exactly how Captain Hook manages to get from Neverland to London in order to kidnap Peter's children, Jack and Maggie.
In Peter Pan in Scarlet (2006), by Geraldine McCaughrean, Neverland is located in waters known as the Sea of One Thousand Islands. The children get to the island by flying on a road called the High Way.
In Peter David's 2009 novel Tigerheart, Neverland is renamed the Anyplace and is described as being both a physical place and a dream land where human adults and children go when they dream. Additionally, there is a location called the Noplace which is cold and devoid of colour where people in a coma and those who are lost live.
In the 2011 miniseries Neverland, inspired by Barrie's works, the titular place is said to be another planet existing at the centre of the universe. It is accessible only via a magic portal generated by a strange sphere.
In the 2015 American film Pan, Neverland is a floating island in a sky-like dimension.
The passage of time in Neverland is similarly ambiguous. The novel Peter and Wendy mentions that in Neverland there are many more suns and moons than on the Mainland, making time difficult to track. One way to tell the time is to find the crocodile, and wait until the clock inside it strikes the hour. Although Neverland is widely thought of as a place where children don't grow up, it is made clear in Peter and Wendy that Lost Boys can grow up and are vaguely thinned out as punishment for doing so. Peter also explains to Wendy that fairies have short lifespans, another temporal confusion.
In Peter Pan in Scarlet (2006), by Geraldine McCaughrean, time freezes as soon as the children arrive in Neverland.
In the 2011 miniseries Neverland, in which Neverland is said to be another planet entirely, time has frozen due to external cosmic forces converging on the planet, preventing anyone living there from ageing.
So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Never Land!
Today, The Morgans and The Grandma have finished their theoretical training in English. They have been intense weeks full of hard work, a lot of effort, commitment, lots of smiles and lots of good times that will always remain in the memory of this fantastic family who will now face the last days of the course preparing Cambridge A2 exam models.
To learn a language there is nothing better than mixing with the community that speaks it, to understand what they are like, because language is the greatest living cultural reflection we have and if we understand how its speakers think, we will understand how they structure and use it.
The Grandma, who loves all languages, has recalled the importance of the Rosetta Stone, one of the great treasures of the British Museum, a stone that reminds us how important it is to know the past and learn from it, knowing that nothing past will ever return, but it will leave us knowledge and memories.
The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in Memphis, Egypt in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes.
The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. The decree has only minor differences between the three versions, making the Rosetta Stone key to deciphering the Egyptian scripts.
The stone was carved during the Hellenistic period
and is believed to have originally been displayed within a temple,
possibly at nearby Sais. It was probably moved in late antiquity or
during the Mameluk period, and was eventually used as building material
in the construction of Fort Julien near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta.
It was discovered there in July 1799 by French officer Pierre-François Bouchard during the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt.
It was the first Ancient Egyptian bilingual text recovered in modern
times, and it aroused widespread public interest with its potential to decipher this previously untranslatedhieroglyphic script.
Lithographic
copies and plaster casts soon began circulating among European museums
and scholars. When the British defeated the French they took the stone
to London under the Capitulation of Alexandria in 1801. It has been on
public display at the British Museum almost continuously since 1802 and is the most visited object there.
Study
of the decree was already underway when the first complete translation
of the Greek text was published in 1803. Jean-François Champollion
announced the transliteration of the Egyptian scripts in Paris in 1822;
it took longer still before scholars were able to read Ancient Egyptian
inscriptions and literature confidently.
Major
advances in the decoding were recognition that the stone offered three
versions of the same text (1799); that the demotic text used phonetic
characters to spell foreign names (1802); that the hieroglyphic text did
so as well, and had pervasive similarities to the demotic (1814); and
that phonetic characters were also used to spell native Egyptian words
(1822–1824).
