Учебное пособие по английскому языку для студентов II курса
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Walking into the WindBy John O’Farrell (abridged) There’s a moment when you’re up on stage when you suddenly become aware that everyone is looking at you; that the entire room is totally focused upon what you are doing. For that precious hour or so the audience completely loves you and that is why being on stage is the greatest job in the world. ‘You have got to be the luckiest bloke I know,’ said Richard the first time he saw me perform at the Edinburgh Festival. ‘Twenty-three years old; doing exactly what you want to do, everyone thinks you’re great; no office, no boss, no suit and you get paid a fortune to boot.’ Fifteen minutes earlier I’d been bowing as two hundred people cheered me and clapped and shouted for more. Now we sat in the pub opposite the theatre and I counted out the two hundred pounds cash that I’d just been paid. I knew it took Richard and Neal a couple of weeks to earn that much money, so I thought I’d better just check it again. A beautiful girl approached our table and asked for my autograph. She blushed and told me that she’d really enjoyed my show and thought I was brilliant. My friends looked on open-mouthed as a I scribbled my name in her programme. It was the first time this had ever happened to me. ‘You sort of get used to it,’ I told them. I think that day was the first time they understood why I’d refused to follow them into the slavery of a normal job. Now that they’d glimpsed this world of fringe festivals, they couldn’t believe that this was my everyday life. They quizzed me about the actresses I met, the festivals I’d played and the European capitals I’d visited. They were impressed, amazed and jealous and I realized why I’d got them there. I was engineering envy. And yet they’d thought I was completely mad when I’d first told them what I was going to do when I left school. ‘Mime?’ they’d said. ‘That’s not a job.’ Everyone’s reaction had been the same. My home town of Dorking was home to the national headquarters of Friends Provident Insurance. The job of my school careers adviser seemed to consist of getting sixth formers into his office, establishing in which particular department of Friends Provident they imagined themselves spending the rest of their lives and then setting up the job interview. It wasn’t until about halfway through the interview that I finally summoned up the courage to tell him: “I don’t want to work at Friends Provident. I want to be a mime artist.’ * * * I spent a couple of years living at home and signing on the dole. My parents worried about me and I was sullen and withdrawn. In the end it was my mother who secretly encouraged me to apply to the famous Jacques Lecoq’s school in Paris. ‘You get your interest in the theatre from me,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen everything Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ever done.’ Paris was a revelation. I studied pantomime. I used no words and so had to work much harder to communicate with my audience: I had to be an actor, dancer and a gymnast. The next year, Richard and Neal came and saw me at the Glastonbury Festival and were really positive about the show. They both had company cars by now. As they left the next day I watched them pull away and then I saw Richard stop at the top of the lane to get his suit out of the boot and hang it up in the back of the car. I continued to tour around the country, although it became a little frustrating when one or two of the venues in which I had done really well still didn’t want me back the following year. Then I secured a booking at the Pontefract Arts and Leisure Venue. It was a great show. A two-hour mime tackling issues like the environment and the annihilation of the indigenous people of the Amazon basin by the multinational mining corporations. ‘Was it about Jack and the Beanstalk?’ said Richard afterwards. ‘When you were doing all that chopping – I thought that might be Jack chopping down the beanstalk.’ ‘That was the destruction of the rainforest,’ I said. Honestly! I think I really conveyed the terrible suffering that was happening in Brazil. Because the audience looked quite depressed by the end of the evening. The following Christmas Eve we went on a pub crawl through Dorking as we’d always done when Richard let slip that he and Neal had already booked to go to Club Mark Warner with their girlfriends at the end of June. ‘What about Glastonbury?’ I said. ‘Erm, to be honest Guy...’ he said, ‘Well, it’s quite interesting to see someone do it once or twice. But I’m just a bit bored with all that white make-up. And Sally doesn’t like mime. She likes musicals.’ A couple of years went by and before I knew it their girlfriends had become their wives. It was at Neal’s wedding that I met Carol. We had a modest little wedding at the registry office and then round to the pub for a couple of pints. At closing time her dad took me aside and went all serious on me. He told me that before he was married he’d been in a jazz band. But he said that when he started a family he realized his priorities had to change. ‘Message received,’ I said to him. Carol worked in the health service, dealing with psychologically disturbed children, which was tough for her because it wasn’t always easy to get time off to come to the shows. But in the evening we’d talk about all the problems we’d had at work – trying to hang on to my Arts Council grant, trying to discover why I’d not been invited to perform at the London Mime Festival. ‘Guy,’ she said one day, ‘I think I’m pregnant.’ Carol had planned to go back to work after she’d had the baby, but then we had another one and she couldn’t bear to leave them. ‘We can live on what I earn,’ I said, confident that this suggestion would be contradicted. When she agreed with me I wanted to say ‘Are you mad?’ Things were obviously a bit tight after Carol gave up work to look after the boys, but sometimes I worried that she was turning into a breadhead like everyone else. She wanted us to get a car, she started going on about life insurance and a pension. So Carol and I had our ups and downs like any couple. She worried about us being in debt and the boys seemed to be costing more and then one day she just suddenly came out with it. ‘Guy, you’re forty-one years old,’ she said, ‘I don’t think you should be a mime artist any more.’ * * * There comes a point in a man’s life when he must face up to his responsibilities; when he has to put his family first and sacrifice the dreams he had when he was young and carefree. This was the theme I explored in my next mime. I actually re-enacted that moment with Carol – at the very end of the show I said out aloud, ‘And my wife told me not to be a mime artist any more!’ You should have heard the applause. I know why she’d said it. All her friends at Dorking had money and husbands with flashy cars and thought that Carol was strange because she didn’t have a nanny or a black labrador. They were always going on at her about me, like I was some sort of threat to their comfy existence. Why did people always imply I ought to be spending my life doing something else? Eventually we got so far into debt that I had to take some drastic action. So I swallowed a few principles and joined the other commuters on the 9.07 from Dorking to Waterloo. I started doing a bit of street theatre up at Covent Garden. I had a private chuckle about the irony of it all, because there was me dressed as a robot when of course the real robots were all those poor office workers who came out to watch me during their one-hour lunch-break. Then came the day when I lost my Arts Council grant as well. They said they didn’t have to give a reason. I’ve reapplied for Arts Council funding every year since, but with no success so far. I was spending so much of my time writing letters that I had a rather good idea. Instead of doing all my office work from the kitchen table with the kids getting under my feet, I’ve got myself a part-time job, which allows me to do all my admin and get paid at the same time. That’s why I’m sitting here. I haven’t told them it’s only a temporary arrangement, but I’m just doing it to clear a few debts till I get some funding. I sit in this little booth from 7 a.m. till 3 p.m. and when the cars come into the car park I press the button and the gate goes up. And then I press another button and the gate goes down. I wanted to talk to Richard about corporate sponsorship for my next show, but it never seemed the right moment. ‘You’re the luckiest bloke I know,’ Richard said to me once. Well, he didn’t say that as he drove past this morning – he was too busy talking on his mobile. Neal and Richard are renting a converted farmhouse this summer, swimming pool for the kids and everything. I think they knew we wouldn’t be able to afford it, so they didn’t embarrass me by inviting us along. Anyway I can’t commit to dates in the summer, I’m going to be touring the next show by then, probably. But sitting in this box all day, you do sometimes wonder if anybody really cares. Richard and Neal stopped coming years ago. Even Carol didn’t come to my last production. Talk about walking into the wind. It seems that more people want to go and see the latest Julia Roberts movie than mime about the African AIDS crisis – what does that say about our society? It’s freezing inside this little box. I wonder if Richard could get me a job inside the main building.
