B2 First Reading and Use of English

Not so long ago, finding your way around an unfamiliar city meant unfolding a paper map on a street corner and hoping for the best. Today most of us simply (1)gap 1 an address into our phones and follow the blue dot. It is undeniably convenient, but some researchers believe it comes at a (2)gap 2. Studies suggest that people who rely heavily on satellite navigation tend to form weaker mental maps of the places they visit, and may find it harder to (3)gap 3 their bearings when the battery dies.
Rachel Okafor, a geographer at the University of Merrow, has a simple suggestion: get lost now and then. 'I'm not saying we should throw our phones away,' she explains. 'But it's worth (4)gap 4 a few minutes to look around and work out where you are.' She encourages her students to walk across town without a screen, paying (5)gap 5 attention to landmarks such as churches, rivers and unusual buildings.
The results, she says, are often surprising. Students who (6)gap 6 out on these walks feeling nervous usually come back delighted. Many discover cafés and parks they had never (7)gap 7 of, despite living nearby for years. 'When you're not staring at a screen,' Okafor says, 'you actually (8)gap 8 the city rather than just passing through it.'

When the head teacher of Linfield Academy announced that the school bell would be switched off for good, many parents assumed it was a joke. (1)gap 1 the plan was perfectly serious. Instead of rushing from class to class at the sound of a loud ring, students are now trusted to keep track of time on (2)gap 2 own.
Supporters of the idea argue that a bell treats teenagers as if they (3)gap 3 factory workers. 'Out in the real world, nobody rings a bell to tell you a meeting has started,' says deputy head Martin Cole. 'Learning to be on time is a skill, and skills have to be practised.'
Not everyone was convinced at first. Some teachers worried that lessons would start late, (4)gap 4 others feared the corridors would be chaotic. In fact, the opposite seems to have happened. Lateness has fallen by almost a third since the change, and the atmosphere is noticeably calmer. 'There's none of that panic (5)gap 5 everyone floods out at once,' says Cole.
Students, for their part, seem to appreciate being given more responsibility. 'At first I kept checking the clock every few minutes,' admits sixteen-year-old Priya Lal. 'Now I hardly think about it. It's become a habit, (6)gap 6 like brushing my teeth.' (7)gap 7 the experiment continues to succeed, the school plans to share its experience with other schools in the area, (8)gap 8 head teachers have already visited it.

In the centre of Brackenford, the roof of a former car park has been turned into one of the region's most (1)gap 1 (PRODUCE) farms. Every week, around two tonnes of vegetables are harvested here and sold to nearby restaurants.
The project was started by two friends, Hana Ruiz and Sam Doyle, who were frustrated by the (2)gap 2 (AVAILABLE) of fresh, local food in the city. 'People assumed growing food on a roof was (3)gap 3 (POSSIBLE),' says Ruiz. 'The wind, the weight of the soil, the lack of water: everyone had a reason why it wouldn't work.'
Solving those problems took time and a great deal of (4)gap 4 (PATIENT). The pair spent months testing lightweight soils and designing a watering system that collects rain from the roof itself. Their (5)gap 5 (PERSIST) has paid off: the farm now employs eleven people and runs workshops for local schools.
For Doyle, the biggest (6)gap 6 (ACHIEVE) is not the size of the harvest but the change in how residents think about food. 'Children come up here and pull a carrot out of the ground for the first time. Their (7)gap 7 (EXCITE) is wonderful to see.'
The farm is not without its critics, who point out that it remains (8)gap 8 (RELY) on volunteers at busy times of year. Ruiz accepts the point but insists the model can be copied elsewhere.

The phone call came at seven in the morning, which in itself should have told me something was wrong. Nobody from the Halden Chamber Orchestra had ever phoned me before; I was the person they emailed, politely, when they needed someone to hand out programmes.
'It's Clara Weiss,' said the voice, as if I might not know who conducted the orchestra I had been trying to join for three years. 'Our second violinist has broken her wrist. Falling off a bicycle, of all things. I'm told you know the Brennan symphony.'
I did know it, in the way you know a city you have only seen on a map. I had played the second violin part alone in my bedroom perhaps a dozen times, mostly to annoy my neighbour, who had once complained about my scales. I had never played it with forty other people, and certainly not in front of an audience.
'I know it,' I said.
'Good. Rehearsal at ten. Concert at eight.' She rang off before I could change my mind.
I spent the bus journey with the music on my knees, fingers tapping out the difficult passages on my leg. The woman next to me moved seats after ten minutes, which I could hardly blame her for.
The rehearsal hall was colder than I remembered. The players were already tuning, and as I walked in, the noise faded a little, the way it does when someone unexpected enters a room. A tall man with grey hair, who I later learnt was called Owen and had played in the orchestra since before I was born, pointed his bow at the empty chair beside him. 'You're with me,' he said. It wasn't clear whether this was a welcome or a warning.
The first hour was a disaster. I came in early twice, and in the slow movement I lost my place so completely that I simply stopped and pretended to adjust my music. Clara said nothing. She didn't need to. Her silence filled the hall more effectively than any criticism could have.
It was Owen who rescued me, though not in the way I expected. During the break, instead of offering advice, he told me about his own first concert with the orchestra, forty years earlier, when he had dropped his bow during the final chord. 'It rolled right to the front of the stage,' he said. 'The conductor picked it up and handed it back to me without a word. I wanted to disappear.' He laughed. 'Nobody remembers. Except me, obviously.'
I don't know why that helped, but it did. In the second half of the rehearsal I stopped trying to play every note perfectly and started listening instead: to Owen beside me, to the cellos behind, to the way the music breathed. I still made mistakes, but they were small ones, and I recovered from them.
That evening, the hall was full. I remember very little of the concert itself, apart from a moment near the end of the slow movement, the very passage where I had stopped that morning, when I realised I was no longer counting. My hands seemed to know what to do without asking me.
Afterwards, Clara walked past me in the corridor. She paused, nodded once, and said, 'Thursday. Same time.' It took me until I was halfway home to understand that she was inviting me back.

