Phosphorescence, by Tessa Hadley

 

SUMMARY, by Josep Guiteres

Graham Cooley is 38 years old, has a degree in physics, is married with children, is a competitive chess player and loves quantum mechanics and quarks.

One Friday, at the university, where he works as a physics professor, a course on food hygiene was held, and he saw a woman with shiny grey hair, a belligerent jaw, a turned-up nose, and a wide mouth. It was Claudia, a woman who he had met one summer at his parents’ house in West Wales, when Graham was 13 years old.

Graham told his wife Carol that in college he saw a woman he hadn’t seen in 25 years. At night, when Graham and his wife were in bed, he told Carol that when Claudia was on holiday at his parents’ house, she had made advances toward him. His wife ended the conversation saying, what would you think if a man did to your daughter what Claudia did to you?

Graham took Claudia’s address and went to her house. He introduced himself saying that he was Graham Cooley and that she and her family had been on holiday at the Cooley’s in West Wales. Claudia remembered, she looked at his face and told him that he was handsome and that she always had good taste in men.

She invited him into her house, they sat down, and he put his hand on Claudia’s knee and reminded her that, on the last night she was at his parents’ house, he took her and her two young daughters by boat. He told her that she had sat in front of him while he rowed; the water that night was full of phosphorescence, tiny sea creatures that glowed in the dark, and that she put her feet on top of his and rubbed them all the time. Once he said this, he kissed her, put his hands under her clothes and she didn’t stop him.

Graham got home very late, his wife was waiting for him, and, for a moment, he thought that Carol might suspect something, but he immediately thought, I am her husband, the physics professor who loves quantum mechanics and a puritan. Nothing happens here.

QUESTIONS

Describe Graham’s family

Talk about Graham.

What can you say about Claudia?

Do / did you play board games? What is your favourite? What kind of player are / were you? Do you have any anecdote?

When do children start dressing as adults?

Do you think our children know better about sex than us?

Do you think that in our time swearing has increased its intensity? Aren’t “shit” and “bloody” a little soft?

In your opinion, why did Claudia choose Graham, and not Tim or Alex?

At first Graham thought Claudia was old, but then, when he saw playing badminton, not so old, even young. How do you calibrate the age of a person? Is there a kind of touchstone?

How does Claudia approach Graham?

Why in a moment wasn’t Graham able to look at his mother?

Do you think our generation have overprotected children?

“He suffered like an adult, secretly.” Do adults suffer in secret? In which cases?

How did Graham / Claudia change over the time?

What do you think about telling your past to anybody (a new friend, a partner, your children)?

Graham’s wife thought that his experience with Claudia was horrible. Does Graham agree? Do you agree?

How was it possible that Claudia didn’t remember him and their story?

Did he have a “trauma” because of Claudia’s seduction?

In your opinion, did Graham cheat on his wife?

How do you think the story would go on?

What do you imagine it’s the relation between the title and the story?

 

VOCABULARY

daps, reslating, chalet, meadow, overspill, Dormobile van, making it all up, toddler, snap, suntan, soothed, scooping, shuttlecock, halter top, gritty, sandpapery, scorch, racing demon, humming, waxed, plug, rewire, flip-flops, hog, six-form college, foyer, pugnacious, brash, dregs, blare, droop, mews, stone-flagged, batik, tans, sag, tinged, GCSE moderation

Ajax, by Graham Swift

AJAX, by Cristina Fernández

SUMMARY

A schoolboy called James lives in the neighbourhood with his mother and father.

A weird man lives in the next house.

Although Mr Wilkinson is educated, respectable, interesting and well-dressed, he is not the “normal family”, he lives alone in his fifties, and he likes to practice sports in his garden in underpants and chanting, in all weathers, therefore he is fit, muscular and well-built.

While the boy feels adoration and beguiling for that man, his mother and the neighbourhood dislike him because he hasn’t a “normal” job: he receives patients at home and practices alternative medicine. Besides, his visitors are young girls too.

