- Câu hỏi 743502:
The restaurant owner John Moore writes about his relationship with his son Gary, the famous TV chef.
I believe everyone's given a chance in life. My son, Gary, was given his chance with cooking, and my chance was to run a restaurant. When l heard about the opportunity, I rushed over to look at the place. It was in a really bad state. It was perfect for what I had in mind.
Coming into this business made me recall my childhood. l can remember my mother going out to work in a factory and me being so upset because l was left alone. With that in mind, I thought, 'We want time for family life.' My wife dedicated herself to looking after the children and did all my accounts, while I ran the business. We lived over the restaurant in those days, and we always put a lot of emphasis on having meals together. It's paid dividends with our children, Gary and Joe. They're both very confident. Also, from a very early age they would come down and talk to our regular customers. It's given both of them a great start in life.
Gary was quite a lively child when he was really small. We had a corner bath, and when he was about seven he thought he'd jump into it like a swimming pool, and he knocked himself out. When he was older he had to work for pocket money. He started off doing odd jobs and by the age of about ten he was in the kitchen every weekend, so he always had loads of money at school. He had discipline. He used to be up even before me in the morning. If you run a family business, it's for the family, and it was nice to see him helping out.
Gary wasn't very academic, but he shone so much in the kitchen. By the age of 15 he was as good as any of the men working there, and sometimes he was even left in charge. He would produce over a hundred meals, and from then I knew he'd go into catering because he had that flair. So when he came to me and said, 'Dad, I've got to do work experience as part of my course at school,' I sent him to a friend of mine who's got a restaurant.
Gary recently took up playing the drums and now he has his own band. Goodness knows what will happen to the cooking if the music takes off. My advice to Gary would be: if you start chasing two hares, you end up catching neither, so chase the hare you know you're going to catch. He understood when I said to him: 'Gary, if you're going to get anywhere in life, you've got to do it by the age of 30. If you haven't done it by then, it's too late.
Gary went to catering college at the age of 17, and on his first day he and the other new students - they're normally complete beginners - were given what's supposed to be a morning's work. But within an hour Gary had chopped all his vegetables, sliced all his meats. He'd prepared everything. That's my son for you! In the end, he was helping other people out.
None of us can believe how successful Gary's TV cookery series has become. I'm extremely proud of him. I've always tried to tell him that if you want something, you've got to work jolly hard for it, because no one gives you anything. He's seen the opportunity he's been given and grabbed hold of it with both hands. You know, you talk to your children as they grow up, and if they only take in ten per cent of what you've told them, you've got to be happy with that. The things Gary says, the things he does, I think, well, he must have listened sometimes
What is Gary's father's attitude to Gary playing in a band?
A. doubtful whether he will have time to improve his technique.
B. concerned that music may interfere with his career .
C. interested in how he can introduce music into the restaurant.
D. pleased that he has a hobby he enjoys.
- Câu hỏi 743505:
By the time a child is six or seven she has all the essential avoidances well enough by heart to be trusted with the care of a younger child. And she also develops a number of simple techniques. She learns to weave firm square balls from palm leaves, to make pinwheels of palm leaves or frangipani blossoms, to climb a coconut tree by walking up the trunk on flexible little feet, to break open a coconut with one firm well-directed blow of a knife as long as she is tall, to play a number of group games and sing the songs which go with them, to tidy the house by picking up the litter on the stony floor, to bring water from the sea, to spread out the copra to dry and to help gather it in when rain threatens, to go to a neighboring house and bring back a lighted faggot for the chief's pipe or the cook-house fire.
But in the case of the little girls all these tasks are merely supplementary to the main business of baby-tending. Very small boys also have some care of the younger children, but at eight or nine years of age they are usually relieved of it. Whatever rough edges have not been smoothed off by this responsibility for younger children are worn off by their contact with older boys.
For little boys are admitted to interesting and important activities only so long as their behavior is circumspect and helpful. Where small girls are brusquely pushed aside, small boys will be patiently tolerated and they become adept at making themselves useful. The four or five little boys who all wish to assist at the important, business of helping a grown youth lasso reef eels, organize themselves into a highly efficient working team; one boy holds the bait, another holds an extra lasso, others poke eagerly about in holes in the reef looking for prey, while still another tucks the captured eels into his lavalava.
The small girls, burdened with heavy babies or the care of little staggerers who are too small to adventure on the reef, discouraged by the hostility of the small boys and the scorn of the older ones, have little opportunity for learning the more adventurous forms of work and play. So while the little boys first undergo the chastening effects of baby-tending and then have many opportunities to learn effective cooperation under the supervision of older boys, the girls' education is less comprehensive. They have a high standard of individual responsibility, but the community provides them with no lessons in cooperation with one another.
This is particularly apparent in the activities of young people: the boys organize quickly; the girls waste hours in bickering, innocent of any technique for quick and efficient cooperation
Which of the following if true would weaken the author's contention about 'lessons in cooperation' ?
I Group games played by younger girls involve cooperation
II Girls can learn from watching boys cooperating
III Individual girls cooperate with their mothers in looking after babies
A. I only
B. II only
C. I and II only
D. III only
- Câu hỏi 329798:
I chose a small house on the edge of the city. It was an ideal place for me, because I wanted fresh mountain air, space, privacy, a place where one could feel the presence of ancient gods and the spirits of nature. The house was merely an empty shell, but I chose it because it was on the sunny side of the valley, high enough to have a good view over the town, with sufficient breeze to diminish the occasionally stupefying heat. It took me a good year to make the place inhabitable.
The first thing that I did was to dig out the well at the side of the house, which had caved in on itself and was full of mud and rocks. I was helped in this by a Frenchman named Antoine, a man of considerable culture who had chosen to live here because he was attached to the people, with whom he had arrived in the original immigration. We repaired the walls and the roof of the house, and painted the rooms completely white so that they became suddenly clean, bright, and spacious.
Antoine and I managed, at some danger to ourselves, to install electricity by connecting up a cable to the faltering system invented by a teacher. This man was Professor Luis, who had set up a row of windmills to generate power; this was perfectly adequate for lighting, but was somewhat feeble when high amperage was required, so that the electric cooker that I had flown in by helicopter turned out to be more use as a storage cupboard.
It often happens when setting up a house that one finds quite suddenly that there is an urgent need for some item overlooked during the last expedition. The track down from my house was a deeply pitted one that served as a watercourse each time that it rained, and although I have stabilised it since, it was to begin with only negotiable on foot or by mule, or by Antoine's ancient three-wheeled tractor. This tractor had been half-buried in the mud of the flood at Chiriguana, but Senor Vivo's father, who is in fact General Sosa, governor of Cesar, had it dog out and brought in slung under a vast helicopter gunship, at his son's request. It is commonly said in this country that General Sosa is the only member of the military hierarchy who ever does anything useful.
There was, at the far end of the town, a tienda that sold goods brought in by mule-train from Ipasueno, and so every few days I would find myself rattling and bumping my way to it on Antoine's formidable old tractor. This shop was owned by a middle-aged couple who left the running of it to their daughter, a girl of twenty or so years whose name was Ena, as I discovered by overhearing the father asking of her the price of a bottle of Ron Cana.
Ena was small and strongly built; usually she wore a plain, faded blue dress, and her feet were always bare. Sometimes I used to think that her head was very slightly too large for her, but she had an appealing and serene face framed by her long black hair. She reminded me forcibly of a Greek girl with whom I had once been in love, for she had the same smooth and soft olive skin, and big brown eyes beneath eyebrows almost heavy enough to meet in the middle. On her forearms were the traces of soft black downy hair, which to be frank, is something that has always driven me crazy, and her fingers were slim and elegant.
The best thing about her, however, was her elfin spirit; she had an air of quiet amusement, an innocent devilry, that gave her the aura of having existed from all eternity, and of being able to see tbe funny side of everything. I perceived that she had a streak of mischief in her, as was to be revealed when I discovered how it was that she had kept me for so long in ignorance
Which of the conclusions can be drawn from this passage?
A. The writer is not interested in the people around him.
B. The writer would like to move to another place
C. The place where the writer lives isolates him from nature.
D. The writer feels happy with the people he has met
- Câu hỏi 329800:
I chose a small house on the edge of the city. It was an ideal place for me, because I wanted fresh mountain air, space, privacy, a place where one could feel the presence of ancient gods and the spirits of nature. The house was merely an empty shell, but I chose it because it was on the sunny side of the valley, high enough to have a good view over the town, with sufficient breeze to diminish the occasionally stupefying heat. It took me a good year to make the place inhabitable.
The first thing that I did was to dig out the well at the side of the house, which had caved in on itself and was full of mud and rocks. I was helped in this by a Frenchman named Antoine, a man of considerable culture who had chosen to live here because he was attached to the people, with whom he had arrived in the original immigration. We repaired the walls and the roof of the house, and painted the rooms completely white so that they became suddenly clean, bright, and spacious.
Antoine and I managed, at some danger to ourselves, to install electricity by connecting up a cable to the faltering system invented by a teacher. This man was Professor Luis, who had set up a row of windmills to generate power; this was perfectly adequate for lighting, but was somewhat feeble when high amperage was required, so that the electric cooker that I had flown in by helicopter turned out to be more use as a storage cupboard.
It often happens when setting up a house that one finds quite suddenly that there is an urgent need for some item overlooked during the last expedition. The track down from my house was a deeply pitted one that served as a watercourse each time that it rained, and although I have stabilised it since, it was to begin with only negotiable on foot or by mule, or by Antoine's ancient three-wheeled tractor. This tractor had been half-buried in the mud of the flood at Chiriguana, but Senor Vivo's father, who is in fact General Sosa, governor of Cesar, had it dog out and brought in slung under a vast helicopter gunship, at his son's request. It is commonly said in this country that General Sosa is the only member of the military hierarchy who ever does anything useful.
There was, at the far end of the town, a tienda that sold goods brought in by mule-train from Ipasueno, and so every few days I would find myself rattling and bumping my way to it on Antoine's formidable old tractor. This shop was owned by a middle-aged couple who left the running of it to their daughter, a girl of twenty or so years whose name was Ena, as I discovered by overhearing the father asking of her the price of a bottle of Ron Cana.
Ena was small and strongly built; usually she wore a plain, faded blue dress, and her feet were always bare. Sometimes I used to think that her head was very slightly too large for her, but she had an appealing and serene face framed by her long black hair. She reminded me forcibly of a Greek girl with whom I had once been in love, for she had the same smooth and soft olive skin, and big brown eyes beneath eyebrows almost heavy enough to meet in the middle. On her forearms were the traces of soft black downy hair, which to be frank, is something that has always driven me crazy, and her fingers were slim and elegant.
The best thing about her, however, was her elfin spirit; she had an air of quiet amusement, an innocent devilry, that gave her the aura of having existed from all eternity, and of being able to see tbe funny side of everything. I perceived that she had a streak of mischief in her, as was to be revealed when I discovered how it was that she had kept me for so long in ignorance
How did the writer find out what Ena's name was?
A. Her father told him when he asked.
B. He heard a customer asking for her.
.
C. Antoine gave him the information
D. Someone mentioned her name.
- Câu hỏi 329802:
By the time a child is six or seven she has all the essential avoidances well enough by heart to be trusted with the care of a younger child. And she also develops a number of simple techniques. She learns to weave firm square balls from palm leaves, to make pinwheels of palm leaves or frangipani blossoms, to climb a coconut tree by walking up the trunk on flexible little feet, to break open a coconut with one firm well-directed blow of a knife as long as she is tall, to play a number of group games and sing the songs which go with them, to tidy the house by picking up the litter on the stony floor, to bring water from the sea, to spread out the copra to dry and to help gather it in when rain threatens, to go to a neighboring house and bring back a lighted faggot for the chief's pipe or the cook-house fire.
