HIPPODROME CASINO, MAY LUCK BE ALWAYS WITH YOU

Today, The Morgans and The Grandma have been resting after a night of endless dancing. 

This evening, the family wants to go to the Hippodrome, one of London's most famous casinos, to have a good time and play a little time: how much money? how many games? how many hours will they be there? No one knows. 

 

Cristina Morgan has broken another heart. This time Connor MacLeod's one, the most famous Scottish immortal, whom she has wished all the luck in the world and may he remain forever young. 

Before enjoying this promising evening, the family has been studying a little English grammar with Countable & Uncountable and May.

Tomorrow, the family is going to travel to Maunché in Normandy, where they are going to visit Mont Saint Miché and to neighbouring Brittany where they will visit Penn-ar-Bed (Finistère), Aodoù-an-Arvor (Côtes-d’Armor), Mor-Bihan (Morbihan) and Ill-ha-Gwilen (Ille-et-Vilaine). 

 More information: A Little/A Few

More information: Much/Many

More information: Much/Many/A Lot Of

More information: How Much/How Many

More information: Uncountable/Countable

The Hippodrome is a building on the corner of Cranbourn Street and Charing Cross Road in the City of Westminster, London. 

The name was used for many different theatres and music halls, of which the London Hippodrome is one of only a few survivors. Hippodrome is an archaic word referring to places that host horse races and other forms of equestrian entertainment.

The London Hippodrome was opened in 1900. It was designed by Frank Matcham for Moss Empires chaired by Edward Moss and built for £250,000 as a hippodrome for circus and variety performances. The venue gave its first show on 15 January 1900, a music hall revue entitled Giddy Ostend with Little Tich. The conductor was Georges Jacobi.

Entry to the venue was through a bar, dressed as a ship's saloon. The performance space featured both a proscenium stage and an arena that sank into 400 tons, when full, for aquatic spectacles. The tank featured eight central fountains, and a circle of fountains around the side. Entrances at the side of the auditorium could also be flooded, and used for the entry of boats.

Shows included equestrian acts, elephants and polar bears, and acrobats would dive from a minstrels' gallery above a sliding roof, in the centre of the proscenium arch. The auditorium featured cantilevered galleries, removing the columns that often obstructed views in London theatres, the whole was covered by a painted glass retractable roof, that could be illuminated at night. The building included the headquarters of Moss Empires.

In 1909, it was reconstructed by Matcham as a music-hall and variety theatre with 1340 seats in stalls, mezzanine, gallery and upper gallery levels. It was here that Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake received its English première by the Ballets Russes in 1910. The Albert de Courville revues were performed here from December 1912.

The Hippodrome hosted the first official jazz gig in the United Kingdom, by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, in 1919.

Its reputation was for revue and musical comedy, among them The Five O'Clock Girl, the West End production of Vincent Youmans' hit Broadway musical Hit The Deck (1928) and also Mr. Cinders, both in 1929; Ivor Novello's Perchance to Dream in 1945 with Margaret Rutherford; and the revue High Spirits in 1953 with Cyril Ritchard and Diana Churchill. 

Julie Andrews made her stage debut here at the age of 12. From 1949 to 1951 it was the London equivalent of the Folies Bergère.

The original interior was demolished in 1958, and Bernard Delfont had the Hippodrome converted into the nightclub The Talk of the Town. It featured appearances by many of the popular artistes of the time.

In 2009, the lease on the Hippodrome was acquired by Leicester-born father and son entrepreneurs Jimmy and Simon Thomas, who began an extensive restoration programme taking the Hippodrome back to Matcham's original designs for use as a casino and entertainment venue. During the planning stage, the adjacent Cranbourn Mansions building became available and plans were redrafted to incorporate this former gentlemen's apartment block into the design, doubling the eventual floorspace and linked using a new structure sited within the existing light well between the two buildings.

Investment in the building reportedly came to over £40 million, the funds being raised by the Thomas family from the sale of a number of bingo halls prior to the UK smoking ban, which made it illegal to smoke within an enclosed workplace, on 1 July 2007.

The Hippodrome Casino was opened on 13 July.

The venue on opening included four floors of gaming, including a Gold Room casino sited in the original basement with access directly into Chinatown to the rear of the building, Heliot restaurant, six bars, a smoking terrace and The Matcham Room cabaret theatre. The restoration and construction of the casino was followed on the blog of LBC presenter Steve Allen.

In January 2013, the casino was awarded Best Land-based Casino at the Totally Gaming Awards, which also gave Jimmy Thomas a Life Achievement award for his contribution to the gaming and entertainment industries.

On 4 March 2013, Simon Thomas announced the opening of Pokerstars LIVE, a collaboration between the Hippodrome and Pokerstars, the world's largest online poker website. While initially on the fourth floor, in 2020 Pokerstars LIVE moved to the third floor where it currently resides.

The Matcham Room at the Hippodrome Casino is currently the home of Magic Mike Live London.

In 2020, construction was completed on an expansion of the fourth floor smoking area to include gaming, and the creation of The Rooftop, a new bar and dining space, on the fifth floor.

More information: Hippodrome Casino

Life is a gamble at terrible odds
if it was a bet, you wouldn’t take it.

