Chapters 33 and 34

Vocabulary work

I. Learn the following words and expressions:

- sob - to swear - exhausted - prison - contagious - to hesitate - chemist - green-grocer’s - hammer - kerb - dummy - to predict - to give up - to glare at smb. - impatiently - to abandon - firmly - to blame smb. for smth.

- wilful - a lighter - a shock of hair - ditto - to be underpinned by smb. - rage - accomplice (to a crime) - proof - furious - insult - gain - confidence - commitment - devout - barmy - to testify against smb. - plaster cast - to snipe at smb. - to work smth. out

II. Answer the questions:

1. What happened on the train? What did Marcus and Ellie talk about?

2. What did Ellie do in Royston and why? What were the consequences?

3. Who did Fiona travel to Royston with? What did they talk about on the way there?

4. What happened at Royston police station?

5. What did Marcus tell his father?

III. State who these words belong to. Translate and reproduce the situations in which they are used:

1. “Of course I knew him. I listened to him sing every single day. I wear him every single day. The things he sings about, that’s him. I know him better than I know you. He understood me.”

2. “I’ve messed you up.”

3. “I suppose you are a useless father, and that doesn’t help a kid very much, but you’d have been a useless father wherever you were living, so I don’t see what difference it makes.”

4. “As a general rule, I’ll turn up when I say I’m going to.”

5. “I took as long as it takes to make a phone call and drive here, so don’t start.”

6. “Make some money out of all the grieving Nirvana fans in Royston, you mean? That would only work if it was a picture of Julio Iglesias.”

7. “We’re willing to cut a deal.”

IV. Translate into English:

- кнопка экстренной остановки;

- окно с зеркальным стеклом;

- право гражданина;

- болтать, трепаться;

- бесконечная пьеса;

- сорока с небольшим лет;

- последняя соломинка;

- командный дух;

- взывать, обращаться к кому-л.;

- изъян в рассуждениях.

Oral practice

V. Comment on the following:

1. His mum had explained to him once (perhaps when she was going out with Roger, who wasn’t like her at all) that sometimes people needed opposites, and Marcus could see how that might work: if you thought about it, right at this moment Ellie needed someone who was going to stop her from pressing the button more than she needed someone who loved pressing buttons. (p. 247)

2. … maybe Ellie was like Will. If either of them had real trouble in their lives, they wouldn’t want or need to invent it for themselves, or put pictures of it on the walls. (p. 249)

3. While Fiona was collecting Ellie’s mum, Will sat in the car listening to Nirvana and thinking about the Dead Duck Day. Something about now was reminding him of then; there was that same sense of unpredictability and absorption and chaos. The main difference was that today wasn’t as… well, as enjoyable. It wasn’t that Fiona’s attempted suicide had been a riot of fun and laughter; it was just that he neither knew nor cared about any of them then, and it had been possible for him to observe, with a terrible but neutral fascination, the kind of mess that people can make if they are wilful or unlucky or both. (p. 257)

VI. Give a good literary translation of the following:

1. “They sat in silence for a couple of stops. Marcus looked out of the window and tried to work out how to explain Ellie to his dad. He hardly noticed when the train pulled in at Royston station, and he wasn’t even completely alert when Ellie suddenly stood up and jumped off the train. He hesitated for a moment, then, with a horrible sick feeling, he jumped off after her.” (p. 250)

2. “The policemen were nice, really. Ellie had explained to them that she wasn’t a hooligan or on drugs; she was simply making a protest, which was her right as a citizen, about the commercial exploitation of Kurt Cobain’s death. The policemen thought this was funny, which Marcus took as a good sign, although it made Ellie very angry indeed: she told them they were patronizing, and they looked at each other and laughed a bit more.” (p. 252)

3. “It seemed to have escaped Fiona’s notice that this embrace should have marked the end of the whole sorry cardboard-cut-out affair, but then Will had been aware for some time that more or less everything had passed her by since they stopped for petrol. It soon became clear, however, that she had been steeling herself for action, rather than daydreaming, and for reasons best known to herself she had decided that the time for action was now.” (p. 263)

VII. Agree or disagree with the following statements:

1. Marcus didn’t believe Ellie really knew Kurt Cobain.

2. Ellie stopped the train in Royston with the emergency button.

3. Marcus helped Ellie to smash the record-shop window.

4. Marcus’s father was the first one to get to the police station.

5. Ellie and Marcus were let go with Marcus’s father.

6. Ruth, the shop owner, was Ellie’s older sister.

7. Fiona wanted Marcus to testify against Ellie.

8. Marcus decided that he didn’t want Ellie as his girlfriend.

VIII. Retell the 33^rd and 34^th Chapters as if you were:

1. Marcus

2. Ellie

3. the police

4. Marcus’s father

5. Will.

Writing

IX. Write a one-page summary of the Chapters 33,34.

X. Make up your own story (8-10 sentences) using your active vocabulary.