Keywords. baseball diamond, pizza, fancy-dress party, film, river.

　　Vocabulary. frizzly, yearbook, platonic, hit it off, chap, trip over.

　　You're going to hear five people talking about their first meetings.

　　A. Before listening, read and consider the following questions.

　　B. Listen to five people describing their first meetings with their present partners.

　　Listen carefully, and take notes in the following chart.

　　I was on my way home from junior high, and in order to get to my house, you have to walk by this baseball diamond.

　　And there was a game of baseball going on, and it looked kind of interesting, so I stopped.

　　There weren't very many people watching.

　　And there was this guy and he wasn't really very good-looking, but he had frizzly hair and glasses, and he was really funny.

　　He did this kind of monologue thing, which was great.

　　And I went home and I told my mother I was going to marry him after talking to him for half an hour.

　　And when I got to high school, he was president of the student body.

　　And he asked me out, and we've got our picture in the yearbook together holding hands, and it's really nice.

　　Well, I'd arranged to have a drink with a friend of mine, a woman friend of mine who is a platonic friend of mine.

　　And she insisted on bringing this friend of hers which who she said I'd like to meet.

　　And I thought she was trying to fix us up and I said, "please don't".

　　But she did bring this friend.

　　And we hit it off.

　　And after the wine bar, we went to have a pizza, and we'll got had a few more drinks.

　　And the other woman who ended up ordering a pizza that had a bunch of stuff on it that I really liked and she...

　　I ordered a pizza that had a bunch of stuff on it that she really liked.

　　So we picked at each other's pizzas all night and we realize we were sort of had a ideal relationship, so that we could order really any pizza on the menu and we'd both be happy.

　　And anyway we ended up living together and still are.

　　We met at a party, and it was a fancy-dress party.

　　A friend of mine is 21, and it was quite big. And I went dressed as Alice in Wonderland.

　　And this person, this guy that I married was dressed as the Cheshire Cat. And it just seemed so amazing that, you know, we were both from the same thing.

　　And we started chatting and ended up being together.

　　Well, I'd arranged to go to the cinema with a group of friends.

　　And unfortunately, I missed the train, that would have got me to the cinema on time.

　　So all my friends had gone in, and I was left standing outside.

　　The film had started, so I wasn't allowed in.

　　And there was a chap outside, he'd also missed the film.

　　And we started to talk, and we talked quite a bit, and he said, "Let's go down the road and see that film, because that one hasn't started at the Odeon."

　　So we went down there and well, we've been going out ever since.

　　I first met my partner when he was on a boat, and I was on the river bank, standing and looking generally into the distance.

　　And he was coming in to land with his boat and he threw me a rope and said,"would you mind catching this?".

　　And I caught it and missed and tripped over it and fell in the river, and he had to dive in and rescue me.

　　And that was it.