Φρυκτωρία: Η διά πυρός ή πυρσών μετάδοση σημάτων τη νύκτα. Φρυκτωρέω-ώ, το αντίστοιχο ρήμα.Στην ιστοσελίδα αυτή, πολύ απλά, φιλοδοξούμε να φρυκτωρούμε φλόγες ποίησης και οποιασδήποτε άλλης στιγμής και πράξης αποτελεί ποίηση και συνεπώς ομορφαίνει τη ζωή μας. Όπως οι πηγές της Μόκιστας του Θέρμου Αιτωλοακαρνανίας (στο φόντο).Ένα παραμύθι, ένα υδάτινο λουλούδι με μια ομορφιά σκέτη φλόγα που ρέει κρυστάλλινη, δροσερή και ακαταμάχητη.. Ό,τι όμορφο είναι και ποιητικό, και ό,τι πραγματικά ποιητικό είναι και ανθρώπινο... Λίγο πιο κάτω στη δεξιά στήλη θα βρείτε την ποιητική συλλογή μου σε ebook

Σε λίγους στίχους κουρνιασμένος (κατεβάστε από εδώ)

από τις διαδικτυακές εκδόσεις 24grammata.com καθώς και μερικά έμμετρα χιουμοριστικά παραμύθια μου και κάποια θεατρικά έργα μου για παιδιά.

Υ.Γ. Η ιστοσελίδα αυτή είναι υπό κατασκευή. 'Υπό κατασκευή'. Μ' αρέσει αυτή η φράση. Υπό κατασκευή. Μονίμως, όπως και η ζωή μας. Γι' αυτό, τη φράση τούτη θα την κρατήσω! Under construction, που λένε, γιατί Θα φρυκτωρούμε και Αγγλιστί. Because we're gonna... blog our poetical ways through English, as well, transmitting poetic flames from heart to heart and soul to soul. Ας αρχίσουμε λοιπόν. Let's get started!
(Επισκεφτείτε και τις
ΜΕΤΑΦΡΑΣΤΙΚΕΣ ΦΡΥΚΤΩΡΙΕΣ, το μικρό αδερφάκι της ιστοσελίδας, για μεταφράσεις ποιημάτων στα Ελληνικά ξένων ποιητών. Από τις (έντυπες) εκδόσεις 24γράμματα κυκλοφορεί στα βιβλιοπωλεία το Αγγλικό έπος του 14αι 'Ο Σερ Γκοουέην κι ο Πράσινος Ιππότης' (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) για ΠΡΩΤΗ ΦΟΡΑ ΣΤΗΝ ΕΛΛΑΔΑ, από τα Middle English (Αγγλικά 14 αι.)
You can also visit ΜΕΤΑΦΡΑΣΤΙΚΕΣ ΦΡΥΚΤΩΡΙΕΣ, the site's little brother for foreign - language poetry translated into Greek!

The Phrasal Verbs Stories! (Teaching idioms in a pleasant way!)

THE PHRASAL VERBS STORIES!   © Vassilis Comporozos 2016
A series of short entertaining and humorous stories (level C1-C2) structured about the phrasals of  a particular verb: for learners of English, for those who love English and its idioms and for those who adore short stories! Each short story covers the most basic phrasals of a verb and some of the other idioms it is used in....

These texts aim at helping learners to assimilate phrasal verbs in the context of their use and are not intended in any way to substitute, just to supplement lessons on phrasal verbs, that most important aspect of English language. I hope they will make a nice reading.  At the end, the meanings of the idioms used are given. Go ahead and enjoy them! 

