by Anne Cassidy

Before you read:

1) What do you like and what do you dislike about supermarkets?

2) Judging by the title, what could the text be about?

“So what did you say? ” Jean heard the blonde woman in front of her talking to her friend.

Supermarkets are much the same all over the world - especially the queues at checkout points. There are always snatches of overheard conversation…

“Well,” the darker woman began, “I said I'm not having that woman there. I don't see why I should. I mean I'm not being old-fashioned but I don't see why I should have to put up with her at family occasions. After all…” Jean noticed the other woman giving an accompaniment of nods at the appropriate parts. They fell into silence and the queue moved forward a couple of steps.

Jean felt her patience beginning to itch. Looking into her wire basket she counted ten items. That meant she couldn't go through the quick till but simply had to wait behind the elephantine shopping loads; giant bottles of coke crammed in beside twenty-pound bags of potatoes and “special offer" drums of bleach. Somewhere at the bottom, Jean thought, there was always a plastic carton of eggs or a see-through tray of tomatoes which fell casualty to the rest. There was nothing else for it - she'd just have to wait.

“After all,” the dark woman resumed her conversation, “how would it look if she was there when I turned up? ” Her friend shook her head slowly from side to side and ended with a quick nod.

Should she have got such a small size salad cream? Jean wasn't sure. She was sick of throwing away half-used bottles of stuff.

“He came back to you after all,” the blonde woman suddenly said. Jean looked up quickly and immediately felt her cheeks flush. She bent over and began to rearrange the items in her shopping basket.

“On his hands and knees,” the dark woman spoke in a triumphant voice. “Begged me take him back. ”

She gritted her teeth together. Should she go and change it for a larger size? Jean looked behind and saw that she was hemmed in by three large trolleys. She'd lose her place in the queue. There was something so pitiful about buying small sizes of everything. It was as though everyone knew.

“You can always tell a person by her shopping," was one of her mother's favourite maxims. She looked into her shopping basket: individual fruit pies, small salad cream, yoghurt, tomatoes, cat food and a chicken quarter.

The blonde began to load her shopping onto the conveyor belt. The cashier, doing what looked like an in-depth study of a biro, suddenly said, “Make it out to J. Sainsbury PLC. ” She was addressing a man who had been poised and waiting to write out a cheque for a few moments. His wife was loading what looked like a gross of fish fingers into a cardboard box marked “Whiskas”. It was called a division of labour.

Jean looked again at her basket and began to feel the familiar regret that visited her from time to time. Hemmed in between family size cartons of cornflakes and giant packets of washing powder, her individual yoghurt seemed to say it all. She looked up towards a plastic bookstand which stood beside the till. A slim glossy hardback caught her eye. The words “Cooking for One" screamed out from the front cover. Think of all the oriental foods you can get into, her friend had said. He was so traditional after all. Nodding in agreement with her thoughts Jean found herself eye to eye with the blonde woman, who, obviously not prepared to tolerate nodding at anyone else, gave her a blank, hard look and handed her what looked like a black plastic ruler with the words “Next customer please” printed on it in bold letters. She turned back to her friend. Jean put the ruler down on the conveyor belt.

She thought about their shopping trips, before, when they were together, which for some reason seemed to assume massive proportions considering there were only two of them. All that rushing round, he pushing the trolley dejectedly, she firing questions at him. Salmon? Toilet Rolls? Coffee? Peas? She remembered he only liked the processed kind. It was all such a performance. Standing there holding her wire basket, embarrassed by its emptiness, was like something out of a soap opera.

“Of course, we've had our ups and downs,” the dark woman continued, lazily passing a few items down to her friend who was now on to what looked like her fourth Marks and Spencer one of the UK's leading retailers of clothing, foods and houseware. The company has 150 stores worldwide operating in 30 countries. carrier bag.

Jean began to load her food onto the conveyor belt. She picked up the cookery book and felt the frustrations of indecision. It was only ninety pence but it seemed to define everything, to pinpoint her aloneness, to prescribe an empty future. She put it back in its place.

“So that's why I couldn't have her there, you see,” the dark woman was summing up. She lowered her voice to a loud whisper which immediately alerted a larger audience. “And anyway, when he settles back in, I'm sure we'll sort out the other business then." The friends exchanged knowing expressions and the blonde woman got her purse out of a neat leather bag. She peeled off three ten pound notes and handed them to the cashier.

Jean opened her carrier bag ready for her shopping. She turned to watch the two women as they walked off, the blonde pushing the trolley and the other seemingly carrying on with her story.

