English_books / New Cambridge Advanced

1 When it rains our roof leaks. If it rains our roof will leak.

When it rained our roof would leak.

If it rains our roof leaks.

If it rained our roof would leak.

3He could get a rise if he asked his boss. He might get a rise if he asked his boss. He should get a rise if he asks his boss.

He would get a rise if he asked his boss. He might get a rise if he asks his boss. He will get a rise if he asks his boss.

1 Find out your partners' answers to these questions:

The -tell-tale signs of stress

Do you feel guilty when relaxing - uneasy if not 'on the go'? Do you lie awake worrying about tomorrow?

Are you tense ... does your neck feel 'knotted-up'?

Are you impatient or irritable - do you interrupt when others are talking?

Do you feel that you have a lot on your mind - have difficulty concentrating?

Are you smoking or drinking more - do you eat in a hurry? Does life seem full of crises - are you always having rows? Do you find it difficult to make decisions?

Do you feel frustrated when people don't do what you want? Do you frequently experience a butterfly stomach, a dry mouth, sweaty palms or a thumping heart?

If you've said yes to some of these, read on . . .

That's easier said than done. That's all very well, but. . .

That sounds like a good idea, but. . Hmm, I'm not sure that would work.

TO

©

New Cambridge Advanced English

THE job of check-in clerk at Heathrow, or any other airport, is not a glamorous or particularly satisfying one. The work is mechanical and repetitive: inspect the ticket, check it against the passenger list on the computer terminal, tear out the ticket from its folder, check the baggage weight, tag the baggage, ask Smoking or Non-smoking, allocate a seat, issue a boarding pass. The only variation in this routine occurs when things go wrong - when flights are delayed or cancelled because of bad weather or strikes or technical hitches. Then the checker bears the full brunt of the customers' fury without being able to do anything to alleviate it. For the most part the job is a dull and monotonous one, processing people who are impatient to conclude their brief business with you, and whom you will

probably never see again.

Cheryl Summerbee, a checker for British Airways in Terminal One at Heathrow, did not, however, complain of boredom. Though the passengers who passed through her hands took little notice of her, she took a lot of notice of them. She injected interest into her job by making quick assessments of their characters and treating them accordingly. Those who were rude or arrogant or otherwise unpleasant she put in uncomfortable or inconvenient seats, next to the toilets, or beside mothers with crying babies. Those who made a favourable impression she rewarded with the best seats, and whenever possible placed them next to some attractive member of the opposite sex. In Cheryl Summerbee's hands, seat allocation was a fine art, as delicate and complex an operation as arranging blind dates between clients of a lonely hearts agency. It gave her a glow of satisfaction, a pleasant sense of doing good by stealth, to reflect on how many love affairs, and even marriages, she must have instigated between people who imagined they had met by pure chance.

Cheryl Summerbee was very much in favour of love. She firmly believed that it made the world go round, and did her bit to keep the globe spinning on its axis by her discreet management of the seating on British Airways Tridents. On the shelf under her counter she kept a Bills and Moon romance to read in those slack periods when there were no passengers to deal with. The one she was reading at the moment was called Love Scene. It was about a girl called Sandra who went to work as a nanny for a film director whose wife had died tragically in a car accident, leaving him with two young children to look after. Of course Sandra fell in love with the film director, though unfortunately he was in love with the actress taking the leading role in the film he was making - or was he just pretending to be in love with her to keep her sweet? Of course he was! Cheryl Summerbee had read enough Bills and Moon romances to know that - indeed she hardly needed to read any further to predict exactly how the story would end. With half her mind she despised these love stories, but she devoured them with greedy haste, like cheap sweets. Her own life was, so far, devoid of romance - not for lack of propositions, but because she was a girl of old-fashioned moral principle. So she was still waiting for Mr Right to appear. She had no very clear image of what he would look like except that he would have a hard chest and firm thighs. All the heroes of Bills and Moon romances seemed to have hard chests and firm thighs.

from Small World by David Lodge

Highlight these words and phrases in the text and try to deduce their meanings from the context (the line number is given beside each word). Underline the words or phrases that help you to deduce the meanings.

(Use a dictionary to look up any phrases you couldn't deduce the meanings of.)

Find an example in the text of each of the following:

In her arms, he melted . . .

FOR something that money can't buy, love sells well. Harlequin Enterprises, a subsidiary of Torstar, a Canadian

lifted on to Rodrigo Aviles's saddle, Rebecca Harper knew she had definitely wandered off the tourist trail in Baja"), and

lusher characters ("Arminel knew that her holiday friendship

with Rhys Beringer was no more than that, a friendship"),

Harlequin's simple 3 last year produced

C$348m ($300m) in sales and C$58m in operating profit.

British and Australian pulp-passion readers know them under the Mills & Boon imprint.

appear each month. Distributed through newsstands and

mail-order rather than 6 , all go out of print

within weeks. Priced at under $3 and fewer than 200 pages long, the books are cheaper than most magazines, and take

no 7 to read.

To keep the titles flowing, Harlequin maintains a vast

housewives or slumming journalists. To keep their output

consistent, Harlequin issues them with 10

instructions on characterisation and plot. The hero must be "overwhelmingly attractive - that means he probably isn't bald, short or fat," suggests an introductory tape. Happy

endings are11

Harlequin's marketing strategy is as simple as its editorial

one. Different sub-brands aim at different 12

of reader. The relatively explicit Temptation series, launched six years ago, aims at younger women. Harlequin's Medical

stare on his smiling face"). Harlequin also has a series

celebrating that most romantic of unions, the single European

The last time you heard from Pam was in 1997 when she sent you this note:

The last time you heard from Max was in 1998 when he sent you this letter: