DOCTOR WHO & OUTLANDER, TRAVELLING BACK IN TIME

Today, The Morgans and The Grandma have been preparing for their next time travel. They have the help of Doctor Who and Claire Randall, as well as the powerful skills of Elsa Morgan, who masters all kinds of time mechanisms, including the TARDIS, and a new secret mechanism that allows time travel: José Luis Morgan's Bon Bon Bum.

The family wants to travel to the Highlands of Connor MacLeod and William Wallace, as well as see for themselves whether Nessie is really a reality or a legend. They have hired Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson and Scotland Yard to investigate the theft at the British Museum and clear them of all suspicion.

Before preparing for this new adventure, The Grandma has been talking about the Middle Age and the origin of some of the oldest police forces in Europe, and they have been studying a little English grammar with the Zero Conditional, the First Conditional and Since/For.

More info: Zero Conditional & First Conditional

More information: Since & For

More information: Test English

Doctor Who is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series, created by Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber and Donald Wilson, follows the adventures of the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being from a humanoid species known as Time Lords. 

The Doctor travels through space and time using a time travelling spaceship called the TARDIS, which has an exterior that resembles a British police box. The Doctor encounters various civilisations, which he seeks to protect by outwitting foes and solving crises. The Doctor usually travels with a companion.

Beginning with William Hartnell, fourteen actors have headlined the series as the Doctor; the most recent being Ncuti Gatwa, who portrayed the Fifteenth Doctor from 2023 to 2025. The transition between actors is woven into the story via the plot device of regeneration. When a Time Lord is fatally injured or weakened by old age, their cells regenerate into a new body; while they retain their memories, their personality changes. The different portrayals function as distinct stages within a single, continuous narrative. Due to time travel, these different incarnations occasionally cross paths.

A British popular culture staple with a global cult following, the show has shaped generations of British television professionals. Fans of the series are sometimes referred to as Whovians. The series has been listed in Guinness World Records as the longest-running science-fiction television series in the world, as well as the most successful science-fiction series of all time, based on its overall broadcast ratings, DVD and book sales.

The series originally ran from 1963 to 1989. There was an unsuccessful attempt to revive regular production in 1996 with a backdoor pilot in the form of a television film titled Doctor Who. The series was relaunched in 2005, with production moving to BBC Wales in Cardiff.

Since 2023, the show has been co-produced by Bad Wolf and BBC Studios Productions in Cardiff. The Doctor Who franchise -or Whoniverse- spans a wide range of media, including television spin-offs, literature, audio dramas, and films.

As a global cultural phenomenon, it has become one of the most frequently referenced and parodied series in television history.

More information: Doctor Who

Download Make Your Own TARDIS

Fear me, I've killed hundreds of Time Lords.

Doctor Who

 

Outlander is a historical fantasy television series based on the book series of the same name by Diana Gabaldon. 

Developed by Ronald D. Moore, the show premiered on August 9, 2014, on Starz. It stars Caitríona Balfe as Claire Randall, an English former World War II military nurse in Scotland who, in 1945, finds herself transported back in time to 1743. There, she encounters and falls in love with a dashing Highland warrior named Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan), a tacksman of Clan Fraser of Lovat whom she later marries. Here, Claire becomes embroiled in the Jacobite rising.

The 16-episode first season of the television series is based on the first novel in the series, Outlander, and was released as two half-seasons, with the first part being aired from August to September 2014 and the second part from April to May 2015. The second season of 13 episodes, based on Dragonfly in Amber, aired from April to July 2016. The 13-episode third season, based on Voyager, aired from September to December 2017. The 13-episode fourth season, based on Drums of Autumn, aired from November 2018 to January 2019. The fifth season of 12 episodes, based on The Fiery Cross and the beginning of A Breath of Snow and Ashes, aired from February to May 2020. The sixth season of 8 episodes, based on A Breath of Snow and Ashes, aired from March to May 2022. The seventh season, which consists of 16 episodes, is based on the end of A Breath of Snow and Ashes, An Echo in the Bone, Written in My Own Heart's Blood and elements of Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone, and was released as two half-seasons, with the first part aired from June to August 2023 and the second part from November 2024 to January 2025.

By February 2022, development had begun on a prequel series titled Outlander: Blood of My Blood, which will focus on Jamie Fraser and Claire Beauchamp's parents. 

In January 2023, Outlander: Blood of My Blood was officially confirmed for a ten-episode first season, and Outlander was renewed for a ten-episode eighth and final season, premiered on March 6, 2026, based on Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone and parts of the upcoming tenth and final novel in the series.