For most of the last century, the narrow footpath that once linked the villages of Ashcombe and Little Brindle had been invisible. Brambles covered it, fences cut across it, and few people under the age of seventy knew it had ever existed. (1)gap 1 Today, thanks to a group of volunteers armed with old maps and garden shears, it is walked by hundreds of people every month.
The group, which calls itself the Lost Ways Society, was founded six years ago by retired surveyor Graham Pike. He had been studying a nineteenth-century map of the area when he noticed a dotted line that didn't appear on any modern one. (2)gap 2 'I followed it for about a mile,' he recalls, 'and then it simply vanished into a farmer's field.' Pike, who spent forty years drawing maps for building projects, admits that the discovery quickly became something of an obsession.
That discovery led to months of research in local archives. Pike learnt that hundreds of paths in the county had fallen out of use as people stopped walking between villages and began to drive instead. (3)gap 3 In many cases, the legal right to walk them still exists; it is simply that nobody has used it for decades.
Bringing a path back to life is rarely straightforward. The society must first prove that the route was used by the public in the past, which can mean months of searching through parish records and old newspapers. (4)gap 4 Most, Pike says, are surprisingly supportive once they understand what the society is trying to do. 'Some of them walked the paths themselves as children,' he says. Others need more persuading, and in a handful of cases the society has agreed to a slightly different route around a farmyard or a private garden.
Only then does the physical work begin. Volunteers, many of them retired, others students or young parents, meet every Saturday morning to clear undergrowth, repair stiles and put up signs. (5)gap 5 'It's hard work,' admits Megan Adeyemi, who joined two years ago, 'but there's nothing like seeing families use a path you've helped to rescue.' Adeyemi, a nurse who often works night shifts, says the Saturday sessions have become the highlight of her week.
The society has now reopened more than forty kilometres of footpaths, and its success has inspired similar groups in neighbouring counties. Walking groups, schools and even a local running club now use the Ashcombe path regularly. Pike, however, is keen to stress that the real goal is not simply to restore old routes. (6)gap 6 'A path that nobody walks will disappear again within a few years,' he says. 'In the end, the best way to protect these paths is to use them.'

Five young people from the town of Wexley talk about starting their own businesses.

• A
  Lucía Montes, mobile bike repairs
  The idea came to me one Monday morning when my chain snapped halfway to work. The nearest repair shop didn't open until ten, and by the time I'd pushed the bike there, I'd missed an important meeting. I thought: why can't the mechanic come to you? Now I drive a van full of tools to office car parks, and people book a slot online and collect their bike, fixed, at the end of the day. Last year a larger company offered to buy the idea and open vans in a dozen cities, with me in charge. I said no. I'd spend my days managing people and spreadsheets instead of fixing bikes, which is the part I actually love.
• B
  Daniel Frost, handmade notebooks
  I make notebooks by hand from paper that offices would otherwise throw away, and every cover is different. Everyone told me the key to selling would be social media, so I spent hours taking photos and writing posts. It made almost no difference. What really worked was standing behind a table at craft fairs, letting people pick the notebooks up and feel the paper. Most of my regular customers found me that way, or because a friend showed them one. I still work three days a week at a printing company, partly for the money and partly because that's where I get a lot of my paper. One day I'd like to do this full-time, but I'm in no hurry.
• C
  Aisha Karim, board-game café
  My dad had paid for me to study law, so when I told him I wanted to open a café full of board games, he didn't speak to me for a week. He's my biggest fan now and comes in every Sunday to beat teenagers at chess. When we first opened, we charged everyone five pounds at the door to play for as long as they liked. It seemed fair to me, but customers hated paying before they'd even sat down, and a lot of people turned around and left. After two months we dropped the fee completely and started making our money from food and drinks instead. It was the best decision we've made.
• D
  Tom Weller, dog-walking app
  I started out walking neighbours' dogs while I was at university, and it grew from there. My big mistake came when I decided to turn it into an app. I spent every penny of my savings, and borrowed from my brother too, paying developers to build something beautiful before I'd checked whether anyone would actually download it. Hardly anyone did, at first. What saved me was Frank, a retired neighbour who'd run a removals firm for thirty years. He sat me down with a cup of tea and asked me questions I'd never thought about. I still go to him before every big decision, and I nearly always do what he says.
• E
  Mei Hart, bread delivered by bike
  I bake bread overnight in a rented kitchen and deliver it by cargo bike before most people are awake. The hardest thing is the weather, which I can never plan for. A sudden storm can mean a whole round of soggy loaves, and in icy weather I've had to cancel deliveries altogether, which has cost me customers. But I wouldn't swap it. After two years, I know most of my customers by name. There's an elderly man on Mill Street who waits at his window every Thursday, and we always have a quick chat about his garden. Those little conversations are honestly the best part of my job.