1 . Recently a Russian friend came to visit me. It was one of her lifelong dreams to visit London. She arrive at lunchtime and we _______ a tiring afternoon going round the Tower of London. However, by 5 o'clock I couldn't help _______ that she didn't seem as enthusiastic as she had been earlier. I asked if _______was wrong and she said, “This is all very interesting but where is the _______ and where are the men in bowler hats (圆顶礼帽)? Why did everyone _______ to get on the bus at the bus stop instead of making a queue? It's very _______ from the books I've read about England.”

Her _______ made me think. It's true that people don't _______ much any more: nowadays you often find that everyone just jumps on the bus. Or maybe this is only in London. Also the idea of a man standing up and offering his _______ to a woman on a train or bus is ________ these days, although my father still does it!

Speaking of the pollution: well, we all know that a hundred years ago there used to be fog all year round in London, but we ________ have much fog; nowadays we have pollution from all the cars! Over the last few years in ________ London had been one of the hottest places in Europe, although we still get more than enough rain in the season.

What about the city men in their working “uniform”? Well, you can still see some city gentlemen in their smart ________, but men hardly ever ________ bowler hats. A few things don't ________, though. If you try to start a conversation with an English person on the underground in London, she or he will probably look at you as if you were mad!

2 . “Fire! Fire! ” What terrible words to hear when I _______ in a strange house in the middle of the night! It was a large, _______ house — the sort that burns easily — and my room was on the top floor. I jumped out of bed, opened the door and stepped out into the passage. It was full of _______.

I began to _______, but as I was still only half awake, instead of going towards the stairs I went in the opposite direction. The smoke grew thicker and I found it hard to _______. The floor became _______ under my feet. I ran into another room and tried to reach the window for fresh air. Suddenly, one of my feet got caught in something _______ and I fell down. The thing I had fallen over felt like a package of clothes, and I picked it up to protect my _______ from the smoke and heat. Just then the floor broke under me and I fell through to the floor below with pieces of _______ wood all around me.

__________, there was a doorway in front, so I put the package over my face and ran. My feet were terribly burned, but I __________. As I reached the cold air outside, my package of clothes gave a __________. I nearly dropped it in my surprise. Then I saw there were many people in the street. A woman screamed (尖叫) as she saw me and came running __________.

“My baby! My baby! ”she cried. Those people cheered loudly __________ she took the smoke­blackened package out of my arms. I almost failed to see who she was — my boss's wife. I had __________ her baby, and I became a hero!