Look at the sentences below about a music day for young people.

Read the text to decide if each sentence is correct or incorrect.

If it is correct, mark A.

If it is incorrect, mark B.

Young People’s Music Day

 

Dear Young Musicians,

Thank you for agreeing to take part in our Music Day. Here are some notes for your information.

 

The day

The whole idea of the day is for music students from secondary schools around the area to meet other players and receive expert teaching from our guests, six professional players. In the evening, you will perform the pieces you have worked on during the day at a concert which your friends and family can attend. The concert will include a range of music from you, followed by one piece from each of our guests.

 

Getting there

A map is included for the concert hall. Your school coaches will drop you at the main building. Please note that there is no return coach journey.

 

The programme

After you have registered at the reception, go to the main hall. First there will be a short performance by our professional musicians who are joining us for the day. After this you will go into your classes to practise on your own instruments for the evening concert. There will also be a chance to experiment with a different instrument from the one you normally play, and see if you enjoy playing something more unusual – we have several instruments to choose from!

 

What to bring

Bring a piece of music that you can play well. Part of the day will include a ‘masterclass’ in which you might have the opportunity, if there is enough time, to play a piece of your choosing and be given a short lesson by one of the professional players.

 

What to buy

There will be opportunities to buy sheet music or books during the day, so you may want to have money for these. If you wish to buy something, you could reserve it and then arrange to pick it up and pay when your parents arrive to watch the concert. This service will be available until 7 pm.

 

Going home

The first part of the day will finish at 5 pm, when parents can collect students. For those remaining in the hall until the evening concert at 7 pm, there will be DVDs for you to watch, although you should also bring something to do while you are waiting. A change of clothes is required for the evening – black trousers or skirt and white top – so unless you are going home at 5 pm, you will need to have this with you at the start of the day.

 

Evening concert

If for whatever reason you cannot attend the evening concert, you must inform us as soon as possible, as we need to know numbers in order to prepare the stage.

 

We look forward to seeing you at the Young People’s Music Day.

 

Look at the sentences below about a man who got lost in the Rocky Mountains.

Read the text to decide if each sentence is correct or incorrect.

If it is correct, mark A.

If it is incorrect, mark B.

Lost in the Rocky Mountains

 

Fifty- four- year- old scientist Bob Rigsby was lost for five days in Canada’s Rocky Mountains, and was only rescued after a mobile phone call to his wife, Shirley, over 8,000 km away in England.

 

Bob, a British wildlife expert, had been in Vancouver, Canada, giving a talk at a conference on the environment. When it was over, he travelled to the Rocky Mountains and checked into The Maple Leaf hotel. He then set off on a short walk to look at the local plant and animal life. After a couple of hours, he realised he had taken a wrong turning on the mountain path, but was sure he could easily get back to the hotel. Even when night fell, he remained confident.

 

But, after walking for several hours the next day, it became clear to Bob that he was in trouble. ‘I had my mobile phone with me, but the battery was almost dead. I thought I could probably make just one call but I didn’t know the number of my hotel and I didn’t want to worry my family unless I really had to.’ Bob carried on walking for three more days. He knew which wild plants he could safely eat and he had little trouble finding them. When he was thirsty he drank from streams.

 

On the fourth day, he reached a forest that he knew he had walked through the previous day. His heart sank. He realised it was hopeless and decided to call his family in England. ‘He was quite calm when he spoke to me on the phone,’ says Shirley. ‘He appeared to be in control of the situation, in spite of everything. He’d been lost a few times before, but never for so many days – that’s why this time was different.’ She immediately contacted The Maple Leaf hotel, after a quick call to the Canadian embassy in London to get its phone number. ‘We’re always anxious if our guests are away for a long time,’ says Greg McCaffrey, the hotel’s owner. ‘But that week several of our English visitors had gone to the city for a few days to watch the hockey games, and we thought Mr Rigsby had gone too.’ As soon as Shirley phoned, hotel staff called the rescue service, who sent out a search party for the scientist. They found him in a cave some hours later, very tired, but, apart from some cuts and scratches, quite unhurt.

 

‘I’ve learnt my lesson,’ says Bob. ‘I admit I was stupid to set off like that without a guide. I never want an experience like that again!’