The cashier was looking expectantly at her and Jean realized that she had totalled up. It was four pounds and eighty-seven pence. She had the right money, it just meant sorting her change out. She had an inkling that the people behind her were becoming impatient. She noticed their stacks of items all lined and waiting, it seemed, for starter's orders. Brown bread and peppers, olive oil and lentils and, in the centre, a stray packet of beefburgers.

She gave over her money and picked up her carrier bag. She felt a sense of relief to be away from the mass of people. She felt out of place, a non conformer, half a consumer unit.

Walking out of the door she wondered what she might have for tea. Possibly chicken, she thought, with salad. Walking towards her car she thought she should have bought the cookery book after all. She suddenly felt much better in the fresh air. She'd buy it next week. And in future she'd buy a large salad cream. After all, what if people came round unexpectedly?

Comprehension

by Clara Augusta

Before you read:

1) Have you (or has anyone you know) ever had an unpleasant experience at the hairdresser's?

2) Can you think of any recent fads in the sphere of style and fashion?

1I am unfortunate enough to be the daughter of a hairdresser. My father is an artist of the first water, who has the handsomest suite of rooms in the city, does an enormous business, and does the hair of all the first ladies in town.

2By birth he was a Connecticut Yankee, by the name of Peter Jones, but since he set up in the hairdressing business he has been M. Pierre de la Johannes.

3My hair was kept short until I was fourteen; after that it was not cut. At sixteen I rejoiced in a very luxuriant crop of dark brown ringlets. It was at just that epoch that all the rage for false hair came in. Everybody had hair on the brain. My father worked night and day constructing curls, etc., and still the supply never equaled the demand.

4Every woman's head ran to hair to such an extent that no wonder naturalists were astounded and felt grave fears that there was to be some sudden and radical change in the organization of the female sex.

5The Bible tells us that we cannot make one's hair white or black, but that assertion was written down before these days of patent hair renewers, restorers, tonics and invigorators. I know people who had white heads yesterday, and today are happy with hair as black as the raven's wing. I have seen black-haired women changed to golden-haired blondes, and vice versa, all in the course of a week or less.

6As soon as this infatuation in regard to hair commenced, my father began to make experiments on my locks. Every new hairstyle which came out was reproduced on my head. My hair was braided, and twisted, and frizzed, and puffed, and left to hang loose, and then again drawn so tight that I couldn't shut my mouth, and my forehead shone like the sheepskin on the head of a drum.

7I had a lover, but I never could have time to bring him to the point, for he came evenings, and evenings my father always practiced on my hair. My suitor did very nearly propose on one occasion, that is, he got so far as to say he loved me, and wanted me to…

8And here my father made his appearance, and marched me off to the shop to have my hair dressed "a la Greeque. "

9Philip was very angry, and persisted in believing it was a contrived plan between my father and myself, and a fortnight afterwards he married Ellen Hastings.

10By and by father turned his attention to the manufacture of restoratives and depilatories; all warranted efficacious, of course, "and all of them had been faithfully tested by a member of the discoverer's own family," meaning me.

11Oh dear, how much I had endured from them. I had gallons of restorers poured on my devoted head, I had smelled of lead, glycerine, cayenne, sage tea, olive oil and beeswax, sulphur, nitrate of silver, bergamot, bay rum, gum shellac, and only my scientific parent knows that I had my hair burned with curling irons, bleached to red, and from red changed to black, and from black to brown, and so on "ad infinitum." My head had been soaked for twenty-four hours in an alkali, for the same length of time in an acid, and I had sat on top of the house in the hot July sun to "bleach" until I felt like a mud pie baked on the desert of Sahara.

12Time passed on, and brought me a second sweetheart. George Guild was his name. He was an extremely sensitive young man, a little superstitious, and inclined to be unstable in most matters. But he was good looking, and had some property, and we were engaged, with the full consent of my parents.

13At the time I promised myself to him I had black hair, just the color he most admired, but two or three days afterwards my father took it into his head to bleach my locks to auburn.

14George came to see me. What a fearful change passed over him as he looked at me! He grew pale as death, gasped, and acted as if he had about made up his mind to swoon. Then, gathering his energies for a final effort, he seized his hat and made for the door.

15He did not come again, and I, sick with suspense, sent for him and appointed a certain evening for the visit. The very day I expected him father called me down to the shop just as I was going to dress to receive George.

16He had a new restorer, and just as he was about to submerge my head in the new concoction he was called away to dress Mrs. Morgan's head for a ball. So he left Bob, his blundering assistant, to apply the restorer. It was a most villainous smelling compound the boy plastered me with, and as soon as the operation was over I hurried up to my chamber and dressed. Then I descended to the parlor to await George's coming.

17My head felt strangely, and presently the scalp began to itch and smart most intolerably. It grew worse and worse, until, at last, in sheer desperation, I seized a brush, and applied it to my head.

18Good heaven! The hair fell off in handfuls, and possessed by a horrible sort of fascination, I stood there before the glass and brushed until my head was as bare as a peeled onion!

19And then the door opened and George Guild came in. He cast at me one glance of horrified dismay, uttered a cry of alarm and fled from the house. I heard the next day he had taken the train for California. A letter, which he left behind, told me that he loved me, but he was satisfied that I had dealings with the Evil One, and therefore dared not link his fate with mine.

20For a week or two I cried most of the time after losing my hair and lover. But now that time enables me to think calmly of the matter, I do not regret the accident, for I have escaped the eternal manipulation of my father.

21I wear a wig, and have no desire that my hair shall grow faster than it chooses to.

by Carol Moore

Before you read

1) Find out essential facts about the author.

2) Who are “the pioneers” in the history of the USA?

3) What is an epilogue? What is it usually about?

It was a day like the day before and the day after. The wind wrapped itself around the sod cabin in gusting moans as the pioneer family within carried out their tasks pretending not to hear. They heard the wind, however. It had been their constant companion on the open plains since their journey from Philadelphia two years before in the spring of 1865. Following the covered wagon train of ten, the wind had lifted the drab landscape into billows of dust falling on everyone and everything until there seemed but one color and one sound.

Now Rachel sat on the bed hand-stitching a quilt while her mother hunched over a sewing machine across the room rocking her feet backwards and forwards on a foot treadle that turned the shaft that moved the needle. The thumping counterpointed the wind outside. Laughter and giggling erupted from Rachel's younger brother and sister playing jacks on the floor and it brought a smile to their sister's face, but when she glanced back at their mother she stopped smiling.

Rachel felt that her parents worked too hard. They rarely had fun or relaxation like they had enjoyed in Philadelphia. Now her father was always in the fields. Her mother prepared meals on a wood-stoked stove, did the laundry on a washboard, baked flatbread and sewed clothes to trade for goods in town. Rachel remembered her mother singing and telling stories at one time but that was before she had begun complaining about the wind and the dirt and the mud. Eventually she had stopped complaining, but she had stopped singing, too.

The door swung open and it was Rachel's father. Entering in a puff of dust, he coughed and wiped his forehead. "Mighty hot day out there. "

"Well, I've got ale for you and flatbread too," replied his wife. She rose from the sewing machine and began setting the table as her husband eased himself into a chair.

"I know. I could smell it from outside. Smelled so good I came in early. What else have you all been up to while I was clearing rows with Molly and Bell?"

"Rachel's done with her quilt. "

"Oh?" Rachel's father turned to look as his older daughter proudly showed off her masterpiece. It was a cheerful blooming of color with stitches outlining the squares.

"That's a mighty fine piece of work." He nodded. "How 'bout us going into town this Saturday? You can show off your quilt, your mother can take her flatbread, and I've got a bushel of onions ready. "

The young children whooped excitedly and Michael, the boy, began dancing around the room, lifting his knees and clapping. There was reason for jubilation. The 20-mile trip to town in the buckboard was a once-a-month affair to which everyone in the family looked forward.

The town of Wausa, Nebraska was not unlike other little towns that had sprung up to welcome the pioneers. It was a mix of old and new buildings with wood plank sidewalks and a wide main street of dirt to accommodate trains of oxen. In one of the newer buildings was the general store. Guarding the door was a wooden Indian and next to it hung a bird cage. The family stopped for a moment to look at the yellow bird inside.

When they stepped into the store it was a universe all its own. There was the scent of wood and soap and spice. The walls were lined with racks of crates and mason jars, and along the aisles were bushel barrels of potatoes and apples. In the back neatly propped against the wall were bolts of fabric. While her brother and sister explored the store and her parents spoke with the grocer about their bread and onions, Rachel wandered back outside to look at the bird.

So bright a yellow it was a miniature piece of the sun in that dusty place. It hopped from perch to perch rarely standing still and as it hopped it kept its eyes on Rachel. Suddenly a shadow passed over the girl and, startled, she looked up to see a Sioux Indian. Her heart beat faster. Indians sometimes came to town to barter although it was discouraged by the shopkeepers. Such a history of warfare existed between Indians and white settlers that no one felt safe. But this Indian was as fascinated by the bird as Rachel. He stared intently and then said something she couldn't understand. Seeing her puzzled face he repeated in English, "It listens to the wind. "

Before Rachel could think about what he had said, the Indian turned and walked away. Her parents appeared a moment later, having seen him through the window.

