I'm going to read you a story again, a story which I have written for B1 students.
There is a lot of interesting B1 vocabulary in this story.
You should find it very useful.
And if you come over to Practicing English you can look at the story and read it and find those B1 words.
Now I'm going to ask two or three questions about the story and you can try to find out the answers as you listen.
I mention several types of vegetable. vegetable in the story and listen to what are the vegetables I mention.
And by the way, these vegetable names are in the list of B1 words, so they're useful to learn.
I will mention one vegetable, and that is a cucumber.
I have to mention it because the title of the story is called The Cucumber.
If you don't know what a cucumber is well, it's a long vegetable, usually a dark green on the outside.
And then when you cut it inside, it's a very light green.
And we usually cut it into slices and we put it into a salad, for example.
It's very nice in summer to eat cucumber in your salad.
The other question then is to listen for the fruit that I mention.
Which fruit do I mention?
And the last question is to find out the meaning of this word, which is not a B1 word.
The word is allotment.
And that is spelt A-double-L-O-T-M-E-N-T.
And the question is, what is an allotment?
OK, so those are the questions.
What are the vegetables I mention?
What is the fruit that I mention?
And what is an allotment?
OK, so here we go with the story for B1 learners.
Hello and welcome to Practicing English.
My name is Mike Bilbre and these are podcasts for students of English at B1 or B2 levels.
For transcripts, please go to practicingenglish.com.
The Cucumber George admired the huge vegetable in his greenhouse.
It really was quite incredible.
According to his ruler, it was 120 centimetres long.
It wasn't the longest cucumber in the world.
That record was held by an Australian at just over 130 centimetres long.
George had read about it in the Guinness Book of Records.
But he knew it wouldn't grow any more because he could see by looking carefully at the skin that it was getting old.
A bit like himself, he thought.
He had tied the cucumber in several places so that it wouldn't break under its own weight.
He now cut the strings with scissors and then cut it from the plant with a sharp knife.
He held it carefully in his two hands and then put it down on a table.
George didn't just grow cucumbers.
He had a large greenhouse in his garden, a small building made of glass that kept the plants inside at a warmer temperature.
He grew several types of vegetables in the greenhouse.
Cabbages, spinach, broccoli, courgettes and peas.
He even had some strawberry plants, but the fruit never seemed to grow very large, probably due to the lack of light.
Because of the cold weather in the north of England, especially in winter, he planted the seeds of some types of vegetables in his greenhouse.
Then, when they started to grow, he dug them up carefully and transferred them to the garden and replanted them in the ground in tidy rows.
He turned away from the giant cucumber and walked over to the strawberry plants with a look of disappointment on his face.
The leaves were a pale green and the fruit was white and pink instead of a bright red.
He looked up.
Although it was nine o'clock in the evening, the sky through the glass of the greenhouse was still blue and the sun shone.
It was June and the days were long in Manchester at this time of year.
So why didn't his strawberries turn red?
George had read that by using ultraviolet light, the fruit of the strawberry plant would grow larger and redder.
If only he had a larger garden, he could have another greenhouse full of strawberries, all lit by ultraviolet.
George couldn't build a larger garden because he had neighbours' gardens on both sides.
However, he could buy an allotment.
Allotments were garden areas that you could buy just outside the city, where people grew vegetables.
You could even buy an allotment with its own greenhouse.
There was a problem, though.
The people from Manchester were very keen gardeners, so there were no allotments available for sale and the waiting list was several years long.
George realized, however, that an allotment was what he really needed.
He even dreamed about it.
In his dreams there was an allotment with a huge greenhouse in the middle where a bright blue light shone.
The light was so bright that George had to wear dark glasses when he went inside.
But the greenhouse was full of wonderful strawberry plants with enormous green leaves and red strawberries the size of tennis balls.
There was something about today that made it different from other days.
George stepped outside into the garden and looked up at his house.
It was at least a couple of hundred years old, large and made of a dark stone, with a grey roof and two tall chimneys, because there was a fireplace in the front living room and in the dining room at the back of the house.
It would have been a rather sad-looking house due to its dark stone, but the plants growing up the walls and around the windows meant that it looked quite pretty.
George had worked hard to make those plants grow up the walls in that way.
