|
|
>>> Ïåðåéòè íà ìîáèëüíûé ðàçìåð ñàéòà >>> Ó÷åáíèê àíãëèéñêîãî ÿçûêà 3 unit.
|
1 a gypsy caravan — öûãàíñêèé ôóðãîí, âàãîí÷èê, êèáèòêà
|
While I was still a baby, my father washed me and fed me, changed my diapers,1 pushed me in my pram to the doctor and did all the millions of other things a mother normally does for her child. That is not an easy task for a man, especially when he has to earn his living at the same time.
But my father didn’t mind. He was a cheerful man, I think that he gave me all the love he had felt for my mother when she was alive. We were very close. During my early years, I never had a moment’s unhappiness, and here I am on my fifth birthday.
I was now a bouncy little boy as you can see, with dirt and oil all over me, but that was because I spent all day in the workshop2 helping my father with the cars. The workshop was a stone building. My father built that himself with loving care. “We are engineers, you and I,” he used to say firmly to me. “We earn our living by repairing engines3 and we can’t do good work in a bad workshop.” It was a fine workshop, big enough to take one car comfortably.
The caravan was our house and our home. My father said it was at least one hundred and fifty years old. Many gypsy children, he said, had been born in it and had grown up within its wooden walls. In old times it had been pulled by a horse along winding country roads of England. Different people had knocked at its doors, different people had lived in it. But now its best years were over. There was only one room in the caravan, and it wasn’t much bigger than a modern bathroom.
Although we had electric lights in the workshop, we were not allowed to have them in the caravan as it was dangerous. So we got our heat and light in the same way as the gypsies had done years ago. There was a wood-burning stove4 that kept us warm in winter and there were candles in candlesticks. I think that the stew5 cooked by my father is the best thing I’ve ever tasted. One plateful was never enough.
1 diapers AmE (nappies BrE) — ïåë¸íêè
|
For furniture, we had two narrow beds, two chairs and a small table covered with a tablecloth and some bowls, plates, cups, forks and spoons on it. Those were all the home comforts we had. They were all we needed and we never regretted that our caravan was far from a perfect home.
I really loved living in that gypsy caravan. I loved it particularly in the evenings when I was tucked up in my bed and my father was telling stories. I was happy because I was sure that when I went to sleep, my father would still be there, very close to me, sitting in his chair by the fire.
My father, without any doubt, was the most wonderful and exciting father any boy ever had. Here is a picture of him.
You may think, if you don’t know him well, that he was a stern and serious man. He wasn’t. He was actually full of fun. What made him look so serious and sometimes gloomy1 was the fact that he never smiled with his mouth. He did it all with his eyes. He had bright blue eyes, and when he thought of something funny, you could see a golden light dancing in the middle of each eye. But the mouth never moved. My father was not what you would call an educated man. I doubt he had read many books in his life. But he was an excellent storyteller. He promised to make up a bedtime story for me every time I asked him. He always kept his promise. The best stories were turned into serials and went on many nights running.2
47. Imagine that you are Danny and answer these questions.
48. Decide which of the adjectives you can use to describe a) Danny; b) his father.
helpful, active, bouncy, serious, gloomy, cheerful, devoted, loving, caring,3 wonderful, exciting, happy, friendly, quick
1 gloomy — óãðþìûé
|
49. A. Match the phrases in English and Russian, find and read out the sentences with them in the text.
1) to go to sleep
|
a) ñàì, áåç ÷üåé-ëèáî ïîìîùè
|
Â. Express the same idea using the phrases above.
50. Find in the text and read out the sentences describing the following:
51. Say who in the story:
52. Say true, false or not stated in the text.
|