Тексты A‑G

Non-drivers in the UK

For a skill that in terms of human history is still relatively new - it's approximately 127 years since automobiles were available to the public - driving is considered innate. "You don't drive?" people say, quizzically. As a form of defence I have developed a few retorts. But for all the bravado, I feel like a good- for- nothing.

So accustomed are we to the idea of being able to control a complex piece of machinery at high speeds, that we never mention it. You never hear: "Meet my husband... he's a driver, don't you know!" It is only the non- drivers that are afforded special demarcation. I'm also a non- racist, a non- astronaut and a non- morris dancer, but nobody cares about all of that.

80% of UK men eligible for a driving licence have one. However, there are some five million males - including myself - who will never drive our partners home from dinner parties. Quite a lot of us will not do so because we find it too scary. There is no medical term for the phobia of driving, which let's face it is a pretty rational fear, unlike say, balloons (globophobia) or felt (textophobia). We are simply "the nameless".

Even in today's liberated age, the idea of a non- driving woman is still fine, but Driving Mr Daisy is not. Aside from people so powerful, they don't have time to drive, because they're busy writing film scripts in the back of limos, the rest of us have to drive. If we don't, society raises a collective eyebrow. Why the big deal? It's only driving! In car ads, however, the notion of driving is presented as being cool, exciting and manly. Hardly any other form of potentially fatal human activity is so casually and misleadingly glossed up.

I know that statistically my fear is irrational, so why have I made my life so difficult? Well, I hated driving lessons, even though I passed first time. On hearing the news, I sniggered: "Are you sure?" I then moved from Norwich to London, where a large proportion of friends and colleagues either couldn't or didn't drive. It wasn't an issue, but as the years went by the idea of getting back behind the wheel became more and more terrifying. Scientists believe that younger men, particularly teenagers, have virtually no sense of mortality and as such the emerging ego regularly tries to "cheat death" in order to gain social standing. I don't think I ever had that mindset, and I certainly don't have it now. I have a "life wish".

So what is life like as a non- driver? Well, it's socially awkward. Often, I feel absolutely stupid. My four- year- old daughter recently pointed at a car being driven down the road and roared: "That car was driven by a man. Men don't drive cars!" I went red. Thank God, I don't have a son, I thought.

Another time I was asked to move the family car a few yards back, while my wife had popped into a shop, and I found myself shaking like a leaf. "I can't move it!" I mumbled with an apologetic shrug. "You'll have to shoot me."

There are benefits, of course. Being a non- driver means I simply don't understand Top Gear, something I see as a gift. It also means I don't get upset by fuel prices, car parks or speed cameras. But, hands- up, I wish I did drive. I want to drive to experience the oft- cited freedom of the road. I often think of all things I have missed. The routes and journeys my life could have taken if I had been less dependent on Tubes, buses and cabs.

A clever boy

Camping

Why do some people have differently coloured eyes?

30 I was in the hospital for four nights. Mark stayed with me almost the whole time, bringing me sodas when I asked for them, and a razor, and a toothbrush, and a pair of his own pajamas. He also brought me pencils and paper, for which I had little use but which I _____ he would have been lost without, and a great many books, half of which were in languages I couldn't read and the other half of which might as well have been. 31 One night - head aching from Hegel - I asked him to bring me a magazine. He _____ rather startled, and when he came back it was with a trade journal (Pharmacology) he had found in the lounge. 32 We talked _____ at all. Most of the time he read, with a concentration that astonished me; six hours at a stretch, scarcely glancing up. 33 He _____ me almost no attention. But he was with me on the bad nights, when I had a hard time breathing and my lungs hurt so I couldn't sleep. 34 Once, when the nurse on duty was three hours late with my medicine, he followed her into the hall and there delivered a tense and eloquent reprimand. After that the nurse was much gentler in her handling of me. The emergency room doctor _____ me that Mark had saved my life. 35 This was a dramatic and gratifying thing to hear - and the one which I _____ to a number of people - but secretly I thought it was an exaggeration. 36 In subsequent years, _____ I've come to feel that he might well have been right.

30. 1) thought 2) felt 3) knew 4) imagined 31. 1) became 2) appeared 3) looked 4) seemed 32. 1) rarely 2) never 3) almost 4) hardly 33. 1) paid 2) gave 3) showed 4) offered 34. 1) claimed 2) assured 3) convinced 4) told 35. 1) talked 2) repeated 3) mentioned 4) referred 36. 1) though 2) however 3) therefore 4) because