But in the case of the little girls all these tasks are merely supplementary to the main business of baby-tending. Very small boys also have some care of the younger children, but at eight or nine years of age they are usually relieved of it. Whatever rough edges have not been smoothed off by this responsibility for younger children are worn off by their contact with older boys.
For little boys are admitted to interesting and important activities only so long as their behavior is circumspect and helpful. Where small girls are brusquely pushed aside, small boys will be patiently tolerated and they become adept at making themselves useful. The four or five little boys who all wish to assist at the important, business of helping a grown youth lasso reef eels, organize themselves into a highly efficient working team; one boy holds the bait, another holds an extra lasso, others poke eagerly about in holes in the reef looking for prey, while still another tucks the captured eels into his lavalava.
The small girls, burdened with heavy babies or the care of little staggerers who are too small to adventure on the reef, discouraged by the hostility of the small boys and the scorn of the older ones, have little opportunity for learning the more adventurous forms of work and play. So while the little boys first undergo the chastening effects of baby-tending and then have many opportunities to learn effective cooperation under the supervision of older boys, the girls' education is less comprehensive. They have a high standard of individual responsibility, but the community provides them with no lessons in cooperation with one another.
This is particularly apparent in the activities of young people: the boys organize quickly; the girls waste hours in bickering, innocent of any technique for quick and efficient cooperation
It can be inferred that the 'high standard of individual responsibility' is
A. developed mainly through child-care duties
B. taught to the girl before she is entrusted with babies
C. only present in girls
D. weakened as the girl grows older.
- Câu hỏi 329805:
The restaurant owner John Moore writes about his relationship with his son Gary, the famous TV chef.
I believe everyone's given a chance in life. My son, Gary, was given his chance with cooking, and my chance was to run a restaurant. When l heard about the opportunity, I rushed over to look at the place. It was in a really bad state. It was perfect for what I had in mind.
Coming into this business made me recall my childhood. l can remember my mother going out to work in a factory and me being so upset because l was left alone. With that in mind, I thought, 'We want time for family life.' My wife dedicated herself to looking after the children and did all my accounts, while I ran the business. We lived over the restaurant in those days, and we always put a lot of emphasis on having meals together. It's paid dividends with our children, Gary and Joe. They're both very confident. Also, from a very early age they would come down and talk to our regular customers. It's given both of them a great start in life.
Gary was quite a lively child when he was really small. We had a corner bath, and when he was about seven he thought he'd jump into it like a swimming pool, and he knocked himself out. When he was older he had to work for pocket money. He started off doing odd jobs and by the age of about ten he was in the kitchen every weekend, so he always had loads of money at school. He had discipline. He used to be up even before me in the morning. If you run a family business, it's for the family, and it was nice to see him helping out.
Gary wasn't very academic, but he shone so much in the kitchen. By the age of 15 he was as good as any of the men working there, and sometimes he was even left in charge. He would produce over a hundred meals, and from then I knew he'd go into catering because he had that flair. So when he came to me and said, 'Dad, I've got to do work experience as part of my course at school,' I sent him to a friend of mine who's got a restaurant.
Gary recently took up playing the drums and now he has his own band. Goodness knows what will happen to the cooking if the music takes off. My advice to Gary would be: if you start chasing two hares, you end up catching neither, so chase the hare you know you're going to catch. He understood when I said to him: 'Gary, if you're going to get anywhere in life, you've got to do it by the age of 30. If you haven't done it by then, it's too late.
Gary went to catering college at the age of 17, and on his first day he and the other new students - they're normally complete beginners - were given what's supposed to be a morning's work. But within an hour Gary had chopped all his vegetables, sliced all his meats. He'd prepared everything. That's my son for you! In the end, he was helping other people out.