Mr Turn-over’s story

Mr Turn-over’s story
© Vassilis Comporozos 2016

Mr Turn-over was a very successful businessman, owner of a food company specializing in tin food and frozen products. His factory turned over loads of money every year. He never turned up late for work at his office for a lot of things used to turn up every day - not to mention the harsh competitiveness with other food companies! He knew well that the company’s success depended on him and his employees knew it too. He was quite an intelligent entrepreneur, having inherited his company from his father, now deceased for ten years. His factories turned out tons of products every year, some of them new to the market, to suit the most demanding tastes since he was always open to novelties and hated turning new proposals down.. Bad products turned him off. He was careful not to turn out employees but to give them perks to work with greater enthusiasm and zeal.
               At every turn of his country you could come up against products of his company. In short, he had turned out to be an exemplary businessman! As it happens to be the case, a lot of other businessmen used to turn against him but he managed to turn them away through his savvy. The truth is that he was immersed in the daily and monthly and annual turn-out of his factories.
               One day, driving to work and having just turned round a corner and into a turn-off, he was halted by a great turn-out of people blocking the way! A car, he learned moments later, had turned over. Luckily and miraculously the driver had a close shave and got out of the car safe and sound with just a few scars. He did not even get into the ambulance which had come to take him to the nearby hospital.
               Now, it is not part of this story (nor is there room for it here) to relate the why and how of the accident, just the aftermath of it! The protagonist of the accident was a fellow-student of Mr Turn-over, whom our businessman recognized as they gave him the first aid outside his crashed car and, to cut a long story short, they exchanged phone numbers and they met over lunch some days later. It turned out that Mr Turn-over’s old acquaintance had signed up a contract for the publication of a collection of fairy-tales (which he had been writing for years) and now his dream had finally turned into a reality… Elated as he was at the prospect, he had forgotten all about the accident! It was then that he asked Mr Turn-over the question, that crucial question which was about to turn the course of our man’s life. That is, he asked Mr Turn-over if he had turned his hand to his own childhood talent and dream…
               Well, it so happened that this meeting turned the tide of Mr Turn-over’s personal history. At home now, ruminating on this turn-up and his childhood ambition of becoming a great poet, our businessman turning up the radio (for it played his favourite song) decided to turn his back to work for some days  so as to write. After all, he was the boss, the owner of the company. Oh, what a surprising turn of events it was! He immediately engaged in writing verses down, writing off the ones he didn’t like, correcting, editing, finishing and… refinishing! He decided to give time to his dream to bud, turning his life inside out! Needless to say, he read voraciously.... He had now turned into a writer. No, he did not turn over his business to a new owner, no, he just hired more people, managers as they call them, CEOs, to be more precise and he devoted less time to his work now. He did not care if his personal earnings were not that high as they used to be. After all, did those earnings matter anything apart from some comforts they could give to him?
He was now happier. Having more people to turn to, as far as business is concerned, he could now put in two hours of writing every day, or more, if it was weekend or if he cut down on sleep! He felt like a student having to hand in essays to the teacher of a literature class he simply adored! As for all these social meetings and events a businessman is obliged to attend in the evenings, he now turned down almost all of them. To sum up, Mr Turn-over had indeed turned over a new leaf in his life, he had become a poet...
But being a poet was not the most important change. The most important one was that he had found the courage and the bravery to turn to his dream and seriously begin to fulfil it…

Definition of idioms used
turn against                                       to oppose
turn away                                           to refuse to allow sb to enter
turn down                                          to reject
turn into                                             to become
turn off                                               to repel, cause to feel disgusted at
turn out                                                             to prove to be, to happen to be, to end up being
                                                            to produce
to send sb out of sth
turn over (e.g. 100.000 euros)        to do business to the amount of (100.000 euros)….
to become inverted
turn sth over to sb                            to give the control of sth to sb
turn round                                         to change the direction into…
turn to sb                                           to ask sb’s help etc.
turn up                                               to appear, arrive and attend
                                                            to increase the sound, heat etc of a device

at every turn                                      everywhere, in every nook and cranny
turn the course of one’s life            to change sb’s life
turn one’s hand to sth to                 to take to an activity, to engage in sth
turn-off                                               a road through which vehicles can leave a highway
turnout                                               gathering
turn the tide of sth                           to change the direction/cause  a  reversal in a situation
turn-up                                               something surprising (That’s a turn-up for the books!)
turn my back on sth                         to reject, abandon sth
a turn of events                                 an unexpected change
turn sth inside out                            to cause big changes to take place
turn over a new leaf                         to decide to change one’s life for the better

References

http://www.dictionary.com/

Mr Go-ahead
Vassilis Comporozos © 2016

Once upon a time, there was a man named Mr Go-ahead, married with two kids, a boy and a girl. He had a decent job, being a teacher of Japanese language in a small country, and a well-paid one since he was the only teacher in his country, of this beautiful and fascinating language with all these difficult-to-learn yet so fascinating characters! The name of the country I can’t recall, but I can assure you that his wife was called Mrs Gohonest. As for his kids’ names, ah, this detail I can’t bring to mind now.
               Anyway, one day he decided to go in for the elections, the so-called general ones, those held every 4 years or so. His family went with his plan jubilantly, so proud did they feel of him! He would be the first member of Parliament in their family, the progenitor of a dynasty of politicians!
               Mr Go-ahead knew very well that a politician’s success depends on making the public go for his ideas. Oh, how our man wished to see his name going down in history! Thus, he goes ahead with his plans…. He announces on TV his candidacy for the party with the greatest possibility to win – based naturally on the opinion polls. His constituency did not know, however, that he never was for that party, besides his family, and that’s why his wife went on at him as far as the way he chose to go up the social ladder. For, his family had really moral values, not fake but real ones!
               Nevertheless, our prospective MP had carefully gone over his plan and its subtlest details. “Which is this plan?” you might ask. Ah, that’s the simplest one you can possibly imagine. Mr Go-ahead would promise this and that to his people and then, after having been elected, he would go back on his promises, explaining to his voters that ‘since the country has been going through a very critical stage and there is an urgent need for cutbacks, I - unfortunately - can’t act according to my promises, which causes me a huge resentment’. (That was the exact wording he meant to use after the elections). A plan which didn’t go over well with his family, though.  
               Now, our politician had not been reputed for his taste in clothes. For example, his shirts would rarely go with his trousers, had it not been for his wife who was in charge of his wardrobe, his ‘wardrobe mistress’ as he called her. The problem at that moment was that his wardrobe manager had gone away to her village due to his change of ideas, mentality and view on life. What’s more, she had been followed by her kids who were in absolute accordance with their mum. Hence, our politician became the butt of people’s jokes, as far as his dress code was concerned and he couldn’t stand that incessant mocking. Nevertheless, he did have the knack of the politician and things almost went off as scheduled, mocking for his clothes excepted. Many voters seemed to be persuaded by the way he put his messages across.
               At home, however, he felt completely alone. He also couldn’t cook, food in the fridge having gone off. The odour of the rotten meat, in particular, could make a whole legion faint! He heavily relied on delivery for his nourishment now, which is not the healthiest of one’s choices.
               What’s more, his wife appeared to politically have gone over to his opponents or so his new friends in his new party had told him, confidentially of course. ‘What’s going on?’ he started wondering. ‘I seem to have a great possibility of getting elected in spite of the ridicule I have gone through and I don’t feel elated or glad or something like that,’ he thought. ‘My wife and kids have vanished… I never expected they’ d react that way when I decided  to go in for the test.  My life has gone to the dogs. I can’t go through that any more, I’m afraid. But, on the other hand, I may be an MP….’
               Going out for a walk, and round a corner he saw a 4-member family just like his, the only difference being that that they were all of four of them and in a happy mood. Back home now, lights had gone out and he couldn’t find where the fuse was, only his wife and children knew! “How can I rule a country if I don’t know how to do simple things” the statesman in him wondered. Then there was that cough which did not intend to stop. (Needless to say, he had been having a cough for three days and was afraid he might go down with flu for he was not a very brave man as far as diseases are concerned.) ‘Where’s that stuff my wife gives me for medicine’, he wondered. And he went on thinking about how helpless he was. ‘I can’t go on like this any longer’ he said so loudly that one might think he talked to someone else.
               Deciding to go over things he realized that he couldn’t be another person than the one he had been so far in his life, he couldn’t go on telling lies as that wasn’t his real self, the good-natured person he has in his inner self. Moreover, his family’s going away had taught him that what goes round, comes round. ‘Oh, I’d better go aboard a ship,’ he went on thinking, ‘and hide into a tiny speck of an unknown uninhabitable islet lost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean than live this way. Oh, I want my real self and my life back…’
               No sooner had he finished this line of thinking than he phoned his wife and kids. No sooner had he phoned his wife and kids than he rang the headquarters of his party to tell them he would quit. No sooner had he rang his party than he publicly announced that he had to stop his campaign due to personal reasons and that it was the best thing for both himself and his country….

