Lesson 33 A day to remember

What incident began the series of traffic accidents?

We have all experienced days when everything goes wrong.

A day may begin well enough, but suddenly everything seems to get out of control.

What invariably happens is that a great number of things choose to go wrong at precisely the same moment.

It is as if a single unimportant event set up a chain of reactions.

Let us suppose that you are preparing a meal and keeping an eye on the baby at the same time.

The telephone rings and this marks the prelude to an unforeseen series of catastrophes.

While you are on the phone, the baby pulls the tablecloth off the table, smashing half your best crockery and cutting himself in the process.

You hang up hurriedly and attend to baby,c rockery, etc. Meanwhile, the meal gets burnt.

As if this were not enough to reduce you to tears, your husband arrives, unexpectedly bringing three guests to dinner.

Things can go wrong on a big scale, as a number of people recently discovered in Parramatta, a suburb of Sydney.

During the rush hour one evening two cars collided and both drivers began to argue.

The woman immediately behind the two cars happened to be a learner.

She suddenly got into a panic and stopped her car. This made the driver following her brake hard.

His wife was sitting beside him holding a large cake.

As she was thrown forward, the cake went right through the windscreen and landed on the road.

Seeing a cake flying through the air, a lorry driver who was drawing up alongside the car, pulled up all of a sudden.

The lorry was loaded with empty beer bottles and hundreds of them slid off the back of the vehicle and on to the road.

This led to yet another angry argument. Meanwhile, the traffic piled up behind.

It took the police nearly an hour to get the traffic on the move again.

In the meantime, the lorry driver had to sweep up hundreds of broken bottles.

Only two stray dogs benefited from all this confusion, for they greedily devoured what was left of the cake.

It was just one of those days!

 

1.      Incident , accident 区别

2.      get out of control   be beyond sb’s control  be under control

I’m afraid it is beyond my control. 

Don’t worry. Everything is under control.

3.      have control of/over sth.  be in control of , take/lose control of

4.      choose to  

1) He has deliberately chosen to lead the life he leads

2) What invariably happens is that a great number of things choose to gowrong at precisely the same moment.

5.      Set up

The committee was set up last year.

Does anyone know how to set up this machine?

In some people this drug sets up a reaction.

6.      a chain of = a series of                 a chain reaction连锁反应

7.      keep an eye on = look after, keep an eye on更不正式一些

A: would you like me to water your plants while you are away?

B: thanks for the offer, but Mark already said he’d keep an eye on them.

8.      catastrophe If war broke out, it would be a catastrophe for the whole world.

9.      attend to : deal with   , unattended

Never leave you child unattended in a shopping cat.

10.  burn ->过去式，过去分词可以是burnt也可以是burned但是要表示烧糊只能用burnt

11.  reduce sb. to 使某人陷入一个不快的状态

His question reduced me to silence.

She was reduced to begging eventually.

The city was reduced to ruins.

12.  Something came up unexpectedly and I can’t make it on Friday.

13.  发音 scale[skeil] skill[skil]             on a big/large/small scale

14.  This led to yet another angry argument .此处的yet是用来强调的常跟anotheragain比较级联用

Having already owned twenty pairs of shoes, she bought yet another pairtoday.

Sorry to disturb you yet again.

He made a yet worse mistake.

15.  Devour吞咽；如饥似渴的做什么事情

He was a very keen reader – he would devour one book after another.

16.  Let’s pick it up where we left off.

17.  draw up 1)起草2)使靠近

1)     The use of gloves was not introduced until 1860,when the Marquis of Queensberry drew up the first set of rules. - Lesson 21Daniel Mendoza

2)     Seeing a cake flying through the air, the lorrydriver who was drawing up alongside the car, pulled up all of a sudden. –Lesson 33 A day to remember