More information: Sony Pictures

 That amount of time does not exist.

Claire Randall

FAME FOREVER, THE HIGH SCHOOL OF PERFORMING ARTS

Today, The Grandma has visited some old friends at High School of Performing Arts, informally known as PA, the public alternative high school established in 1947 and located at 120 West 46th Street in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, from 1948 to 1984.

Meanwhile, The Grangers have been practising some English vocabulary about Transport and Useful things, and improving their Speaking. They have also studied Since/For (Present Perfect).

In 1961, the school was merged with another alternative arts school, the High School of Music & Art, while each retained its own campus. Plans for establishing a joint building for the merged schools took many years to be realized. There was opposition to the loss of PA's individual identity, but both student bodies eventually moved into a shared building in 1984, christened the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School.

More information: Since/For

More information: Transport

 

Download Useful things Vocabulary

 

More information: Useful things

 

 Download Cambridge KET Exam Speaking Models (02)

Leaving behind PPAS, a middle and high school created in 1990 to meet the needs of two groups of students: those who wanted to pursue professional work in the arts as they earned a junior/senior high school diploma and those who wanted to study the arts as an avocation.

Many well-known performers were trained at the school, such as Eartha Kitt, Liza Minnelli, Jennifer Aniston, Ving Rhames, Lorraine Toussaint, acting coach Bernard Hiller and Suzanne Vega, Hwang Hyunjin.

The 1980 film Fame was set in the High School of Performing Arts, though the building was not used in filming.

This school was created in 1947 by educator and creative thinker Franklin J. Keller, as a part of Metropolitan Vocational High School, using his staff and administrators on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Under Keller's stewardship, it offered music and theater arts programs in addition to the traditional trade skills.

In 1948, the school occupied Public School 46, a disused 1894 public school building on West 46th Street in the Times Square area. The new school offered programs in music, dance, drama, and, for a time, photography. There were many professionals on staff, including the young Sidney Lumet in the drama department. His production in 1948 was The Young & Fair.

Beginning in the mid-1950s, the New York City administration announced plans to move PA out of its ancient building and into new quarters. These plans evolved to joining the student body with that of the High School of Music & Art M&A in a newly constructed building. A site in the Lincoln Square area was chosen, eventually settling to within the newly developed Lincoln Center complex.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held in 1958, where Mayor Robert F. Wagner and the City Council publicly promised completion by 1964. In anticipation of this, PA and M&A formally merged in 1961 as sister schools on paper while retaining their respective campuses.

In 1969, the combined institution was coined the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, named after the founder of M&A.

PA continued to audition, educate, and graduate students in its old location during these decades of uncertainty. 

In 1973, ground was again broken for a new building at Lincoln Center, but New York City's budget crisis forced all construction to be suspended until the early 1980s. 

Finally, in September 1984, the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts welcomed students from both schools into their new building.

In 1980 the motion picture Fame, based loosely on student and faculty life at PA, premiered. In 2009 a remake was released.

More information: New York Post

Fame is an American television series originally produced between January 7, 1982, and May 18, 1987, by Eilenna Productions in association with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television and sponsored by Yamaha musical instruments, which are prominently showcased in the episodes.

The show is based on the 1980 motion picture of the same name. Using a mixture of comedy, drama and music, it followed the lives of the students and faculty at the New York City High School for the Performing Arts  -a fictional establishment, but based heavily on the actual Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.

Most interior scenes were filmed in Hollywood, California. In all seasons except the third, the show filmed several exterior scenes on location in New York City.

The popularity of the series around the world, most notably in the United Kingdom, led to several hit records and live concert tours by the cast.

Despite its success, few of the actors maintained high-profile careers after the series was cancelled. Several of the cast members were seen again briefly in Bring Back...Fame, a reunion special made for Channel 4 in the United Kingdom in 2008.

The series won a number of Emmy awards, and in 1983 and 1984, it won the Golden Globe Awards: Television, Best Series, Musical/Comedy. Actress, director and choreographer Debbie Allen, who had a small role in the motion picture, but played a major character in the television version, also won several awards.

More information: Shondaland

 

You've got big dreams.
You want fame.
Well, fame costs.
And right here is
where you start paying: in sweat.

Lydia Grant

SIMON & GARFUNKEL, THE CONCERT IN CENTRAL PARK

Today, The Grandma has been walking across Central Park.