Three
other fragmentary copies of the same decree were discovered later, and
several similar Egyptian bilingual or trilingual inscriptions are now
known, including three slightly earlier Ptolemaic decrees: the Decree of Alexandria in 243 BC, the Decree of Canopus in 238 BC, and the Memphis decree of Ptolemy IV, c. 218 BC.
The Rosetta Stone is no longer unique, but it was the essential key to the modern understanding of ancient Egyptian literature and civilisation.
The term Rosetta Stone is now used to refer to the essential clue to a new field of knowledge.
The Rosetta Stone is listed as a stone of black granodiorite, bearing threeinscriptions...
found at Rosetta in a contemporary catalogue of the artefacts
discovered by the French expedition and surrendered to British troops in
1801.
At
some period after its arrival in London, the inscriptions were coloured
in white chalk to make them more legible, and the remaining surface was
covered with a layer of carnauba wax designed to protect it from
visitors'fingers.
This
gave a dark colour to the stone that led to its mistaken identification
as black basalt.These additions were removed when the stone was cleaned
in 1999, revealing the original dark grey tint of the rock, the sparkle
of its crystalline structure, and a pink vein running across the top
left corner.
Comparisons with the Klemm collection of Egyptian rock samples showed a close
resemblance to rock from a small granodiorite quarry at Gebel Tingar on
the west bank of the Nile, west of Elephantine in the region of Aswan;
the pink vein is typical of granodiorite from this region.
The Rosetta Stone
is 1,123 millimetres high at its highest point, 757 mm wide, and 284 mm
thick. It weighs approximately 760 kilograms. It bears three
inscriptions: the top register in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the second in the Egyptian Demotic script,and the third in Ancient Greek.
The front surface is polished and the inscriptions lightly incised on
it; the sides of the stone are smoothed, but the back is only roughly
worked, presumably because it would have not been visible when the stele
was erected.
The
Rosetta Stone is a fragment of a larger stele. No additional fragments
were found in later searches of the Rosetta site. Owing to its damaged
state, none of the three texts is complete. The top register, composed
of Egyptian hieroglyphs, suffered the most damage. Only the last 14
lines of the hieroglyphic text can be seen; all of them are broken on
the right side, and 12 of them on the left. Below it, the middle
register of demotic text has survived best; it has 32 lines, of which
the first 14 are slightly damaged on the right side. The bottom register
of Greek text contains 54 lines, of which the first 27 survive in full;
the rest are increasingly fragmentary due to a diagonal break at the
bottom right of the stone.
The full length of the hieroglyphic text
and the total size of the original stele, of which the Rosetta Stone is a
fragment, can be estimated based on comparable stelae that have
survived, including other copies of the same order.
The
slightly earlier decree of Canopus, erected in 238 BC during the reign
of Ptolemy III, is 2,190 millimetres high and 820 mm wide, and contains
36 lines of hieroglyphic text, 73 of demotic text, and 74 of Greek. The
texts are of similar length. From such comparisons, it can be estimated
that an additional 14 or 15 lines of hieroglyphic inscription are
missing from the top register of the RosettaStone, amounting to another
300 millimetres.
In
addition to the inscriptions, there would probably have been a scene
depicting the king being presented to the gods, topped with a winged
disc, as on the Canopus Stele. These parallels, and a hieroglyphic sign
for stela on the stone itself, suggest that it originally had a
rounded top.The height of the original stele is estimated to have been
about 149 centimetres.
The
stele was erected after the coronation of King Ptolemy V and was
inscribed with a decree that established the divine cult of the new
ruler. The decree was issued by a congress of priests who gathered at
Memphis. The date is given as 4 Xandikos in the Macedonian calendar
and 18 Mekhir in the Egyptian calendar, which corresponds to 27 March
196 BC. The year is stated as the ninth year of Ptolemy V's reign,
equated with 197/196 BC, which is confirmed by naming four priests who
officiated in that year: Aetos son of Aetos was priest of the divine
cults of Alexander the Great and the five Ptolemies down to Ptolemy V
himself; the other three priests named in turn in the inscription are
those who led the worship of Berenice Euergetis (wife of Ptolemy III),
Arsinoe Philadelphos (wife and sister of Ptolemy II), and Arsinoe
Philopator, mother of Ptolemy V.
