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

THE FUTURE, MAY & WILL FOR WISHES & PREDICTIONS

Today, The Grandma has continued her English classes with The Bishops in Castelldefels.

First, they have practised future tense and indefinite pronouns composed by some, any and no.

Next, they have read some tarot cards and have predicted the future using Will/Won't, and they have expressed their best wishes using May.

It has been another interesting class where they have been talking about different themes like the troubadours, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Gypsy culture, and the importance of space and time in compositions and explanations.

More information: Some, Any & No Compounds

More information: Future Simple (Will)

More information: May

Forever Young is a song by Bob Dylan, recorded in California in November 1973. The song first appeared, in two different versions, a slow-pace and a fast-pace, on Dylan's fourteenth studio album Planet Waves.

A demo version of the song, recorded in New York City in June 1973, was included on Dylan's 1985 compilation Biograph. In the notes included with that album, Dylan is quoted as saying that he wrote Forever Young in Tucson, Arizona, thinking about one of his sons and not wanting to be too sentimental.

 

A live version of the song, recorded in Tokyo on 28 February 1978 and included on Dylan's album Bob Dylan at Budokan, was released as a European single in 1979.

 
Written as a lullaby for his eldest son Jesse, born in 1966, Dylan's song relates a father's hopes that his child will remain strong and happy.

It opens with the lines, May God bless and keep you always / May your wishes all come true, echoing the priestly blessing from the Book of Numbers, which has lines that begin: May the Lord bless you and guard you / May the Lord make His face shed light upon you. Not wishing to sound too sentimental, Dylan included two versions of the song on the album Planet Waves, one a lullaby and the other more rock-oriented.

In notes on Forever Young written for the 2007 album Dylan, Bill Flanagan writes that Dylan and the Band got together and quickly knocked off an album, Planet Waves, that featured two versions of a blessing from a parent to a child. In the years he was away from stage, Dylan had become a father. He had that in common with a good chunk of the audience. The song reflected it. Memorably recited on American television by Howard Cosell when Muhammad Ali won the heavyweight crown for the third time.

 

According to his website, Dylan performed the song live 493 times between its live debut in 1974 and its last outing in 2011. This includes a duet with Bruce Springsteen at the Concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, in 1995. Dylan also performed the song live on the Late Show with David Letterman in 1993.

 

Rod Stewart recorded a song titled Forever Young that was released as a single and included on his 1988 album Out of Order. Stewart's manager, Arnold Stiefel, said, [I]t would be fair to say that while the melody and the music is not at all the same [as Dylan's song], the idea of the song is similar. The architecture of the lyrics of the song is very much from Dylan–there are definite similarities.

 

The similarities were enough to cause Stiefel to contact Dylan, who requested a share of the royalties, and Stewart agreed.

 

More information: Bob Dylan

 

 May you grow to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
And may you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
And may you stay forever young.

 

Bob Dylan

NEW ORLEANS: ENJOYING BLUES & THE CREOLE CULTURE

Nereyda, Maria and Ana's wishes

Today, The Beans have visited New Orleans in Lousiana. They are excited with this trip because they love blues and jazz and they want to know more things about the Creole culture which has great roots in this city.

More information: May

The family has revised the future of probabilities with May and has started to talk about Countable and Uncountable and some kinds of containers.

Paqui Bean is a little sad because his last Amish friend has decided to begin a new path far away the family and The Beans have dedicated some wonderful wishes and hopes to him in a local way.

Finally, the family has finished a new chapter of Christmas Carol and they have reviewed numbers with two intensive bingos and letters with the IATA codes, in an attempt to choose their last destination.

More information: Countable & Uncountable

New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The population of the city was 343,829 as of the 2010 U.S. Census. Before Hurricane Katrina, Orleans Parish was the most populous parish in Louisiana. As of 2015, it ranked third, trailing neighboring Jefferson Parish and East Baton Rouge Parish.

The city is known for its distinct French and Spanish Creole architecture, as well as its cross-cultural and multilingual heritage. New Orleans is famous for its cuisine, music -particularly as the birthplace of jazz- and its annual celebrations and festivals, most notably Mardi Gras. The city is often referred to as the most unique in the United States.

Manuel Bean playing Bingo

New Orleans is located in southeastern Louisiana, and occupies both sides of the Mississippi River. The heart of the city and its French Quarter is on the river's north side. The city and Orleans Parish, in French paroisse d'Orléans, are coterminous. The city and parish are bounded by the parishes of St. Tammany to the north, St. Bernard to the east, Plaquemines to the south, and Jefferson to the south and west. Lake Pontchartrain, part of lies within the city limits, lies to the north and Lake Borgne lies to the east.

