Section D

 

 

I'll never forget...

 

Twenty-six-year-old barrister Annette Henry will never forget the romantic evening that ended with a splash1•••

 

'I was on holiday in Cyprus with my parents and I'd met this nice boy, Pambos. One evening - wanting to give me a special surprise - he took me to this lovely restaurant with tables round a swimming pool. We were gazing into each other's eyes in the moonlight when to my surprise I saw Mum and Dad walk in- they'd picked the same restaurant! I was just about to go over when Dad pulled out a chair for himself, started sitting down... and then suddenly he was gone! He hadn't realised in the darkness that the swimming pool was just behind him. "I thought it was a dance floor," he said moments later when he came up. Luckily he was OK, but

my romantic evening was dampened2 too... '

 

(adapted from a letter to Best magazine)

later sent him to a school for blind and partially sighted

children. Here Ved describes how he came to

understand the idea of a mirror.

 

Whenever I asked Paran, from the boy's side of the classroom, "What are you doing, Paran?" she would say, "I'm looking into my mirror."

"What do you see in a mirror?" "My reflection.''

"What is that?" "It's my double."

"But how can it be your double? The mirror is thin and flat.''

"You have to be able to see to understand.''

I could not work out the puzzle of Paran and the mirror until some time after Abdul and I stumbled onto1 a heavy stone slab in the cellar. We moved it and discovered that under it was a big, sloping hole. We got down into the hole.

I was frightened and wanted to run back, because the tunnel -

for that was what it seemed to be - was knee-deep in water, and I could hear things splashing2 and swimming, scuttling and buzzing. The little noises were picked up and repeated all around me, until it seemed that the whole tunnel was full

,

of ghosts3 snakes and wasps.

"I'm getting out of here!" I shouted.

"I'm getting out of here!" they shouted back.

Abdul and I almost fell over each other getting out of the tunnel.

We put the stone back over the hole and didn't go near it for a few days. But one day I told Deoji about the tunnel.

"That's an old, unused sewer," he said. "I don't know

what things were swimming down there. But the sound you heard was an echo."

"What is an echo?"

"It's when your voice bounces back from the walls and the ceiling."

"Why doesn't it do that everywhere?"

"You have to be in a tight comer or the voice will escape." After that, I would often go down to the slab of stone,

move it a chink", and shout, "Hello, there!'' As I listened to

the echo, I felt that, like Paran, I was looking into a mirror.

 

(from Vedi by Ved Mehta)

 

:

stumbled onto 1 found by chance splashing 2: hitting the water noisily ghosts 3: spirits of dead people

move it a chink 4: move it to make a small opening

:

splash 1

what happens when something hits water hard

To Ved the idea of an echo is similar to the idea of a

dampened 2: 1) made something a little wet

2) made something less exciting

 

Choose the best summary.

mirror. He found his echo 'down there' in a hole. Draw

lines to the left for words that mean something like echo

or mirror, to the right for words that mean something like hole.

A. Annette was with a new boyfriend in a restaurant. echo/mirror

Her parents came in and her father fell in the

swimming pool, which he thought was a dance floor.

After that the romance of the evening was gone.

 

B. Annette's new boyfriend wanted to give her a surprise and invited her parents to the same

 

 

reflection double cellar tunnel shout back

 

hole

restaurant. Her father fell in the swimming pool, which was a surprise for everyone. After that the

romance of the evening was gone.

sewer----­

bounce back