Complete solutions to every exercise in the NCERT Flamingo textbook, Chapter 8 “Going Places” by A. R. Barton: the “Notice these expressions” box at the start of the story, the in-text margin questions, Understanding the Text, Talking about the Text, Working with Words, Noticing Form, Thinking about Language, Writing and Things to Do. Try answering each one yourself first, then check.
1 Notice These Expressions
Before the chapter begins, the book prints a box: “Notice these expressions in the text. Infer their meaning from the context.” Here is what each one means where it appears in the chapter.
| # | Expression | Meaning in the context of the chapter |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | incongruity | Something that does not fit with what is around it; a mismatch. Sophie watched her mother at the sink and “wondered at the incongruity of the delicate bow which fastened her apron strings”: the delicate-seeming bow did not match her mother’s crooked, stooped back. |
| 2 | prodigy | A young person with exceptional natural talent. Geoff’s bedroom wall carries the poster of United’s team and coloured photographs, “three of them of the young Irish prodigy, Casey”, the young star footballer Danny Casey. |
| 3 | chuffed | Delighted; very pleased (an informal word, which the book itself glosses later as “delighted or very pleased”). When Sophie says there will be a row if her dad hears she met Danny Casey, Jansie replies, “I’d have thought he’d be chuffed as anything.” |
| 4 | solitary elm | A single elm tree standing alone. Sophie goes to the canal after dark and sits on “a wooden bench beneath a solitary elm where lovers sometimes came” to wait for Danny. |
| 5 | arcade | A covered walkway, usually lined with shops. Sophie tells Geoff that she met Danny Casey in the arcade, and later, coming through the arcade, she pictures the meeting again. |
| 6 | amber glow | A warm, golden-yellow light. “The table lamp cast an amber glow across her brother’s bedroom wall”, lighting up the poster of United’s first team squad and the photographs of Casey. |
| 7 | wharf | A platform built along the water’s edge where boats load and unload. The canal path where Sophie waits is “lighted only by the glare of the lamps from the wharf across the water”. |
| 8 | pangs of doubt | Sudden, sharp feelings of doubt. As time passes and Danny does not come, Sophie says to herself, “I feel the pangs of doubt stirring inside me.” |
2 In-Text Comprehension Check
NCERT prints three small comprehension boxes in the margin of this story, before the formal exercises. They are answered here too, since they are part of the book’s own text.
Q. Where was it most likely that the two girls would find work after school?
Answer: The biscuit factory. The narrator says Jansie, “knowing they were both earmarked for the biscuit factory, became melancholy,” which is the story’s own answer.
Q. What were the options that Sophie was dreaming of? Why does Jansie discourage her from having such dreams?
Answer: Sophie considers owning a boutique, being a manager first, becoming an actress (“there’s real money in that”), and being a fashion designer. Jansie discourages her because, as she says, a boutique “takes money”, shop work pays badly and her father would never allow it (“you really should be sensible”); the narrator adds that Jansie knows they are both “earmarked for the biscuit factory”.
Q. Why did Sophie wriggle when Geoff told her father that she had met Danny Casey?
Answer: The book does not say why she wriggles: “Sophie wriggled where she was sitting at the table.” A reasonable reading is embarrassment and anxiety at having her secret told to her father before she was ready, since she expects him to disbelieve or disapprove (his expression is “one of disdain”).
Q. Does Geoff believe what Sophie says about her meeting with Danny Casey?
Answer: No, not fully. Geoff is sceptical throughout the story: “It’s never true,” “I don’t believe it,” “As if he’d ever show up,” and finally “It’s the unlikeliest thing I ever heard.” Even so, he backs her in front of their father (“She met him in the arcade,” Geoff said) and keeps her secret, showing that his doubt does not stop him from protecting her.
Q. Does her father believe her story?
Answer: No. His expression is “one of disdain,” and when Sophie adds that Casey is “going to buy a shop,” he dismisses it outright: “This another of your wild stories?”
Q. How does Sophie include her brother Geoff in her fantasy of her future?
Answer: In her motorcycle daydream, Sophie imagines riding behind Geoff, he in “new, shining black leathers” and she in “a yellow dress with a kind of cape that flew out behind,” greeted by “the sound of applause as the world rose to greet them.” Geoff is central to this vision of an exciting, unknown future, well before Danny Casey ever enters the story.
Q. Which country did Danny Casey play for?
Answer: Ireland. His club side is named only as “United,” and the story never states his national team outright, so the answer is an inference, the kind the book’s “Inferential comprehension” focus asks for: he is “the young Irish prodigy,” it is noted that “it’s a long way from the west of Ireland” for him, someone on the bus after the match says, “I wish he was an Englishman,” and little Derek separately tells his mother at home, “Ireland’ll win the World Cup.” Taken together, these lines point to Ireland, even though no single sentence states it as a bare fact; his club, “United”, is never placed in a named country.