However,
a second date is also given in the Greek and hieroglyphic texts,
corresponding to 27 November 197 BC, the official anniversary of
Ptolemy's coronation. The demotic text conflicts with this, listing
consecutive days in March for the decree and the anniversary. It is
uncertain why this discrepancy exists, but it is clear that the decree
was issued in 196 BC and that it was designed to re-establish the rule
of the Ptolemaic kings over Egypt.
Napoleon's 1798 campaign in Egypt inspired a burst of Egyptomania in Europe, and especially France.
A corps of 167 technical experts (savants), known as the Commission des
Sciences et des Arts, accompanied the French expeditionary army to
Egypt.
On
15 July 1799, French soldiers under the command of Colonel d'Hautpoul
were strengthening the defences of Fort Julien, a couple of miles
north-east of the Egyptian port city of Rosetta, modern-day Rashid. Lieutenant Pierre-FrançoisBouchard
spotted a slab with inscriptions on one side that the soldiers had
uncovered. He and d'Hautpoul saw at once that it might be important and
informed General Jacques-François Menou, who happened to be at Rosetta.
The
find was announced to Napoleon's newly founded scientific association
in Cairo, the Institut d'Égypte, in a report by Commission member Michel
Ange Lancret noting that it contained three inscriptions, the first in
hieroglyphs and the third in Greek, and rightly suggesting that the
three inscriptions were versions of the same text.
Lancret's
report, dated 19 July 1799, was read to a meeting of the Institute soon
after 25 July. Bouchard, meanwhile, transported the stone to Cairo for
examination by scholars. Napoleon himself inspected what had already
begun to be called la Pierre de Rosette, the Rosetta Stone, shortly
before his return to France in August 1799.
After the surrender, a dispute arose over the fate of the French archaeological and scientific discoveries in Egypt,
including the artefacts, biological specimens, notes, plans, and
drawings collected by the members of the commission. Menou refused to
hand them over, claiming that they belonged to the institute. British
General John Hely-Hutchinson refused to end the siege until Menou gave
in.
Scholars
Edward Daniel Clarke and William Richard Hamilton, newly arrived from
England, agreed to examine the collections in Alexandria and claimed to
have found many artefacts that the French had not revealed. In a letter
home, Clarke said that we found much more in their possession than was represented or imagined.
Hutchinson
claimed that all materials were property of the British Crown, but
French scholar Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire told Clarke and Hamilton
that the French would rather burn all their discoveries than turn them
over, referring ominously to the destruction of the Library of
Alexandria. Clarke and Hamilton pleaded the French scholars' case to
Hutchinson, who finally agreed that items such as natural history
specimens would be considered the scholars' private property.
Menou
quickly claimed the stone, too, as his private property. Hutchinson was
equally aware of the stone's unique value and rejected Menou's claim.
Eventually an agreement was reached, and the transfer of the objects was
incorporated into the Capitulation of Alexandria signed by representatives of the British, French, and Ottoman forces.
It
is not clear exactly how the stone was transferred into British hands,
as contemporary accounts differ. Colonel Tomkyns Hilgrove Turner, who
was to escort it to England, claimed later that he had personally seized
it from Menou and carried it away on a gun-carriage.
In
a much more detailed account, Edward Daniel Clarke stated that a French officer and member of the Institute had taken him, his student John
Cripps, and Hamilton secretly into the back streets behind Menou's
residence and revealed the stone hidden under protective carpets among
Menou's baggage. According to Clarke, their informant feared that the
stone might be stolen if French soldiers saw it. Hutchinson was informed
at once and the stone was taken away -possibly by Turner and his
gun-carriage.