to go ahead (with sth)                    proceed to do sth
to go back on one’s promises  not to keep one’s promises
to go for sth                                     try to get/desire sth, to have a special liking for sth
to go in for                                        be a candidate
to go off                                            (of  food) become spoiled, rancid
to go on at sb about                       complain to sb about/ criticize
to go on doing sth                           to continue doing sth
to go over sth                                   examine/check/study carefully
to go through sth                            to experience/suffer sth
to go with sth                                   choose sth, agree with,
                                                            to match sth
sth goes over well with sb             sth wins approval
what’s going on?                             What’s happening?
My life has gone to the dogs        My life is in a mess
lights go out                                     there is a power cut and lights do not work
to go down with (flu)                      get sick with (flu)
What goes round, comes round ‘the results of things one has done will some day have an effect’ on one’s life, to reap what one sows


References

http://www.dictionary.com/

Mr Get-up-and-go
© Vassilis Comporozos 2016

Once upon a time (a perfect beginning for a story since through this we get rid of the burden of giving exact details of the ‘when’) well, once upon  a time there lived a very energetic and sprightly person called Mr Get-up-and-go. Mr Get-up-and-go used to work all day from morning till evening,or better, till late at night. He got to work at 7:00 and stayed there till 23:00 p.m.! He was lucky in that his shop – a medium-sized Super Market downtown – was easily get-at-able through the Tube and he hadn’t to get on and off this and the other bus at this and the other bus stop. He didn’t have a car because he hadn’t managed to get through the exams to obtain a driving licence. Having failed once, he did not have the courage to give it another try. He only wanted to get through his work selling things and counting money and cheques and suchlike. ‘Get down to work’ was his favourite motto.
He hated getting up late (that it after 6:30 a.m.) for fear he may lag behind in his work. Due to his extreme passion for working he did not get about his town often. He didn’t get along very well with people, either, not even with his assistant. He was sprightly only as far as the fulfillment of his professional obligations is regarded. He paid him well though, hence his assistant managed to get by on his salary. Get-up-and-go wasn’t a miser, no, he just was a workaholic, with all the consequences such a thing may have in one’s life. So absorbed was he in his job that living with him could really get you down! He was always getting at people who were getting some rest! Once he had been accepted into the Open University to do a M.Sc. in Entomology (he loved studying and dissecting insects!) but on second thought he saw that he could not spend so much time studying for he should get the best out of his job.
               ‘I ought to get on with my work’ he used to think. Naturally, no one could get any confession on personal matters out of such a business-minded person. As for marriage, he had no time for such a trifle business! It got on his nerves to see people lazing around, let alone having their work done by others! He knew how to get around difficulties with his business brain. He had only one assistant, not because he was stingy but because he was a workaholic. During rush hours in his business you couldn’t get through to him on the phone. To be precise, you could but if it wasn’t a phone call related to business transactions he would hang up, telling you that he had so many business problems to get over that he simply had to get back to work!
               Nevertheless, at home at night he felt a void, a hole spreading across the tapestry of his business – centered life, a hole no work of the business type could fill in. To add to this, there happened a tiny strange and unusual incident one day… To be honest, it was not that strange, nor unusual. Well, there got into his shop a man with a kid, a boy of around 7 years of age. The man, tall and thin, with greying hair must have been getting on for 50, or so I guess! The little boy, with the innocence and the air of the seriousness of a small child, started a conversation (a monologue I mean) with the shop-owner, informing him that “my dad had recently lost his job – he worked as an accountant in an office – well, they had got into trouble, financial they called it (my father explained to me it meant money problems) but fortunately my mother has got a job and we’ll manage to get by on her salary, so dad says, but the best thing is that dad does have a lot of time now to see me for he worked very long hours, his boss pressed him that much because his boss is a grumpy, ill-tempered workaholic (so the people in the office call him) and only likes money and nothing else and my dad and the other dads there do not have time to play with their kids but kids do want to see their dads.” He abruptly put a full stop here. His dad, laughing, explained that he had been made redundant, although he was very diligent in his job, but at least now he could spend time with his son for the first time in his life, at which he felt jubilant. They had to move to a cheaper flat in this area. Of course, it appeared very difficult for him to find a job now but they would be able to get over trouble…  He finished stating that “I harbor no grudge or resentment against him”. The ‘because’ answer to the ‘why’ took Mr Get-up-and go by surprise. “Bless those who persecute thee…”
 Back at home, our chap felt uneasy. For the first time in his life he felt he had wasted his life in trifles… this and the next and the following night and day. For the first time in his life he was getting up to something new, something of a novelty for him… And what he had been expecting for so many days, there came at last, for the same client got into his shop again and after the basics of small talk Mr Get-up-and-go offered him a post in his Super Market. Now our workaholic man had more free time, worked less, and what’s more, he had given an unemployed man a well paid job with a schedule of eight hours per day.
Not only this, but Mr Get-up-and-go with his three assistants (he hired one more in due time!) got up an hour later, having got over his …workaholism!. That didn’t mean he had become a lazy person, merely loitering about. No, not at all! Quite the contrary! He simply had realized that humans must work to live and not live to work because he felt his … workaholism had got away with his life… So he had to get out of it immediately…
Time went by and news got out that Mr Get-up-and-go dated a beautiful lady and they were preparing to get married soon. He now got along well with his fellow-citizens… Moreover, he was now filled with joy and love towards his fellow –citizens and when they asked him how he got on at work he answered that he worked hard to live and did not live just to work…


