Lesson 1

MARIA: This can’t be the house!
JOHN: Good heavens! It’s a most peculiar place!
MARIA: Look at that carving over the fireplace.
JOHN: Looks Chinese.
MARIA: Weird! There’s a mixture of everything.
JOHN: And how could anyone live in a house like this?
MARIA: I’ve never seen anything like it.
MAN: Good afternoon.
MARIA:  Oh… hello!
MAN: Who are you? I’m the caretaker.
JOHN: I think we’ve come to the wrong house.

MAN: The wrong house?
MARIA: Yes… by mistake.
MAN: Well! I’d have thought it was difficult to mistake this house.
JOHN:  Yes … it is an extraordinary place. Who built it?
MAN: A pirate.
JOHN: A pirate?
MARIA: Really! How astonishing!
MAN: He was most artistic.
MARIA:  What! Who’d have thought of a pirate being artistic?
MAN: He stole only works of art.
JOHN: Did they catch him?
MAN: Yes. In the end, he was hanged.
MARIA: Oh, no!
MAN: For murder.

MARIA: Murder!
MAN: The house has been empty all these years, and now it’s being sold.
JOHN: Who on earth would want to buy an extraordinary place like this?
MAN: To a couple called – let me think – I believe.
JOHN: Sallis?
MARIA: Sallis?
JOHN: But… but that’s us!
MAN: You?
JOHN: You must’ve got the wrong name.
MARIA: This isn’t the house we’re buying.  John, we’ve come to the wrong place.
JOHN: We’re buying a Georgian house, in Butterfield Lane, near Malmesbury.
MAN: This is Butterfield Lane, near Malmesbury
JOHN: The house agents must’ve made a mistake, dear.
MARIA: Surely not!
JOHN: I wouldn’t have thought so, but they must have.
MAN: Well, I never!

1. Why does  Maria think she’s in the wrong house?
2. Why does she think the house is weird?
3. Why does the caretaker come?
4. What was astonishing about the man who built the house?
5. Why was he hanged? 6. How did they catch him, you think?
7. Why has this house a caretaker?
8. Is the pirate’s house a Georgian house?
9. Why does the caretaker laugh?

EXPRESSIONS OF SURPRISE
How astonishing (amazing, surprising, etc)! Who (what, why, how, etc.)
on earth is that? don’t say! Good heavens! Good gracious!

1. Georgian : from the time of the first four Georges, Kings of England (eighteenth century)
2. weird : strange
3. pirate : sea-robber
4. house agent :  person who buys and sells houses for others
5. caretaker : person in charge of a building