He didn't think he'd ever get used to this business. He had quite liked Roger, and the three of them had been out a few times; now, apparently, he'd never see him again. He didn't mind, but it was weird if you thought about it. He'd once shared a toilet with Roger, when they were both busting for a pee after a car journey. You'd think that if you'd peed with someone you ought to keep in touch with them somehow.
Apart from Roger, not much had happened in London yet. They'd only been here for a few weeks--they'd moved on the first day of the summer holidays--and so far it had been pretty boring. He had been to see two films with his mum, Home Alone 2, which wasn't as good as Home Alone 1, and Honey, I Blew Up the Kids, which wasn't as good as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and his mum had said that modern films were too commercial, and that when she was his age ... something, he couldn't remember what. And they'd been to have a look at his school, which was big and horrible, and wandered around their new neighbourhood, which was called Holloway, and had nice bits and ugly bits, and they'd had lots of talks about London, and the changes that were happening to them, and how they were all for the best, probably. But really they were sitting around waiting for their London lives to begin.
About A Boy Nick Hornby.pdf
Download Zip: https://tweeat.com/2vJyFQ
He found the remote control down the back of the sofa and zapped through the channels. He didn't want to watch any of the soaps, because soaps were full of trouble, and he was worried that the trouble in the soaps would remind his mum of the trouble she had in her own life. So they watched a nature programme about this sort of fish thing that lived right down at the bottom of caves and couldn't see anything, a fish that nobody could see the point of; he didn't think that Would remind his mum of anything, much.
How cool was Will Freeman? This cool: he had slept with a woman he didn't know very well in the last three months (five points). He had spent more than three hundred pounds on a jacket (five points). He had spent more than twenty pounds on a haircut (five points) (How was it possible to spend less than twenty pounds on a haircut in 1993?). He owned more than five hip-hop albums (five points). He had taken Ecstasy (five points), but in a club and not merely at home as a sociological exercise (five bonus points). He intended to vote Labour at the next general election (five points). He earned more than forty thousand pounds a year (five points), and he didn't have to work very hard for it (five points, and he awarded himself an extra five points for not having to work at all for it). He had eaten in a restaurant that served polenta and shaved parmesan (five points). He had never used a flavoured condom (five points), he had sold his Bruce Springsteen albums (five points), and he had both grown a goatee (five points) and shaved it off again (five points). The bad news was that he hadn't ever had sex with someone whose photo had appeared on the style page of a newspaper or magazine (minus two), and he did still think, if he was honest (and if Will had anything approaching an ethical belief, it was that lying about yourself in questionnaires was utterly wrong), that owning a fast car was likely to impress women. Even so, that gave him ... sixty-six! He was, according to the questionnaire, sub-zero! He was dry ice' He was Frosty the Snowman! He would die of hypothermia!
Will didn't know how seriously you were supposed to take these questionnaire things, but he couldn't afford to think about it; being men's-magazine cool was as close as he had ever come to an achievement, and moments like this were to be treasured. Sub-zero! You couldn't get much cooler than sub-zero! He closed the magazine and put it on to a pile of similar magazines that he kept in the bathroom. He didn't save them all, because he bought too many for that, but he wouldn't be throwing this one out in a hurry.
Will wondered sometimes--not very often, because historical speculation wasn't something he indulged in very often--how people like him would have survived sixty years ago. ("People like him" was, he knew, something of a specialized grouping; in fact, there couldn't have been anyone like him sixty years ago, because sixty years ago no adult could have had a father who had made his money in quite the same way. So when he thought about people like him, he didn't mean people exactly like him, he just meant people who didn't really do anything all day, and didn't want to do anything much, either.) Sixty years ago, all the things Will relied on to get him through the day simply didn't exist: there was no daytime TV, there were no videos, there were no glossy magazines and therefore no questionnaires and, though there were probably record shops, the kind of music he listened to hadn't even been invented yet. (Right now he was listening to Nirvana and Snoop Doggy Dogg, and you couldn't have found too much that sounded like them in 1933.) Which would have left books. Books! He would have had to get a job, almost definitely, because he would have gone round the twist otherwise.
Now, though, it was easy. There was almost too much to do. You didn't have to have a life of your own anymore; you could just peek over the fence at other people's lives, as lived in newspapers and EastEnders and films and exquisitely sad jazz or tough rap songs. The twenty-year-old Will would have been surprised and perhaps disappointed to learn that he would reach the age of thirty-six without finding a life for himself, but the thirty-six-year-old Will wasn't particularly unhappy about it; there was less clutter this way.
"Oh. Right." Everything came back to the sodding baby. "That would make you pretty tired, I guess." He'd deliberately waited a week so that he wouldn't have to talk about this sort of thing, but it hadn't done him any good. They were talking about it anyway.
John and Christine used to be OK, really. When Will had been going out with Jessica, the four of them used to go clubbing a couple of times a week. Jessica and Will split up when Jessica wanted to exchange the froth and frivolity for something more solid; Will had missed her, temporarily, but he would have missed the clubbing more. (He still saw her, sometimes, for a lunchtime pizza, and she would show him pictures of her children, and tell him he was wasting his life, and he didn't know what it was like, and he would tell her how lucky he was he didn't know what it was like, and she would tell him he couldn't handle it anyway, and he would tell her that he had no intention of finding out one way or the other; then they would sit in silence and glare at each other.) Now that John and Christine had taken the Jessica route to oblivion, he had no use for them whatsoever. He didn't want to meet Imogen, or know how Barney was, and he didn't want to hear about Christine's tiredness, and there wasn't anything else to them anymore. He wouldn't be bothering with them again.
"We were wondering," said John, "whether you'd like to be Imogen's godfather?" The two of them sat there with an expectant smile on their faces, as if he were about to leap to his feet, burst into tears and wrestle them to the carpet in a euphoric embrace. Will laughed nervously.
These cookies help us understand user behavior within our services. For example, they let us know which features and sections are most popular. This information helps us design a better experience for all users. To learn more about cookies, please see our cookie policy. To learn more about how we use and protect your data, please see our privacy policy.
Nick Hornby's new story about a country so tiny, it's just a field, a few houses, a shop, and a café. There, a boy whose mom happens to be president of this minuscule nation is called upon to show his patriotism by playing on the national soccer team. Nick Hornby is the author of a number of books, including High Fidelity, About a Boy, and A Long Way Down. This story is part of a larger collection of stories for young people called Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Thing That Aren't As Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creatures from the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, a Man Named Lars Farf, and One Other Story We Couldn't Quite Finish so Maybe You Could Help Us Out, which is a fundraiser for the literacy group 826NYC. (25 minutes)
9781405884501: about a boy, level 4, penguin activereadersAbeBooks.com: About a Boy, Level 4, Penguin Active Readers(Penguin Active Reading: Level 4)(9781405884501) by Nick Hornby anda great selection of [PDF] The Thinking Student's Guide To College:75 Tips For Getting A Better Education.pdf
Plar4:about a boy book and cd-rom pack: level 4 (penguinactiveBuy PLAR4:About a Boy Book and CD-ROM Pack: Level 4 (PenguinActive Reading (GradedReaders)) 1 Pck Pap/ by Nick Hornby (ISBN:9781405884501) [PDF] The Autobiography Of Saint MargaretMary.pdf
Pearson english active readers level 4: about a boy (book +cdWill Freeman wants an easy life with no responsibilities. Butthen he meets Marcus an unusual twelveyear old boy with seriousproblems.[PDF] Chicken Soup For The Teenage Soul Journal.pdf
About a boy, level 4, penguin active readers by hornby, nickThiscopy of About a Boy, Level 4, Penguin Active Readers (PenguinActive Reading: Level 4) offeredfor sale by GoodDealsOnUsedBooksfor $6.81 [PDF] Historical Atlas Of The United States: WithOriginal Maps.pdf
[pdf]about a boy - englishcenterAbout a Boy - Answer keys of 2.PENGUIN ACTIVE READING. Teacher Support Programme.Answer keys LEVEL4. Book key. 1.1 1 C 2 A 3 B 4 D. 1.2 Open [PDF] Quinoa: TheEveryday Superfood: 150 Gluten-Free Recipes To Delight Every KindOf Eater.pdf
[pdf]about a boy pdfFor a complete list of titles available inthe Penguin Readers series, please write to your local IV.Chapter 1A Man and a Boy. Will Freeman was thirty-six years old and he hadnever . reading books,but it didn't do him any good at school.[PDF]The Adventures Of Oliver Twist. Centennial Edition.pdf 2ff7e9595c
Comments