None of us can believe how successful Gary's TV cookery series has become. I'm extremely proud of him. I've always tried to tell him that if you want something, you've got to work jolly hard for it, because no one gives you anything. He's seen the opportunity he's been given and grabbed hold of it with both hands. You know, you talk to your children as they grow up, and if they only take in ten per cent of what you've told them, you've got to be happy with that. The things Gary says, the things he does, I think, well, he must have listened sometimes
How does his father regard Gary’s upbringing?
A. The family influence on Gary was too strong.
B. Gary has learnt some essential things.
C. His encouragement has caused Gary’s success.
D. Gary has forgotten important lessons.
- Câu hỏi 329806:
The restaurant owner John Moore writes about his relationship with his son Gary, the famous TV chef.
I believe everyone's given a chance in life. My son, Gary, was given his chance with cooking, and my chance was to run a restaurant. When l heard about the opportunity, I rushed over to look at the place. It was in a really bad state. It was perfect for what I had in mind.
Coming into this business made me recall my childhood. l can remember my mother going out to work in a factory and me being so upset because l was left alone. With that in mind, I thought, 'We want time for family life.' My wife dedicated herself to looking after the children and did all my accounts, while I ran the business. We lived over the restaurant in those days, and we always put a lot of emphasis on having meals together. It's paid dividends with our children, Gary and Joe. They're both very confident. Also, from a very early age they would come down and talk to our regular customers. It's given both of them a great start in life.
Gary was quite a lively child when he was really small. We had a corner bath, and when he was about seven he thought he'd jump into it like a swimming pool, and he knocked himself out. When he was older he had to work for pocket money. He started off doing odd jobs and by the age of about ten he was in the kitchen every weekend, so he always had loads of money at school. He had discipline. He used to be up even before me in the morning. If you run a family business, it's for the family, and it was nice to see him helping out.
Gary wasn't very academic, but he shone so much in the kitchen. By the age of 15 he was as good as any of the men working there, and sometimes he was even left in charge. He would produce over a hundred meals, and from then I knew he'd go into catering because he had that flair. So when he came to me and said, 'Dad, I've got to do work experience as part of my course at school,' I sent him to a friend of mine who's got a restaurant.
Gary recently took up playing the drums and now he has his own band. Goodness knows what will happen to the cooking if the music takes off. My advice to Gary would be: if you start chasing two hares, you end up catching neither, so chase the hare you know you're going to catch. He understood when I said to him: 'Gary, if you're going to get anywhere in life, you've got to do it by the age of 30. If you haven't done it by then, it's too late.
Gary went to catering college at the age of 17, and on his first day he and the other new students - they're normally complete beginners - were given what's supposed to be a morning's work. But within an hour Gary had chopped all his vegetables, sliced all his meats. He'd prepared everything. That's my son for you! In the end, he was helping other people out.
None of us can believe how successful Gary's TV cookery series has become. I'm extremely proud of him. I've always tried to tell him that if you want something, you've got to work jolly hard for it, because no one gives you anything. He's seen the opportunity he's been given and grabbed hold of it with both hands. You know, you talk to your children as they grow up, and if they only take in ten per cent of what you've told them, you've got to be happy with that. The things Gary says, the things he does, I think, well, he must have listened sometimes
As a young boy, Gary…
A. demonstrated a variety of talents
B. showed how determined he could be.
C. was always in trouble.
.
D. was motivated by money.
- Câu hỏi 329808:
The restaurant owner John Moore writes about his relationship with his son Gary, the famous TV chef.
I believe everyone's given a chance in life. My son, Gary, was given his chance with cooking, and my chance was to run a restaurant. When l heard about the opportunity, I rushed over to look at the place. It was in a really bad state. It was perfect for what I had in mind.