The stone has been exhibited almost continuously in the British Museum since June 1802.
Prior
to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and its eventual decipherment,
the ancient Egyptian language and script had not been understood since
shortly before the fall of the Roman Empire.
The usage of the hieroglyphic script
had become increasingly specialised even in the later Pharaonic period;
by the 4th century AD, few Egyptians were capable of reading them.
Monumental
use of hieroglyphs ceased as temple priesthoods died out and Egypt was
converted to Christianity; the last known inscription is dated to 24
August 394, found at Philae and known as the Graffito of Esmet-Akhom.
The last demotic text, also from Philae, was written in 452.
The Greek text on the Rosetta Stone provided the starting point.
Ancient Greek was widely known to scholars, but they were not familiar
with details of its use in the Hellenistic period as a government
language in Ptolemaic Egypt; large-scale discoveries of Greek papyri
were a long way in the future.
At
the time of the stone's discovery, Swedish diplomat and scholar Johan
David Åkerblad was working on a little-known script of which some
examples had recently been found in Egypt, which came to be known as
demotic. He called it cursive Coptic because he was
convinced that it was used to record some form of the Coptic language,
the direct descendant of Ancient Egyptian, although it had few
similarities with the later Coptic script.
In
1811, prompted by discussions with a Chinese student about Chinese
script, Silvestre de Sacy considered a suggestion made by Georg Zoëga in
1797 that the foreign names in Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions might
be written phonetically; he also recalled that as early as 1761,
Jean-Jacques Barthélemy had suggested that the characters enclosed in
cartouches in hieroglyphicinscriptions were proper names.
Thus, when Thomas Young, foreign secretary of the Royal Society of
London, wrote to him about the stone in 1814, Silvestre de Sacy
suggested in reply that in attempting to read the hieroglyphic text, Young might look for cartouches that ought to contain Greek names and try to identify phonetic characters in them.
Calls for the Rosetta Stone to be returned to Egypt were made
in July 2003 by Zahi Hawass, then Secretary-General of Egypt's Supreme
Council of Antiquities. These calls, expressed in the Egyptian and
international media, asked that the stele be repatriated to Egypt,
commenting that it was the icon of our Egyptian identity.
He
repeated the proposal two years later in Paris, listing the stone as
one of several key items belonging to Egypt's cultural heritage, a list
which also included: the iconic bust of Nefertiti in the Egyptian Museum
of Berlin; a statue of the Great Pyramid architect Hemiunu in the
Roemer-und-Pelizaeus-Museum in Hildesheim, Germany; the Dendera Temple
Zodiac in the Louvre in Paris; and the bust of Ankhhaf in the Museum of
Fine Arts in Boston.
Yesterday, The Morgans and TheGrandma visited Wallsend, an Englishtown known for one of their favourite sons: Sting. The family had a fantastic day in the company of this exceptional musician, who made them walk on the moon.
Today, The Morgans have studied English grammar with the PastContinuous and Some & Any Compounds.They have finished the grammatical part and will spend more time listening, reading and speaking.
Sting, whose real name is Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, is an English musician, singer-songwriter, actor, and activist. He was born in 1951 in Wallsend, England, and became famous as the lead singer, bassist, and principal songwriter of the rock band The Police. The group achieved worldwide success between the late 1970s and early 1980s with hits such as Every Breath You Take, Roxanne, and Message in a Bottle.
After the breakup of The Police in the mid-1980s, Sting launched a highly successful solo career. His music combines many styles, including rock, pop, jazz, reggae, classical, and world music. Some of his best-known solo songs include Englishman in New York, Fields of Gold, and Shape of My Heart. Over his career, he has sold more than 100 million records both as a solo artist and with The Police.
Sting has received numerous awards and honours, including 17 Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe, an Emmy, and several Oscar nominations. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of The Police in 2003 and has also received recognition for his contributions to music and humanitarian causes.