Q. Why didn’t Sophie want Jansie to know about her story with Danny?
Answer: The story was meant to be something special and secret between Sophie and Geoff alone. “It wasn’t a Jansie kind of thing at all”: Sophie fears that if Jansie is told, “the whole neighbourhood would get to know it”; she also tells Jansie, “There’ll be a right old row if my dad gets to hear about it.”
Q. Did Sophie really meet Danny Casey?
Answer: The story leaves this open and does not give a single confirmed answer. There is evidence on both sides: the arcade replay near the end is introduced as “she pictured him again,” moves into the second person (“you”), and adds new details never mentioned before, all of which point towards fantasy; but the story never directly states that she invented it, and her account is otherwise consistent. The honest answer is that it cannot be settled for certain from the text; one reading is that this uncertainty fits the theme of adolescent fantasising.
Q. Which was the only occasion when she got to see Danny Casey in person?
Answer: The Saturday football match, watching him play from near the goal, with her father and little Derek. This is the one occasion the story actually shows the reader Sophie seeing Casey; every other “meeting” is only ever narrated by Sophie herself.
3 Understanding the Text
Q. Sophie and Jansie were class-mates and friends. What were the differences between them that show up in the story?
Answer: Sophie is imaginative and restless, unwilling to accept the ordinary future, the biscuit factory, that is already laid out for her; she keeps inventing bigger, more glamorous plans, from a boutique to acting to fashion design, and eventually the elaborate story about Danny Casey. Jansie is realistic and practical: she points out that a boutique “takes money,” tells Sophie she “really should be sensible”, and, knowing they are both “earmarked for the biscuit factory”, becomes melancholy and wishes Sophie wouldn’t say these things. Even so, Jansie is loyal: once she hears a version of the Casey story, she promises, “I’ll keep a secret, Soaf, you know that,” showing that her practicality does not come at the cost of friendship.
Q. How would you describe the character and temperament of Sophie’s father?
Answer: He is a tired, hard-working man with little patience for fantasy. He comes home “grimy and sweat-marked from the day,” eats his meal quickly, switches on the television, goes with the family to watch United on Saturday, and afterwards goes to the pub to celebrate. He is openly disdainful of Sophie’s Danny Casey story, calling it “another of your wild stories,” and is cautious about Casey’s own future, worrying about “a lot of distractions for a youngster in the game.” Yet he has his own small brush with football greatness, offering “reverently to the television” that he once knew a man who had known Tom Finney; one reading is that this is a milder version of the hero-worship he scorns in Sophie (the book does not say he exaggerates).
Q. Why did Sophie like her brother Geoff more than any other person? From her perspective, what did he symbolise?
Answer: Sophie is drawn to Geoff’s extreme reticence, “words had to be prized out of him like stones out of the ground,” because it makes her imagine he has access to a whole unknown world of places and people she has never been let into. Unlike her father, who dismisses her outright, Geoff at least listens to her, keeps her most important secret (the promised second meeting), and defends her in front of their father, even while doubting her. For Sophie, Geoff symbolises escape and freedom from her ordinary life: her clearest fantasy in the story, riding behind him on his motorcycle to unknown places, has nothing to do with Danny Casey at all, showing how central Geoff is to her imagined future in his own right.
Q. What socio-economic background did Sophie belong to? What are the indicators of her family’s financial status?
Answer: Sophie belongs to an ordinary working-class family. The indicators include: her father comes home “grimy and sweat-marked from the day” (the book does not name his job) and eats a simple meal (shepherd’s pie); Sophie and Jansie are “earmarked for the biscuit factory”; their small room is “steamy from the stove and cluttered” with dirty washing piled up in the corner; her mother’s back is “stooped over the sink”; and her father’s reply to Sophie’s boutique talk is that if she ever came into money, she should buy them “a blessed decent house to live in”. Sophie’s dreams of a boutique or an acting career stand out against this modest life.
4 Talking about the Text
These are discussion questions, meant to be answered in pairs or as a class; the answers below are model responses to guide a written answer.
Q. Sophie’s dreams and disappointments are all in her mind.
Answer: This is largely true. Every one of Sophie’s plans, the boutique, the acting career, the motorcycle ride with Geoff, and the Danny Casey story, exists only in what she imagines or narrates; nothing in the text confirms any of them will actually happen, or, in Casey’s case, that the meeting even took place as she describes it. Her disappointment at the canal, waiting for a meeting that may never have been promised at all, is real to her, but it too grows entirely out of her own imagined version of events. The story is careful never to fully confirm or deny this, which is exactly what makes the statement worth discussing rather than simply agreeing with outright.
Q. It is natural for teenagers to have unrealistic dreams. What would you say are the benefits and disadvantages of such fantasising?
