Chapter 8 Solutions — Going Places

Sophie's father is a working-class man, weary from physical labour. He comes home with a 'plump face still grimy and sweat-marked from the day' and immediately scoops food into his mouth, suggesting exhaustion and a life with little leisure.

He is sceptical and dismissive of Sophie's stories. When Geoff tells him Sophie met Danny Casey, his expression is 'one of disdain'. He mutters something inaudible and asks, 'This another of your wild stories?' He warns Sophie that she is going to 'talk yourself into a load of trouble'. This shows he has no patience for her fantasies and regards them as habitual lying.

He is also a football enthusiast, admiring Casey with genuine reverence, yet he tempers his admiration with caution about the pitfalls facing a young player. He celebrates United's victory by going to the pub. Overall, he is a gruff, unimaginative, and somewhat aggressive man, shaped by the hardships of working-class life, with little sympathy for his daughter's romantic temperament.

The expression is a simile using figurative language. To 'prize' something out means to lever it free with effort, as one would use a crowbar to extract a stone embedded in soil. Applied to Geoff, it means that getting him to speak was an extremely difficult task requiring considerable effort — he was silent and uncommunicative by nature, and any conversation had to be almost physically forced out of him.

The following are ten common informal or colloquial English words of the same type, with their meanings:

1. bloke — an informal word for a man (British English)

2. bonkers — informal for crazy or mad

3. knackered — informal for extremely tired or exhausted (British English)

4. skint — informal for having no money, broke (British English)

5. gobsmacked — informal for utterly astonished or shocked

6. natter — informal for chat or talk at length

7. dodgy — informal for suspicious, risky, or of poor quality

8. grub — informal for food

9. posh — informal for elegant, upper-class, or expensive

10. reckon — informal for think or believe ('I reckon it'll rain')