Look at the sentences below about two wildlife filmmakers.

Read the text to decide if each sentence is correct or incorrect.

If it is correct, mark A.

If it is incorrect, mark B.

Wildlife Filmmakers

 

Richard and Sonia Muller make documentaries about wildlife, particularly dangerous animals, like the big cats found in Africa. Film-making for them is a way to bring the message of the importance of understanding wildlife to international audiences, with their last film, Staying Alive, exploring relationships between lions and other wildlife in one special project run by a wildlife organization that was providing information about the falling numbers of big cats, especially lions, they immediately agreed to take part.

 

Richard grew up near a wildlife park and as a child was keen on filming what he saw. The couple were introduced at university in Cape Town, and quickly realized how much they had in common. They were both curious about the natural world and Sonia soon discovered a similar talent for filmmaking. As a child in South Africa Sonia often ran off alone to explore the wild areas surrounding her home, despite her parents’ fears.

 

When asked what they found hardest about their work, Sonia and Richard have the same answer – leaving an area and finishing a project. Sonia adds that the hours required can be hard, and things like the heat, dust, and bugs make it very tiring. The excitement of her work comes from not knowing what will happen, perhaps even discovering something new for science, while Richard takes most interest in spending time with individual animals, getting to know their character.

You are going to read extract from a newspaper article about wildlife in New Zealand. Choose the answer (A, B C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.

Swimming with dolphins

Jonathan Lorie reports

 

As darkness fell on the olive trees, I had nothing particular to do, so I sat on my own in my tree house and listened to the Pacific waves roll in, without a care in the world. My muscles ached slightly from swimming with 400 dolphins beyond that surf, but I was looking forward to dinner in a nearby restaurant, then an evening in my room. My iPod was playing jazz but I was listening to the sounds of deer calling to one another outside. Was this, I wondered, the world’s finest place to get close to the wild?

I was in the small town of Kaikoura, in New Zealand. ‘It’s the best place in the world for swimming with dolphins,’ explained Kate Baxter, the receptionist who welcomed me to Hapuku Lodge. She showed me up the slightly loose stairs to my tree house. ‘And seeing whales,’ she added. ‘But mind you read the weather forecast at breakfast.’ She smiled. ‘If the sea’s rough, you might need a Kaikoura Cracker. It’s the only seasickness pill that works.’

Kaikoura has two great claims to fame. One is Hapuku Lodge – the luxury tree houses between the mountains and the sea. Its restaurant serves superb food and its management is keen to be green in every respect. It has been called the world’s most romantic location for a honeymoon. (line 25) The other lies just off
the coast. Below those huge waves is the Kaikoura Trench – a Grand Canyon of the ocean, 60 kilometres long and 1,200 metres deep, whose rich food chain attracts 14 species of dolphin and whale. Nowhere else in the world has such deep water a kilometre from shore.

Next morning, I’m ready for the sea. Following instructions, I search the breakfast room for that weather forecast. It’s a handwritten note that says: ‘Rough seas warning.’ Should I be worried by this, and go easy on the early-morning eating? But I don’t need much persuading by Stefan, the smartly dressed waiter, to try the Lodge’s full breakfast dish of the day: fried duck and potatoes with egg. It is wonderful.

Unlike my stomach when I hit the water an hour
later, determined to catch the best experience this coastline has to offer: a swim among dolphins. They’re everywhere. Our speedboat is surrounded by hundreds – jumping, diving and splashing in circles around us in a display of playfulness and trust. I sit there dressed in rubber, madly adjusting my mask. ‘You have too many smile lines,’ warns the instructor from Dolphin Encounter. ‘They’ll let the water in.’ Then I jump into the white water behind the boat.  

There’s a shock of cold water and the sensation of being in the middle of the ocean, even though we’re within sight of the mountains, not half a mile from shore. But out here the open water stretches all the way to Antarctica, and wide-winged, ocean-going birds fly just above the waves. It rises and falls like a vast creature breathing, the boat appearing and disappearing with each wave. Luckily, I have taken a Cracker.