Beyond music, Sting has acted in films and theatre productions and is known for his activism on environmental and human rights issues. He has also supported rainforest conservation projects and other charitable causes throughout his career.
The Police was a British rock band formed in London in 1977 by Sting, Andy Summers, and Stewart Copeland. They became one of the most influential and successful bands of the late 1970s and early 1980s thanks to their unique mix of punk, reggae, jazz, and pop-rock.
Their debut album, Outlandos d’Amour (1978), included hits such as Roxanne and Can’t Stand Losing You, which helped launch their international career. Later albums like Reggatta de Blanc, Zenyatta Mondatta, Ghost in the Machine, and especially Synchronicity (1983) made them global superstars. Their best-known song, Every Breath You Take, became one of the biggest hits of the decade.
The band was admired for combining catchy pop melodies with sophisticated musicianship. Sting's distinctive vocals and songwriting, Summers's atmospheric guitar style, and Copeland’s energetic drumming created a sound that strongly influenced later rock and pop artists.
Despite their enormous success, tensions within the group led to their breakup in 1984, with Sting later pursuing a highly successful solo career. The band reunited briefly in 1986 and again for a major world tour in 2007-2008.
Overall, The Police sold more than 75 million records worldwide, won several Grammy Awards, and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003. They remain one of the defining bands of the new wave era.
Yesterday, The Morgans and TheGrandma met TheRolling Stones, one of the best rock bands of all time, in HydePark.
It was a fantastic meeting where they were able to talk about the origins of the band and their great songs, especially As Tears Go Byone of the most beautiful songs ever written about childhood and memories of the past, wonderfully performed by MarianneFaithfull.
Today, the family has been reminiscing about yesterday's fantastic encounter before reviewing some English grammar with the Past Simple(Irregular Forms) and Had/Didn't have.
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band formed in London in 1962. Active across seven decades, they are one of the most popular and enduring bands of the rock era.
In
the early 1960s, the band pioneered the gritty, rhythmically driven
sound that came to define hard rock. Their first stable line-up
consisted of vocalist MickJagger, guitarist Keith Richards, multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones, bassist Bill Wyman, and drummer Charlie Watts. During their early years, Jones was the primary leader of the band.
After Andrew Loog Oldham became the group's manager in 1963, he encouraged them to write their own songs. The Jagger-Richards
partnership became the band's primary songwriting and creative force;
this alienated Jones, who developed a drug addiction that by 1968
interfered with his ability to contribute meaningfully.
Rooted in blues and early rock and roll, the Rolling Stones
started out playing covers and were at the forefront of the British
Invasion in 1964, becoming identified with the youthful counterculture
of the 1960s. They then found greater success with their own material,
as (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, Get Off of My Cloud (both 1965), and Paint It Black
(1966) became international number-one hits. Aftermath (1966), their
first entirely original album, is often considered to be the most
important of their early albums.
In 1967, they had the double-sided hit Ruby Tuesday/Let's Spend the Night Together and experimented with psychedelic rock on Their Satanic Majesties Request.
By the end of the 1960s, they had returned to their rhythm and blues-based rock sound, with hit singles Jumpin' Jack Flash (1968) and Honky Tonk Women (1969), and albums Beggars Banquet (1968), featuring Sympathy for the Devil and Street Fighting Man, and Let It Bleed (1969), featuring You Can't Always Get What You Want and Gimme Shelter.
Jones left the band shortly before his death in 1969, having been replaced by guitarist Mick Taylor. That year they were first introduced on stage as the greatest rock and roll band in the world.
Sticky Fingers (1971), which yielded Brown Sugar and Wild Horses
and included the first usage of their tongue and lips logo, was their
first of eight consecutive number-one studio albums in the US. It was
followed by Exile on Main St. (1972), featuring Tumbling Dice and Happy and Goats Head Soup (1973), featuring Angie.