to be getting on for 50
To be reaching the age of 50
to get about my town
To wander around, go out
to get along (at/ with)

used to talk about how well one is doing in a situation/with sb
to get around difficulties
To overcome
to get at sb
Criticize somebody severely
to get away with sth
Steal and escape with sth (here figuratively)
to get by on sth
To make do with (e.g. a salary)
to get on with
To go on with sth/ continue doing sth
to get over sth
To overcome sth
to get rid of
To make one free from sth one does not need/ want etc
to get sb down
To make sb feel depressed
Get out
Get out of sth
To become known (here)
To stop having a habit (here)
To avoid a duty
to get through (exams etc)
To complete/ pass sth
to get through one’s work
To complete one’s work
to get through to sb (e.g. on the phone)
To get in touch with sb
to get down to sth
To begin doing sth seriously
to get up (late, early etc)
To wake up
to get up to sth
To be busy with sth (esp sth surprising or unpleasant)

Sth gets on one’s nerves
Sth annoys one
Get-up-and-go
Energy to do various things
get-at-able
Accessible, approachable
What are you getting at?”

To get the best out of
To exploit sth to the full
To get into trouble
To be involved into trouble
Note: Since get has also the meaning of ‘go’, many collocations with prepositions such as get into/ out of are not difficult to understand or use at all. Hence, they are not given here.

