PHRASAL VERBS AND IDIOMS IN CONTEXT ~ 01
MARK
MARK MILROY HAD FORGOTTEN TO SET the alarm clock the night before when he’d rolled in half cut from his friend Joe’s engagement party. Now he had slept in and, once again, he’d be late for work. Oh he shouldn’t have overdone it with the drink he thought as he rushed to the toilet to spew up. He should have learned his lesson by now. But it was always a case of ‘never again until the next time’ with Mark.
It was the third time this month he’d woken up with the most horrendous of hangovers and he’d vowed never to touch the bottle again. He’d sworn to himself that he was going to give up drinking once and for all. It wasn’t his fault he told himself. It just was not his fault if other people invited him to parties and pubs and put temptation right in front of his face. He could have ordered some lemonade or a glass of fruit juice but hey, there was no fun in drinking soft drinks. He liked the hard stuff plus the boys would just laugh in his face and call him a sissy or a pansy if he were to be seen with a glass of or the likes in his hand.
Mark had been known as the local hard man since the age of thirteen and hard men do not drink lemonade. He’d also been the leader of the “LYT", Liverpool young team, all throughout his teens and early twenties. He’d always been a born leader and people had always looked up to him. He had a reputation to live up to.
He had a look in the mirror and didn’t like what he saw. His face was a purplish colour and the tip of his nose was deep purple tinged with red thread veins – a tell-tale sign of a hardened drinker he thought alarmingly to himself.
He’d always been such a handsome lad with those rough and ready good looks. All the girls had swooned over him at school fighting for his attention. The lifestyle he led was beginning to take its toll on him. He was on the verge of losing what Mother Nature had so generously bestowed him with. If he didn’t pull up his socks pretty quickly, those good looks would soon be gone.
Of late he’d noticed that quite a few of his mates were beginning to thin on top. He should thank his lucky stars that he still had a decent head of hair on him – a thick mop of wavy blonde locks. His bright blue eyes were not so bright this morning. They were puffy and blood shot. He didn’t look like, or feel like, for that matter, the healthiest of human beings.
He headed for the kitchen and put the kettle on. A strong cup of good old British brew might do the trick and get him back on the mend.
As he sat sipping the tea with two teabags in it for good measure, his mind went back to June of the year before when his wife Katrina had walked out on him just nine months after they’d tied the knot. He’d pleaded with her not to go and had told her for the umpteenth time that he’d lay off the booze. But it had been to no avail. His pleading had fallen on deaf ears. She’d already made up her mind and nothing or no-one was going to stand in her way. She’d reached the end of her tether with her so-called husband. With a suitcase in one hand and their pooch on his lead in the other, she walked out of the door, and out of his life, never to be seen again.
Rumour had it that her father had set her up in business in a recruitment agency in London. In fact, not long after her departure, Mark received notification from a solicitor in the capital informing him that she’d filed for divorce on the grounds of irretrievable break down due to his continual drunkenness. Had it been his own fault? He remembered only too well how many chances she’d given him to smarten up and get his act together. Only now, several months down the line was he beginning to get over the break up.
He looked up at the kitchen clock. He was going to have to get a move on. He was due at the factory at 9 o’ clock and it was now going on 8.45 a.m. He risked getting sacked if he didn’t get there on time. He’d already been given two oral warnings for his late time-keeping and the next one would be a written one and then after that he’d be out the door.
Anyway, did it really matter if he got the sack? Maybe they’d be doing him a favour. For quite some time now he’d been thinking of reinventing himself but he still hadn’t thought about how.
For Gawd’s sake! He was twenty nine going on thirty and he’d been in that margarine factory since the day after his sixteenth birthday. Where the heck was his life going? A written warning is something he did not need in his life right now. It would go against him
nguon VI OLET