Taylor left the band at the end of 1974, and was replaced by Ronnie Wood. The band released Some Girls in 1978, featuring Miss You, and Tattoo You in 1981, featuring Start Me Up.
Steel Wheels (1989) was widely considered a comeback album and was followed by Voodoo Lounge (1994). Both releases were promoted by large stadium and arena tours, as the Stones
continued to be a huge concert attraction; by 2007 they had recorded
the all-time highest-grossing concert tour three times, and they were
the highest-earning live act of 2021.
Following
Wyman's departure in 1993, the band continued as a four-piece core,
with Darryl Jones becoming their regular bassist, and then as a
three-piece core following Watts' death in 2021, with Steve Jordan
becoming their regular drummer. Hackney Diamonds, the band's first new
album of original material in 18 years, was released in October 2023,
becoming their fourteenth UK number-one album.
The Rolling Stones'
estimated record sales of 200 million make them one of the best-selling
music artists of all time. They have won three Grammy Awards and a
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2004.
Billboard and Rolling Stone have ranked them as one of the greatest artists of all time.
Yesterday, The Morgans and The Grandma were evoking the past, remembering good times and great friends, and looking back is always thinking about yesterday.
Today, they all have continued studying English grammar with PastSimple(Regular Verbs), Used to and So/Such.
It has been an intense session for a family that continues working on the birthdaycelebration party of Cristina Morgan and Vanessa Morgan next week in Kingston, Jamaica.
Happy birthday, sisters!
Yesterday is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon-McCartney. It was first released on the album Help! in August 1965,
except in the United States, where it was issued as a single in
September. The song reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100
chart. It subsequently appeared on the UK EP Yesterday in March 1966 and
made its US album debut on Yesterday and Today, in June 1966.
Yesterday is a melancholic ballad about the break-up of a relationship.The singer nostalgically laments for yesterday when he and his love were together before she left because of something he said.
McCartney is the only member of the Beatles to appear on the track. The final recording was so different from other works by the Beatles
that the band members vetoed the song's release as a single in the
United Kingdom. However, other artists quickly recorded versions of it
for single release. The Beatles'recording was issued in the U.K. as a single in 1976 and peaked at number 8 on the UK Singles Chart.
Yesterday All my troubles seemed so far away Now it looks as though they're here to stay Oh, I believe in yesterday
Suddenly I'm not half the man I used to be There's a shadow hanging over me Oh, yesterday came suddenly
Why she had to go? I don't know She wouldn't say I said something wrong, now I long For yesterday
Yesterday Love was such an easy game to play Now I need a place to hide away Oh, I believe in yesterday
Why she had to go? I don't know She wouldn't say I said something wrong, now I long For yesterday
Yesterday Love was such an easy game to play Now I need a place to hide away Oh, I believe in yesterday
After an intense weekend visiting MountSaint Michel in Normandy, today, TheMorgans and The Grandma havereturned to London and they have met Adele, one of the best singers of all time. They have been very excited and happy.
Before this wonderful visit, the family has studied some English grammar with ToBe (Past) and Could/Couldn't, and they have talked about the importance of school and teaching to create critical citizens.
I remember when I was a teenager. After leaving my hometown, Andorra La Vella, my familyand I lived in a little town in the Garraf coast near Barcelona.
It was a fishermen village with large beaches of white sand and a quiet sea.
We were very young and ourstory wasvery short, but I still remember him, I still remember when we were young. Now, he is like a shadow that accompanies meeverywhere. I will never forget him. He will be always on my mind and my memories.
The Grandma
Adele Laurie Blue Adkins (born 5 May 1988), known mononymously as Adele, is an English singer-songwriter. She is known for her mezzo-soprano vocals and sentimental songwriting.
Adele
has received numerous accolades including 16 Grammy Awards, 12 Brit
Awards (including three for British Album of the Year), an Academy
Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Golden Globe Award.
After graduating in arts from the BRIT School in 2006, Adele signed a record deal with XL Recordings. Her debut album, 19, was released in 2008 and included the UK top-five singles Chasing Pavements and Make You Feel My Love.
