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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| lanni Senior Member China Joined 6058 days ago 102 posts - 156 votes  Speaks: Mandarin* Studies: English | Message 1 of 7 09 August 2010 at 11:37am | IP Logged | ||
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I copied most of the chapter in case the phrase in question seems out of nowhere in understanding to you. I underlined the phrase that puzzled me. Could you help me with it?
For the opening game of my first full season I was at a scout camp in Wales. I hadn’t wanted to go. I was never the most ging-gang-gooly gung-ho of scouts at the best of times and, shortly before our departure, I had discovered that my parents were finally getting divorced. Actually, this didn’t disturb me unduly, at least consciously: after all, they had been separated for some time now and the legal process seemed to be a simple confirmation of the separation. From the moment we arrived at the camp, though, I was dreadfully, overwhelmingly homesick. I knew that I was going to find it impossible to get through the ten days away; each morning began with a reverse charge call to my mother, during which I would sob pathetically and embarrassingly down the line back home. I was aware that this sort of behaviour was quite unbelievably feeble, and when an older scout was assigned to talk to me in order to discover what was wrong, I told him about the divorce with a shameless eagerness: it was the only explanation I could come up with that would in any way excuse my cissy longing to see my mother and my sister. It did the trick. For the rest of the holiday I was treated with a reverential pity by the rest of the campers. I blubbed and dripped through the first week, but it wasn’t getting any easier, and on the Saturday my father was dispatched from his Midlands base down to see me. Saturday, of course, was the hardest day of all. I was stuck in some stupid Welsh field for the first home game of the season, and my sense of displacement was all the more acute. I had missed football in the preceding months. The summer of ’69 was the first in my life in which something seemed to be lacking. My dad and I were faced with pre-Arsenal problems; the sports pages no longer held any interest for me (in those days, before Gazza, before cynical and meaningless pre-season tournaments which somehow still offer a methadone alternative to the real competitions to come, before the ludicrous freneticism of the contemporary transfer market, the newspapers went weeks on end without even mentioning football); and we weren’t allowed on to the tennis courts at school to kick a ball around. I had longed for and welcomed the previous summers, but this one destroyed so many routines I had come to rely on that it seemed to stifle rather than liberate – as if July and November had swapped places. Dad arrived at the camp-site in mid afternoon. We walked over to a rock on the edge of the field and sat down; he talked about how little difference the divorce itself would make to our lives, and how we would be able to go to Highbury much more frequently next season. I knew he was right about the divorce (although to admit as much would have rendered his two hundred mile round-trip unnecessary), but the football promise seemed hollow. What, in that case, were we doing sitting on a rock in Wales when Arsenal were playing Everton? Quite a way back down the line my self-pity had got the better of me. I really did blame it all – the terrible food, the nightmarish walks, the cramped, uncomfortable tents, the revolting, fly-plagued holes we were supposed to crap into, and, worst of all, the two empty seats in the West Stand – on the fact that I was the child of estranged parents, the product of a broken home; in fact, I was on a scout camp in the middle of Wales because I had joined the scouts. Not for the first time in my life, and certainly not for the last, a self-righteous gloom had edged out all semblance of logic. Edited by lanni on 09 August 2010 at 12:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zekecoma Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5139 days ago 561 posts - 655 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 2 of 7 09 August 2010 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Quite a way back down the line. It refers to recalling a memory in the past. Edited by zekecoma on 09 August 2010 at 1:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| LandTortoise Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5016 days ago 10 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Welsh | Message 3 of 7 09 August 2010 at 1:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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It means "a long time ago". The "line" referred to is the time line.
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| lanni Senior Member China Joined 6058 days ago 102 posts - 156 votes Speaks: Mandarin* Studies: English | Message 4 of 7 09 August 2010 at 2:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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The speaker had already been taken over by his self-pity long before his father came to the scout camp. So no matter how hard his father tried to console him, he would end up whining about the circumstances. Right?
Sometimes I just get stuck with phrases like this in my reading even with a dictionary on hand. Thanks very much for your help. Edit: When is the starting point of the "time line backwards"? Is it from when the author was writing this memoir or from when his father arrived at the camp? Edited by lanni on 09 August 2010 at 2:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5355 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 5 of 7 09 August 2010 at 2:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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As well as just meaning "some time ago", to me it suggests a sequence of events. It's interesting that you produces the whole paragraph, but it's still not clear when he says "way back down the line" whether he means "since my dad arrived", "since the camp started" or "sometime in my childhood", but it's not really that important.
"down the line" (without the "back") can also be used to mean "sometime in the future" (or after a sequence of events) (earlier he also uses "down the line" to refer to taking on the telephone) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lanni Senior Member China Joined 6058 days ago 102 posts - 156 votes Speaks: Mandarin* Studies: English | Message 6 of 7 09 August 2010 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | ||
For a second, I thought the author was referring to the long before time period, but then I felt he was making it in a more general sense of time. The time range seems rather blurred, I thought it was because of my reading a foreign language writing, is it not? Edited by lanni on 09 August 2010 at 3:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 budonoseito Pro Member United States budobeyondtechnRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5600 days ago 261 posts - 344 votes Studies: French, Japanese Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 7 09 August 2010 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here is a site to help you with English idioms. http://www.idiomdictionary.com/
It may not have all of them; but, they claim over 5,000 entries so far. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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