Number 15, exercise 46.0:14
Listen to the text, Danny's story and try to read it in the same manner.0:18
When I was four months old, my mother died suddenly and my father was left to look after me all by himself.0:30
I had no brothers or sisters with whom I could share toys or play together.0:40
So all my boyhood, from the age of four months on, there were just us two, my father and me.0:45
We lived in an old gypsy caravan behind a filling station.0:53
My father owned the filling station and the caravan and a small meadow behind that was about all he owned in the world.0:59
And my father struggled to make both ends meet.1:07
It was a very small filling station on a small country road with fields and woody hills around it.1:11
While I was still a baby, my father washed me and fed me, changed my diapers, pushed me in my pram to the doctor and did all the millions of other things a mother normally does for her child.1:20
That is not an easy task for a man, especially when he has to earn his living at the same time.1:35
But my father didn't mind.1:43
He was a cheerful man.1:45
I think that he gave me all the love he had felt for my mother when she was alive.1:47
We were very close during my early years.1:53
I never had a moment's unhappiness.1:57
And here I am on my fifth birthday.2:00
I was now a bouncy little boy, as you can see, with dirt and oil all over me.2:05
But that was because I spent all day in the workshop helping my father with the cars.2:12
The workshop was a stone building.2:19
My father built that himself with loving care.2:21
We are engineers, you and I, he used to say firmly to me.2:26
We earn our living by repairing engines and we can't do good work in a bad workshop.2:32
It was a fine workshop, big enough to take one car comfortably.2:40
The caravan was our house and our home.2:47
My father said it was at least 150 years old.2:51
Many gipsy children, he said, had been born in it and had grown up within its wooden walls.2:56
In old times it had been pulled by a horse along winding country roads of England.3:04
Different people had knocked at its doors, different people had lived in it.3:13
But now its best years were over.3:18
There was only one room in the caravan and it wasn't much bigger than a modern bathroom.3:22
Although we had electric lights in the workshop, we were not allowed to have them in the caravan as it was dangerous.3:30
So we got our heat and light in the same way as the gypsies had done years ago.3:38
There was a wood burning stove that kept us warm in winter.3:45
And there were candles in candlesticks.3:49
I think that the stew cooked by my father is the best thing I've ever tasted.3:52
One plateful was never enough for furniture.3:58
We had two narrow beds, two chairs and a small table covered with a table cloth.4:03
And some bowls, plates, cups, forks and spoons on it.4:10
Those were all the home comforts we had.4:16
They were all we needed.4:19
And we never regretted that our caravan was far from a perfect home.4:21
I really loved living in that gypsy caravan.4:28
I loved it particularly in the evenings when I was tucked up in my bed and my father was telling stories.4:32
I was happy because I was sure that when I went to sleep, my father would still be there very close to me, sitting in his chair by the fire.4:40
My father, without any doubt, was the most wonderful and exciting father any boy ever had.4:53
Here is a picture of him.5:00
You may think, if you don't know him well, that he was a stern and serious man.5:04
He was actually full of fun.5:12
What made him look so serious and sometimes gloomy was the fact that he never smiled with his mouth.5:15
He did it all with his eyes.5:22
He had bright blue eyes.5:25
And when he thought of something funny, you could see a golden light dancing in the middle of each eye.5:27
But the mouth never moved.5:35
My father was not what you would call an educated man.5:39
I doubt he had read many books in his life, but he was an excellent storyteller.5:43
He promised to make up a bedtime story for me every time I asked him.5:52
He always kept his promise.5:57
The best stories were turned into serials and went on many nights running.6:00
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