Comprehension , Upper Intermediate , Advanced ( 8 )

Comprehension

8 - ] Upper Intermediate & Advanced

Read the following newspaper article , then answer the questions below :

                 ‘This is the real star of the collection, ’ says Cynthia Lole , wide eyes shining , holding up a 12 cm-high pink plastic doll to my face . It looks much the same as the hundred or so other pink plastic dolls arranged round the walls of her tiny west London flat . But not to Cynthia . ‘Look ! It’s a boy ! ‘ she cries . ‘I was so excited when I found it .’ All Cynthia’s other dolls are girls . Not girls in pretty dresses with blinking eyes and lots of hair , though . She collects kewpie dolls - rubber dolls with pointed heads and round faces , that have been manufactured in various countries throughout the world for nearly a century .

                 Over the past five years or so she has gathered together big ones and little ones , sitting-up ones and lying-down ones , crying kewpies , crawling kewpies , kewpies sucking their thumbs . There’s a large 1930s kewpie , a rare black kewpie with no eyes , key-ring kewpies from Kapan , a kewpie box whose head lifts off as the lid . ‘They’ve all got slightly different expressions because they are of different ages and come from different countries , ‘she explains . ‘This one’s sweet , isn’t she ? She’s Italian ,’ she says picking up a particularly attractive example with a cute smile and a round stomach .

                 In every shade of pink from strawberry ice-cream to flesh , the dolls form a six-deep guard on wall shelves in Cynthia Lole’s spare bedroom . Ninety pairs of painted eyes seem to turn on you as you pass the door - they’re not exactly threatening , but Cynthia says she’s had business visitors drop their briefcases open-mouthed at the sight of them . The rarest examples are behind glass in the bathroom - tiny kewpies no more than four centimeters high from the 1920s . The very earliest ones were made from porcelain , but Cynthia’s collection doesn’t go back that far : ‘It’s a fun thing , so I don’t want to spend big money . Most of these cost very little , although I did pay rather more for the boy .’

                As with most collections , Cynthia’s started with just one : a very ordinary example she bought in a local London market . ‘Then I found a few more , and before I knew it , the dealers were saving them for me and people were buying me them as presents.’ She had about 25 or so before she became a serious collector . ‘I brought home this bright pinklight from a film I’d been working on , and when I put it on in the bedroom , all the kewpies’ eyes lit up and their heads started glowing . I thought -yeah ! - I’m going to have a whole shelf of them with a light behind .’

                 Now  Cynthia hunts down kewpies wherever she goes , from local street markets and specialist doll dealers to work trips abroad , fro Philadelphia to Portugal , with her job making pop videos . Quick as a flash , she can remember the origin or each : ‘That one I found in New York just as I was leaving to catch a plane . There it was for only a dollar . And that dear little one in the red suit a friend found in San Francisco .’

                 Kewpie dolls are the most recent of Cynthia’s addictions , but the flat is a monument to a lifetime of collecting . She began in her childhood , probably as a reaction against her parents , who hated having lots of unnecessary things around and would say things like : ‘Why do you need another vase if you’ve already got 

one ?’

                    In the early days it was just cardboard boxes , but she started collecting seriously when she moved to London to work and discovered the street markets . One of her interests is old advertising signs and she also collects things from the videos she has worked on - a model 1950s plane hangs from the ceiling and there is a rubber octopus on the television . 1960s pop music plays on a 1954 jukebox machine that had to be brought in through the window when Cynthia moved here six years ago -she’d got the measurements of the hall wrong and they even had to remove the window frame . ‘Being such an enthusiastic collector does have its drawbacks ,’ she sighs .’It’s not only moving house - I’ve been warned I could never have a cleaner because it would take them hours just to dust and as for the dolls , they’d probably take one look and resign on the spot .’

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Answer the following questions

1. What is the writer’s first impression of Cynthia’s dolls ?

( A ) They are mostly girls

( B ) They all look very similar .

( C ) They have a lot of hair .

( D ) They are very old .

2 . What does the writer learn from Cynthia about kewpie dolls ?

( A ) They were originally children’s toys .

( B ) Their faces differ in detail .

( C ) The best ones come from Italy .

( D ) Older examples are often damaged .

3 . How does Cynthia display most of her dolls ?

( A ) She protects them from visitors .

( B ) She keeps frightening ones by the door .

( C ) She has a glass case in her bedroom .

( D ) She displays them all around her flat .

4 . How did Cynthia begin collecting dolls ?

( A ) She bought a boy doll in London .

( B ) She started with porcelain dolls .

( C ) She found a doll in a market .

( D ) She was given a doll as a present .

5 . When did Cynthia become a serious doll collector ?

( A ) when she saw how the dolls looked lit up

( B ) when she started working op pop videos

( C ) when she begin traveling on business

( D ) when she found a specialist doll dealer

 6 . How did Cynthia’s background influence her choice of hobby ?

( A ) her parents gave her dolls .

( B ) She started collecting vases .

( C ) Her family discouraged collecting .

( D ) She was surrounded by unnecessary objects .

7 . What problems do Cynthia’s collections cause ?

( A ) Moving around her flat is difficult .

( B ) The cleaner has threatened to resign .

( C ) There is not room to display everything .

( D ) She has problems when she moves house .

Answer Key

1 . B 2 . B 3 . D 4 . C 5 . A 6 . C 7 . D