One day, while James is playing with flowers in the garden, is asked by Mr. Wilkinson if he’s a vegetarian, and so the boy thinks the adult is.

Another day, the man asks the boy for something to clear drains, and he gives the man Ajax, and it’s explained to be the name of a Greek myth. The boy sees blood in that water and explains everything to their parents. The boy thinks he’s not a vegetarian.

Mr. Wilkinson had to leave, a police man asked questions to the boy and a normal family moved in, what the whole street wanted.

When the boy grew up, he studied to be a Greek teacher in Oxford college, was homosexual and weird and discovered that “Ajax” was a Greek warrior who went mad mistaking sheep for people.

 

PERSONAL OPINION

The obvious conclusion to be drawn is that maybe Mr Wilkinson used to practice abortions to the young girls that visited him.

That the parents of the boy perhaps thought that the man had tried to abuse sexually the boy.

I think that this neighbour was the first platonic love of the boy who influenced him in his future career, not minding being weird.

I am convinced that respectability rejects everything that is new, different and free.

QUESTIONS

-“Weirdo” is a bit offensive. Nowadays, we tend to use euphemisms. Do you think that a change of words can change the reality?

-“I was too young to have opinions of my own.” In older times, you could start giving opinions only when you reached a specific age. Does it seem right for you?

-“I was driven into taking an opposite view.” In which cases new generations do the opposite to old generations?

-Do you remember the film “In and Out”? There is a scene where a student says all the qualities of a gay man. Is it only a cliché?

According to the English novels, you are a gentleman or a gentlewoman if you are rich, you have a title, or you have an education. Is there any other way to be a gentleman or a gentlewoman?

-“Anyone can do what they like in the privacy of their own home.” Is that an absolute right?

-What do you think about name’s shortening or nicknaming (James to Jim or Jimmy)?

-Do you think being a vegetarian is a way to be different? Is there something you can call a “normal diet”?

-Do you remember the famous admonition “Don’t talk to strangers”? Were our parents right?

-What do you know about “alternative medicines”?

-What were your experiences with doctors when you were a child?

-In your opinion, why did Mr Wilkinson show the narrator boy how he cleaned the drains?

-What do you think Mr Wilkinson did to earn his living? How do you know?

-How did you decide to study what you wanted to be?

-The new residents, the Fletchers, in Mr Wilkinson’s house were a couple with their first baby: can you see the irony?

-What do you know about Ajax, from the Greek mythology? Do you remember more literary names used as a brand name?

-“If you’re a professor of Greek, you’re allowed to be that”: Do you think there is a relation between sexual tendency and studies or job?

 

 

VOCABULARY

weirdo, undoing, doff, cut above, educated, look up, medley, chanting, semis, beret, kit bag, tinkered, trellis, stoopingness, pebble-dashing, abiding, clinch, held much water, scotched, pinned him down, gruff, drains, bother, sporting, sly, rush, hazardous, scouring, enthralled, beguiling, tantalizingol, slop, gutter, squeamish, capped, slander, unwitting, bereft, Fellow's gown, smoothed over, tenet

The Eggy Stone, by Tessa Hadley

 

SUMMARY, by Begoña Devis

This is a story about two girls who are spending a week in a camp school. The first afternoon, boys and girls go to the beach looking for treasures, like old shells or curious stones. At a certain moment, one of them pick up an eggy stone, just at the same moment that another girl, Madeleine, does too. This fortuitous fact creates a special relationship with them. During the week, they invented different games and challengers to possess the stone, and they took turns to hold it at night in their sleeping bags (they slept in different tends), because whoever possessed the stone felt privileged and safe.

The narrator feels happy, because she thinks that she doesn’t deserve a friend like Madeleine, a girl who, the very first day, has been directed to sit on the table where the charming girls sat. In addition, Madeleine’s usual friends included her tolerantly in her circle.

When the week is over, the narrator wonders what they will do with the stone from that moment: keep the stone for a week each other, and dividing up the holidays, perhaps?  But before she could speak, Madeleine turned and threw the Eggy Stone hard and far. The sound of the stone falling among the pebbles made our protagonist feel that she will never be able to find a stone like that again.

PERSONAL OPINION

I think the author uses the stone as a symbol of the feelings that the protagonist has when, through it, she makes friends with Madeleine.
She is surely a girl who goes unnoticed, she is not in the popular group of girls, and that is why she admires Madeleine. «I’m smart but she’s blonde», she says at one point, feeling adoration for her.
She admires too how Madeleine dances, sings, and even how she cheats her, stealing the Eggy Stone from her pocket. Surely he also admires her courage when she goes out at night to the boys’ tents to kiss them, when she is incapable of doing such a thing. Being friends with Madeleine makes her feel special, deserving of being in the group of the lovely girls.
That is why, when he sees Madeleine throwing the Eggy Stone, his plans to keep their friendship go up in smoke. When she says she’ll never be able to find a stone like that, what she really means is that she’ll never feel again like the special girl that she has been for that one week.

TESSA HADLEY

She was born in 1956 in Bristol, on the East Coast of England.

Her father was a teacher and an amateur jazz trumpeter, and her mother, an amateur artist.

She studied to be a teacher and worked as a teacher until she decided to form a family. Then she had three children.

When she was 37 she decided to study for a Master of Arts at the Bath Spa University, where she dedicated her time specially to the works of Katherine Mansfield, Elisabeth Bowen and Jean Rhys. Then, at 41, she started to teach creative writing at the same university.

Her first novel, Accidents in the Home, written while she was bringing up a family, was published when she was 46.

As a part of her studies, he wrote a book about Henry James. So, James, together with the authoress mentioned above, are her principal influences.

From the issue of her first novel, she has gone on publishing novels and short stories collections. Her last novel is Free Love.

Her stories are usually realistic, situated away from London, and her characters belong to the middle classes. She tends to focus the plots on the family relationships and on women. It’s remarkable her psychological insight.

She has won several awards and she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

QUESTIONS

What do you remember of your camps / holiday homes?

The boys began throwing pebbles in the sea; the girls looked for treasures. Is there something biological in our constitutions that make boys to do different things from girls? Or is it sociological?

They touched fingers: Is physical contact always a prelude of something?

Situations can change friendships: do you have a literary or personal example?

When you were at school, where did you use to sit down? Were the ranks in alphabetical order or the teacher gave you your places, or you could choose your desk?

When can an object be a special thing (souvenir, memory, idol, talisman…)?

Do you remember any curious / invented rhyme from your childhood?

What do you know about Gargantua and Pantagruel?

Why do you thing Madeline wouldn’t go on with the narrator’s friendship?

 

VOCABULARY

rim, seaweed, sealed, daintily, felts, plantains, by rote, skipping rhymes, yearned, filching, bond, trailing, tepid, foam, publicity, constipation, netball

Lawrence of Arabia, by Graham Swift

Old Harry Rocks at Studland

SUMMARY, by Adriana Cruz 

This fragment makes us reflect on situations and moments in life that are marked and that we leave our marks. It starts with Hettie who is in the guest bedroom looking at the painting on the wall and thinking how graceful death can be. From then on, several reports of her wedding and honeymoon, then the gratitude for her sister-in-law having received her at Christmas and how they felt more like sisters and all the protection she gave her.

They say that no matter how much we prepare for death, we are never prepared. No one knows the date or the weather. 

Her husband Roy had died just before Christmas. She left the hospital, took a bus and didn’t understand why all this was going on, she didn’t want to accept it. She just wanted Roy to be with her. Then, inside the bus, she sees Peter O’Toole all over the newspapers. He, too, had died. She didn’t see the actor, but Lawrence of Arabia in his white robe, it was as if he had died again. 

What she demonstrates at the end, comparing the physical aspects between the two men (who didn’t have any resemblance) is the acceptance of him. Saying that it was just as his younger brother was before, just as Nelson Mandela was too, would change nothing because he is gone too.

QUESTIONS

What do you know about Peter O'Toole and Lawrence of Arabia? (Do some research, please.)

And about Nelson Mandela? (Do some research, please.)

Can you give us some information about Studland and the Scilly Isles?

We couldn’t choose a day to be born, and we won’t be able to choose a day to die. All our life is between two random dates: all our life, is it a product of the chance, or can we really conduct our lives?

What do you think about these couple that wanted to have a baby the 1^st of January 2000 / 2001, that is, the beginning of the 21^st Century?

What do you know about Harold Wilson? (Do some research, please.)

Would you feel better if you die in company of famous people? And in a big accident, with a lot of casualties? Or with someone you loved (suicide by love)?

“Peter O’Toole suddenly came along? And what girl wouldn’t? In her dreams.” Who were your favourite actors/actresses, your idols? Why?

How do you feel when a global event stifles your personal event?

Why do you think the story is in the second person?

 

VOCABULARY

rallies, crows, crones, crumple-faced, tinsel, cracker, amenity, squinty, peek-a-boo

Keys, by Graham Swift

Summary and analysis, by Elisa Sola Ramos

Briefly, the summary of the story is an incident of everyday life: John, a 47-year-old architect, accompanies his wife to the station to catch the train: she has to go to see his brother who is dying. John doesn’t go with her because he can’t stand his brother, and makes a secondary excuse that he has work. She doesn’t mind that he doesn’t accompany her, either. Just after leaving the woman, he realizes that he has left his keys in his zip-up jacket pocket inside the house and finds himself locked out of the house. Then, he notices that the neighbour’s housekeeper is there, and he knocks on the door for her to help him into his house. They make love.

As in many of Graham Swift’s stories, an incident of everyday life (in this case, forgetting the keys) serves to reflect on one’s own life. In our story, being shut out of the house helps John to see his own life from a distance, as if he was a stranger. And this is what John does: a 47-year-old architect, with a comfortable life and married to Clare, shows us a conventional slice of life of a well-to-do middle-aged couple, and we see the loneliness of the characters at every moment. Clare doesn’t count on him when it comes to her family (“He’d be peripheral. He was just a husband.”) and John had an affair with his colleague - or superior - at work and didn’t tell his wife, even though she knew (“she had her inklings”). The couple leads a conventional life, with jobs that are not perfect, and they are burdened with their loneliness.

The other character is the cleaner, a girl no more than 25 years old, foreign, with little command of the language. There is a great distance between John and the cleaner, to highlight the man’s power over the woman: age, purchasing power, culture... It’s a full-fledged league, but both characters are completely alone, they are strangers to their own life. They meet at a given moment and make love, but they make love to themselves because they never break the distance that separates them, at no time do they communicate.

Weather is an essential element in the story. As in many of the stories we have read, time is another character. In fact, it is the element that creates the right atmosphere. With a short story, this is very useful, because a few words create an atmosphere. In this case, the rain draws a curtain between him and his own life. It begins that four drops fall and ends that it rains in torrents and torrents, and that gives the tone and context of the story.

As always, a good image illustrates the entrance of the blog: an old and unpainted heart as a keyring, like the relationship between the two main characters. What really brings people together? Does John need Claire to appease his predatory instincts, his “stray animal inside him”, to get the stability he wants, against his impulse? Does Claire need John for her strength, as opposed to her brother and family? Why do people stay together if they feel lonely? It is the great question of our story.

QUESTIONS

What kind of goodbye do you prefer? A short one? A long one? When it’s you who goes away? When it’s you who stays?

What do you think of families? What is it better for a person, relatives or friends?

“He was just a husband.” Do you think a husband will always be peripheral? They say the first person old widows forget is their husband. Is it true?

