Choose Your English Lesson 01

Barbara and Harry Sallis are trying to buy a house.

Here they are looking at the house for which they have paid a deposit. The mood is surprise.

Conversation

BARBARA      : This can’t be the house!

HARRY            : Good heavens! It’s a most peculiar place!

BARBARA  : Look at that carving over the fireplace.

HARRY  : Looks Chinese.

BARBARA  : Weird! There’s a mixture of everything.

HARRY  : And how could anyone live in a house like this !

BARBARA  : I’ve never seen anything like it.

MAN    :Good afternoon.

BARBARA  : Oh . . . hello!

MAN    : Who are you? I’m the caretaker.

HARRY  : I think we’ve come to the wrong house.

MAN    : The wrong house?

BARBARA  : Yes . . . by mistake.

MAN    : Well! I’d have thought it was difficult to mistake this house.

HARRY  : Yes . . . it is an extraordinary place. Who built it?

MAN    : A pirate.

BARRY  : A pirate?

BARBARA  : Really! How astonishing!

MAN    : He was most artistic.

BARBARA  : What! Who’d have thought of a pirate being artistic?

MAN    : He stole only works of art.

HARRY  : Did they catch him?

MAN    : Yes. In the end he was hanged.

BARBARA  : Oh, no!

MANI     : For murder.

BARBARA      : Murder !

MAN                  : The house has been empty all these years,  and now it’s being sold.

HARRY            : Who on earth would want to buy an extra-ordinary place like this?

MAN                  : To a couple called - let me think — Sallis, I believe.

HARRY/BARBARA  :  Sallis ?

BARBARA  : But . . . but that’s us!

MAN    : You?

HARRY  : You must’ve got the wrong name.

BARBARA  : This isn’t the house we’re buying. Harry, we’ve come to the wrong place.

HARRY  : We’re buying a Georgian house, in Butterfield Lane, near Mamesby.

MAN    : This is Butterfield Lane, near Mamesby.

HARRY  : The house agents must’ve made a mistake, dear.

BARBARA  : Surely not!

HARRY  : I wouldn’t have thought so, but they must have.

MAN    : Well, I never!

DRILL

One for Lesson 1 Exercise 3.

Here is a way of making your opinions less dogmatic. Replace think by should have thought

and  don’t think by shouldn’t have thought .

like this:

We think it’s too far.

We’d have thought it was too far.

We don’t think it’s too far.

We shouldn’t have thought it was too far.

Notice that I should and we should are shortened to I’d and we’d.

A correct answer is given after each pause.

1. We think the caretaker knows.

We’d have thought the caretaker knew.

2. We don’t think the caretaker knows.

We shouldn’t have thought the caretaker knew.

3. I think he’s bought a bigger house.

I’d have thought he’d bought a bigger house.

4. I don’t think he’s bought a bigger house.

I shouldn’t have thought he’d bought a bigger house.

5. We don’t think he can live in a place like this.

We shouldn’t have thought he could live in a place like this.

6. I think you have to pay a lot for a house in London.

I’d have thought you had to pay a lot for a house in London.

7. We don’t think you’ll find any pirates nowadays.

We shouldn’t have thought you would find any pirates nowadays.

8. I think you may have got the wrong name.

I’d have thought you might have got the wrong name.