47. Find the Russian for: the job interview; to sign on the dole; a revelation; out of the boot; a venue; we went on a pub crawl; a wedding at the registry office; to go (all serious) on sb.; to have one’s ups and downs; things were ... tight; to face up to one’s responsibilities; to clear a few debts; I can’t commit to dates; it’s freezing inside. 48. Find the English for: в придачу вы получаете кучу денег; смотреть, раскрыв рот; консультант по трудоустройству; угрюмый; замкнутый, углубленный в себя; истребление коренного населения; не успел я оглянуться, как…; отвести кого-то в сторонку; родить ребенка; возражать; беззаботный; принять решительные меры; безуспешно/безрезультатно; мешаться под ногами; идти против ветра/плыть против течения. 49. Answer the questions. 1. Why is being on stage the greatest job in the world? 2. Why did Richard call Guy the luckiest man in the world? 3. Why did Guy decide to check the two hundred pounds in front of his friends? Why did he pretend to be used to giving autographs? What is the implication of the phrase ‘I was engineering envy’? 4. What career opportunities were open to school leavers in Dorking? Why did Guy refuse to work for Friends Provident? What was everybody’s reaction to Guy’s decision? 5. Why was Paris a revelation for Guy? Why did Guy’s mime shows fall flat on the audiences? Why were they so poorly attended? Do you think Guy was a talented artist or did he overestimate himself? Do you think a mime artist should raise burning social issues rather than entertain the public? What makes you think so? 7. How did Guy’s friends manage to make a career? What social position did they achieve? 8. Why do you think Guy and Carol decided to have a modest wedding at the registry office? What kind of husband did Guy turn out to be? Why didn’t he make a good husband? Why did his wife feel discontent with her position in the town? 9. What made Guy take some drastic action? What kind of work did he start doing? 10. What brought him to Friends Provident? What were his relationships with his former friends like? Was Guy mature enough to face up to the realities of life? Why is the story entitled “Walking into the Wind”? Why is it necessary to find a proper balance between one’s ambition and responsibility HOME ACTIVITIES (8) 50. Retell the text as if you were
51. Complete the sentences with the proper forms of the Verb. Always a source of affection, my grandparents _____________ (1 – to be) hugely important figures in my life. They would shower my sisters and me with sweets, indulgences and stories, telling tales about my parents as naughty children. When the last of them ____________ (2 – to die), we all wondered who __________________ (3 – to hold) the family together. People ________________ (4 – to rely) on grandparents in Britain since the Industrial Revolution, when whole families ______________ (5 – to move) into cities from the country ________________ (6 – to get) work in the new factories, taking grandmother along _____________ (7 – to look) after the children. Despite the fact that more grandmothers _________________ (8 – to work) now, grandparents are still the backbone of childcare in Britain. They _______________________ (9 – to report/to provide) 44 percent of full-time care for pre-school children, which makes you _______________ (10 – to wonder) how the country would manage without them. The traditional image of a grandparent is a smiling old person surrounded by happy children but it _________________________ (11 – not to seem/to match) the facts. What we have now is the so-called ‘beanpole family’, thinly stretched over several generations, with fewer family members in each and with growing number of single-parent families. Grandparents _________________ (12 – to get) younger – more than 50 per cent of grandparents __________________________ (13 – to report/to have) their first grandchildren by the age of 54. For many of them, grandparenthood means giving up a job, involvement with grandchildren and, sometimes, the care of their own parents. It’s up to us ________________ (14 – to balance) the demands we make on them if we don’t want to wear them out. Grandparents ___________________ (15 – always/to be) such a valuable part of the family pattern that we __________________________ (16 – to be unlikely/modal/to do) without them. CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES (8)
52. Paraphrase using a Complex Subject. Model 1: T – While at school, everybody considered Guy to be a promising actor. St – While at school, Guy was considered to be a promising actor. 1. Guy expected his friends to envy his career as a mime. 2. After the show Guy’s friends saw a beautiful girl ask him for his autograph. 3. Everybody believed Carol to be over the moon when Guy proposed to her. 4. Everybody knew that Carol had always stood by her husband. 5. Neal and Richard thought them to get on well. 6. When Guy got far into debt Carol made him take some action. 7. Women considered Carol to be strange because she didn’t have a nanny and a car. 8. Everybody in the town considered Guy to be a complete failure. Model 2: T – It seemed that Guy did not envy his more affluent friends. St – Guy didn’t seem to envy his more affluent friends. 1. One day it happened that Guy heard about the famous Jacques Lecoq school of miming in Paris. 2. The Dorking News reported that Guy had performed at the Edinburgh Festival and was going to take part in the local folk festival. 3. It seemed that there was no work in Dorking for Guy. 4. Eventually it turned out that that Guy and Carol didn’t see eye to eye on the responsibilities of family life. 5. It turned out that a steady job for a mime artist was difficult to find. 6. It appeared that Guy had always had his head in the clouds. 7. It seemed that Neal and Richard had their feet firm on the ground. 8. It seemed to Richard that Guy had been doing nothing for years. 53. Speak about the characters of the story Walking Into the Wind. Use the table below.
54. Express your opinion and support it using the suggested words and word combinations. Who do you side with?
Carol’s father: Guy is an irresponsible and immature, self-centred man who has always neglected his duties. He has never been able to keep his feet firmly on the ground. That’s why it is only natural that in Dorking he is considered to be almost a social outcast.
Carol’s mother: Carol may sometimes have her head in the clouds but she is a devoted wife and mother. She puts her family first and has sacrificed the dreams she had when she was young and carefree. She is a saint to have put up with Guy’s eccentricities so long!
Carol: I was over the moon when Guy proposed to me. He had a great future of him as an actor. But now I can only envy Neal’s and Richard’s wives. To start with so little and finally to have such a helluva lot! A converted farmhouse for the summer with a swimming pool for the kids and everything. I was green with envy when I heard it from Sally the other day. It’s most depressing, especially now that the boys are in their teens and are unlikely to get a decent college education. Not with a father like that!
HOME ACTIVITIES (9) 55. a) Complete the sentences with the words and word combinations from the box. Learn the words and word combinations from the box.
1. It has become difficult to decide what factors ______________(1) a person’s class in Britain. For some people it is money (or lack of it), for others it is family __________________ (2) or the job a person does. Class, however, is not simply a matter of wealth. People may have very little money, yet still belong to the ____________________ (3), or be very rich and still think of themselves as ______________________ (4). Members of the upper class are sometimes accused of ____________ (5) (being too concerned with social status and showing contempt for people of lower status). 2. The upper class was traditionally composed of ________________(6) and owners of country houses and estates. These people passed on their wealth and __________________ (7) to their children. Today, when some landowners have had to sell their estates, they still keep their upper class status because of their family history and the ____________________ (8) they move in. Judges, who were formerly always members of the aristocracy, still have upper class status although they now come from a wider_______________________ (9). Today, the upper class also includes many top __________________________ (10) and wealthy business people. 3. The middle class is the newest and the largest of the three main classes and is sometimes divided into the upper middle class and the lower middle class _________________ (11) income and seniority. The middle class grew rapidly in the 20th century with the spread of education, giving more people ____________ (12) to colleges and universities. These people became doctors, teachers, etc. or __________ ________________ (13), and formed a professional middle class based on education and money rather than on birth. 4. The lower class (the working class) is generally understood to include factory workers, builders, cleaners and other _____________________ ___________ (14). Because of increased_________________________ (15), most ‘working-class’ people enjoy what might have been regarded as a middle class consumer lifestyle only a few years ago. It is still true, however, that _________________ (16) is highest among ‘working-class’ people who often leave school at sixteen and do not have the educational qualifications to enable them to get skilled work. 5. People who are very poor, ________________ (17), often without a home and unable to live without money and other help from the state are described as ________________ (18). b) Economists and sociologists use an alphabetical grading system to describe the layers of British society. Study the table below and describe the modern class structure in Great Britain. Use the words and word combinations from exercises 55-a, 8-c.
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