Part 2 · Open cloze

Most of us have put (1) ______ an important task at least once, telling ourselves that we will feel more like doing it tomorrow. Psychologists now believe that procrastination has less to do (2) ______ laziness than with emotions. When a job makes us feel anxious or bored, we avoid it in (3) ______ to feel better in the short term.

The problem is that the relief does not last. The longer we delay, the (4) ______ stressed we become, and the task begins to seem even harder (5) ______ it did before.

One simple technique is to promise yourself that you will work on the task for just five minutes. It is surprising (6) ______ often this is enough to get you going. Another is to break a large project into smaller steps and deal with them one (7) ______ a time. Neither method is perfect, but both are worth trying if you find yourself leaving everything until the last minute over (8) ______ over again.

When I was fourteen, I decided to cook dinner for my whole family. I had never made anything more complicated (1) ______ toast, but I was sure it couldn't be that difficult. I chose a recipe for a vegetable curry, (2) ______ I found in an old cookbook belonging to my grandmother.

Things started to go wrong almost immediately. I had forgotten to buy half of the ingredients, so I had to borrow some spices from our neighbour, (3) ______ luckily was at home. Then I misread the recipe and added a tablespoon of chilli (4) ______ of a teaspoon.

By the time everyone sat down to eat, the kitchen was in (5) ______ a mess that my mother could hardly believe her eyes. The curry was so hot that nobody could finish it – nobody, that is, apart (6) ______ my father, who bravely asked for a second plate. 'It's delicious,' he insisted, although he drank (7) ______ least three glasses of water.

It was a disaster, but it didn't put me (8) ______ cooking. Ten years later, I work as a chef.

Few foods are as widely eaten (1) ______ the sandwich, yet its origins are surprisingly hard to pin down. The story most people have heard is that it was named (2) ______ John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, an eighteenth-century politician (3) ______ was said to spend so long at the card table that he refused to stop even to eat. (4) ______ of leaving the game, he asked for some meat to be brought to him between two slices of bread, so that he could keep playing without getting his cards greasy.

Historians point out, however, that there is little evidence to support this colourful tale. Some suggest that the Earl was more (5) ______ to have eaten at his desk, since he was known as a hard-working official. What is certain is that people had been putting food between pieces of bread for centuries (6) ______ the Earl was born. (7) ______ he did was give the snack a fashionable name.

Today sandwiches are sold in almost every shop and café, and hardly (8) ______ stops to think about where the name came from.