Tom Stoppard

WE MUST PROTECT ENVIRONMENT, WE NEED OUR PLANET

Today, The Grandma has been reading about the environmental risks in Hawaii.

 

Basically, there are four important issues: plastic pollutioin, tourism, invasive species and air quality.

 

The family has been reading about what Hawaiians must do and mustn't do to protect their islands and live with a good qualitity of life. While The Grandma was reading about Hawaiian issues, The Stones have been practising some English grammar. They have reviewed Modal Verbs (Must & Need) and Countable/Uncountable (Much, Many, A lot of, A little & A few).

The majority of environmental issues affecting Hawaii today are related to pressures from increasing human and animal population and urban expansion both directly on the islands as well as overseas. These include tourism, urbanization, climate change implications, pollution and invasive species.

The waters surrounding the Hawaiian Islands are affected by increasing waste products like marine debris from land and ocean sources washing onto shore as well as effluents generated and released from the islands themselves. Oceans in particular are being devastated by factors including marine debris, plastic pollution, and tourism.

More information: Must/Mustn't & Need/Needn't

Marine debris is defined as any persistent solid material that is both a land-based and ocean-based issue faced across the world. The positioning of Hawaii in particular makes it a high-impact target for marine debris, given the natural ocean currents and its relative location to the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone. As a result, marine debris is not limited to waste from the islands exclusively but is also carried from other locations around the world.

Although plastic pollution remains under the umbrella of marine debris, it is one of the largest concerns affecting marine life and the most ubiquitous source of pollution across the oceans.

Historically, the U.S. military used the ocean as a dumping ground for munitions from 1919 to 1970, and the U.S. army dumped 16,000 mustard gas bombs in deep water, south of Pearl Harbor after World War II. Presently, floating plastic garbage from disposable consumer products accumulate in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, from debris eventually find its way onto the reefs and beaches in Hawaii.

Kamilo Beach, located at the southern tip of the Big Island, has been devastated by plastic pollution from the patch and was named The Dirtiest Beach in the World by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). Unique to this site is the abundance of both microplastic and meso-plastic, where geologists found plastic-infused rocks called plastiglomerates; they expect this new rock become a part of the fossil record, indicating the intensity of human influence on the environment.

More information: Much/Many/A lot of & A little/A few

Plastiglomerates are formed when melted plastic binds together sand, shells, pebbles, basalt, coral and wood, or seeps into the cavities of larger rocks to form a rock-plastic hybrid; although they were not discovered until 2012 by Captain Charles Moore from Algalita Marine Research Institute, plastiglomerates occur in other parts of the world, in part by fire-using activities such as bonfires.

The presence of plastic is harmful to marine life, including seabirds, that often get entangled in plastic or mistake plastics as food sources and consume them. Studies show that ingestion can block gastric enzyme secretion, diminish feeding stimulus, lower hormone levels, and lead to reproductive failure.

Tourism in Hawaii began in the 19th century and persists today with its tropical weather and landscapes. Welcoming over seven million visitors annually, it is one of the major contributors to Hawaii's economy.

Although it adds to the state’s economic growth, tourism is a non-geologically driven environmental issue that also degrades the island ecosystems islands, primarily Hawaiʻi, Oʻahu, Maui, and Kauaʻi, the sites of the major tourism industries. Major concerns of the urban infrastructure development for tourism include habitat loss for local flora and fauna, energy use, consumer waste and pollution, and water shortages. Because of their need to satisfy travel customers, resort destinations’ reliance on the shining sun, a comfortable climate, and the beautiful sea heighten resource use.

More information: Hawaii Community Foundation

Invasive species are non-native organisms that are introduced, often by humans, to an ecosystem. However, what differentiates invasive species from non-native species is their negative impact and threat to economic, environmental, and human health, which aided by their ability to easily adapt and reproduce. Although invasive species may be introduced naturally, they are typically introduced by accidental or intentional means; intentional purposes include habitat restoration and removal of pests.

A number of plant species are now extinct due to grazing livestock, and aggressive non-indigenous species taking over the land. Almost 40% of the endangered species in the United States are Hawaiian species, while nearly 75% of all U.S. extinctions have occurred in Hawaii.

Prior to the arrival of non-natives, some bird species were made extinct, or pushed to near extinctio from the collection of feathers by Native Hawaiians. With the arrival of James Cook in 1778, a new set of environmental threats emerged. Alien species such as cats, dogs, rabbits, pigs, and rats affected a number of indigenous species.

Hawaii is known as the extinction capital of the world with the extinction of nearly half (140) of its historically recorded native bird species.

Some of the alien species that are currently affecting Hawaii include cane toads, mongoose, coquí frogs, gall wasps, Mediterranean, Oriental, and melon flies that damage crops, ants that destroy native insects, and bacteria that infect waters.

Compared with the mainland United States, Hawaii's rating on the air quality index is ranked among the best. Approximately 47% of all emissions are caused by burning fossil fuel for electricity production. Ground transport is the second biggest contributor with 22%, while air transport contributes 19%.

More information: Hawaii Conservation

The major problems in the world are the result
of the differences between the way nature
works and the way people think.

Gregory Bateson