Coming into this business made me recall my childhood. l can remember my mother going out to work in a factory and me being so upset because l was left alone. With that in mind, I thought, 'We want time for family life.' My wife dedicated herself to looking after the children and did all my accounts, while I ran the business. We lived over the restaurant in those days, and we always put a lot of emphasis on having meals together. It's paid dividends with our children, Gary and Joe. They're both very confident. Also, from a very early age they would come down and talk to our regular customers. It's given both of them a great start in life.
Gary was quite a lively child when he was really small. We had a corner bath, and when he was about seven he thought he'd jump into it like a swimming pool, and he knocked himself out. When he was older he had to work for pocket money. He started off doing odd jobs and by the age of about ten he was in the kitchen every weekend, so he always had loads of money at school. He had discipline. He used to be up even before me in the morning. If you run a family business, it's for the family, and it was nice to see him helping out.
Gary wasn't very academic, but he shone so much in the kitchen. By the age of 15 he was as good as any of the men working there, and sometimes he was even left in charge. He would produce over a hundred meals, and from then I knew he'd go into catering because he had that flair. So when he came to me and said, 'Dad, I've got to do work experience as part of my course at school,' I sent him to a friend of mine who's got a restaurant.
Gary recently took up playing the drums and now he has his own band. Goodness knows what will happen to the cooking if the music takes off. My advice to Gary would be: if you start chasing two hares, you end up catching neither, so chase the hare you know you're going to catch. He understood when I said to him: 'Gary, if you're going to get anywhere in life, you've got to do it by the age of 30. If you haven't done it by then, it's too late.
Gary went to catering college at the age of 17, and on his first day he and the other new students - they're normally complete beginners - were given what's supposed to be a morning's work. But within an hour Gary had chopped all his vegetables, sliced all his meats. He'd prepared everything. That's my son for you! In the end, he was helping other people out.
None of us can believe how successful Gary's TV cookery series has become. I'm extremely proud of him. I've always tried to tell him that if you want something, you've got to work jolly hard for it, because no one gives you anything. He's seen the opportunity he's been given and grabbed hold of it with both hands. You know, you talk to your children as they grow up, and if they only take in ten per cent of what you've told them, you've got to be happy with that. The things Gary says, the things he does, I think, well, he must have listened sometimes
“…chase the hare you know you're going to catch.” in Paragraph 5 means
A. do everything you want.
B. do many things at one time.
C. do one thing at a time
D. do what you think you can do successfully.
- Câu hỏi 329811:
By the time a child is six or seven she has all the essential avoidances well enough by heart to be trusted with the care of a younger child. And she also develops a number of simple techniques. She learns to weave firm square balls from palm leaves, to make pinwheels of palm leaves or frangipani blossoms, to climb a coconut tree by walking up the trunk on flexible little feet, to break open a coconut with one firm well-directed blow of a knife as long as she is tall, to play a number of group games and sing the songs which go with them, to tidy the house by picking up the litter on the stony floor, to bring water from the sea, to spread out the copra to dry and to help gather it in when rain threatens, to go to a neighboring house and bring back a lighted faggot for the chief's pipe or the cook-house fire.
But in the case of the little girls all these tasks are merely supplementary to the main business of baby-tending. Very small boys also have some care of the younger children, but at eight or nine years of age they are usually relieved of it. Whatever rough edges have not been smoothed off by this responsibility for younger children are worn off by their contact with older boys.
For little boys are admitted to interesting and important activities only so long as their behavior is circumspect and helpful. Where small girls are brusquely pushed aside, small boys will be patiently tolerated and they become adept at making themselves useful. The four or five little boys who all wish to assist at the important, business of helping a grown youth lasso reef eels, organize themselves into a highly efficient working team; one boy holds the bait, another holds an extra lasso, others poke eagerly about in holes in the reef looking for prey, while still another tucks the captured eels into his lavalava.