19
has sold over 2.5 million copies in the UK and was named in the top 20
best-selling debut albums of all time in the UK. She was honoured with
the Grammy Award for Best New Artist.
Adele released her second studio album, 21, in 2011. It became the world's best-selling album of the 21st century, with sales of over 31 million. 21 holds the record for the top-performing album in US chart history, topping the Billboard 200 for 24 weeks, with the singles Rolling in the Deep, Someone like You, and Set Fire to the Rain
heading charts worldwide, becoming her signature songs. The album
received a record-tying six Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year.
In 2012, Adele released Skyfall, a soundtrack single for the James Bond film Skyfall, which won her the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
Adele's third studio album, 25,
was released in 2015, breaking first-week sales records in the UK and
US. In the US, it remains the only album to sell over three million
copies in a week. 25 earned her five Grammy Awards, including the Album of the Year. The lead single, Hello, achieved huge success worldwide. Her fourth studio album, 30, released in 2021, contains the chart-topping and Grammy-winning single Easy on Me. 25 and 30 became the best-selling albums worldwide, including the US and the UK, in 2015 and 2021, respectively.
As of 2023, all of her studio albums, except 19, have topped the yearly best-selling albums chart worldwide in the 21st century.
Adele is one of the world's best-selling music artists,
with sales of over 120 million records worldwide. The best-selling
female artist of the 21st century in the UK, she was named the
best-selling artist of the 2010s decade in the US and worldwide.
Her studio albums 21 and 25
were the top two best-selling albums of the 2010s in the UK and both
are listed among the best-selling albums in UK chart history, while in
the US both are certified Diamond, the most of any artist who debuted in
the 21st century.
Today, The Morgans and The Grandma are visiting Mont Saint Michéin Maunché, Normaundie
Normaundie in Norman, Normandy in English, is a geographical and culturalnation in northwestern Europe, roughly coextensive with the historical Duchy ofNormandy. Itcomprisesmainland Normandy (a part of France) and insular Normandy (mostly the British Channel Islands). It covers 30,627 square kilometres. The inhabitants of Normandy are known as Normans; the region is the historic homeland of the Normanlanguage. Large settlements include Rouen, Caen, Le Havre and Cherbourg.
The cultural region of Normandy is roughly similar to the historical Duchy of Normandy, which includes small areas now part of the departments of Mayenne and Sarthe. The Channel Islands, in French Îles Anglo-Normandes, are also historically part of Normandy; they cover 194 square kilometres and comprise two bailiwicks: Guernsey and Jersey, which are British Crown Dependencies.
Normandy's name comes from the settlement of the territory by Vikings (Northmen" starting in the 9th century, and confirmed by treaty in the 10th century between King Charles III of France and the Viking jarl Rollo. For almost 150 years following the Norman conquest of England in 1066, Normandy and England were linked by having the same person reign as both Duke of Normandy and King of England.
Archaeological finds, such as cave paintings, prove that humans were present in the region in prehistoric times. Normandy also has many megalithic monuments.
Many still-visible megaliths are scattered quite regularly throughout the Norman countryside. The Rozel Archaeological Site presents exceptional traces of footprints and handprints of Homo neanderthalensis.
The testimony of Julius Caesar (in the Gallic Wars) allows us to identify the different Gallic groups occupying the region. In 56 or 57 BC, these populations gathered to resist the invasion of the Roman legions. After the Gallic defeat at the siege of Alesia, the peoples of Normandy continued the struggle for some time, but by 51 BC, all of Gaul was subdued by Rome.
Celts (also known as Belgae and Gauls) have populated Normandy since at least the Bronze Age. When Julius Caesar invaded Gaul (58-50 BC), there were nine different Celtic tribes living in this part of Gaul.
