2.4 Fun and games  (Page 2/3)

The new one

sits in the hall

chirrups away

like an electric mouse,

busy all day,

ruling the house.

Grownups moan

about the telephone

upstairs, downstairs,

out of beds and armchairs,

never see a programme through:

what can they do?

‘Not that phone again’ they shout.

Why don’t they have it taken out?

QUESTIONS

1. How does the telephone ‘rule’ the house?
2. Discuss the use of the word ‘chirrups.’
3. Why don’t they have it taken out?
4. What is your opinion of cell phones? How do grownups feel about them?

Write a letter to a magazine complaining about cell phones being a nuisance in society. Give yourself a witty pseudonym.

DOMESTIC HELP

The other day,

one of our domestic robots went mad,

kissed my dad,

poured marmalade over the video wall,

shampooed the cat,

sugared my mother’s hair,

and sat on my sister’s knee

(she fell through the chair).

Dad’s frantic fiddling with the control-panel

only made matters worse.

It vacuum-cleaned the ceiling,

put the coffee-table into the garbage disposal unit,

uncorked a bottle of wine

and poured it gently over the carpet,

then carefully unscrewed its head

and deposited it in Mum’s lap.

Mother says

that’s the way it is these days:

you can’t get the robots you used to.

QUESTIONS

1. List some inventions in this poem that you do not have in your home.
2. What are some of the ‘domestic help’ duties of the robot in the poem?
3. Discuss Mother’s comment about ‘modern’ robots.

TAKE ANOTHER LOOK AT THE MIND MAP. WE HAVE DISCUSSED, WRITTEN ABOUT, READ ABOUT THINGS TO EAT AND THINGS TO WEAR AND GAMES PEOPLE PLAY. NOW IT IS UP TO YOU. FIND OUT ABOUT THE WHEEL, CARS AND THAT MOST FAMOUS OF DOLLS – BARBIE!

What to consider

• What need did the invention address?
• Apart from transport, how does the invention of the wheel affect your daily life?
• Find out about some firsts to do with the motorcar:

First four-wheeled car

First petrol-driven car

First mass-produced car

First car tyres that contained air

• How Barbie moved with the times.

AHEAD OF HIS TIME

One inventor who was hundreds of years ahead of his time was Leonardo da Vinci.

Today he is best known as an artist. His most famous painting is probably the Mona Lisa. Another well-known masterpiece is The Last Supper. It is said that one of the disciples is painted in his likeness.

Leonardo da Vinci also left behind many drawings of the human anatomy, which were detailed and precise.

Yet he also invented everything from flying machines and parachutes to horseless wagons. He drew pictures of his inventions and recorded his ideas in backwards writing to keep others from stealing them.

His inventions are startlingly like the machines we have today. However, few of them made it past the idea stage, usually because they were so far ahead of their time that it would have been impossible to build them with the materials then available! Drawings of a machine very much like a modern day helicopter were found amongst his work. He believed in and was very interested in time travel and was ahead of his time by thinking that the world was round and not flat as most people of his generation believed.