Conversation Gambits - Eric Keller, Sylvia T Warner 1988

47. Finish your Story
2. Linking Gambits

All good stories have to come to an end. The phrases in the list give you ways of drawing your story to an end

Here are two stories about two people and the first time they smoked Finish each story

Story 1

''I remember that my grandfather used to smoke huge Havana cigars. He always bought them in boxes which he keptin the kitchen cupboard One day when he was in the garden with my grandmother, my brother a nd 1 crept into the kitchen and opened the cigar cupboard. We took one of them and hid out in the woods. We took ages trying to light it After a few puffs we were both violently sick. When we found the courage to go back, our grandmother smelled the cigar on our breath. She was a wise woman and realised what we had been up to. She made us eat some garlic so that grandfather wouldn't find out.”

Add a phrase and finish the story.

Story 2

"When I was at school, some of the other boys said you could smoke cinnamon sticks. We were too young to buy cigarettes, but anyone could go into a chemist’s shop and buy cinnamon sticks. You said that your mother needed them for cooking. So I decided on my first experiment with smoking. In I went and nervously paid for the cinnamon sticks. 1 waited till there was no one else at home one day before taking them out and trying to smoke. They tasted horrible! I sat on my bed and tried and tried. So 1 thought to myself, This isn’t worth it unless it makes me look older’. So 1 went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror — bright red with bloodshot eyes. I had to admit that 1 looked like the silly little boy that I was"

Add a phrase and finish the story.

Story 3

Now tell the class about the first time you yourself did something forbidden. Use one of the phrases from the list to finish the story.

Discussion

Do you fee! guilty about the story you have told?

Children are always going to disobey rules

Why do we bother to give them rules?

To cut a long story short,

So in the end,

So, in short,

So,

To sum up,

All in all,

To put the whole thing in a nutshell,