the lady writes: those were days of franco
DIFFICULTY: OOOH, THAT’S GONNA HURT
intro … This set of fill-outs is based on excerpts from letters written by Bethanie (aka the Lady) to her Czech friend Jana in the mid to late 1990s. Some of them (the early ones) were sent from Toronto, but most seem to have been written in Cambridge after Bethanie’s family moved back to England.
Interesting things were happening back then. A young politician by the name of Tony Blair became the British Prime Minister. In fact, all of Great Britain was undergoing some major changes, which you’ll read more about in Bethanie’s letters. In world news, SARS threatened to kill us all. Largely unnoticed here, Indians were raising some hell in Canada, though not nearly as much as the IRA was on its way out.
batch … dá
excerpt … výpisek, vý?atek, vybraný krátký úsek z delšího textu
SARS … akutní zán?t dýchacího ústrojí
raise hell … vyvád?t, spustit povyk
IRA … Irská republikánská armáda, ohavná teroristická organizace
reminisce … vzpomínat (na staré ?asy)
be on the lookout for st … vyhlížet, hledat
provide … poskytnout
off-and-on … ob?asný (chvíli je, chvíli není)
On a personal note, plenty of plans were made. Most never materialized but that’s always the trouble with plans. There’s some reminiscing about Bethanie’s stay in Czechia as well as her trip to Spain forty years ago. Bethanie’s family (her husband Paul, constantly on the lookout for a well-paid job, and son Patrick, constantly on the lookout for a way to avoid work) provides an endless source of news, as does Jana’s. So do her off-and-on office jobs. There’s an old friend, Veronica, who gets a mention. And of course, the weather remains one of the favorite topics.
NOTE …
those were days of franco
I first went to Spain hitch-hiking as a university student. That was _____ Franco, before the great tourism explosion, when it was considered quite risky for a foreigner to go to Spain - people _____ into prison for wearing bikinis or behaving in a manner that General considered lewd (eg. kissing in public, walking arm in arm with a person of the opposite sex). The police at that time were quite alarming, ignorant peasants carrying machine guns and looking _____ use them at any time. _____ quite careful.
lewd… oplzlý
alarming… siln? znepokojivý
suspicious… podez?elý
be worthy of st… stát za n?co
elsewhere… jinde
feast… hostina
spin… to?it
stumbling… zde: p?erývaný
wrestle… zápasit
At that time I had very long hair, _____ most suspicious (this was about 1957-8, before the Swinging Sixties had started to swing), and wore jeans, then unknown in Spain. Both of these were worthy of arrest in themselves. Fortunately my boyfriend and I managed to _____ prison and get back home alive, but we _____ Barcelona and Tarragona. Some years later I went to the very south of Spain near Gibraltar, but never got to Madrid.
Did you stay only in Madrid, or did you go elsewhere? And what did you think of it? How did you like it compared to Italy? And then, by now you _____ your skiing in Austria and had your English and Dutch students to stay. What a cultural feast of nationalities, your head _____ with all those languages and stumbling accented English. Seriously though, I expect you enjoyed it all, or at least most of it and you didn’t have to work too hard: I hope some of your colleagues _____ a little of the wrestling.
enjoy