Question 1 (AQA GCSE English Language): Exam Questions

The first time I ever saw somebody riding a surfboard was at the Manhattan Pier in 1953. As much time as I’d spent at the beach, you’d think I would have at least seen one surfer before then. But there were only a few dozen surfers in all of California at that time and, like surfers today, they were out at dawn surfing the morning glass. By the time the crowds arrived, they were gone.

But this one morning I took the first bus to the beach, walked out onto the Manhattan Pier, looked down and saw these bronzed gods, all in incredibly good shape, happier and healthier than anybody I’d ever seen.

Ask most people who ride a bike regularly in the UK and they’ll happily recount a list of terrifying or alarming incidents caused by the deliberate actions of another road user, usually someone in a motor vehicle.

My last such incident happened just under a week ago, when a driver decided to overtake my bike very closely and at speed on a narrow residential street near my home in south-east London. I was unharmed, but the driver was gambling on the assumption that I would not, for example, hit a sudden pothole and swerve or wobble.

Inevitably the congested traffic meant I caught up with the driver at the next junction. His relatively minor, but nonetheless very real, roll of the dice with my chances of making it home safely that evening had all been for nothing. That’s appallingly common.

It was still dark. We had at least three hours of darkness to go before daybreak and, as always, I had the sunrise shift. The ocean had continued to build, with an ever-increasing wind that was gusting at 40 knots. The swell had grown and conditions were becoming increasingly frenzied. I began to feel vulnerable again. If we can just make it to daybreak, I thought, it will be easier to read the waves and prepare for the breakers.

Our boat was brand spanking new and bought straight from the race organisers. It had coped with the seas we had experienced thus far incredibly well. I rowed on, worried by the deteriorating weather, and I thought of my wife, back at home. I longed to be with her and away from this intimidating ocean. As I rowed, a barely perceptible blue hue appeared on the skyline.

The col was exposed and windy. Directly beneath us the glacier we had walked up five days ago curved away towards the crevasses which led to base camp, nearly 3 000 feet below us. It would take many long lowerings, but it was all downhill, and we had lost the sense of hopelessness that had invaded us at the ice cliff.

Every Saturday afternoon at the pictures there was a feature film, sixteen cartoons and an episode each from four different serials. The programme just went on and on and on. The Margaret Street children would join up with the Irene Street children and the combined mass would add themselves to the Sunbeam Avenue children and they would join the swarm of children from all the other areas, all moving north along Rocky Point Road towards Rockdale, where the Odeon stood.

In summer, the concrete footpaths were hot. The tarmac footpaths were even hotter: bubbles of tar formed, to be squashed flat by our leathery bare feet. Running around on gravelled playgrounds throughout the spring, by summer we had feet that could tread on a drawing pin and hardly feel it.

‘You know,’ said my mother who, as far as I could tell, was the only person delighted to be back in France, ‘we should treat this holiday as the occasion it is. There’s no point in being miserable. Holidays are what you make them.’

Holidays were not what you made them. Holidays were in the hands of malevolent forces hell-bent on wreaking chaos at every turn. Holidays were assault courses of the mind and body, endurance tests designed to break spirits and shatter spleens. In my nine years on the planet I had learnt one thing: going on holiday was awful. As we sat, chugging along through the French countryside, sunflowers in the fields on either side of us, I thought, ‘Yes, it IS nice to look at. But in the same way that cheese looks nice in a mousetrap.’

Now, I am about to say something that I never thought I would: I had a good night’s sleep last night. And the night before that. All week in fact, I have tipped into bed, my mind restless for one shuddering moment before I turn to lie flat on my back and repeat a well– rehearsed script, at which point my thoughts drop off into dark velvety sleep.

A full night’s sleep could never have happened a few years ago. I am 44 now but, until my late 30s, I had insomnia that clung on from childhood and progressively beat me down.

And now the journey was almost over. There is no more luxurious sensation than what may be described as the ‘end of term’ feeling. I felt very content. After tomorrow there would be no more trips to the dining-car; no more of that black bread, in consistency and flavour suggesting rancid peat; no more of that equally earthy tea; no more of a monk’s existence; no more days entirely blank of action. It was true that I did not know what I was going to do, that I had nothing very specific to look forward to. But I knew what I was going to stop doing, and that, for the moment, was enough.

The car turns into the driveway of the large Edwardian house and I can’t hide my look of surprise. I expected barbed wire and reinforced concrete, not architecture and period features. I am immediately greeted with the impression that I’ve been brought to a luxury spa, somewhere I would be willing to pay copious amounts of money to stay. However, the car ignores the front door and sweeps on to the low, new brick-built extension hidden behind the house. My expectations suddenly become realised — the windows there are of reflective glass. Outsiders can’t see in. But the occupants can see out. In the control room, where staff survey two banks of CCTV, the staff press the button to close the shutter. Only when it has clanged back into place are the car doors opened. Two men get out of the back. So does the small, mousey boy who has been sitting between them.

Soon after breakfast mother sometimes began her beadwork.

On a bright, clear day, she pulled out the wooden pegs that pinned the skirt of our wigwam to the ground, and rolled the canvas part way up on its frame of slender poles. Then the cool morning breezes swept freely through our dwelling, now and then wafting the perfume of sweet grasses from newly burnt prairie.

Untying the long tasselled strings that bound a small brown buckskin bag, my mother spread upon a mat beside her bunches of coloured beads, just as an artist arranges the paints upon his palette. On a lapboard she smoothed out a double sheet of soft white buckskin; and drawing from a beaded case that hung on the left of her wide belt a long, narrow blade, she trimmed the buckskin into shape. Often she worked upon small moccasins for her small daughter.

Agnes and I were called at a quarter to seven and got up and went to early service at St Mark’s Church. There were not many people. It was bitterly cold and very foggy. We didn’t have breakfast till about 9.30 as Mother and Daddie were late. Norman was down before we got in and Emi soon after but Stella of course had her breakfast in bed and had a fire to get up by.

Mother, Emi and I walked to Wooburn Church for morning service — Agnes would have liked to go with us but went for a walk to Maidenhead with Stella and Norman — they were to see Mrs Quare and came back to lunch in a fly.

We met Katie just as we were going in Church so she made us go up to Aunt Agnes’ pew as only she, Aunt Agnes and Constance came to Church. I did enjoy the service — it was so bright and I think the Vicar is so nice.

I’ve always loved telling stories. It’s the most natural thing in the world for me. When I was a musician and folk singer, I would chat to the audience between songs. I wouldn’t tell jokes, as such, I told wee^[1] stories.

Once, in the early days, when I’d forgotten the lyrics to an old Jimmy Driftwood song, I stopped singing and started riffing^[2] on the story of the song to cover myself. The audience loved it. They laughed and cheered when I’d finished and I thought to myself, oh, this is interesting!

So, I was a storyteller long before I was a comedian. It was something I learned at school and later in the army, but most of all from my time as a welder in the shipyards on the Clyde. When we stopped work for a cup of tea, and the heavy machinery fell silent, the stories always flowed.

They could be rough, rude, cruel even, but they were always funny. And there were some brilliantly funny men there, much funnier than me, real patter^[3] merchants who could’ve made a life out of comedy. But I guess I had a banjo^[4] and that gave me a ticket out.

wee = small

riffing = improvising

patter = chat

banjo = a small string instrument, like a guitar

Oil and food scraps are finding their way into pipes and drains as the majority of eateries have no grease traps.

The vast majority of London restaurants and takeaways are responsible for feeding the fatbergs that are choking the capital’s sewers, according to survey findings that Thames Water called “staggering".

Ninety per cent of eateries in London are contributing to the problem by failing to install grease traps, the report found. As a result, grease, oil and food scraps washed off plates, utensils and saucepans are finding their way into pipes and drains.

The issue hit the headlines last month when a 130-tonne fatberg, described as a “total monster” by Thames Water, was found under Whitechapel Road in east London. The company found that no restaurants on the road had a working grease trap.