Then I look down. Below me, far into the depths, are the shadow-like figures of dark dolphins. They move quickly through soft green light. I float face down, looking into their world. We make three dives like this – the maximum the instructor allows. ‘We don’t want to disturb them,’ he says. But it is enough. On the third, a single dolphin of my own length appears beside me. It stays close. I see its head turning towards me, looking into my face, and then I hear its voice. Nothing had prepared me for this.

You are going to read part of an autobiography in which a gardener talks about this childhood and his love of plants and the countryside. Choose the answer (A, B C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.

Green fingers

It never occurred to me when I was little that gardens were anything less than glamorous places. Grandad’s garden was on the bank of a river and sloped gently down towards the water. You couldn’t reach the river but you could hear the sound of the water and the birds that sang in the trees above. I imagined that all gardens were like this – a place of escape, peace and solitude. Grandad’s plot was nothing out of the ordinary when it came to features. He had nothing as grand as a greenhouse, unlike some of his neighbours. Not that they had proper ‘bought’ greenhouses. Theirs were made from old window frames. Patches of plastic would be tacked in place where a carelessly wielded spade had smashed a pane of glass.

            At home, his son, my father, could be quiet and withdrawn. I wouldn’t want to make him sound humourless. He wasn’t. Silly things would amuse him. He had phrases that he liked to use, ‘It’s immaterial to me’ being one of them. ‘I don’t mind’ would have done just as well but he liked the word ‘immaterial’. I realise that, deep down, he was probably disappointed that he hadn’t made more of his life. He left school without qualifications and became apprenticed to a plumber. Plumbing was not something he was passionate about. It was just what he did. He was never particularly ambitious, though there was a moment when he and Mum thought of emigrating to Canada, but it came to nothing. (line 14) Where he came into his own was around the house. He had an ‘eye for the job’. Be it bookshelves or a cupboard – what he could achieve was astonishing.

 

            My parents moved house only once in their entire married life. But my mother made up for this lack of daring when it came to furniture. You would just get used to the shape of one chair when another appeared, but the most dramatic change of all was the arrival of a piano. I always wanted to like it but it did its best to intimidate me. The only thing I did like about it were two brass candlesticks that jutted out from the front. ‘They’re too posh’, my mother said and they disappeared one day while I was at school. There was never any mention of mine being allowed to play it. Instead lessons were booked for my sister. When I asked my mother in later life why I wasn’t given the opportunity, her reply was brief: ‘You’d never have practised’.

 

            Of the three options, moors, woods or river – the river was the one that usually got my vote. On a stretch of the river I was allowed to disappear with my imagination into another world. With a fishing net over my shoulder I could set off in sandals that were last year’s model, with the fronts cut out to accommodate toes that were now right to the end. I’d walk along the river bank looking for a suitable spot where I could take off the painful sandals and leave them with my picnic while I ventured out, tentatively, peering through the water for any fish that I could scoop up with the net and take home. After the first disastrous attempts to keep them alive in the back yard, they were tipped back into the water.

 

            I wanted to leave school as soon as possible but seemed an unlikely prospect until one day my father announced, ‘They’ve got a vacancy for an apprentice gardener in the Parks Department. I thought you might be interested.’ In one brief moment Dad had gone against his better judgement. He might still have preferred it if I became a carpenter. But I like to feel that somewhere inside him was a feeling that things might just turn out for the best. If I stuck at it. Maybe I’m deceiving myself, but I prefer to believe that in his heart, although he hated gardening himself, he’d watched me doing it for long enough and noticed my unfailing passion for all things that grew and flowered and fruited.

You are going to read an article about an island off the west coast of Scotland. Choose the answer (A, B C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.

The Isle of Muck

Jim Richardson visits the Scottish island of Muck

 

Lawrence MacEwen crouches down on his Scottish island, the Isle of Much. And so do I. An Atlantic gale threatens to lift and blow us both out like October leaves, over the steep cliff at our feet and across the bay 120m below, dropping us in the surrounding ocean. Then MacEwen’s sheepdog, Tie, creeps up and his blond, bearded owner strokes him with gentle hands. The howling wind, rage as it might, can’t make this man uncomfortable here, on his island, where he looks – and is – perfectly at home.

