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On The Train
"On The Train" is a poem by Gillian Clarke. Its chief subject matter is the Paddington rail crash and its aftermath. The poem imagines commuters on the train heading towards the "bone-ship" and refers to the anxiety of passengers and loved ones alike in the days following the disaster. Clarke uses the technology of 1999 to ground her poem in reality - the mobile phones of the victims lie in the wreckage of the train while their friends and family frantically try to ring them. She quotes the phrase: "The Vodafone you are calling May have been switched off. Please call later." This everyday phrase takes on a new, more sinister meaning in context. Clarke concludes the poem by taking a lenient view, post-Paddington, of train passengers who make mobile phone calls - they no longer seem irritating, merely essential for reassuring people that they are still alive. This poem was written soon after the mobile phone boom of the late 1990s and as such is one of the first comments ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gillian Clarke
Gillian Clarke (born 8 June 1937) is a Welsh poet and playwright, who also edits, broadcasts, lectures and translates from Welsh into English. She co-founded Tŷ Newydd, a writers' centre in North Wales. Life Gillian Clarke was born on 8 June 1937 in Cardiff. She was brought up in Cardiff and Penarth, though for part of the Second World War she was in Pembrokeshire. She lived in Barry for a few years, at a house called Flatholme in The Parade. Although her parents were Welsh speakers, she was brought up to speak only English and learnt to speak Welsh as an adult – partly as a form of rebellion. She graduated in English from Cardiff University. Career After university Clarke spent a year working for the BBC in London. She then returned to Cardiff, where she gave birth to her daughter, Catrin, and two sons. About Catrin she wrote a poem under her name. Clarke worked as an English teacher, first at the Reardon-Smith Nautical College and later at Newport College of Art. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paddington Rail Crash
The Ladbroke Grove rail crash (also known as the Paddington rail crash) was a rail accident which occurred on 5 October 1999 at Ladbroke Grove in London, England, when two passenger trains collided almost head-on after one of them had passed a signal at danger. With 31 people killed and 417 injured, it remains one of the worst rail accidents in 20th-century British history. It was the second major accident on the Great Western Main Line in just over two years, the first being the Southall rail crash of September 1997, a few miles west of this accident. Both crashes would have been prevented by an operational automatic train protection (ATP) system, wider fitting of which had been rejected on cost grounds. This severely damaged public confidence in the management and regulation of safety of Britain's privatised railway system. A public inquiry into the crash by Lord Cullen was held in 2000. Since both the Paddington and Southall crashes had reopened public debate on ATP, a se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commuters
Commuting is periodically recurring travel between one's place of residence and place of work or study, where the traveler, referred to as a commuter, leaves the boundary of their home community. By extension, it can sometimes be any regular or often repeated travel between locations, even when not work-related. The modes of travel, time taken and distance traveled in commuting varies widely across the globe. Most people in least-developed countries continue to walk to work. The cheapest method of commuting after walking is usually by bicycle, so this is common in low-income countries, but is also increasingly practised by people in wealthier countries for environmental and health reasons. In middle-income countries, motorcycle commuting is very common. The next technology adopted as countries develop is more dependent on location: in more populous, older cities, especially in Eurasia mass transit (rail, bus, etc.) predominates, while in smaller, younger cities, and larg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mobile Phones
A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while the user is moving within a telephone service area. The radio frequency link establishes a connection to the switching systems of a mobile phone operator, which provides access to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Modern mobile telephone services use a cellular network architecture and, therefore, mobile telephones are called ''cellular telephones'' or ''cell phones'' in North America. In addition to telephony, digital mobile phones ( 2G) support a variety of other services, such as text messaging, multimedia messagIng, email, Internet access, short-range wireless communications (infrared, Bluetooth), business applications, video games and digital photography. Mobile phones offering only those capabilities are known as featur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vodafone
Vodafone Group Public limited company, plc () is a British Multinational corporation, multinational Telephone company, telecommunications company. Its registered office and Headquarters, global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates Service (economics), services in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. , Vodafone owns and operates networks in 22 countries, with partner networks in 48 further countries. Its Vodafone Global Enterprise division provides telecommunications and IT services to corporate clients in 150 countries. Vodafone has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. The company has a secondary listing on Nasdaq. Name The name Vodafone comes from ''VO''ice ''DA''ta ''FONE'' (the latter a sensational spelling of "telephone, phone"), chosen by the company to "reflect the provision of voice and data services over mobile phones". History The evolution of Vodafone started in 1981 with the es ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
September 11 Attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners scheduled to travel from the Northeastern United States to California. The hijackers crashed the first two planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, and the third plane into the Pentagon (the headquarters of the United States military) in Arlington County, Virginia. The fourth plane was intended to hit a federal government building in Washington, D.C., but crashed in a field following a passenger revolt. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people and instigated the war on terror. The first impact was that of American Airlines Flight 11. It was crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan at 8:46 a.m. Seventeen minutes later, at 9:03, the World Trade Center’s S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AQA Anthology
The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (the AQA) has produced Anthologies for GCSE English and English Literature studied in English schools. This follows on from AQA's predecessor organisations; Northern Examinations and Assessment Board (NEAB) and Southern Examining Group (SEG). 2000 Anthology The 2000 AQA anthology covered four sections: poets in the English Literary Heritage, poems from other cultures and traditions, 20th-century prose, and 20th- or pre-20th-century poetry. English: Poets in the English Literary Heritage Simon Armitage *"I Am Very Bothered When I Think" *"Poem" *"It Ain't What You Do, It's What It Does To You" *"Cataract Operation" *"About His Person" Ted Hughes *"Works and Play" *"The Warm and the Cold" *"The Tractor" *"Wind" *"Hawk Roosting" Carol Ann Duffy *"War Photographer" *"Valentine" *"Stealing" *"Before You Were Mine" *"In Mrs. Tilscher's Class" English: Poems from other cultures and traditions *Sujata Bhatt: " Search for My Tongue" * Tom Leo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
GCSE
The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is an academic qualification in a particular subject, taken in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. State schools in Scotland use the Scottish Qualifications Certificate instead. Private schools in Scotland may choose to use GCSEs from England. Each GCSE qualification is offered in a specific school subject (English literature, English language, mathematics, science, history, geography, art and design, design and technology, business studies, classical civilisation, drama, music, foreign languages, etc). The Department for Education has drawn up a list of preferred subjects known as the English Baccalaureate for England on the results in eight GCSEs including English, mathematics, the sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, computer science), history, geography, and an ancient or modern foreign language. Studies for GCSE examinations take place over a period of two or three academic years (depending upon the subject, school ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Difficult Birth
"A Difficult Birth, Easter 1998" is a poem by Gillian Clarke. The poem references the Good Friday Agreement, where Unionists and Nationalists in Northern Ireland agreed to engage in a peace process. References {{DEFAULTSORT:Difficult Birth, Easter 1998, A Welsh poems ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Field-Mouse
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of the archai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Welsh Poems
Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic people) Animals * Welsh (pig) Places * Welsh Basin, a basin during the Cambrian, Ordovician and Silurian geological periods * Welsh, Louisiana, a town in the United States * Welsh, Ohio, an unincorporated community in the United States See also * Welch (other) * * * Cambrian + Cymru Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in 202 ... {{Disambiguation Language and nationality disambiguation pages ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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