Prime Time 7, Coursebook plus Semester Self-checks

5 Tragic dilemma Before you read a) Read the definition below. Then find a similar explanation for the phrase can of worms and write it into your exercise book. First describe the metaphor and then explain the meaning. The expression dilemma refers to a situation in which a difficult choice between two or more options has to be made, but each of these is somehow undesirable or bad. It is a no-win situation. b) Think of situations that you regard as dilemmas. With a partner, choose one of them and prepare a short presentation. c) Present your dilemma in class. Reading: A long way down Read the following text and mark the passages that have a humoristic touch. Martin 1  2  VIP file Nick Hornby was educated at Cambridge University. His previous jobs include English teacher, journalist and pop music critic for The New Yorker . Some of his books, such as About a boy or High fidelity , have been turned into successful movies. V Can I explain why I wanted to jump off the top of a tower block? Of course I can explain why I wanted to jump off the top of a tower block. I’m not a bloody idiot. I can explain it because it wasn’t inexplicable: it was a logical decision, the product of proper thought. It wasn’t even a very serious thought, either. I don’t mean it was whimsical – I just meant that it wasn’t terribly complicated, or painful. Put it this way: say you were, I don’t know, an assistant bank manager, in Guildford. And you’d been thinking of emigrating, and then you were offered the job of managing a bank in Sydney. Well, even though it’s a pretty straightforward decision, you’d still have to think for a bit, wouldn’t you? You’d at least have to work out whether you could bear to move, whether you could leave your friends and colleagues behind, whether you could uproot your wife and kids. You might sit down with a bit of paper and draw up a list of pros and cons. You know: Cons – aged parents, friends, golf club. Pros – more money, better quality of life (house with pool, barbecue, etc.), sea, sunshine, no leftwing councils banning “Baa-Baa Black Sheep”, no EEC directives banning British sausages, etc. It’s no contest, is it? The golf club! Give me a break. Obviously your aged parents give you pause for thought, but that’s all it is – a pause, and a brief one, too. You’d be on the phone to the travel agents within ten minutes. Well, that was me. There simply weren’t enough regrets, and lots and lots of reasons to jump. The only things in my “cons” list were the kids, but I couldn’t imagine Cindy letting me see them again anyway. I haven’t got any aged parents, and I don’t play golf. Suicide was my Sydney. And I say that with no offence to the good people of Sydney intended. […] I’d spent the previous couple of months looking up suicide inquests on the internet, just out of curiosity. And nearly every single time, the coroner says the same thing: “He took his own life while the balance of his mind was disturbed.” And then you read the story about the poor bastard: his wife was sleeping with his best friend, he’d lost his job, his daughter had been killed in a road accident some months before … hello, 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 72 Extreme situations Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv