wrzesień 2009 - The Triangle

The Triangle

Have you ever been to Sieradz? Probably not without an ambulance on standby. After all, would you feel safe with all those domestic fights, drunk hooligans in the street and of course dangerous drivers unable to get a standard bank loan? We all know Sieradz is the one place you don't go if you want to stay out of hospital.

What do you mean, you didn't know that? Doesn't everybody know how unsafe the town is? I can show you crime and accident statistics. There are a lot of people who can tell of the day they met with violence in Sieradz, and some who didn't live to tell anything. The fact that I only have the figures for Sieradz, and I have never bothered to look at statistics for any other part of Poland, is not important. Sieradz is like the Bermuda Triangle.

What mysteries wait to be discovered in that triangle of death, off the east coast of America? We know the stories: ships disappear without even a lifebelt left floating on the surface of the sea. Aeroplanes vanish from radar screens with no SOS messages sent. People take their yachts out for a trip in fine weather, but suddenly a storm blows up and they are never seen again. And it all happens in a triangular region of sea near the island of Bermuda.

Then you look at the reports of all plane crashes and disappearing ships and the mystery vanishes. There are worse places to sail or fly, where ships sink and planes crash into the sea with nothing left behind. The truth is that there is nothing mysterious about the seas around Bermuda, just as there is nothing especially dangerous about Sieradz.

The legend of the Bermuda Triangle appeared like most folk tales, but this one remained while others died out. Now, any time one of the hundreds of ships that sink every year does so in The Triangle, it will make the legend stronger. When it happens off the coast of South Africa, most people will forget it in a day or two (if it even appears on the news in the first place).

So what will be your first thought next time you hear a story from Sieradz on the news?

Exercise

Speaking of things going missing, where should these words go? Remember to use the right tense.

misplace
destroy
vanish
disappear
lose
forget
abandon

1) Our factory was completely ____________ by the flood.
2) Since the company closed down, that factory has been ____________.
3) Your application form was ____________ somewhere in one of our offices. We found it quite by accident last night while we were cleaning.
4) The police were following a man in a yellow raincoat, but he ____________ in thick fog.
5) Each year we ____________ thousands of letters in the post, so many people have switched to using a courier service instead.

Sinking

Remember, ships sink and people drown. People swim and ships float (they can also sail, even if they have motors).
A ship can also capsize. This means the ship falls over in the water, but stays on the surface (it 'stays afloat').

How many English words can you think of that mean 'go down? Here are three to get you started: drop, fall, tumble.

Creative writing

Write a short story called 'The missing ____________' (choose the third word of the title yourself). We'll upload some of them to this blog in the future. Please send it to biuro@blc.pl.

Dodatkowe zadanie i niespodzianka: kliknij tutaj.

KEY TO EXERCISE:
destroyed, abandoned, mislaid, disappeared/vanished, lose

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