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--- lesson 33 A day to remember |
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--- Listen to the tape then answer the question below. |
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--- What incident began the series of traffic accidents? |
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We have all experienced days when everything goes wrong. |
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A day may begin well enough, but suddenly everything seems to get out of control. |
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What invariably happens is that a great number of things choose to go wrong at precisely the same moment. |
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It is as if a single unimportant event set up a chain of reactions. |
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Let us suppose that you are preparing a meal and keeping an eye on the baby at the same time. |
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The telephone rings and this marks the prelude to an unforeseen series of catastrophes. |
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While you are on the phone, the baby pulls the tablecloth off the table, |
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smashing half your best crockery and cutting himself in the process. |
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You hang up hurriedly and attend to baby, crockery, etc. |
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Meanwhile, the meal gets burnt. |
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As if this were not enough to reduce you to tears, your husband arrives, unexpectedly bringing three guests to dinner. |
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Things can go wrong on a big scale, as a number of people recently discovered in Parramatta, a suburb of Sydney. |
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During the rush hour one evening two cars collided and both drivers began to argue. |
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The woman immediately behind the two cars happened to be a learner. |
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She suddenly got into a panic and stopped her car. |
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This made the driver following her brake hard. |
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His wife was sitting beside him holding a large cake. |
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As she was thrown forward, the cake went right through the windscreen and landed on the road. |
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Seeing a cake flying through the air, a lorry driver who was drawing up alongside the car, pulled up all of a sudden. |
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The lorry was loaded with empty beer bottles and hundreds of them slid off the back of the vehicle and on to the road. |
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This led to yet another angry argument. |
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Meanwhile, the traffic piled up behind. |
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It took the police nearly an hour to get the traffic on the move again. |
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In the meantime, the lorry driver had to sweep up hundreds of broken bottles. |
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Only two stray dogs benefited from all this confusion, for they greedily devoured what was left of the cake. |
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It was just one of those days! |
