by Alan Townend27. Phrasal verb run or «A Christmas postman»
This story contains a lot of combinations with the phrasal verb run.
Do you know the meaning of all of them? Read the story and then
take the four interactive tests below to check your knowledge.
«A Christmas postman»
My main reason for becoming a temporary postman during the
Christmas holiday period was because I had run up some rather
large bills and what was more important I had run out of money. My
trainer was a postman by the name of Ted with a life time of
experience in doing all the walks in the town. It was all a question of
order, he said and then he ran through the steps I had to take the
moment I got into the sorting office. He didn't want any of his
trainees to run away with the idea that being a postman was an easy
job. He was fed up with people he ran across every so often who
claimed that it was only a part-time job because it was all finished by
mid-day. He ran over the sequence very carefully. The first thing was
to be punctual since you started at a time when most people were
still asleep. Immediately you arrived you had to start sorting the mail
into the different pigeon holes. Sometimes you ran up against some
terrible handwriting and didn't know where the letter should go. He
was always running down teachers for not teaching children to write
properly. These letters should be put to one side and old Charlie, the
handwriting expert, would run through them later. The next step was
to run off some cold water, fill the kettle and then make a cup of tea.
Ted was always calm and optimistic. He never let himself get run
down by the job. He left me alone for an hour to follow his method
and asked me to call him if I ran into any difficulties. As he had been
running about his house since two that morning because of a burst
water pipe, he went to have a quiet rest.
At first I got on famously finding the right pigeonholes, checking
Ted's list and putting the letters in bundles. After about two hours of
this my internal battery started to run down and I found myself
running out of patience. It was at this stage that Ted came running
in encouraging me to finish and get out on the road. The post office
in this country district didn't run to vans because of the expense. I
had to make do with a bicycle that looked as though it had been run
into several times. Once out in the open air I ran into a violent
shower but soon the sun came out. The shouts of joy coming from
some houses as I put the mail through the letter box made up for
the discomfort and I was beginning to feel like a real Father
Christmas. I then came to number 56 that Ted had warned me
about. They had a ferocious dog. The only way to deal with this one,
Ted recommended, was to run at the door shove the letters through
the door and run away as quickly as possible. I did just that but in
my haste I dropped a small packet that fell into a puddle. I didn't
have the courage to make another assault on the house. Instead I
took the packet home to dry it out. I knew if I told Ted, he would run
on about being strictly against the rules but I was convinced it would
not matter. In my kitchen I ran my eyes across the address and saw
the recipient was a «Master Richard» I was ashamed of my