The small girls, burdened with heavy babies or the care of little staggerers who are too small to adventure on the reef, discouraged by the hostility of the small boys and the scorn of the older ones, have little opportunity for learning the more adventurous forms of work and play. So while the little boys first undergo the chastening effects of baby-tending and then have many opportunities to learn effective cooperation under the supervision of older boys, the girls' education is less comprehensive. They have a high standard of individual responsibility, but the community provides them with no lessons in cooperation with one another.
This is particularly apparent in the activities of young people: the boys organize quickly; the girls waste hours in bickering, innocent of any technique for quick and efficient cooperation
What was boys’ attitude to girls when they worked in team to capture eels?
A. They felt bored
B. They did not show anything.
C. cheerful
D. Hostile
- Câu hỏi 329820:
The sons are composers and prize-winning musicians, while Dad makes the instruments. Matthew Rye reports.
Whole families of musicians are not exactly rare. However, it is unusual to come across one that includes not only writers and performers of music, but also an instrument maker.
When South Wales schoolteachers John and Hetty Watkins needed to get their ten-year-old son, Paul, a cello to suit his blossoming talents, they baulked at the costs involved. ‘We had a look at various dealers and it was obvious it was going to be very expensive,’ John says. ‘So I wondered if I could actually make one. I discovered that the Welsh School of Instrument Making was not far from where I lived, and I went along for evening classes once a week for about three years.’
‘After probably three or four goes with violins and violas, he had a crack at his first cello,’ Paul, now 28, adds. ‘It turned out really well. He made me another one a bit later, when he’d got the hang of it. And that’s the one I used right up until a few months ago.’ John has since retired as a teacher to work as a full-time craftsman, and makes up to a dozen violins a year – selling one to the esteemed American player Jaime Laredo was ‘the icing on the cake’.
Both Paul and his younger brother, Huw, were encouraged to play music from an early age. The piano came first: ‘As soon as I was big enough to climb up and bang the keys, that’s what I did,’ Paul remembers. But it wasn’t long before the cello beckoned. ‘My folks were really quite keen for me to take up the violin, because Dad, who played the viola, used to play chamber music with his mates and they needed another violin to make up a string trio. I learned it for about six weeks but didn’t take to it. But I really took to the character who played the cello in Dad’s group. I thought he was a very cool guy when I was six or seven. So he said he’d give me some lessons, and that really started it all off. Later, they suggested that my brother play the violin too, but he would have none of it.’
‘My parents were both supportive and relaxed,’ Huw says. ‘I don’t think I would have responded very well to being pushed. And, rather than feeling threatened by Paul’s success, I found that I had something to aspire to.’ Now 22, he is beginning to make his own mark as a pianist and composer.
Meanwhile, John Watkins’ cello has done his elder son proud. With it, Paul won the string final of the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition. Then, at the remarkably youthful age of 20, he was appointed principal cellist of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, a position he held, still playing his father’s instrument, until last year. Now, however, he has acquired a Francesco Rugeri cello, on loan from the Royal Academy of Music. ‘Dad’s not said anything about me moving on, though recently he had the chance to run a bow across the strings of each in turn and had to admit that my new one is quite nice! I think the only thing Dad’s doesn’t have – and may acquire after about 50–100 years – is the power to project right to the back of large concert halls. It will get richer with age, like my Rugeri, which is already 304 years old.’
Soon he will be seen on television playing the Rugeri as the soloist in Elgar’s Cello Concerto, which forms the heart of the second programme in the new series, Masterworks. ‘The well-known performance history doesn’t affect the way I play the work,’ he says. ‘I’m always going to do it my way.’ But Paul won’t be able to watch himself on television – the same night he is playing at the Cheltenham Festival. Nor will Huw, whose String Quartet is receiving its London premiere at the Wigmore Hall the same evening. John and Hetty will have to be diplomatic – and energetic – if they are to keep track of all their sons’ musical activities over the coming weeks.
What is meant by ‘crack’ in the second paragraph?
A. plan
B. period
C. attempt
D. shock