The Romanisation of this region partly included in the Gallia Celtica and in the Gallia Belgica (the Seine being more or less the limit between them) was achieved by the usual methods: Roman roads and a policy of urbanisation.
In the late 3rd century AD, Germanic raids devastated Lugdunensis Secunda, as the modern area of Normandy was known at the time. The Romans built a system of coastal defences known as Saxon Shore on both sides of the English Channel. The ecclesiastical province of Rouen was based on the frame of the Roman Lugdunensis Secunda, whose limits corresponded almost exactly to the future duchy of Normandy. In 406, Germanic tribes began invading from the east, followed by dispersed settlements mainly in the Pays de Bray, Pays de Caux and Vexin. As early as 487, the area between the rivers Somme and Loire came under the control of the Frankish lord Clovis.
Following the disintegration of Roman power in northern Gaul, the region that would later become Normandy passed under the control of the Franks. By the sixth and seventh centuries it was integrated into the Merovingian and later Carolingian realms. Large rural estates, episcopal sees such as Rouen, and fiscal centres marked Frankish authority. The Capitulary legislation and royal courts extended Frankish law and institutions into the area, though local aristocracies maintained significant autonomy.
From the late eighth century, Scandinavian raiders targeted the coasts of northern Gaul. Viking fleets exploited the navigability of the Seine and its tributaries, sailing upriver to raid Paris in 845 under a leader recorded as Ragnar.
Vikings started to raid along the river Seine during the middle of the 9th century. The fiefdom of Normandy was created for the Viking leader Hrólfr, known in Medieval Latin as Rollo. The name Normandy reflects Rollo's Viking (Norseman) origins.
Aside from the conquest of England and the subsequent invasions of Wales and Ireland, the Normans expanded into other areas. Norman families, such as that of Tancred of Hauteville, Rainulf Drengot and Guimond de Moulins played important parts in the conquest of southern Italy and the Crusades.
Over the tenth century the Scandinavian newcomers gradually merged with the Frankish population. Rollo's baptism and the establishment of a Norman episcopate symbolized Christianization, while intermarriage and bilingualism facilitated cultural assimilation. By the mid-eleventh century the dukes of Normandy commanded a polity that blended Scandinavian martial traditions with Frankish legal, ecclesiastical and feudal practices.
In the 1780s, the economic crisis and the crisis of the Ancien Régime struck Normandy as well as other parts of the nation, leading to the French Revolution. Bad harvests, technical progress and the effects of the Eden Agreement signed in 1786 affected employment and the economy of the province. Normans laboured under a heavy fiscal burden.
Following the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815), there was an economic revival that included the mechanization of textile manufacturing and the introduction of the first trains.
Also, with seaside tourism in the 19th century came the advent of the first beach resorts.
During the Second World War, following the armistice of 22 June 1940, continental Normandy was part of the German occupied zone of France. The Channel Islands were occupied by German forces between 30 June 1940 and 9 May 1945. The town of Dieppe was the site of the unsuccessful Dieppe Raid by Allied forces.
The Allies coordinated a massive build-up of troops and supplies to support a large-scale invasion of Normandy in the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944 under the code name Operation Overlord.
Mont Saint Miché in Norman, Mont-Saint-Michel in English, is a small rocky island located off the coast of Normandy, famous for its spectacular medieval abbey and dramatic tides. Originally founded as a religious sanctuary in the 8th century after, according to legend, the Archangel Michael appeared to the bishop of Avranches, the site later became one of Europe's most important pilgrimage destinations.
The island is crowned by the impressive Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey, a remarkable example of Romanesque and Gothic architecture built between the 11th and 16th centuries. Over time, the abbey also served as a fortress during conflicts such as the Hundred Years' War, thanks to its strong defensive walls and strategic position.
Mont-Saint-Michel is known for having some of the highest tides in Europe. At high tide, the island appears surrounded by water, while at low tide vast sandbanks emerge around it. Because of its unique landscape and historical importance, the site was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.
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