“Weak men got ill and die.” Do you think character and constitution decide over life and death?

For you, what is a feeling? Are feelings logical? Can you control your feelings?

What is your opinion about saying always the raw truth?

Did you lose your keys any time? Do you have a story about this?

What will happen to the residents of Neale Road?

Ugly names: can a name be ugly? Can a name decide if a person is attractive or plain?

What do you know about Moldova?

Do you think we have an “animal inside us”?

Is a paraphilia to need to make love in any other’s house?

What is your opinion about the famous sentence: “No news, good news”?

What do you imagine it is going to happen then? Is Clare going to know about it? If yes, is she going to pardon him? Is their marriage going to last long?

 

VOCABULARY

spared, forecourt, got on with, spared, stifling, spot, inklings, riddle, terraced, manhandling, squirmed, tackle, put up with, unremitting, none-the-wiser, feral, bucketing, proneness, have that one there, sanctuary, knuckle down

England, by Graham Swift

SUMMARY

England is the last story of the collection and it gives the title to the book, so we have to suppose that it is its flagship. But the “spirit” of “England” is in all the stories, because they tell us about ordinary people in their country: their lives, their history, their feelings, their successes and failures. Perhaps, because of the title, someone would think that the author is a bit of a chauvinist, but his stories prove that it is the other way round: he doesn’t boast of his country, but neither scoffs at it.

 

Our story is situated in a remote place in England, in that extreme England border, the ocean, in the geographical sense as in the human sense.

Ken Black, a coastguard in the Bristol Channel, goes to his post very early in the morning, and sees a car stopped on the side of the road with one of its (“her”) wheels in a ditch. He stops to help and finds that the driver is a black man who works as a travelling comedian. For Ken it’s a so extraordinary event (a black man, a comedian, very early in the morning, in this remote part of the country) that he isn’t going to tell anybody about it. The comedian, Johnny Dewhurst, explains that a young deer standing in the middle of the road has caused his little accident. Together they put the car back on the road; then the stranger invites Ken to a coffee from a thermos and explains a bit of his job, that he comes from the north and visits a lot of places doing his show, a kind of entertaining or comical monologue. Even he invites Ken and his wife to go and see him. In the end, the coastguard goes on to his work, not believing what has happened to him and deciding he isn’t going to see his show. The comedian gets into his old car to go on his itinerary.

 

Where is England in the story? Perhaps the comedian (a black man that maybe has ancestors from Jamaica) knows more about England than Ken (a really typical Englishman), because he travels around it. Perhaps he knows more about people because he tries to make them laugh, so he has to know the famous English humour (if that thing does exist), or he knows that one really understands people when one understands their sense of humour. Perhaps the story is a kind of apology for the English people: they do help strangers, they do try to be kind to them, they can accept a cup of coffee from them, but they cannot pay a visit to their performances (that is, as it was their home) … All in all, they are perplexed and shy in front of the alien. Is the English character like this, or is it a topic?

QUESTIONS

Let’s talk about driving. Do you think people drive better or worse than before? Does driving define your personality? Do you think people become aggressive when they sit behind a wheel?

Would you stop to help someone on the road, if you can see they are in trouble?

Did you do hitch-hike when you were young? And now, do you stop your car to take hitch-hikers?

Do you think four-by-four cars should be banned from cities?

According to the narrator, the comedian has “a thick bizarre bonnet of frizzy hair”. Do you know the song Buffalo Soldier by Bob Marley? What does “Buffalo Soldier” stand for? Talking about Bob Marley; what do you know about Rastafari movement?

The narrator thinks the black man could be Caribbean. Why? Where do black people in Great Britain come from?

He says he has a “joke voice”: do you know more examples of “joke voices”?

What can you tell us from Ilfracombe?

“He pronounced the word at full-picth and with declamatory slowness.” Do you know any anecdote relative to the way we people talk to foreigners?