This was the house where he had been born nearly 70 years ago. nearly seventy years ago.
Yes, that was why today seemed different from other days.
He was going to be seventy in a few days' time.
George had been an only child and had lived alone with his parents.
But they both died from cancer when he was still a young man and he had no ambition to go to university or see the world.
He stayed in the house.
His keen interest in gardening meant that he soon found a job looking after the local park near his home.
And there he worked all his life, until he retired at 65.
George was a shy man, and so there had been little romance in his life.
Of course, there had been Sheila.
That had happened when George had been about 30.
She arrived at the park one day with a group of university students.
She was showing them some of the different types of plants that grew there.
She came up to George and asked him if he could tell them about some of the plants he wasn't sure about.
George was glad to help, and Sheila was delighted that he was able to explain things to her students that even she didn't know.
Sheila was a botanist at Manchester University, and so they both had a lot in common right from the beginning.
They started seeing each other quite often, after work and at weekends.
They used to go for walks in the city parks or in the countryside around Manchester.
George used to talk about plants, flowers and trees most of the time.
In fact, he didn't used to talk about anything else.
But Sheila also tried to talk about other subjects.
George understood now why Sheila stopped telephoning him.
And in the end, their relationship finished.
And now Janet had moved into his neighbourhood.
She had lived in Manchester most of her life, but when her husband died she had wanted to leave that house and make a fresh start in another part of the city.
This had happened about a year ago.
Janet had bought a house in the same street where George lived.
But George, who talked to very few of his neighbours, didn't find that out until he met her once at the garden centre, where people bought products for their gardens.
Of course Janet was a lot older than Sheila, probably about sixty, but both Sheila and George both found they had something in common gardens and gardening.
Janet had invited George to tea a few times at her home, and then one day George had felt brave enough to ask Janet to come to dinner at his house.
He prepared a vegetarian meal, of course, with vegetables from his garden.
Janet obviously enjoyed the dinner and George felt very proud.
It had been a success.
He had the feeling there was something special between them.
A feeling he wanted to grow.
When he had looked at her that evening, he noticed her eyes shone and her smile was happy and beautiful.
But he hadn't been in contact with Janet since then.
Perhaps now was the time to make a change in his life.
Now he should do something to make a dream come true.
George had an idea.
He went back inside the greenhouse to the enormous cucumber.
This would be his excuse.
His excuse for his visit.
Then he wrapped it up carefully in an old but clean towel and carried it out and round to the front of the house.
He then opened the boot of his car and put the cucumber inside.
He took a brief look at his clothes.
They were clean enough, he thought.
George got into the car and drove off.
It was a very short drive to Janet's house and when he arrived he opened the boot and carefully took out his cucumber.
He didn't need to ring the bell.
Janet had seen him arrive, and she opened the front door and stood on the doorstep.
She looked at George curiously.
"'What have you got there?' she asked, smiling.
"'It's a present,' replied George.
"'I thought you might like it.'
Come in, George, said Janet.
And she laughed and George saw how her eyes were shining.
They went into the living room.
Please, sit down, George, she said.
I've just made some tea.
Would you like some?
Thank you.
I'd love a cup.
George sat down on the sofa.
Janet came in with the tea things and put them on the table next to the sofa and sat down close to George.
George took the towel off the cucumber and looked up at Janet.
"'It's a cucumber,' she said, clearly surprised.
"'It's... it's amazing!'
How did you make it grow so long?
I grew it specially for you, said George.
I gave it special food and looked after it.
I even talked to it.
They say plants grow better and bigger if you talk to them.
It should be good to eat.
Nice and fresh.
I've just cut it from the plant.
Well, said Janet, I could make cucumber sandwiches with the tea, but it seems a shame to cut it.
It's so long.
And she smiled.
Janet, said George, and his voice became more serious.
Yes, George, said Janet.
And she seemed to be breathing more quickly.
There's something I want to ask you.
Yes?
Janet put her hand on his knee.
You told me once you had an allotment, and that since your husband died, you have never used it.
Janet was silent.
Well, Janet, would you like to sell it?
I'd like to buy it from you.
And that's the end of the story.
Please come over to Practicing English Podcast 134 and you can read through the story and find out the answers to the questions.
Goodbye for now.
