English Grammar through Stories. myself. Now, I should have the maturity to know precisely what to do
by Alan Townend
myself. Now, I should have the maturity to know precisely what to do. It was high time I had a piece of luck. With these philosophical thoughts turning round in my mind I picked up my daily newspaper. They too ran a sort of lottery and if you had a scratch card with two sums of money the same as the one in the paper, then you won that amount. «Saints preserve us!», I yelled at the top of my voice, although I was alone at the time. Yes, you've guessed it. I had won £250,00. I went cold and found myself quoting Shakespeare: «If this be error and upon me proved …» I forgot the rest of the line. I was too excited.
Naturally I phoned everyone up and told them the news and I received plenty of advice. Someone suggested a financial plan should be drawn up to assess the different possible investments. Another proposed that I went straight to the bank for advice. A third insisted I did nothing until he had had time to consider what to do. I was seriously beginning to wonder who had won the money. The best advice came from the person who recommended that I should go out and enjoy myself. The trouble was that everyone reacted as if they knew everything about money and I hadn't the least idea. It seemed to me that I was being treated as if I were a complete fool.
Meanwhile I had to be sensible and take some practical steps in order to get hold of the money. It was time I stopped daydreaming and read the rules on the back of my scratch card. Either they would send you the cheque for the amount after you had sent them the appropriate card or you could actually go round to their main office and do the paperwork there. I thought I would sooner go round to the office. I felt I would rather get the matter sorted out at the headquarters. The first thing you were instructed to do was to ring a certain telephone number. I tried and the number was engaged. Throughout the rest of that Wednesday I tried phoning again and again and the number was either engaged or nobody answered. It was as if they knew about me and didn't want to part with the money. I just wished they had picked up the phone. I knew that the office closed at 5.30 and so I made one last desperate phone call at 5.15. A young woman answered who sounded as though she knew what she was talking about. I tried hard to sound as if I were in charge of the situation and as if winning £250,000 was the sort of thing that happened every day. My throat was very dry and she asked me to repeat what I had just said. I explained that the amounts on the Wednesday's scratch card were the same as that day's paper and I claimed that sum. There was a long pause and then as politely as she could she suggested I looked at the day on today's paper. «Heaven help me», I cried, «it's Thursday.»
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English Grammar through Stories
by Alan Townend
Reflections
In Greek mythology Narcissus looked into the water of the pool and saw his own reflection. In other words he saw himself - he saw a reflection of himself. Both those words that I have highlighted are called reflexive pronouns and in both cases the subject and the object are the same just like the reflection of Narcissus. But we'll come back to that later. Let's do some more reflecting or thinking. A reflection, apart from being another picture of someone or something as in the case of our Greek friend, who incidentally died gazing at his reflection in the pool, is also another word for a considered thought or coming back to think about something again. If you are writing an account of your childhood for example and you are thinking back to that time, you could call this description; «Reflections of my childhood.» Again if you think that crime occurs because of the type of society in which people live, you could say that «The increase in crime in cities is a sad reflection of the poor conditions in which some people live.» In these examples you can see that one thing is a sort of representation of another. In fact the older spelling of «reflection» was «reflexion» and we also find «reflective» and «reflexive». The former means «thinking seriously about» - you can be described as «in a reflective mood« when you are deep in thought about has happened. The latter of course brings us back to the pronoun.
Let me show the forms of the reflexive pronoun in tabular form using the same sentence:
■ I saw myself on the TV news last night.
■ You saw yourself on the TV news last night.
■ He saw himself on the TV news last night.
■ She saw herself on the TV news last night.
■ It saw itself on the TV news last night. (Let's imagine the «it» here refers to the dog!)
■ We saw ourselves on the TV news last night.
■ You saw yourselves (plural) on the TV news last night.
■ They saw themselves on the TV news last night.
Two points to note in particular: «you» as a personal pronoun does not change when it becomes plural but it does in the reflexive pronoun: the spelling of the third person plural - themselves.
Take a look at these two sentences, both of which contain the word «himself» but in each sentence the word has a different meaning: Narcissus himself saw it in the water. Narcissus saw himself in the water.
In the second sentence the meaning is that Narcissus saw a
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