“He felt like a policeman”. When do you try to be civilized, do you feel sometimes like being a policeman? Do you think it’s right to act as a policeman?

What literary symbol could be the deer in the road?

When sailors talk about ships, they mention them as feminine: the nautical “lift her”. Do you think that some things are masculine and others feminine?

They say “close contact breeds affection” (el roce hace el cariño in Spanish). In this story, working together creates a kind of link between them. Can you tell us any similar experience?

“The only cloud was retirement.” Was or would be a cloud for you? Why?

How do you imagine being a travelling comedian?

What type of cities did the comedian visit in his tour?

Where is the joke here: “Johnny Dewhurst, it no joker’s name, it a butcher’s name”?

What can you tell about Dewsbury?

Do you usually give money to street artists? Why?

How does anybody decide what to be in the future?

Is the narrator going to tell the story to his mates and to his family? Why?

What is the meaning of that: “would that risk having his roadside encounter hurled outrageously back at him”?

What do you think it’s the relation between the title and the story?

 

VOCABULARY

brow, pulled up, gullies, tarmac, seldom, starkly, scoops, overcast, dashboard, plush, four-by-four, dinky, cowering, dip, dodgy, Fookin' 'ell, I is, screechy, hissy, I no, weirdly, de, joost, beguiling, lee-tal, dapples, reversing, manic, swerved, strutting, her, spin, skipper, looped stripe, arse, bumber, wrestler, We don't wahnt you messin' de natty tailorin', dents, fleetingly, skip, log, boot, elated, wizardly, skittering, yanking on, clock on, Tain't, yielding chuckle, glued, huddle, dishes, decommissioned, cackled, personas, topiary, gig, inured, shuddered, hee-hawed, bubbled out, corn exchanges, billing, stranded, dregs, forlorn, yen, buckled, head-in-the-sand, whisked away, SUVs

Do you remember how Jim speaks in Huckleberry Finn?:

You can't learn a nigger to argue 

I never see such a nigger. If he got a notion in his head once, there warn't no getting it out again. He was the most down on Solomon of any nigger I ever see. So I went to talking about other kings, and let Solomon slide. I told about Louis XVI that got his head cut off in France long time ago; and about his little boy the dolphin, that would ’a’ been a king, but they took and shut him up in jail, and some say he died there.

“Po’ little chap.”

“But some says he got out and got away, and come to America.”

“Dat’s good! But he'll be pooty lonesome—dey ain’ no kings here, is dey, Huck?”

“No.”

“Den he cain’t git no situation. What he gwyne to do?”

“Well, I don’t know. Some of them gets on the police, and some of them learns people how to talk French.”

“Why, Huck, doan’ de French people talk de same way we does?”

“No, Jim; you couldn’t understand a word they said—not a single word.”

“Well, now, I be ding-busted! How do dat come?”

“I don’t know; but it’s so. I got some of their jabber out of a book. S’pose a man was to come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy—what would you think?”

“I wouldn’ think nuffn; I’d take en bust him over de head—dat is, if he warn’t white. I wouldn’t ‘low no nigger to call me dat.”

“Shucks, it ain’t calling you anything. It’s only saying, do you know how to talk French?”

“Well, den, why couldn’t he say it?”

“Why, he is a-saying it. That’s a Frenchman’s way of saying it.”

“Well, it’s a blame ridicklous way, en I doan’ want to hear no mo’ ‘bout it. Dey ain’ no sense in it.”

“Looky here, Jim; does a cat talk like we do?”

“No, a cat don’t.”

“Well, does a cow?”

“No, a cow don’t, nuther.”

“Does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?”

“No, dey don’t.”

“It’s natural and right for ‘em to talk different from each other, ain’t it?”

“Course.”

“And ain’t it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different from us?”

“Why, mos’ sholy it is.”

“Well, then, why ain’t it natural and right for a Frenchman to talk different from us? You answer me that.”

