Prime Time 7, Coursebook plus Semester Self-checks

4 First love The power of love What adjectives come to your mind when you think of love? • Look at the expressions in the word bank. • Find out which words have similar meanings. • Collect synonyms for some of them. Reading: Unfulfilled expectations a) Read the first part of the short story and underline any information about Tossie that you find remarkable. 1  Word bank Love absolute • affectionate • compassionate • devoted • divine • endless • eternal • faithful • fond • genuine • honest • hoping • inestimable • infinite • joyful • merry • noble • optimistic • peaceful • perpetual • precious • promising • pure • real • selfless • self-sacrificing • sincere • stunning • tender • vibrant W 2  Have you ever thought how when you think you know what something’s going to be like, it turns out to be quite different? Or if it is anything like you imagined, it’s somehow flat, as if you’d had it before. There may be a minute when you say, “It’s perfect; it’s exactly like I imagined.” Then, another minute later, it’s disappointing, just because it is how you’d imagined it. Like staying too long at a party, or thinking too much about Christmas before it comes. My sister Tossie was always disappointed long before the end of Christmas Day. She was the one of us who got most excited about Christmas; she was always awake long before we were supposed to get up on Christmas morning, waking the rest of us up too, poking at our stockings and guessing what was inside them. I remember one Christmas, she can’t have been more than ten, because I know I was nearly six; it was the year we’d all had chickenpox. She poked round a sort of long, thin thing in her stocking and said, “It’s a watch.” “It couldn’t be a watch. It’s much too expensive,” we said. “It could. It could be a watch. What else would be that shape?” “Too flat.” “A bracelet.” “Not in that shaped box.” “A paper knife.” “Mum wouldn’t.” We guessed all sorts of things, but Tossie wouldn’t listen to any of them. She went off on a sort of dream which she told out loud, about how she’d wear the watch, and how surprised her friends were going to be, and how no one except her in the upper thirds had a watch. How she’d lend it to me for parties – as long as she wasn’t going to them herself, of course – and how when she was an old, old lady and died, she’d leave it to her grandchildren, with a message telling them it was the first watch she’d ever had, and she’d been given it the Christmas she was ten. It turned out to be a pair of compasses, something she’d always wanted before, but of course not like having a proper watch. That was another sad Christmas. Somehow when Tossie was sad it made us all feel as if we’d been disappointed about our presents too. Our Mum used to say she built up such a rigmarole in her head about how marvellous everything was going to be that nothing, not watches or bicycles or diamond rings or the Queen’s crown could have come up to what she’d imagined. And it was always like that. She’d come back sad from parties, because each one was going to be the most marvellous party she’d ever been to; then when it turned out to be just being with the same lot of people she’d seen every day at school all term, but wearing different clothes and not having anything special to do, she felt let down and awful. I used to dread Tossie’s parties because of her and me sharing the room. I’d be asleep when she came in, but when it had been a bad evening she wouldn’t bother about being quiet. She’d drop her shoes, shut the wardrobe door so it slammed as well as squeaked – which you couldn’t help – and then lie in bed sighing. Tossie had the biggest sighs I’ve ever heard; it was like hearing a 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 54 Adolescence Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eig ntum des Verlags öbv