The other day my husband came in with the groceries.

‘I’ve bought plenty of pasta packets.’ he said.

To me this means little packs to serve one or two people, that contain both pasta and the ingredients for a sauce – a quick snack when in a hurry. You just add water or milk, perhaps some butter and heat up.  Today we’d been out for a walk and needed lunch quickly so that he could go on to an appointment. but I searched the shopping bag in vain.  Plenty of plain pasta in packets,  but no pasta packets.  We discussed the difference between a packet of pasta and a pasta packet over lunch – sardine sandwiches.

How to perfect an American or British English accent

The problem

Learning a language is one thing, but learning how to perfect a certain accent is quite another. That said, many people embark on the quest for that perfect British or American English accent.  

Language can be slow to catch up with changes in society, for example, we still talk about ringing someone up, even though phones no longer have a little bell attached as they did in the "good old" days, and we download "ring tones" for our mobile phones, even though half the time they are snippets of popular songs.  We also talk about dialling a number, although we no longer use phones where you have to put your finger into a dial with holes and move it round, but we don’t say we press or type a number, even though that is exactly what we do.

Having trouble learning English? Do it like the stars!

Many of Hollywood’s finest non-native speaking actors have had to learn English fast after realising that they were destined for movie stardom stateside. With this need to master fluent English to seize the opportunities of fame and fortune that Hollywood offers, it is no surprise that they have the inside scoop on some of the most efficient tricks to mastering English quickly.

There are some phrases we hear often in English that just don’t mean what they say.  For example, my daughter comes into the kitchen. ‘There’s nothing on the telly. I’m bored to death.’ She obviously isn’t dead.

She is walking talking, making tea, eating a biscuit – she never gets bored of chocolate biscuits. Her  words though serve to emphasise just how very bored she is.  She could have said ‘Bored stiff’ – dead bodies stiffen after all.

I like to think it's spring in February when the very first snow drop pushes through the snow. But by the time you read this it will be May, the snowdrops have long retreated back into the soil and the garden is full of blossom, late tulips, primroses and all the rest. It is a time of new beginnings, of fresh hopes.