As a port New Orleans played a major role during the antebellum era in the Atlantic slave trade. The port handled commodities for export from the interior and imported goods from other countries, which were warehoused and transferred in New Orleans to smaller vessels and distributed along the Mississippi River watershed. The river was filled with steamboats, flatboats and sailing ships. Despite its role in the slave trade, New Orleans at the time had the largest and most prosperous community of free persons of color in the nation, who were often educated, middle-class property owners.

The Civil Rights Movement's success in gaining federal passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 renewed constitutional rights, including voting for blacks. Together, these resulted in the most far-reaching changes in New Orleans' 20th century history. 

The Beans visiting Southern Charm in New Orleans

Though legal and civil equality were re-established by the end of the 1960s, a large gap in income levels and educational attainment persisted between the city's White and African-American communities.

New Orleans was catastrophically affected when the Federal levee system failed during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. As the hurricane passed through the Gulf Coast region, the city's federal flood protection system failed, resulting in the worst civil engineering disaster in American history. Floodwalls and levees constructed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers failed below design specifications and 80% of the city flooded. 

More than 1,500 people were recorded as having died in Louisiana, most in New Orleans, while others remain unaccounted for. Before Hurricane Katrina, the city called for the first mandatory evacuation in its history, to be followed by another mandatory evacuation three years later with Hurricane Gustav.

More information: New Orleans on Line

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. 

Learn as if you were to live forever. 

Mahatma Gandhi

ARISTOCRATIC SERIAL KILLERS: THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

Mariona and Pedro Bond with a voodoo toy

Today, The Bonds are visiting Washington DC. They're interested in the historical buildings and they're comparing them with Comparative. They are also learning how to use the modal verb May and practising some Social English.

After that, the family is practising some vocabulary about Hotels and Tourism and they're meeting with Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully who are helping The Bonds to know more things about voodoo.

More information: Comparative

The Grandma is remembering some of her favourite singers and Irene Bond is explaining some experiences with one of them. Suddenly, they have received an unexpected visit, M, the partner of MJ, has appeared with some presents for the family. Thanks a lot MJ! We admire you and you know it!

In addition, The Bonds are discovering Ordesa, a beautiful natural reserve in the north of Aragon and they're connecting different stories.

Finally, the family are listening to The Grandma who is explaining some stories about blood and monarchies talking about Jack the Ripper, Vlad Tepes and Enriqueta Martí meanwhile Jaume Bond is adding a new name to this serial killers list: Elizabeth Báthory.

More information: Jack the Ripper

Tomorrow, the family has a meeting in The White House with the new president of the USA, a Juanjo Bond's old friend, and with the Queen Elizabeth II. They're going to talk about Middle Age and literature. 

Be polite and dress elegantly!

 My grandfather was a voodoo priest. A lot of my life dealt with spirituality. I can close my eyes and remember where I come from.
 

Wyclef Jean

GROUP DYNAMIC: ARE YOU READY?

Voodoo

Today, The Poppins have revised some grammar. First, they’ve done some exercises about May using a small voodoo doll and after they’ve paid attention to the articles A/An/The, one of the most difficult things in this language.

More information: The Articles

After reading a new chapter of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, they’ve talk about the importance of Sant Boi de Llobregat in Antoni Gaudí’s Life.

Download Antoni Gaudí in Sant Boi

Finally, they’ve participated (perhaps without knowing it) in a group dynamic where school has been the chosen subject and they’ve discovered that Laura Poppins is fine and she’s returning with the rest of the family.

Download Antoni Gaudí & Colònia Güell

Tomorrow, they’re practising Superlative Adjectives and Relative Pronouns.

This is my way to give something to the world

 Jordi Benet

FREDDIE MERCURY: FOREVER YOUNG

Freddie Mercury

After visiting the Pope, the Holmes have continued reviewing Past Continuous, Used to and Modal Verbs (May-Might). Moreover they’ve practised some Social English.

Next, they’ve created comparisons between Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Família and Vatican City and they’ve been talking about voodoo and its effects nowadays.

More information: May-Might

More information: Past Continuous Exercises

The family arrives to Venice tonight where they want to enjoy the Carnival during this weekend before going to Belgium to participate in Eurovision Song Contest. Because of this, today, they have read some interesting songs from Tom Jones, Queen, Suzanne Vega and Joan Baez.

Tomorrow, they’re going to prepare excellent songs to win the festival and continue travelling, this time, perhaps, to London. 

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young

 Joan Baez