"Are you all right?" asked her father.

Rachel nodded. "He was just looking at the canary. "

At that moment the little bird lifted its head, swelled its chest, and sang out a joyous trill. Rachel saw her mother's face light up with delight.

Rachel traded her quilt for the canary and never regretted it because the little bird entertained them endlessly. Sir Gallant, they called him because he did battle with the wind. The louder the wind the more loudly he sang, competition so fierce that sometimes everyone burst out laughing. Sir Gallant lifted their spirits turning dust days back into sunshine days.

Rachel thought about what the Indian had said. She'd heard the wind but unlike the canary she'd never listened to it. Now when she tried she could hear music in the moaning. Of course the music was faint and hidden in the background and she needed her imagination, but it was there if she truly listened. She began humming the sounds she heard. "That's a pretty tune" her mother commented one day, "what song is that?" Rachel didn't reply, unsure how to explain, and her mother didn't press the question. Soon she, too, began humming.

Occasionally bachelor cowboys stopped by the cabin to buy flatbread or to have their clothes mended. They were always welcomed, not for the money in their pocket but for their company. With no neighbors for twenty miles, it was lonely on the plains. The family and guests traded news, shared a meal, and were serenaded by Sir Gallant who was often the center of conversation.

One afternoon the younger daughter Mary noticed the canary sitting motionless on his perch. "Is Sir Gallant sick?" she asked in alarm.

"No. It's just a dark day outside," her mother reassured her. "It'll be raining soon and he probably doesn't feel like singing. "

The younger children accepted this explanation but not Rachel. She knew that while Sir Gallant stopped singing from time to time, he had always hopped about his cage. She went to the door and looked outside. It was deathly quiet, no wind or sounds of birds or prairie dogs. She saw the outline of her father with the two oxen in the north field and at the same time she saw black thunderclouds stacked high into the sky. There was a heaviness to the air and a prickly feeling.

The Indian's words echoed in her mind. "It listens to the wind. "

Rachel thought about Sir Gallant's odd behavior and the angry thunderclouds and how strange it felt. Straining to hear, she caught a faint rumbling and it was the sound of thunder.

Suddenly Rachel knew. She absolutely knew they were in danger. "Mom," she shouted. "It's a tornado!"

Immediately Mary and Michael began screaming as their mother gathered them up and, along with Sir Gallant, rushed outside. The safest place was the root cellar at the side of the house. Throwing open the cellar doors, the mother yelled to Rachel to warn her father.

Rachel took off running across the field shouting and waving her arms, but not until she was halfway across did she get his attention.

"What's wrong?" he yelled.

It was another moment before she reached him. "Tornado. "

His eyes searched the horizon. "I don't see anything, but I can bring in Molly and Bell anyway. I'll come back to the house. "

"No! There's no time. Listen!" Rachel was close to hysterical and because she never lied or played tricks, he did as she asked. Finally able to hear the rumbling he jumped to action. Releasing the yoke from the harnesses on the oxen he turned them free and then grabbed Rachel's arm and they began to run. By the time they reached the sod cabin, the tornado was visible, rain drenched their bodies and a thunderous roaring pounded the air.

The tornado lasted only minutes although it felt like hours. When the family emerged from their shelter they were relieved to find their sod cabin intact. Fortunately the oxen, too, had escaped although the scarred earth proved the north field had been in the center of the tornado's path. The loss of crops would make things more difficult, but they felt blessed to be alive. They also felt divine intervention had come in the form of a little yellow bird…

A woman stood in the door of the attic and sighed. Gray and dusty in the half light, the room was filled with old furniture, boxes and a thousand forgotten memories. She had inherited its contents from her grandmother and now faced the chore of deciding the fate of each piece. Attracted to an old sewing machine, so old that it had a foot treadle, she opened the top drawer. Amidst the buttons and needles and scissors was a tiny bundle of lace neatly tied with ribbon. Curious, she picked it up and unwrapped it. To her surprise she found she was unfolding the burial cloth of a canary, its body long ago dried up but carefully preserved. Holding it in her right hand she stared, perplexed, and quite unconsciously put her left hand over her heart.

Epilogue

This story was inspired by an article I read in a magazine years ago. Inheriting her grandmother's sewing machine (who had been a pioneer in one of the plains states), the author of that article found the wrapped body of a canary in one of its drawers. Intrigued, she had done research, discovering just how much the pioneers had loved these little birds. The article included the photograph of a prairie cabin with three cages of canaries hanging from its eaves.

Comprehension: