Part A Directions ：

Read the following two texts. Answer the questions on each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on your ANSWER SHEET.

Text 1

    Late last year, I needed to transport some furniture from our house in Sussex to my son ’ s flat in central London. I should have paid a man to do it for me, but foolishly confident in my driving ability T I decided to hire a van and drive it myself. It was a Ford Transit 280, long and wide:  you couldn’t see out of the back. You never really knew how close you were to anything else on the road.

    Reversing in my home yard, I crashed into a small shed, causing permanent damage. At least I owned the shed.

I loaded up the furniture and set out. By now it was rush hour. My nerves broke down，as 1 steered the huge van through ever-shifting lanes, across oncoming vehicles, between distances of buses，at last to Charlotte Street.

    Here I found an available parking space. As I reversed into it, I noticed three people at a pavement café waving at me, I got out, trembling violently, like one who has just endured a stormy Atlantic crossing. “ You’ve shifted the car parked behind you three feet，” they said, and it belonged to a disabled person. I examined the car. There were white scratches along its front bumper. It bore a disabled sign. So, now I was a bad driver and a bad man. Under the stem gaze of the three，I left an apologetic note on the damaged car’s windscreen, giving my phone number.

    I unloaded the furniture, dripping with sweat. Wanting only to escape the monster，I drove the van back to its base on the Edgware Road. On arrival, the hire man told me I must fill it up with petrol before returning it. “Just charge me,” I cried, still shaking with fear. He gazed at me with understanding. No doubt he’d witnessed others in this state before. “How about I drive you to a petrol station, you fill up, and I drive her back?” he asked.

    He danced the great van through the traffic so casually that it would have shamed me if I had not been so grateful.