Past Tenses

Two actions in the past, one of which was very short, the other one was in progress (usually with when, while, as, just as):

• When he saw her first she was buying just another knick-knack.

• While I was fumbling for some money, my friend paid the fares.

Parallel actions:

• The sun was shining, the birds were singing and I was smiling happily.

• While she was selling books he was writing articles for newspapers.

Repeated actions:

• When he worked here he was always making mistakes.

Polite inquiries (even more polite than in the Simple past):

• I was wondering if you could give me a lift.

Read text II about sales and people’s behaviour at them.

When prices draw us.

" ...We have become a people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing... "

Oscar Wilde

On Boxing Day morning – a lovely crisp winter's day, perfect for a bracing walk or even a gentle potter or, for heaven's sake, a bit of a lie-in – half of the West End of London was at a standstill. Cars were crawling. There was nowhere to park. Thousands of desperate-looking bad-tempered people had descended on Oxford Street in general and Selfridges in particular and were swarming like so many mad bees looking for a so-called bargain.

The same scenario was being played out at department stores all over the country: in Manchester someone I know got a cracked rib standing by the cutlery counter. Now I don't know about you, but after the comprehensive exertions of Christmas – after the virtuoso displays of greed and excess, the frenetic shopping, the piles of presents, the mountains of food – the very last thing in the world I would want to do is get into a car, wade through several kinds of traffic jam and go shopping again.

The idea makes me feel nauseous. I am completely bewildered by the January sales and it's not because I dislike shopping: I am so unusually fond of it that I wrote a whole book on the subject.

The kind of shopping I enjoy might involve crossing town to buy an especially delicious cake or finding a lovely second-hand book for a friend or trying to track down a bottle of my grandmother's discontinued scent. But this is something else: the frenzy that the sales trigger is like a sort of collective psychosis. It turns everyone into a greedy moron in the throes of the most explicit and repellent consumerism. And for many of us shopping is now our only recreation: not libraries, not museums or galleries, not parties, but shops.

We could be at the zoo, or ice-skating at Somerset House, or pleasurably slumped with leftover chocolates in our cozy sitting-rooms. But no, the lure of Mammon is so great that we have schlepped into town and braved the crowds for the dubious delights of risking death-by-stampede in the lighting department.

I can understand hitting the sales with precision to buy a particular item you wanted all your life while it remained elusively unaffordable – until suddenly it appears on offer with 70% off. That makes sense.

But this accounts for the tiniest micro-minority of sales shoppers. The rest just want stuff because it's there and because it's cheaper than it might be – although of course this last virtue is relative. As anyone who's ever worked in a shop knows, the sales are when you pull all the rubbish stock that nobody wanted to buy all year out of its hidey-hole and – ta-daa! – present it as the most tremendous bargain.

People are duped in their hundreds of thousands. Suddenly the already tragically passé dress that nobody bought because it was, is and ever shall be completely hideous, becomes the acme of desirability because it's got 20 quid off.

It's absolute madness. This kind of shopping is, at its core, about dissatisfaction: it's about the belief that the more you have, as in demonstrably own, the happier you'll be. There is a certain kind of joyless middle-aged woman, either single or unhappily married, who absolutely embodies this theory. You can see her every day in the bigger department stores kidding herself that such and such a lipstick will make her glamorous, such and such a handbag will make her fashionable, that divine pair of shoes will make her sexy.

Of course all shopping involves a degree of delusion – we buy things because we think that our lives will be better for it, whereas in fact what our lives need is good health and enough money. The trick is to keep sane; you can desire something without being a complete psycho about it.

To me, what's happened to shopping represents the most persuasive evidence so far of a really alarming collective dumbing-down. Shopping can be an exquisite pleasure, but not when it's a compulsion and not when it overrides your desire for anything else.

“The Sunday Times” - from the materials of India Knight

Exercise 1. Match the definitions with the words from the text.

Exercise 2. Read the text, think it over and complete the following chart:

Exercise 3. Insert the proper word.

Wealth

Easton premise.

Only the fittest survive in the shires, and Lord Hesketh isn't among them.

canny owner-occupiers, swisher, hunting money, robust challenges, habitat, thriving businesses, running costs, unprofitable ventures, pile, the commonest customers, has already snapped up, business skills.

GRAND houses don't come much ¹... than Easton Neston, a baroque ²... on the market for around £50 m ($90 m). After 470 years the Hesketh family is selling up: ³... for the 54-room house are too high. Evolution's like that. People whose ⁴... is big country estates need to be good at ⁵... . That can be by marriage - wise alliances with American heiresses by past generations enriched the Hesketh treasury or from business sense. The ⁶... of other big houses have made them into ⁷... , with model railways, safari parks, paintballing and other plebeian attractions. Lord Hesketh likes showing off his house to guests, but not that much. And his ⁸... have not matched his outsize talents in other areas. He has used up his time, energy and cash on ⁹... such as racing cars, motorbikes and the Conservative Party. A foreign species is the most likely replacement for the Heskeths. Until recently, Arabs were ¹⁰... for English stately homes. Now the cash is flowing into the shires from other regions. Roman Abramovich, a Russian billionaire who ¹¹... one of the top global status symbols, an English football club, is talked of as a possible new owner. After the ¹²... of post-Soviet business practices, even the oddest bits of English country life should seem quite manageable.

I. Make up sentences.

1. To, a, or, one, price, needed, money, the, of, of, obtain, amount, service, unit, good.

2. The, is, price, a, interaction, of, the, of, demand, by, solely, commodity, and, supply, set.

3. Concerned, consumers, price, the, the, of, or, governments, influence, may, producers, have, upon, commodity.

4. Will, the, market, way, best, price, the, to, to, charge, sustain, what, is.

5. Responsive, for, a, demand, good, or, not, to, in, be, responsive, may, very, changes, price.

6. Success, product, business, fine, means, and, tuning, the, failure, in, difference, the, price, between, a, a, of.

7. Pricing, odd, pricing, pricing, their, use, to, lining, discount, price, optimize, companies, suggest, pricing.

8. $4, $5, when, the, or, technique, a, is, $12, or, for, are, lining, only, offered, goods, etc., price.

9. Process, lining, choice, easier, the, of, and, selling, price, makes, the, simplifies, consumer’s.

10. World, odd, or, used, psychological, over, all, is, the, pricing.

11. A, in, offers, pricing, discount, reduction, price.

Exercise 2. Choose the right tense.