“Is a cat a man, Huck?”

“No.”

“Well, den, dey ain’t no sense in a cat talkin’ like a man. Is a cow a man?—er is a cow a cat?”

“No, she ain’t either of them.”

“Well, den, she ain’t got no business to talk like either one er the yuther of ‘em. Is a Frenchman a man?”

“Yes.”

“Well, den! Dad blame it, why doan’ he talk like a man? You answer me dat!”

I see it warn’t no use wasting words—you can’t learn a nigger to argue. So I quit.

 

A bit of dialogue between Jim and Huck (from Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain)

Holly and Polly, by Graham Swift

Holly and Polly, by Begoña Devis

SUMMARY

Holly and Polly are two young girls who work in an assisted reproductive clinic. Holly is cheeky with men, she likes saying that they work in an introduction business and teasing them, making them guess what they do.

Holly is also irreverent, she likes making jokes, like creating Latin phrases to describe the sexual act, such as “penis in vagina intro-duxit”, and answering “et semen e-mi-sit”, as if it were a chorus of monks.

Polly is amazed at Holly’s nerve. She’s also shocked at his blasphemous behaviour, despite having been raised as a Catholic. But at the same time, Polly is attracted to her. It is the attraction of opposites, as Polly is shy and quiet, meek and mild.

One day, Holly asks Polly out, who realizes that she is also a lesbian, and that makes her very happy, because she has fallen in love with her.

Polly thinks about how unlikely it is that they ever met. It is as difficult as both, the sperm and the egg, meeting at the right time in a pot at the clinic, which they enter the next day as a couple. And she is also thinking about how ironic it is that the fact of playing God creating a new life is in the hands of two lesbians, who never mixed eggs with sperm in their private lives.

Nonetheless, they’ve found each other, and Polly thinks they don’t need to be ashamed of being a couple. How can they be ashamed of anything in a place where eggs and sperm pass through their hands all day? They have met in the right place. They are happy there, wearing green, like two peas in a pod.

 

PERSONAL OPINION

My personal opinion is that it is a difficult story to read, because it uses a large amount of colloquial language and expressions unknown to me.

As for the story itself, the author is ironic all the time about the fact that two lesbians have in their hands the ability to create new lives using spermatozoa and ovules.

Deep down, he is ironic about how things happen in life, how unlikely it is that the things that happen to us really happen to us, or that we meet the right person at the right time. Actually, everything is amazing in life.

It is also a reflection on the fact that everyone can lead the life they want, where they want, without being ashamed of it.

QUESTIONS

What can it be, the relation between the title and the story?

What do you think of artificial insemination? And what about being a mother without a father? Or about surrogate mothers? Would you prefer one of these methods, or adopting?

What are the two different meanings of the word “date”, or what is the pun between “dating agency” and “getting the date right” at the beginning of the story?

“How things come together in this world”: what do you think is best, design or random? (Think about deciding sex, eyes colour, skin colour…)

Why is it a joke to come from Kildare and have to wear green?

Why is their job similar to being God?

What can it be, the “touch of red in her black hair”?

Do you believe everyone has their “type”? Is there a different type for every different person?

Why does Polly mention Northern Ireland?

Do you trust in young people for important jobs?

For a couple in love, what is it better, to be opposites or to be similar?

Who can give a better piece of advice, a person that is “in” or a person that is “out”? For example, a catholic priest to a marriage, or an out looker to a player.

What do you know about Wilmslow?

Can you guess at a first sight if someone is in love, or if a pair of friends are “friends with a benefit” or lovers?

Are you able to know someone’s sexual preferences at first sight?

 

VOCABULARY

home in on, edge, give up, fellers, youse, turn-off, turn-on, mucky, comprehensive, B.Sc, scrubs, teasing, brashness, being up for it, plainsong, had me in stitches, shred, smoothie, buck passer, lark, detachment, gash, tilt, toss, scrub cap, pod, bumped, coy, canny