 

MacEwen is giving me a visual tour of his neighbourhood. Nodding to the north, he yells, ‘That island is Eigg. The one to the west of it is the Isle of Rum. It gets twice as much rain as we do.’ I watch heavy clouds dump rain on its huge mountains. ‘Just beyond Rum is the island of Soay.’ ‘I have sheep to move,’ MacEwen abruptly announces when rain drifts towards us. We start down the slopes. As we stride along, he brings me up to speed on island details: Volcanic Muck is 3 km long and half as wide; its geese eat vast amounts of grass; and the MacEwens have been living here for 3,000 years.

 

Herding the sheep interrupts the flow of information. Tie, the sheepdog, is circling a flock of sheep – and not doing it well. ‘Away to me, Tie. Away to me’, meaning the dog should circle to the right. He doesn’t; he goes straight up the middle of the flock, creating confusion. ‘Tie.’ MacEwen’s voice drips disappointment. ‘That will never do.’ The dog looks ashamed.

 

The Isle of Muck is largely a MacEwen enterprise. Lawrance runs the fam with his wife, Jenny; son Colin, newly married, manages the island cottages; and daughter Mary runs the island hotel, Port Mor, with her husband, Toby. Mary and Toby love the fact that their two boys can wander the island on their own and sail dinghies on summer days. ‘They go out of the door and come back only when they’re hungry.’ But island life has its compromises. For one, electricity is only available part if the time. My first evening, I wait anxiously for the lights to turn on. The next morning I find Mary setting out breakfast by torchlight. But I cope with it – along with no mobile phone service. ‘There is mobile reception on the hill,’ Mary tells me. ‘Most visitors try for a couple of days, then just put the phone in the drawer,’ So do I too.

 

Everything on Muck seems delightfully improbable. The boat today brings over the post – and three musicians, who hop off carrying instruments. Their concert in the island’s tearoom proves a smash hit, with the islanders present tapping their boots in time to the music. That night, sitting by a glowing fire as it rains outside, Lawrence MacEwen tells me how he met his wife, Jenny. ‘Her father saw a small farm on the isle of Soay advertised in the newspaper, and bought it without even looking at it. He’d never been to Scotland. Jenny was sent to manage it.’ Did Jenny know anything about running a farm? She had good typing skills.’

 

I go to bed with rain and awake to more rain. But I eat well, virtually every bit of food coming from the tiny island. Mary sends me down to fisherman Sandy Mathers for fresh fish. I carry it back through the village and deliver it to Mary at the kitchen door. By 7 pm, our fish is on the table, delicious beyond reckoning. Also beyond reckoning: my ferry ride the following morning to my next island. Over the preceding two months, many of the scheduled ferries had been cancelled because of high seas. If my ferry didn’t come, I’d be stuck on Muck for two more days. (line 75) Which, now, phone or no phone, was what I secretly longed for.

You are going to read a magazine article about a famous pianist and the young student who became his pupil. For questions 31-36, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.

A musician and his pupil

Paul Williams interviews the famous pianist Alfred Brendel

Over six decades the pianist Alfred Brendel gradually built up and maintained a dominant position in the world of classical music. He was an intellectual, sometimes austere, figure who explored and recorded the mainstream European works for the piano. He wrote and played a great deal, but taught very little. Those who knew him best glimpsed a playful side to his character, but that was seldom on display in his concerts. It was a disciplined, never-ending cycle of study, travel and performance.

 

And then, four or five years ago, a young boy, Kit Armstrong, appeared backstage at one of Brendel’s concerts and asked for lessons. Initially, Brendel didn’t take the suggestion very seriously. He had very few pupils and he saw no reason to start now. He quotes from another famous pianist: ‘You don’t employ a mountain guide to teach a child to walk.’ But there was something that struck him about the young boy – then about 14. He listened to him play. Brendel explained, ‘He played remarkably well and by heart. Then he brought me a CD of a little recital he had given where he played so beautifully that I thought to myself, “I have to make time for him.” It was a performance that really led you from the first to the last note. It’s very rare to find any musician with this kind of overview and the necessary subtlety.’

