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I don't believe that statement is correct. In British English, we say: things have gotten better with the vaccinations, we don't say: things have got better with the vaccinations. The latter expression sounds wrong. Although you could avoid the debate altogether by saying, things have improved. Collins English Dictionary. Examples of 'have gotten' in a sentence Though 'things have gotten better, better isn't good enough'. Times, Sunday Times (2007) The best thing you can say is that the wars have gotten smaller. Times, Sunday Times (2010) Try replacing "gotten" with "got" in those two sentences, sounds wrong, I think? Of course, you could use "become."

Everybody knows McDonald's, it's synonymous with the great American hamburger. How many people know Wimpy? This is no doubt a trip down memory lane for some Brits who were teenagers in the seventies and eighties, for the rest of us it's an incredibly British history founded in America. Wimpy was the burger bar of the seventies, before Ronald McDonald conquered the world. The company was founded in Chicago in the 1930s and was named after the Popeye character. How many of you knew that? As Ashley Clark says: According to my mum, “Wimpy used to be a pretty cool place in the 70s, both as a family eating place on shopping days and a place for teenagers to hang out on Saturday afternoons and before and after going clubbing.” Film critic Julien Allen told me about his wide-eyed wonderment at visiting the Oxford Street branch with his dad in 1978: “It was my first time in a burger bar,” he recalled. “It was impossibly glamorous.” Today 67 Wimpy burger bars remain in the UK... Ashley Clark again: Was Wimpy’s name a self-fulfilling prophecy? Could it have stood up and fought for itself more? Perhaps. But even as a youngster I was dimly aware that Wimpy lacked the swagger of its American competitors. On a personal level, I never minded; Wimpy always seemed to be content with gently maintaining a shabby, understated Britishness, down to its conjoined plasticky table-chair combos and stoically unchanging menu. If McDonald's was Friends, then Wimpy was Only Fools and Horses. And that was fine by me. By American competitors he must mean McDonald's, because as I said Wimpy was originally an American company and later in 1989 was bought by Grand Metropolitan PLC owners of Burger King who re-branded many of the Wimpy outlets as the trend switched to over the counter takeaway. As Ashley Clark ends his article in Vice magazine, Wimpy has a Twitter account, and as he proudly proclaims, Wimpy is not dead yet, “Round here we say chips not fries”, is weirdly (and amusingly) antagonistic – but only a true optimist could be that hopeful about its future prospects. Read the full article here: The Slow Death of a British Institution

You have to tell them If it is true there are people who love each other If all children are the same Then you have to tell them It's like the frangrances we breathe Just a look Easy to do A little more love than usual Since we live in the same light Even if there are some colours we prefer We would like to tell them It's like the frangrances we breathe Just a look Easy to do A little more love than usual Just a little more love repeated For less tears For less emptiness For less winter Since we live in the folds of a dream Before their hands touch our lips We would like to tell them The words we hear It's like the frangrances we breathe You have to tell them Easy to do A little more love than usual

@Nigel Gordon your description is rather what I had in mind. However, there is the use of the word podium in sports. "He mounted the podium." Meaning the stage at three levels as in the Olympic Games. Plus, there is the word dias, which is essentially the same thing.

I love a challenge, even if I get it wrong. The two are for me more or less the same, a guy stands on a rostrum like the conductor before an orchestra. The podium, I guess, refers more to a stand in front of a person which holds a book open. So the rostrum is a small platform, the podium a stand which supports a book to read from. Now I'll look it up 😁

You raise a fascinating point about language and what you are trained to hear. The similarity you highlight applies to English ears, brought up to understand the mother tongue. Your brain is attuned to English, even if you speak and understand another language. It is why you can understand English in different accents and when badly spoken, the brain interprets, it looks for English, and it understands English tone and pronunciation. For a French person, as an example, they seek French words and intonation. La nuit and l'ennui are as far apart and different as missed and messed. I had this conversation with a French person, discussing how I had always heard "l'année dernière" last year, when listening to news reports, but what actually was said was, "la nuit dernièr" last night, which of course makes more sense in most cases, when they are talking about what happened yesterday. He could not understand how I did not discern the difference which was as evident to him as night and day. That's what I mean by English ears, you don't hear the language like the native speaker unless you are truly bilingual, which means you grew up speaking both languages or, in rare cases, you have a photographic memory. Because I knew one guy who could learn any language simply by listening to it spoken and could speak the language without any foreign accent. He spoke at least nine languages fluently, and believe it or not, but it is true, after meeting a Scandinavian boyfriend and coming back from a stay in his boyfriend's country, I think it was Finland, he could speak Finnish. I diverge from the thread, but I find it a fascinating topic, so forgive me. As a little addition, the mechanism in the brain that perceives the language is the same that reads text and puts in words which or missing or makes corrections to errors, making it difficult for authors to self-edit. Did you pick up the error? Words which or missing!