 

She loves this place, and she has remembered when she was there on September 19, 1981 listening to Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel in an unforgettable concert where they played one of her favourite songs, A heart in New York.

Meanwhile, The Newtons have continued preparing their Cambridge Exam. They have studied Since/For.

More information: Since/For 

The Concert in Central Park is the first live album by American folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel, released on February 16, 1982, by Warner Bros. Records.

It was recorded on September 19, 1981, at a free benefit concert on the Great Lawn in Central Park, New York City, where the pair performed in front of an audience reported at the time as 500,000 people.

Later estimates determined that the maximum number of people who could fit in the park space was 48,500. A film of the event was shown on TV and released on video. Proceeds went toward the redevelopment and maintenance of the park, which had deteriorated due to lack of municipal funding.  

The concert and album marked the start of a three-year reunion of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel.

The concept of a benefit concert in Central Park had been proposed by Parks Commissioner Gordon Davis and promoter Ron Delsener. Television channel HBO agreed to carry the concert, and they worked with Delsener to decide on Simon and Garfunkel as the appropriate act for this event. Besides hit songs from their years as a duo, their set-list included material from their solo careers, and covers.

The show consisted of 21 songs, though two were not used in the live album. Among the songs performed were the classics The Sound of Silence, Mrs. Robinson, and The Boxer; the event concluded with a reprise of Simon's song Late in the Evening. Ongoing personal tensions between the duo led them to decide against a permanent reunion, despite the success of the concert and a subsequent world tour.

More information: Grunge

The album and film were released the year after the concert. Simon and Garfunkel's performance was praised by music critics and the album was commercially successful; it peaked at number six on the Billboard 200 album charts and was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

The video recordings were initially broadcast on HBO and were subsequently made available on Laserdisc, CED, VHS and DVD. A single was released of Simon and Garfunkel's live performance of The Everly Brothers's song Wake Up Little Susie, which reached No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1982; it is the duo's last Top 40 hit.

New York City's Central Park, an oasis that functions as the city's green lung, was in a state of deterioration in the mid-1970s. Though Central Park had been designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962, at the start of the 1980s, the city lacked the financial resources to spend an estimated US$3,000,000 to restore or even to maintain the park. The nonprofit Central Park Conservancy was founded in 1980, and began a successful campaign to raise renovation funds.

The concert took place on Saturday, September 19, 1981, on the Great Lawn, the central open space of Central Park. The first spectators, many carrying chairs or picnic blankets, arrived at daybreak to secure a good spot.

The Parks Department originally expected about 300,000 attendees. Although rain fell throughout the day and continued until the start of the concert, an estimated 500,000 audience members made this the seventh-largest concert attendance in the United States in history. Later estimates determined that the maximum number of people who could fit in the park space was 48,500.

More information: Ultimate Classic Rock

 New York, to that tall skyline I come, flyin' in from London to your door

New York, lookin' down on Central Park

Where they say you should not wander after dark

New York, like a scene from all those movies

But you're real enough to me, but there's a heart

A heart that lives in New York

A heart in New York, a rose on the street

I write my song to that city heartbeat

A heart in New York, love in her eye, 

an open door and a friend for the night
New York, you got money on your mind
And my words won't make a dime's worth a difference, 

so here's to you New York.

 

Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel

TIERRA DEL FUEGO, TRAVEL TO THE END OF THE WORLD

The Stones and The Grandma have just arrived to Tierra del Fuego in Argentina. It has been a long travel from Hawaii Islands crossing the Hemisphere and flying over the Ocean but it has been very exciting, too. During this long flight, the family has had enough time to revise Present Perfect and For/Since.

Tierra del Fuego, officially Provincia de Tierra del Fuego, Antártida e Islas del Atlántico Sur, is the southernmost, smallest, and least populous Argentine province.

The province had been inhabited by indigenous people for more than 12,000 years, since they migrated south of the mainland. It was first encountered by a European in 1520 when spotted by Ferdinand Magellan. Even after Argentina achieved independence, this territory remained under indigenous control until the nation's campaign known as the Conquest of the Desert in the 1870s, after which Argentina organised this section in 1885 as a territory.

European immigration followed due to a gold rush and rapid expansion of sheep farming on large ranches in the area.

Tierra del Fuego is the most recent Argentine territory to gain provincial status, which occurred in 1990.

The effective extent of the province is the eastern part of the island of Tierra del Fuego, Isla de los Estados and adjacent islands.