 

As Brendel is bowing out of the public eye, so Kit is nudging his way into it – restrained by Brendel, ever nervous about the young man burning out early. Kit, now 19, is a restless, impatient presence away from the lessons – always learning new languages; taking himself off to study maths, writing computer code or playing tennis. All under the watchful eye of his ever-present mother. On top of all this he composes. ‘This was very important,’ Brendel says. ‘If you want to learn to read music properly it is helped by the fact that you try to write something yourself. Then I noticed that Kit had a phenomenal memory and that he was a phenomenal sight reader. But more than this is his ability to listen to his own playing, his sensitivity to sound and his ability to listen to me when I try to explain something. He not only usually understands what I mean, but he can do it. And when I tell him one thing in a piece, he will do it everywhere in the piece where it comes in later.’

 

(line 50) Brendel catches himself and looks at me severely. ‘Now I don’t want to rise any expectations. I’m very cross if some newspapers try to do this. There was one article which named him as the future great pianist of the 21^st century, I mean, really, it’s the worst thing. One doesn’t say that in a newspaper. And it has done a great deal of harm. As usual, with gifted young players, he can play certain things amazingly well, while others need more time and experience. It would be harmful if a critic was there expecting the greatest perfection.’

 

It is touching to see the mellowness of Brendel in his post-performing years. He explains ‘When I was very young, I didn’t have the urge to be famous in five years’ time, but I had the idea I would like to have done certain thing by the age of 50. And when I was 50, I thought that I had done most of those things, but there was still some leeway for more, so I went on. Although I do not have the physical power to play now, in my head, there are always things going on, all sorts of pieces that I’ve never played. I don’t play now but it’s a very nice new career.’

 

You are going to read an extract from a novel in which a young woman called Caitlin talks about her life on an island. Choose the answer (A, B C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.

Caitlin’s island

We live on the island of Hale. It’s about four kilometres long and two kilometres wide at broadest point, and it’s joined to the mainland by a causeway called the Stand- a narrow road built across the mouth of the river which separates us from the rest of the country. Most of the time you wouldn’t know we’re on an island because the river mouth between us and the mainland is juts a vast stretch of tall grasses and brown mud. But when there’s a high tide and the water rises a half a metre or so above the road and nothing can pass until the tide goes out again a few hours later, then you know it’s an island.

We were on our way back from the mainland. My older brother, Dominic, had just finished his first year at university in a town 150 km away. Dominic’s train was due in at five and he’d asked for a lift back from the station. Now, Dad normally hates being disturbed when he’s writing (which is just about all the time), and he also hates having to go anywhere, but despite the typical sighs and moans – why can’t he get a taxi? what’s wrong with the bus? – I could tell by the sparkle in his eyes that he was really looking forward to seeing Dominic. 

So, anyway, Dad and I had driven to the mainland and picked up Dominic from the station. He had been talking non-stop from the moment he’d slung his rucksack in the boot and got in the car. University this, university that, writers, books, parties, people, money, gigs… And when I say talking, I don’t mean talking as in having a conversation, I mean talking as in jabbering like a mad thing. I didn’t like it… the way he spoke and waved his hands around as if he was some kind of intellectual or something. It was embarrassing. It made me feel uncomfortable – that kind of discomfort you feel when someone like you, someone close to you, suddenly starts acting like a complete idiot. And I didn’t like the way he was ignoring me, either. For all the attention I was getting I might as well not have been there. I felt a stranger in my own car.

As we approached the island on that Friday afternoon, the tide was low and the Stand welcomed us home, stretched out before us, clear and dry, beautiful hazy in the heat – a raised strip of grey concrete bound by white railings and a low footpath on either side, with rough cobbled banks leading down the water. Beyond the railings, the water was glinting with that wonderful silver light we sometimes get here in the late afternoon which lazes through to the early evening.

We were about halfway across when I saw the boy. My first thought was how odd it was to see someone walking on the Stand. You don’t often see people walking around here. Between Hale and Moulton (the nearest town about thirty kilometres away on the mainland), there’s nothing but small cottages, farmland, heathland and a couple of hills. (line 31) So islanders don’t walk because of that. If they’re going to Moulton they tend to take the bus. So the only pedestrians you’re likely to see around here are walkers of bird-watchers. But even from the distance I could tell that the figure ahead didn’t fit into either of these categories. I wasn’t sure how I knew, I just did.

