Reading 2

One day, "Kate" will be the Queen of England. Once she was just an ordinary girl, Miss Kate Middleton, the daughter of Mr. & Mrs. Middleton. Kate is short for Catherine, or for Katherine,  and it's always written with a "K". Kate was born in 1982, the first of three children. Both her parents worked for British Airways. Her mother is from an ordinary family in the north of England; some of her ancestors worked in the coal mines. Kate's father comes from a family of lawyers and businessmen. Kate was educated in private schools, and as a teenager, she went to Marlborough College, a famous school in the south of England. She was good at sports and was captain of the girls' hockey team.     In 2001 she went to St. Andrew's University, in the east of Scotland. She studied Art History and met another student called William. William was actually Prince William, the grandson of the Queen, and he was studying geography.     The two lived in an apartment with some other students. After university Kate and William went different ways, but they remained friends. By then Kate, William's girlfriend, was a celebrity, the most famous woman in Britain. Wherever she went there were people with cameras.... too many cameras. In 2010 William asked Kate to marry him, and she said yes.      They were married the next year, on St. Catherine's Day, in Westminster Abbey, London.  After their wedding, they became the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.  In 2013 their first son was born; they called him George, after his great-grandfather King George VI.  Later, Kate had two other children, Charlotte and Louis.      Then in 2022, Queen Elizabeth II died, and William's father, Prince Charles, became King Charles. Soon after, William became the Prince of Wales, the historic name of the first son of the English king. Kate, his wife, became the Princess of Wales.      Kate and William had a very busy life; they were very popular, so lots of people wanted to meet them. They went on official visits, they opened new buildings, they went to conferences.... they had a very busy life indeed.     However, at the start of 2024, Kate went into hospital with a medical problem. Soon doctors announced that she had a type of cancer. She had to stop her public life, while doctors treated her condition. They were successful, and in the summer Kate began doing things in public again.     Everyone hopes that her cancer will not come back. One day Prince William will become the next King of England, and then "Kate Middleton" will become Queen.

Ed Sheeran is one of the best-known singers in the world today. Ed was born on February 17, 1991, in Halifax, a town in Yorkshire, in the north of England. As a child, he sang in a choir and started to play the cello. He got his first guitar when he was eleven, and soon decided to become a professional musician.     When he was a teenager, he moved to London and began to record his own songs. People liked his music, and in 2011 he signed a contract with Asylum Records. He played at the Glastonbury Festival and on television and won a "Best New Artist" prize.     Later in the year, he brought out his first album called "Plus", which was a big hit.     The following year he won one of the biggest prizes in British music: "Best British Male Solo Artist". Since then he has been one of the most successful musicians in the world and has played and sung with Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Beyoncé and many other top stars.     During his twenties, Ed started to take drugs "like all my friends"; but he soon saw the dangers, and stopped before it was too late.      Ed is known for the way he mixes different styles of music, including pop, folk, and rock. He also likes to sing with just an acoustic guitar. He has played in most of the biggest concert venues in the world, but he still likes to play in small venues too.     Although Ed is one of the world's most successful musicians, he lives a normal life. At the age of 28, he married his childhood friend, Cherry Seaborn, and they now have two daughters. He makes a lot of money but gives quite a lot of it away to help other people. His journey from a small town in Yorkshire to become a global superstar inspires many young artists.

