The Art of Campfire Cooking 8 глава

The Owl

Joan Harrison was walking along the street. She was shy and always felt lonely and upset. Joan worked as a secretary in an office in the city centre. It was lunch time and she went out to get some air. She was looking absently at the shop-windows when she saw a brown wooden owl in one of them. Suddenly Joan stopped. Joan was totally indifferent to birds and she had never understood people who collected useless statues. But for some reason she could not take her eyes off the owl. The wooden owl drew Joan to itself.

Joan decided to buy the owl. She earned a little, just to pay for her room and food. She couldn’t afford new clothes. Even a ticket to the cinema was a heavy expense for her. But this time Joan was sure that she had to buy the wooden owl.

Joan opened the door of the shop. She asked the shop assistant about the price of the wooden owl. It was fifty pounds. Joan understood that it was sheer madness to buy such an expensive wooden bird. But she did it without any hesitation.

Joan left ten pounds in advance and promised to bring the rest of the money in the evening. After work she ran home, took all her savings and rushed back to the shop in excitement. Joan brought the wooden owl home and put it onto the table. Joan smiled and touched the owl’s head. Suddenly, she felt happy and self-confident.

The next morning she left her house in a very good mood. Now, having the owl at home, Joan made it a habit to say good-bye and touch the owl’s head before leaving. Amazingly, after this simple gesture she was cheerful and energetic the whole day. One morning, when patting the owl on the head, Joan remembered her wish to join the evening pottery class at college. She had often thought about it but always changed her mind at the last moment. Now she decided to fulfill her wish.

At the pottery class Joan achieved considerable results. Her teacher said she had a unique style. Nobody knew that she worked hard at home. Under the owl’s observation Joan experimented with forms and colours. Once she took part in the students’ show at the college, and the Art Museum asked her to sell her works for two thousand pounds. The sum covered all her debts and she could afford to buy a new dress and shoes and even more.

The next step was the annual National Art Festival, at which a secretary, Joan Harrison, presented her personal exhibition. Her fame and income were growing. Joan left her office and became a potter. A year later she and the art director of the museum were happily married. They moved to a large country house and now Joan had her own pottery.

Joan took the lucky owl with her. It took its honorary place in the large living room. In her last years she often remembered the shop where she had bought the owl, her evening classes and her first steps in pottery. Joan was so proud of the owl that each piece of her pottery had a picture of the owl on it. Lots of famous artists and important people visited Joan and her husband, but Joan never gave her owl to anybody until her dying day.

Sports in Great Britain

It is interesting how many of today’s sports games originated in Britain – football, rugby, tennis, boxing, rowing and horse racing among them. Of course, horse racing was popular with the Greeks and Arabs long before the British began to put them into practice; and people had been playing football in one form or another for thousands of years all over the world. But it was the British who created special rules for these sports and sports games.

Football is a good example. In the Middle Ages people in Europe, Japan and Asia all played some forms of the game. A sort of football was also very popular in England, especially as a contest between villages. But at that time there were very few rules. When the students of English schools started to play football, rules then became necessary. They were changed several times and by the middle of the 19^th century football had become very much the game that we know and like today. By the way, the first serious football rules were written at Cambridge University.

A similar story can be told about some other sports. Why did this happen in Britain before other countries? There are some possible explanations: after the Norman invasion of 1066, Britain was quite a peaceful country. As a result people had time to develop sports. Later, after Britain’s industrial revolution, English factories were based on highly organized work and strict time keeping. The same discipline was applied to sport. So uniforms, referees and punishments were introduced to football and other games. British authorities thought that team games were good training for future military and industrial careers.

Every country has its own list of favourite sports. What is the British list? There are lots of games apart from football. Schoolgirls, for example, play a game which seems a lot like basketball. It is called netball. Netball is different from basketball in many details: for example, the ball is lighter, the court is bigger and netball has seven players in each team (not five). There is something very strange about netball – it is never played by boys. There is no biological reason for this, it is simply a tradition. It is popular throughout the English-speaking world, and the Australians and New Zealanders usually win the competitions.

But the most famous and popular British sport is cricket. Cricket is an important part of English summer life. You can watch it all day on TV or even listen to it on the radio. News programmes keep you up-to-date with the score. Men, when they meet, always exchange a few words about the state of the game.

One of cricket’s distinguishing features is that the games are very long. In an ordinary game at a boys’ school it takes up to a whole afternoon. But the big international games are up to five days long.

The White House

For more than 200 years, the White House has been known as the symbol of the President's administration, and of the United States.

The history of the White House began when President George Washington signed an Act of Congress in December of 1790 which declared that the federal government would live in a district "not exceeding ten miles square on the river Potomac." The creation of the new American capital began. Later it was named Washington after the first American President.

George Washington, together with the city planner Pierre L'Enfant, chose the place for the new president’s home. A competition was held to find an architect to design the President's House. Nine proposals were handed in, and architect James Hoban won the competition. He proposed to build an impressive three-storey house.

The construction began in October of 1792. Although President Washington watched over the construction of the house, he never lived in it. Originally the White House was grey and was called the Presidential Palace. In 1800, when it was nearly completed, its first residents, President John Adams and his wife moved in. Ever since, each President of the United States has lived in this residence.

The Presidential Palace was seriously damaged in the great fire of 1814. The British invaded Washington and burned many buildings. After the war James Hoban, the original architect, partially rebuilt the President’s home. To cover the marks of the fire, the building was painted white. At various times in history, the building has been known as the President's Palace, the President's House, and the Executive Mansion. President Theodore Roosevelt officially gave it the name of the White House in 1901.

The White House is the president's private home and each president has made his own changes and additions in it. At first the president's office was located in the living area, on the second floor of the White House. When Theodore Roosevelt brought his large family to the White House in 1901, he felt that his office and his home should be completely separated. Two wings were added to the first floor of the building: the East Wing and the West Wing. The President's Office was moved into the West Wing and was called the Oval Office.

In 1805 President Thomas Jefferson opened the house for public tours. However, since September 11, 2001 the public tours have been prohibited.

There are 132 rooms in the residence now. For recreation, the White House has a variety of facilities available to its residents, including a tennis court, a jogging track, a swimming pool, a movie theatre, and a bowling alley.

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