References

The story of Mr Keepstohimself  
© Vassilis Comporozos 2016

Once upon a time, many centuries ago – people who told me that incredible story did not quite knew or remember when – there lived a really strange, odd man in a big mansion, a castle-like one, somewhere in England, or so they told me. 
Mr Keepstohimself, for that was his name or so it seems, was a guy who always kept to himself, a really introverted person, an anti-social fellow we could say, one who preferred standing aloof to keeping company to people, to being in people’s company. His aloofness had turned him into a meticulous sort of person who would fly into a rage if you did not keep an appointment you had with him for some transaction.
Thus he indulged in keeping his life back from people. No one could exchange with him more words than were necessary for the specific business he was on at that specific time, or, to put it in other words, he kept people from coming to his house, from dropping by to see him. In fact no one desired to have the least social contact with him, except for his employees, his workers and his servants, for he paid them well to guarantee that his castle was run as satisfactorily as he wished it to be, according to his thoroughness and his mania for perfection in everything he dealt with. Social relations were excepted, for he had no relations of this kind and no one could tell why that was so.
If children came close to his garden he would shout ‘Keep off, Keep your feet and hands off my garden. Keep away!’ The truth is he had a spectacular garden with a plethora of trees, plants and flowers of an astonishing variety which enthralled anyone who had the luck and opportunity to watch them. But Mr Keepstohimself, a most solitary type, cherished to keep his garden back for himself! Money, he had lots of it, being the heir to an enormous fortune. He did not like wasting it, though, but took every care to keep costs down. You could not say he was a miser, no, not at all. He quite simply liked economy. His other care was some curious intruders who dared at times to poke their nose and existence into his kingdom. Hence he was always on the alert to keep them out, helped by hounds, dogs he had bought at a quite high price and which he had ordered to be trained in the best of manners for the sole purpose of keeping everyone away, unless he was there, in full person, to let someone in, when for example he had some business to do with them…
Possessing such a mentality prevented him from any wish to try to keep up with other people. It goes without saying, he only wanted to keep up his own standards, standards which he himself had set from his teens and now made every effort to abide by, come rain or shine. By ‘standards’ we mean of course his passionate love for solitude, isolation, aloofness, his keeping away from people through thick and thin. Sometimes, nevertheless, he felt the need to get in touch with his own people, his living relatives and wished he had kept in with them but quickly averted his mind from such thoughts, discarding them as a moment of weakness, since he adored his life of complete loneliness and did not feel the need to talk to people anyway. That is why he had lost contact with his relatives. The truth is that his relatives used to pay him regular visits some years ago but on seeing his taciturnity and his aloofness decided not to go to his castle anymore.     
Turning into a real agoraphobic now he ordered everything he might need through the few servants he had, just a handful of them. Rarely did he go out in the world. He thrust a ‘sign’ outside his castle, reading “Keep out. No entry to anyone for any reason.” He kept on living this way day in day out. I forgot to say that especially he couldn’t stand people who tended to keep on about miscellaneous things non-stop! Keeping even more and more to himself he stopped even going hunting, his favourite pastime. As for his fortune, he didn’t want to leave anything in somebody else’s keeping. This way of living, however, had a very high price for he lived in the continuous fear that his house may be burgled in spite of the guards. What’s more, he now started suspecting his own servants…
So, in keeping with his suspicions, he decided to build another wall and another one round his castle to become more isolated! He would now stay there for keeps! He even had a moat built which he filled with crocodiles as was usual in stories of that era! Not only this, but he also dismissed all his servants, guards and peasants to be there completely alone! No one dared to enter, no one! Time passed, loads of years elapsed, trees grew up, vegetation grew to an enormous level surrounding the whole place on all sides, covering the entire castle from top to bottom.
Then there came a time that no one was sure if there had been a castle with a lord in this place deep inside that forest! Everybody could see the forest but no one the castle. It was as though the castle had kept to itself. No one remembered the castle now. Only some legends survived of a mysterious solitary man who had a castle there in the distant past. But, whether it was a legend or a reality, no one can say now, not even me! I don’t know, I am so confused, I can’t believe this story. And, to tell you the truth, that lord’s name was not Mr Keepstohimself! I made it up so as to tell you this sad, most unreal story. As for this little lie of mine, you have no other option but forgive me!

Definition of idioms used
to keep sb/sth away
to prevent sb/ sth from going somewhere
to keep back
to stay at a distance
to keep sth back from sb
to refuse to tell sb sth
to keep sth back for (oneself etc.)
to retain sth for (oneself etc.)
to keep sth down
to keep sth (e.g.) at a low level
to keep sb from (doing) sth
to prevent sb from sth
to keep in with sb
to stay friendly with sb
to keep off sth
to avoid sth
to keep on (doing ) sth
to continue
to keep on (at sb) about sth
to nag at sb, to talk non-stop about sth
to keep sb out
to not let sb enter a place
to keep out (of sth)
to not enter a place
to keep up doing sth
to keep up the standards
to keep up with sb
to keep up with sth
to keep up with sb/sth
to continue doing sth
to continue with the same standards
to be in contact with sb
to be aware of news etc
to move (lit/fig) at the same rate as sb/sth


Phrases with keep
To keep (oneself) to oneself
to be introverted/to avoid meeting people socially
in keeping with sth / out of keeping with sth
In /not in agreement with sth
In sb’s keeping
Being taken care by sb
For keeps
For ever
How are you keeping?
How are you doing?
  

                                            





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