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F ile 2
Li s tening 1
Speaker 1 From the age of about seven till I was 16 I went to an all Speaker 4 Yeah, I went to a boarding school and one of the
girls’ school in North London, in Highgate, which was strange things we used to have to do was play at toy
really good fun, but it was a bit of a shame that it was all soldiers, a thing called ‘the Combined Cadet Force’ and
girls. Then when I was 16 I went to a boarding school in one of the strangest things we did were night
the countryside, which in fact was a boys’ boarding operations, where we were taken out at night and spent
school, that took girls in the sixth form, and I really the whole night finding our way to somewhere or
enjoyed it. I was quite rebellious at school but I was trying to follow a map or something, but it was great
never too bad, I wasn’t expelled or suspended or fun because we all used to get lost on purpose and do
anything but I just sort of stood up for what I believed what we wanted really. But there was one occasion
in. School was a fun experience, it’s many years of your when we got seriously lost and we were walking
life but I look back at it with quite fond memories. through a whole lot of back gardens, going over
peoples’ fences and we got into one back garden and a
Speaker 2 My favourite toy as a child was a football game called sash window shot up and this voice said, ‘Who’s there?’,
‘Subbuteo Table Soccer’ and this was like a religion, it and we all froze, ‘Who’s there?, I say’, we just froze and
was all these footballers, it looked ridiculous actually the next thing was, ‘Mabel, get my gun!’ and were
because the ball was bigger than the players, but they absolutely terrified and we ran for our lives.
were all beautifully painted in every team’s kit, and I
had about 12 different teams that my father thought Speaker 5 Well, I loved dolls when I was little, particularly Sindy
was ridiculous because ‘you can only play with two at dolls and Barbie dolls and my sister was a lot older than
the same time’, but I loved them, I mean, just as good as me, so I spent a lot of time playing by myself with these
playing the game was setting them all out on the pitch, dolls, and I just treasured them so much. We only got
before a tournament started and I built out of balsa toys at Christmas or birthdays so they really were
wood an entire stadium to go round the outside. There valued and I really looked after them and, and
were the Subbuteo floodlights, as well, and this eventually had quite a good collection of clothes and
beautiful golden pitch and all these teams laid out. little accessories and things for their little houses and
Wow, it was like the World Cup! all the rest of it and I always said, ‘I’ll keep these, if I
ever have a daughter of my own, she’ll be able to play
Speaker 3 I was raised on Enid Blyton books and Enid Blyton’s with them’ and then I did have a daughter of my own
very preoccupied with school life and there’s a whole and I went up into my mum’s attic and got the Barbies
range of books all about boarding school and I down, that were all very carefully, lovingly wrapped up
desperately, desperately wanted to go and eventually and packed in a box, gave them to my daughter, who
my parents sent me, not because I’d forced them to but broke two of them within three minutes. But I think
because they were in the Forces and so they needed the thing is that, you know, things were valued a lot
somewhere for me to be based. So I had all these more when I was little, things were more expensive and
amazing expectations about it and when I got there it you treasured them, whereas I think nowadays perhaps
just wasn’t like it at all, it was like prison, it was just the children get a lot more and they’re not so special or
most miserable archaic horrible place, and I’ll never appreciated.
forget my first night there and I’d been taught how
brave I had to be and that, you know, you mustn’t cry
and you had to be grown up and respectful of
everybody else and cheerful and be a generally good
girl and I remember lying in my bed in the dormitory
and there were ten of us in there, and getting into bed
and lying there and suddenly being overwhelmed with
homesickness, just, just feeling terrible and starting to
cry but trying to cry really quietly because it wasn’t the
done thing.

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F ile 2
Li s tening 2
Announcer In today’s Advice slot, Relationship Counsellor
Kate Fine talks about what can happen when a
long-term relationship comes to an end.
Counsellor Of course, whatever the reason it happens, the end
of a long-term relationship is very hard. One
reason for this is that you have to completely
change your thinking about the future. It’s not just
the immediate pain of breaking up that hurts, it’s
the fact that the way you had seen things
developing no longer applies. You will have had a
view of how your life would develop over the next
few years, but that’s not going to happen now, and
it can be very scary to rethink it all.
Most people’s reactions to a break-up come in
three stages. The first stage is a state of shock and
disbelief, when you can’t really make sense of it all.
You may even find yourself unconsciously thinking
that it hasn’t really happened, and that things are
carrying on as normal. Lots of people act as if the
relationship is still going on during this phase, and
though this may seem odd to other people, it’s
perfectly normal.
Another aspect of this first stage is going over in
your own mind what led to the break-up and
thinking of ways it could have been avoided. This is
the ‘what if ’ stage, when you keep analysing the end
of the relationship and thinking ‘what if I’d done
this’ and ‘what if I hadn’t done that’. This kind of
thing often forms the main topic of conversations
with other people, and it’s all part of the stage of
making sense of what’s happened.
The second stage is often the longest one and it’s
characterized by feelings of anger and panic. Some
people try to suppress these feelings but you
shouldn’t be afraid of letting yourself have these
feelings or of showing them, because this is an
essential part of the healing process. It’s a good idea
to be aware that these feelings may haunt you for
quite some time – you might think that they’re
never going to go away, but they do in the end.
People also sometimes feel that it’s wrong for them
to remain upset for more than a few weeks, but the
reality is that this stage can last far longer than that,
and you shouldn’t be hard on yourself if that’s the
case.
The final stage is when you to start to come to
terms with the fact the relationship is over and
realize that you’ll be fine and able to move on with
your life. One day it’ll occur to you that you haven’t
thought about it for a while. But beware, you might
make some progress for a while and then go
backwards again – ups and downs are the norm at
this stage. But you can tell yourself at this stage that
the last bad feelings will soon pass.

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