Lesson 76 April Fools' Day
What was the joke?
'To end our special news bulletin,' said the voice of the television announcer,
'we're going over to the macaroni fields of Calabria. Macaroni has been grown in this area
for over six hundred years. Two of the leading growers, Giuseppe Moldova and Riccardo
Brabante, tell me that they have been expecting a splendid crop this year and harvesting
has begun earlier than usual. Here you can see two workers who, between them, have just
finished cutting three cartloads of golden brown macaroni stalks. The whole village has
been working day and night gathering and threshing this year's crop before the
September rains. On the right, you can see Mrs. Brabante herself. She has been helping
her hus.band for thirty years now. Mrs. Brabante is talking to the manager of the local
factory where the crop is processed. This last scene shows you what will happen
at the end of the harvest: the famous Calabrian macaroni-eating competition!
Signor Fratelli, the present champion, has won it every year since 1991. And that ends
our special bulletin for today, Thursday, April lst. We're now going back to the studio.
Lesson 77 A successful operation
Did the doctors find out how the woman died? The mummy of an Egyptian woman who died
in 800 B.C. has just had an operation. The mummy is that of Shepenmut who was once
a singer in the Temple of Thebes. As there were strange marks on the X-ray plates taken
of the mummy, doctors have been trying to find out whether the woman died of a
rare disease. The only way to do this was to operate. The operation, which lasted for
over four hours, proved to be very difficult because of the hard resin which covered the
skin. The doctors removed a section of the mummy and sent it to a laboratory.
They also found something which the X-ray plates did not show: a small wax
figure of the god Duamutef. This god which has the head of a cow was normally
placed inside a mummy. The doctors have not yet decided how the woman died.
They feared that the mummy would fall to pieces when they cut it open, but
fortunately this has not happened. The mummy successfully survived the operation.
Lesson 78 The last one?
For how long did the writer give up smoking? After reading an article entitled
'Cigarette Smoking and Your Health' I lit a cigarette to calm my nerves.
I smoked with concentration and pleasure as I was sure that this would be my
last cigarette. For a whole week I did not smoke at all and during this time,
my wife suffered terribly. I had all the usual symptoms of someone giving up
smoking: a bad temper and an enormous appetite. My friends kept on offering me
cigarettes and cigars. They made no effort to hide their amusement whenever I
produced a packet of sweets from my pocket. After seven days of this I went to a party.
Everybody around me was smoking and I felt extremely uncomfortable. When my old friend
Brian urged me to accept a cigarette, it was more than I could bear. I took one guiltily,
lit it and smoked with satisfaction. My wife was delighted that things had returned to
normal once more. Anyway, as Brian pointed out, it is the easiest thing
in the world to give up smoking. He himself has done it lots of times!