Los Angeles - a city on the brink? Curious creatures, humans, aren't they ?     Throughout history, humans have willingly set up homes in areas of great danger, knowing that from one day to the next, their civilization or their city could be devastated. Atlantis, Minos, Pompeii; history is full of the legends or stories of cities that have perished.     Perhaps, one day, Los Angeles will join the list.    In southern California, Angels may guard over the City of Angels; but more appropriately, the city might be renamed the "City of Dangers".     Like San Francisco, Los Angeles lies astride one of the most active geological fault lines on our planet, the San Andreas Fault.     Every few years, city buildings tremble and sway as Los Angeles is rocked by an earthquake. Often, millions of dollars worth of damage are done, and lives are lost; but the effect on Angelenos is little and short-lived. Few Angelenos pack their bags and move out of town after an earthquake; most shrug their shoulders, and get on with the job, making money, enjoying life, bringing up a family, or whatever.     Yet as seismologists keep warning, the "Big One" is coming. No one knows when it will strike, nor how violent it will be; but experts tend to agree that at some time within the next fifty years, a mega-quake will strike somewhere in California.     According to nightmare scenarios, whole sections of the ultra-chic L.A. suburbs of Palos Verdes and Malibu could slide into the sea (as little bits do from time to time already); a major quake centered in the city in mid-summer could set off fires that could rage uncontrolled for weeks on end. There is no limit to the extravagance of the disaster scenarios that can be imagined, as Hollywood - on the spot and in the know - has not failed to realize. Other potential disasters     Yet a direct hit by the "Big One" is just one of many potential disasters that could befall L.A.  If an earthquake or some other event were to cut off the city's water supplies for more than 24 hours, L.A. would begin to disintegrate. Located on and around a hot coastal plain where it does not often rain, L.A. can only survive thanks to vast aqueduct systems that bring in millions of gallons of water a day from hundreds of miles away. A prolonged power failure, or disruption of gasoline supplies, could be just as devastating.

American Way of Eating "Fast food can even be eaten in the car." Americans did not invent "fast food", any more than they invented cars or television; they were just the first to refine it into an art, and spread the art worldwide.     Before Ronald McDonald was even born, the British were into hot fast food, in the form of fish 'n' chips. Precursors of today's drive-thru, sit-down or carry-out burger restaurants and other fast-food outlets, British fish 'n' chip shops had for many years been offering customers a real meal to eat in the street. In the olden days, people ate fish 'n' chips wrapped in old newspaper, and used their fingers to eat them with.     Other forms of fast food were common all over the world too; the "packed lunch", some bread and something to eat with it, was part of the daily routine of millions of industrial and agricultural workers all over Europe and North America for over a century.     American-style "fast food" took existing models, and refined them, to create a new style of eating adapted to the high-speed mobile lifestyles of the modern age.   As its name implies, a "Hamburger" was originally a German dish that originated in Hamburg (and has nothing to do with ham, despite modern derivatives such as chicken-burger and beefburger). Its repackaging as the most popular type of fast food was, however an American achievement, as America was the first nation in the world to master modern methods of large-scale food production, distribution, and conservation (notably deep freezing).     Even in the 1960's, steak was still an expensive luxury for most people in Europe; but in America, it was already an everyday dish. Furthermore, fast food outlets, offering cheap cooked meals, corresponded ideally to the needs of an increasingly mobile and increasingly busy society.      In the sixties, American lifestyles were far ahead of those of most Europeans; but since then, Europe has caught up. Ronald McDonald's Golden Arches have sprung up in and around virtually every big town and city in Europe, and across much of the rest of the world too; and even such typically "American" styles of fast food, such as Tex-Mex, are following in the international traces of the hamburger franchises, thanks to television and the popularity of American youth culture.     Americans can no doubt be forgiven for saying such things as "It's as American as pizza". Even if this other classic dish is of Mediterranean origin, it is America that has spread its popularity around the world. WORDS  -worldwide: all over the world - precursor: something that comes before -outlets: shops, points of sale - customer: client - repackage: present something differently - dish: meal - a franchise: a shop or restaurant that pays to use a famous name - to forgive: to pardon

English Pubs and their Signs The pub, people say, is the heart of British social life. More than just a place for drinking, it is a place where people gather to talk, to discuss, to do business. Each pub is distinguished by its name, usually displayed on a decorative sign hanging outside the building. Looking at these names and signs can give us a fascinating glimpse into local history, as Andrew Rossiter reports. England. The history of the pub goes back a long way — and of course much fur­ther than general literacy. It is only dur­ing the last century and a half that the majority of people in Britain have been able to read at least simple words; until then, any commerce wishing to identify itself, be it a shop or tavern, had to make use of symbols or sign language. Yet while bar­bers' shops in Britain were all identified by red and white striped poles, and chemists' by large glass bottles of colored water, the situation was different with pubs.      In the olden days, many "inns" and "taverns", the prede­cessors of today's pubs, were catering to visitors and travelers, as well as local customers. The names they gave themselves, and the signs they hung up in the street outside their premises were not just for decoration but served as publicity, and to identify one pub or tavern from the other.                While many of today's pubs are less than fifty years old, almost each one still has its distinctive name, and in many cases a fine sign to go with it. The oldest named pub in Britain is the Trip to Jerusalem in Nottingham, an old inn beneath the castle, where medieval knights used to gather before setting out on the Crusades. Only a few English pubs, how­ever, have names dating back more than three centuries. One of the more common names that do date back a long way is the Rose and Crown, a name first used just after the "Wars of the Roses" in the fifteenth century when the House of Lancaster (emblem: a red rose) fought the House of York (emblem: a white rose) for the English crown. The name Rose and Crown has been a popular name for inns and pubs ever since. A lot of older pubs have names reflecting local loyalties or loyalty to the king and country. Inns situated near the homes of dukes and lords are frequently named after the duke's or lord's family name — especially when the duke or lord in question happened to own the inn, as was often the case. Thus a pub called the Norfolk Arms, whose sign shows a heraldic shield or the por­trait of a Duke, is likely to have been named after one of the Dukes of Norfolk (a title created in 1483).    As Britain's population expanded in the nineteenth century, so did the number of pubs, many new pubs taking names to celebrate military victories or victorious commanders. Following the Battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Welling­ton became a popular pub name, and fine portraits of the "Iron Duke" still adorn many English pubs.   Britain's status as an island na­tion is clearly illustrated by the large number of pubs called The Ship — not just in ports, but in inland towns as well. Each Ship has its history; here the Ship was founded by a retired seaman, there it was an inn pop­ular with seamen, and in other places just a nice name, though certainly not chosen without some justification. In some places, pubs are named after spe­cific ships or specific incidents related to the sea; two of the oldest pubs in England fall into this category, the Mer­maid in Rye, named after the mythical figure half-fish, half-woman, about which sailors used to love "spinning yarns"; and the Ship and Turtle in Chester, the origin of whose name remains a mystery! Local indus­tries or activities have given rise to many pub names. Many university towns boast a College Arms, catering principally for students and staff alike; and many vil­lages contain pubs called the Plough or the Boar's Head.     Not all pubs, however, have ancient names. A pub in Bristol which opened in the 1970s, is called the Man in Space, and its sign depicts an Ameri­can astronaut. In the small town of Boston, in the east of England, there is a pub called the Boston Blitz, with a sign showing a man playing American foot­ball; though the sign is new, the name of the pub reflects the history of this small town, from which settlers crossed the Atlantic four centuries ago, to found the city of Boston, Massachusetts.    Pub signs have been described as Britain's finest free art collection, and that is not a bad description. Some, though not all, are real works of art, due to skilled artists and craftsmen. Stanley Chew, who died in 1997, produced over seven hundred signs, which are now collectors' items.     Some people are worried, how­ever, about the future of pub signs; the big breweries, who own most of Britain's pubs, have begun standardizing some of their outlets and replacing the old names with standard ones, such as the Harvester, frequently with no picto­rial sign. A minority of pubs have thus lost their identity, as they have been converted into mediocre mass products; yet the majority of English pubs still hold on to their distinctive names, and in many cases their fine signs. English pubs are a fine tradition, with imitations all over the world; and no self-respecting imitation would consider itself authentic without a painted sign! Words Literacy: the ability to read and write - cater for: provide what is necessary for - premises: buildings - knight: soldier on horse - emblem: symbol   - happened to own: by chance owned - shield: coat of arms - status: condition - boast: have - boar: wild pig - settler: a person who establishes his home in a place - brewery: firm or building where beer is made - outlets: points of sale - to harvest: to bring in agricultural produce when it is ready