Answer: On the benefit side, fantasising gives Sophie a way to cope with a limited future she has not chosen: it keeps hope alive and, in the case of the Danny Casey story, gives her a private source of pride and importance. It costs very little when kept small, like her boutique dream. On the disadvantage side, fantasy can isolate a person: Sophie spends much of the story anxious about being found out, and is ultimately left alone and disappointed at the canal. Taken to its extreme, as with the Danny Casey story, an unrealistic dream that is never tested against reality can leave a person unable to tell, even to themselves, what actually happened from what they wished had happened. A balanced answer should conclude that some fantasising is a normal and even useful part of growing up, but that it should support, not replace, a person’s real relationships and their own grip on what is true.
5 Working with Words
Q. Notice the following expressions. The highlighted words are not used in a literal sense. Explain what they mean: “Words had to be prized out of him like stones out of a ground.” “Sophie felt a tightening in her throat.” “If he keeps his head on his shoulders.” “On Saturday they made their weekly pilgrimage to the United.” “She saw… him ghost past the lumbering defenders.”
Answer: “Prized out… like stones out of a ground” means Geoff is so reticent that getting him to speak takes real, deliberate effort. “A tightening in her throat” describes a physical sign of strong emotion (the text does not name which), rather than an actual physical injury. “Keeps his head on his shoulders” means stays sensible and level-headed, not literally about his head. “Weekly pilgrimage” compares the family’s devoted, habitual visit to watch United to a religious journey to a sacred place. “Ghost past the lumbering defenders” means Casey moves so swiftly and elusively that he seems almost invisible to the defenders trying to stop him, not that he is literally a ghost.
6 Noticing Form
Q. Notice the highlighted words in these sentences: (1) “‘When I leave,’ Sophie said, coming home from school, ‘I’m going to have a boutique.'” (2) “Jansie, linking arms with her along the street, looked doubtful.” (3) “‘I’ll find it,’ Sophie said, staring far down the street.” (4) “Jansie, knowing they were both earmarked for the biscuit factory, became melancholy.” (5) “And she turned in through the open street door leaving Jansie standing in the rain.” Analyse the other examples in the same way. Pick out five other sentences from the story in which present participles are used in this sense.
Answer: As the book itself explains, the present participle (verb + “-ing”) ordinarily combines with a form of “be” (is, was, are, were, am) to show the present continuous tense. Used by itself, without that helping verb, it shows an action happening at the same time as the sentence’s main verb, letting one sentence do the work of two: in sentence 1, Sophie’s main action is “said,” and “coming home from school” tells us what she was doing at the same time. Five further examples of the same pattern from the story: “said little Derek, hanging on the back of his father’s chair”; “Jansie frowned, sensing she was covering”; “For some while, waiting, she imagined his coming”; “She watched along the canal, seeing him come out of the shadows, imagining her own consequent excitement”; and “Coming through the arcade she pictured him again outside Royce’s.” A student should underline the “-ing” word that describes what someone is doing at the same time as the main verb, as in the book’s own examples.
7 Thinking about Language
Q. Notice these words in the story: “chuffed,” meaning delighted or very pleased; “nosey,” meaning inquisitive; “gawky,” meaning awkward, ungainly. These are words used informally in colloquial speech. Make a list of ten other words of this kind.
Answer: This is an open, personal-vocabulary question, so answers will vary. Along with the book’s own three examples, chuffed, nosey and gawky, ten other informal, colloquial English words a student could list are: knackered (very tired), gobsmacked (astonished), dodgy (unreliable or suspicious), cheeky (playfully disrespectful), telly (television), bloke (a man), mate (a friend), quid (a pound, informally), grub (food), and daft (silly). A good answer should give the meaning of each word alongside it, exactly as the book does for its own three examples.
8 Writing
Q. Think of a person who you would like to have as your role-model. Write down the points to be discussed or questions to be asked, if you were asked to interview that person on a television show.
Answer: This is a personal task with no single correct answer, and it connects directly to the chapter’s own theme of hero-worship. A strong response names a real role-model, explains briefly why they were chosen, and lists five to seven specific interview questions, for example: What first drew you to this field? What was the hardest setback you faced, and how did you get past it? What advice would you give someone just starting out? Is there a moment you are proudest of? How do you want to be remembered? The questions should show genuine curiosity about the person’s real journey, in contrast to Sophie’s own idealised, imagined version of a hero in the story.
9 Things to Do
Q. Look for other stories or movies where this theme of hero worship and fantasising about film or sports icons finds a place.
Answer: This is an open, extension-activity task. A student can name any story, film or show they know that is built around hero-worship or fantasising about a film or sports icon; the answer should briefly summarise the example and explain, in one or two lines, how the character’s hero-worship there is similar to or different from Sophie’s in Going Places, for instance whether the story confirms or leaves open whether the character’s admired hero notices them back.