However, Argentina has made a territorial claim over the two British Overseas Territories of the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands and over a segment of Antarctica, which overlaps with the British and Chilean claims on that continent. Despite international recognition of the British territories and Argentina exercising no authority in said territories -other than in Argentine Antarctic bases- nevertheless those territories have been nominally included in the province since 1990.

More information: Present Perfect

The youngest of the Argentine provinces was first inhabited around 12,000 years ago. When the first Europeans arrived, they encountered a population of about 10,000 indigenous people belonging to four tribes: Yámana, Alakaluf (now known by their autonym of Kawésqar), Selk'nam (Ona) and Manek'enk (Haush).

Within fifty years of discovery, only about 350 natives remained due to high fatalities from the endemic diseases carried by Europeans, such as smallpox and measles, as the natives had no immunity to these new diseases.

In addition, in the late 19th century, ranchers and settlers committed genocide against the Selk'nam. The provincial capital city is Ushuaia, from a native word meaning bay towards the end.

The territory was first seen by Europeans in 1520 during Ferdinand Magellan's expedition. He named the area Land of Smokes, later changed to Land of Fire, as he saw what were probably the fires produced by the local Amerindian peoples for heating. Juan de Alderete in 1555 and later Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa intended to found settlements in the area. The harsh weather and the constant attacks of British pirates, who took Sarmiento de Gamboa prisoner, frustrated their ambitions.

Spanish, Dutch, British and French explorers ventured on Tierra del Fuego island and the nearby seas. Gabriel de Castilla passed through before exploring the Antarctic islands. In the early 1830s, Commander Robert FitzRoy, and Charles Darwin explored this land and other parts of Patagonia via HMS Beagle.

In 1828 Argentina established a penal colony at Puerto Luis on the Falkland Islands. In 1833 the British sent a naval task force to request that the Argentine representative of the islands, José María Pinedo, and Argentine forces leave the islands, and re-established their rule there.

Luis Piedrabuena installed a base in San Juan de Salvamento on Isla de los Estados. The British South American Mission Society Patagonia Mission, under its superintendent Waite Stirling, founded Ushuaia as an Anglican mission in southern Tierra del Fuego in 1869. Shortly after, Salesian missionaries founded Río Grande.

More information: Since/For

In the 1880s the Argentine government took a more active interest in Tierra del Fuego. In 1881, the meridian 68°36'38 W was defined as the boundary between the Chilean and the Argentine portions of the island. In 1884 the Government of Tierra del Fuego was created, and a subprefecture was established at Ushuaia.

The southern part of the Beagle Channel was an issue of conflict between both states, which competed for control of three small islands, Picton, Lennox and Nueva. Finally in 1977, these were awarded to Chile by decision of the mediating British Crown, revised by Pope John Paul II and ratified by treaty in 1985.

When the crews of sailing-ships told of the notoriously dangerous voyage round the tip of South America, Tierra del Fuego became a byword in Europe for an inhospitable land, where life would be impossibly harsh for settlers. But, it is not the most sparsely populated province of Argentina. Its population density of 4.75/km² is higher than five other provinces, due to various waves of immigration.

Gold fever started in Tierra del Fuego around 1883. Many Croatians from the Dalmatian coast arrived in search of gold. In addition, the gold rush inspired new technologies and innovations, such as the telegraph. Although by 1910 the gold had run out, most of the pioneers stayed. The inauspicious-looking northern plains proved ideal sheep-farming country, and vast ranches were developed. Croatian, Scottish, Basque, Italian, Galician and Chilean immigrants arrived to work on the estancias, with the hope of eventually buying their own land and stock.

The Amerindians suffered high fatalities from disease and the outright warfare waged by ranchers and bounty hunters; by 1920 their population on the island had dropped to only 200. News of the atrocities and genocide reached the Federal Congress in Buenos Aires. It sent aid and tried to help the Salesian mission, the only institution working in the island to protect the indigenous peoples.

With the creation of the Gobernación Marítima de Tierra del Fuego in 1943, construction of naval bases began in Ushuaia and Río Grande. An airport and other infrastructure were also built. These projects attracted immigrants from other countries as well as other parts of Argentina.

It was not until 1990 that the National Territory of Tierra del Fuego, the Antarctic and the South Atlantic Islands was declared a province. Its first governor was appointed two years later.

More information: Welcome Argentina

Endings are scary and foreign.
They split you up emotionally and put you in a place
where you don't know what's going to happen next.
But with every end of the world,
there is a new world that follows.

 Alex Hirsch