I guess that the Codey's World site for online gay stories is dead? The site has not been updated since March, the story Adam left unfinished, and Colinian has not been on Gay Authors since June. This is a loss of a good site. It highlights the problem of running a site alone, there is no one to step in and carry on publishing stories, respond to authors, or even say what happened, it simply ceases to be 😢

I'm not a fast reader, I got other stuff to do so it takes time, still I finished this book today. I ought to write a review, but it is a little hard to do that, so I'll give you a few thoughts and comments. I think it would help to read this book if you were familiar with Mexican Americans and the common lifestyle that minority shares. It might help if you know a little Spanish American, you might get more into it if you were even just American and can appreciate the lifestyle. None of that means you can't just read it, like I did, and it's a good story, only I was always a little detached. Not from the emotional stuff, the friendships, the fights, the issues, but the whole lifestyle, it's another world for me. I can kind of appreciate it, but still find myself thinking things like, do young Americans really drink that much, and do they spend all their time stuffing their faces with food, eating junk and drinking soda? Obviously some big part of America does, from Texas to California, and equally obviously portions in Texas are huge, really huge, because they're bigger than in Cal where they seem already large. I can say for certain if you already know the world described in this book and you want to know one struggling gay boy's life story, coming out, coming to terms, facing up to the odds, you'll love it. And if it's a whole other universe, you'll still love it, just not quite so much... maybe!

My first book is complete, a novella just short of 20k words, twenty-one chapters, finishes publishing next week. A Russian Summer by James Keogh One summer well before the Bolshevik revolution, when Russia was a noble country, young Alexei, as was the custom of the time, left the city with his family, for the countryside. It was a time of discovery, excitement, longing, and also sadness. A time in which he made new acquaintances and fought battles with himself, as the child he still was struggled free from many constraints into a world of dangerous possibilities. "Gandalf 237 - I’m caught in your web. A good start. Thanks for your work. Looking forward to an adventure into a fascinating time and place in history." This is the first book by James Keogh, his first essay into the world of published stories. It is a modest tale of life in another century, in another country, and as such is set in a world probably unfamiliar to the reader. The style and language used are such as to reflect this different world. At the same time the theme the story evokes is one which is common throughout history. So whilst being a historical romance, it embarks on that familiar voyage of self-discovery, questioning, and struggle. A battle the protagonist engages in, both with his family, society, new found friends and acquaintances, and most importantly himself. We were living in Moscow where my parents had rented a house. It was a short walk across the river to the Alexander Gardens and I used to go there each day. Usually the mornings, but sometimes at dusk. From where I entered the park you could see the Borovitskaya Tower with it's green roofed spire. Of course, the place was not the same in summer as it was covered with the winter snow. Honestly, I can't say which time of year I preferred the most, but the warmth of the sun lifted my spirit. No one interfered with my freedom. I was preparing for university with the help of a private tutor. I didn't work much, neither did my tutor, a Frenchman. He'd arrived in Russia as a stop on a sort of world tour of the northern hemisphere. Much of his time was spent in bed, a fixed expression on his face. I had difficulty deciding if he was crazy or lazy, most probably he was intoxicated. My father treated me with kindness as was his gentle nature. My mother hardly noticed me, although I was her only child. She was ten years older than my father and occupied her own world. I felt a sense of freedom that enveloped me at the same time as the summer sun climbed into the sky. My life was one of expectation, I dreamt of what might be and harboured fantasies which kept me company at night. As I walked through the greenery that lent an air of calm to the busy city, an oasis that both consoled and angered my being, I yearned for things to happen and yet I was at the same time comfortable doing nothing. It would be true to say I was struggling with my own self, but it was not an internal war, more the highs and lows of riding the waves of life.

The planet is, for sure... Between 2002 and 2016, Greenland shed approximately 280 gigatons of ice per year, causing global sea level to rise by 0.03 inches (0.8 millimeters) per year.