Contrast-Kate Moss,Man United,The Forsyte Saga.

September 8th


The BBC is an enormous stock of interesting audios.
This time I got close to the people in London queuing to see the super model Kate Moss.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/radio/specials/1728_people_places/page51.shtml

Her silence is definitely the secret to her career and the reason why she has lasted almost 20 years now and most other models haven’t had careers lasting half that amount of time. The reason she’s so successful is people can put onto her any image they want and they can do that because she’s completely silent. So she can represent older sister, the cool rock and roll girlfriend, anything that they like.
(Hadley Freeman - the Guardian)

This programme was specially made for the learning purposes, so not only reading while listening was available, but a change in person, who’s speaking – real people in the streets and the journalist talking to them; the tutor, who explained the meaning of words and repeated the sentences several times.

Reading:

Football is like...

The trouble with the orgasm as metaphor here is that the orgasm, though obviously pleasurable, is familiar, repeatable (within a couple of hours if you've been eating your greens), and predictable, particularly for a man - if you're having sex then you know what's coming, as it were. Maybe if I hadn't made love for eighteen years, and had given up hope of doing so for another eighteen, and then suddenly, out of the blue, an opportunity presented itself ... maybe in these circumstances it would be possible to recreate an approximation of that Anfield (Liverpool's stadium) moment. Even though there is no question that sex is a nicer activity than watching football (no nil-nil draws, no offside trap, no cup upsets, and you're warm), in the normal run of things, the feelings it engenders are simply not as intense as those brought about by a once-in-a-lifetime last-minute Championship winner.
None of the moments that people describe as the best in their lives seem analogous to me. Childbirth must be extraordinarily moving, but it doesn't really have the crucial surprise element, and in any case lasts too long; the fulfilment of personal ambition - promotions, awards, what have you - doesn't have the last-minute time factor, nor the element of powerlessness that I felt that night. And what else is there that can possibly provide the suddenness? A huge pools win, maybe, but the gaining of large sums of money affects a different part of the psyche altogether, and has none of the communal ecstasy of football.
There is then, literally, nothing to describe it. I have exhausted all the available options. I can recall nothing else that I have coveted for two decades (what else is there that can reasonably be coveted for that long?), nor can I recall anything else that I have desired as both man and boy. So please, be tolerant of those who describe a sporting moment as their best ever. We do not lack imagination, nor have we had sad and barren lives; it is just that real life is paler, duller, and contains less potential for unexpected delirium.

(Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch)

Taken from the TA website.

What could I go on with after that? Maybe Manchester United website? Nope, I took The Forsyte Saga – a famous novel about the three generations of the upper-middle class of English society.


As I’m on the 157th page now (I started reading in August), I won’t be giving out my thoughts about this book, I’ll only say, that I enjoy it due to its beautiful language (not very difficult by the way), exposure of the British life in the late 19th century and themes, roughly minimised to Duty versus Desire and Generations and Change.

(5 pages today.)

As I read this book I don’t use the dictionary, despite I don’t understand many words. The idea is to get used to the structures, which are nearly the same in this book and the modern life.