Text II

Pre-reading

Task 1. You are given two verbs “to sew” and “to sew”. They look the same but are absolutely different in their meaning. Consult the dictionary and find the difference. Give the forms and mind the pronunciation.

Task 2. Look up the pronunciation of the following words in the dictionary: sewer, tag, auction, amateur, reward, innocent, trait.

Task 3. Translate the following words.

English Russian

flight …

… аукцион

… склад

amateur …

reward …

tip-off …

… смена, дежурство

… досмотр

queue …

… штраф

Task 4. Translate the following word combinations.

a) to reflect the trend

b) amateur smuggling

c) sixth sense

d) to screen passengers

e) guilty passengers

f) tell-tale traits

g) to weight up attitudes

h) to pick luggage off the conveyor belt

Task 5. Whom do we call “the professionals” in comparison to “the amateurs”?

Anything to declare?

Once a month a sad ritual is performed at the Queen’s Warehouse at Heathrow. Four Customs men open hundreds of bottles of impounded liquor, and invert them into crude wooden bottle racks. The spirit pours directly into a main drain, called the Queen’s Sewer, thus foiling anyone who might want to catch and rebottle the evil, eye-watering mixture of wines and strange spirits.

The cloying scent of alcohol is sharpened by tobacco fumes as cartons of cigarettes and cigars are burned in an incinerator known as the Queen’s Pipe.

The warehouse is a large basement in the main Customs House on the north side of the airport, conveniently close to the police station. It is stuffed with goods seized by Customs in the Queen’s name. The shelves are crammed with bottles, each tagged with the airline flight number and the name of the passenger it was taken from.

Some is sold off at regular auctions. But there are no buyers for the exotic, or for bottles that have export labels or airline stickers on them. It is not worth the expense of relabelling and rebottling for the home market.

So every month the doomed bottles are picked out, Yugoslav Slivovitz, Polish blackcurrant vodka, Thai Mekong whisky, sake and tequila. Occasionally a man will pause from his work before starting a jeroboam of Moet Chandon or a two-gallon bottle of Black Label Scotch on its ignominious trip to the sewage works.

The warehouse reflects the trends in amateur smuggling by passengers, since professionals nowadays often ‘smuggle’ goods by altering the import tax on invoices. The ‘traditional’ goods, as the Customs men call them, still stand out in pure volume.

The amateurs give the Customs men their biggest challenge, for least reward. The professionals, smuggling cannabis by the hundredweight and cameras by the £100,000 worth, are often caught after tip-offs. The small-time returning holidaymaker has to be detected, and all the knowledge acquired at the Customs Training School in Southend is needed.

A good nose, or what the victim might consider sixth sense, is vital. The Customs people call it ‘smuggler’s eye’. It is indefinable, of course, but it is the quality that makes a really good Customs man as he screens hundreds of passengers pouring past him on a six-hour shift. One man who had it was Liam Sumption, a legendary Irishman who pulled passengers out of the Green Channel at Heathrow for bets with his fellow officers, and is rumored never to have challenged an innocent traveler.

Every guilty passenger has tell-tale traits. The normally timid become over-boisterous, the placid bite their lips, the domineering are ingratiating, bossy women turn sweet. The ‘eye’ is mainly a question of feeling who is acting out of type.

‘A lot of people look nervous when they walk through the Green,’ says a Customs man. ‘The art is spotting types who do not seem to be naturally nervous.’ The process starts much earlier than most passengers realize – at the moment when they pick their luggage off the conveyor belt. It is there that the Customs men weight up attitudes. Most people who are stopped in the Green Channel have been earmarked for inspection from the moment they first picked up their case.

Smugglers like to go through Customs in the middle of the queue. If their bag comes up first, they will often let it go round on the conveyor belt and only pick it up after other passengers from the flight have started off through the channels. Likewise, they get agitated if the bag is late and they have to go through at the end.

Some attempts are almost as old as smuggling itself. Passengers are caught with a two-gallon bottle of Scotch, and say innocently that they thought they were allowed a single bottle duty free, irrespective of size. They put old straps on new watches and new cameras in old cases. Fur coats are picked out because they have no labels, or because the shop label that ‘proves’ the coat was not brought abroad has been sewn in by hand instead of machine and is clearly older than the coat.

‘I had one lady who challenged me to look at the Harrods label in her mink. It was Harrods all right – Harrods Man’s Shop,’ says a Customs man.

Other smugglers show a touching belief that priest, doctors and other respectable men are not searched. A house painter arrived at Heathrow with 300 watches hidden in a woman’s girdle round his waist. He was dressed as a Roman Catholic priest with a passport to match. He was fined for the watches, and imprisoned for smuggling when disguised in Holy Orders. Few amateurs have heard of section 73 of the Customs and Excise Act. It provides that anyone either armed with an offensive weapon or in disguise whilst attempting to avoid Customs duty is liable to imprisonment.

Working on the text

Task 6. Find in the text the words that follow the verbs below.

a) to reflect … e) to walk through …

b) to smuggle … f) to pick off …

c) to screen … g) to put on …

d) to pull out … h) to show …

Task 7. Find in the text the words/phrases that have the following meanings.

1. to carry out

2. to value

3. something difficult, a problem

4. to notice, to discover

5. to check

6. to risk money on the result of something (game, competition, other future evens)

7. signs etc. that clearly show something has happened, often something that is a secret

8. to consider something carefully so that you can make a decision about it

9. something that you wear to change your appearance and hide who you are

10. to deliberately not to do something

Task 8. Find the beginning of the sentences.

1. … a large basement in the main Customs House.

2. … of relabelling and rebottling for the home market.

3. … in amateur smuggling by passengers.

4. … are often caught after tip-offs.

5. … is vital.

6. … tell-tale traits.

7. … weigh up attitudes.

8. … as old as smuggling itself.

9. … are not searched.

10. … is liable to imprisonment.

Task 9. Make up the sentences about the currency of the given countries according to the model.

The UK / pound sterling / 100 pence → The standard unit of the currency of the UK is the pound sterling subdivided into 100 pence.

1. The US / dollar / 100 cents

2. The EU / euro / 100 cents

3. Canada / Canadian dollar / 100 cents

4. Australia / Australian dollar / 100 cents

5. The Russian Federation / rouble (ruble) / 100 copeks

6. Egypt / pound / 100 piastres

Task 10. Translate the following phrases.

1. a sad ritual is performed;

2. close to the police station;

3. goods seized by Customs;

4. amateur smuggling;

5. “smuggler’s eye”;

6. innocent traveler;

7. guilty passenger;

8. tell-tail traits;

9. earmarked for inspection;

10. in the middle of the queue;

11. either armed with an offensive weapon or in disguise;

12. to be liable to imprisonment.

Task 11. Give synonyms to the following words.

- to perform - to screen

- goods - to walk through

- to seize - passenger

- tip-offs - to realize

- to be worth - to be liable to

Task 12. Divide the following words into 3 categories:

perform, sad, Customs, spirit, regular, buyer, export, amateur, smuggling, smuggle, smuggler, professional, professionals, tax, challenge, detect, passenger, guilty, nervous, inspect, inspector, queue, duty, challenge, search, imprisonment.

Task 13. Answer the following questions.

1. What is the Queen’s sewer?

2. What is the Queen’s pipe?

3. What are the “traditional goods”?

4. What is the “smuggler’s eye”?

Task 14. Write down five tricks that smugglers use.

Task 15. Problem question.

Why do people smuggle?

Task 16. Summarize the text.