As we drew closer, he became clearer. He was actually a young man rather than a boy. Although he was on the small side, he wasn’t as slight as I’d first thought. He wasn’t exactly muscular, but he was weedy-looking either. It’s hard to explain. There was a sense of strength about him, a graceful strength that showed in his balance, the way he held himself, the way he walked…

 

Read the following text and answer the questions below.

 

Kombat Kate

James Stanton meets ‘Kombat Kate’ Waters, who trains theatre actors in how to ‘fight’ on stage.

There must be few occasions when it would be really rude to refuse an invitation to head-butt someone you’ve just met! But I’m in one of those right now. I’m in a rehearsal room in a theatre with a group of actors, facing up to stage fighting director Kate Waters. I’ve already dragged her around the room and slapped her on the arm. Now she wants me to head-butt her. But fear not, this is all strictly pretend!

‘Imagine there’s a tin can on my shoulder,’ she says. ‘Now try to knock it off.’ I lower my head as instructed, then lift it sharply, aiming for the imaginary can, hoping desperately that I don’t miscalculate the angle and end up doing damage to her face. To my amazement, I get it right. ‘That was good,’ says Waters. ‘Now maybe try it again without smiling.’

Waters, known in the industry as Kombat Kate, is showing me how actors fight each other without getting hurt, and that includes sword-fighting. (She inspires fierce devotion: when I tweet that I’m meeting Waters, one actress friend responds: ‘She’s amazing. She taught me how to be a secret service agent in two days.’)

Perhaps the most famous play Kate has worked on recently was called Noises Off. She taught the cast how to fall down stairs without breaking any bones. One of the fight scenes is fairly close, Kate tells me, to the one we’re trying out now. ‘I’ve just slowed it down a bit,’ she says tactfully, before inviting me to throw her against the wall. I obey, making sure I let go of her quickly, so she can control her own movement. Push your opponent too hard, and they will hit the wall for real. I watch her hit the wall before falling to the ground.
She’s fine, of course. ‘That’s my party trick,’ she says with a grin. ‘Works every time.’

 

Once the lesson is over Kate tells me how she became one of only two women on the official register of stage fight directors. Already a keen martial arts expert from childhood, Kate did drama at university, and one module of her course introduced her to stage combat. When she made enquiries about the possibility of teaching it as a career, she was told (line 22) about the register and the qualifications she’d need to be accepted onto it. It was no small order: as well as a certificate in advanced stage combat, she would need a black belt in karate and proficiency in fencing, a sport she’d never tried before.

But she rose to the challenge and taught the subject for several years at a drama college before going freelance and becoming a fight advisor for the theatrical world. The play she’s working on is Shakespeare’s Richard III. This involves a famous sword fight. With no instructions left by the great playwright other than –
Enter Richard and Richmond: they fight, Richard dies – the style and sequence of the fight is down to Kate and the actors.

‘I try to get as much information as possible about what a fight would have been like in a particular period,’ Kate explains. ‘But because what I’m eventually doing is telling a dramatic story, not all of it is useful. The scene has to be exciting and do something for the audience.’ (Line 30)

Ultimately, of course, a stage fight is all smoke and mirrors. In our lesson, Kate shows me how an actor will stand with his or her back to the audience ahead of a choreographed slap or punch. When the slap comes it makes contact not with skin but with air: the actor whacks his chest or leg to make the sound of the slap.

 
In the rehearsal room, I can’t resist asking Kate how she thinks she would fare in a real fight. Would she give her attacker a hard time? She laughs, ‘Oh, I’d be awful,’ she says. ‘I only know how to fake it.’ I can’t help thinking, however, that she’s just being rather modest.

A varied career

Chloe Kelling, a successful model and singer-songwriter, now has a new venture

I arrive for my interview with Chloe Kelling and I’m asked to wait in the garden. I hardly have time to start looking round at the carefully tended flowerbeds when Chloe appears. Every bit as tall and striking as I’d expected, Chloe emerges from the house wearing an oversized man’s jacket, a delicately patterned top and jeans. Chloe is known for her slightly quirky sense of fashion and, of course, she looks great as she makes her way towards me through the flowerbeds.

‘Let’s talk in my office,’ she says, leading the way not back to the house, but instead to an ancient caravan parked up next to it. As we climb inside the compact little van, the smell of fresh baking greets us. A tiny table is piled high with cupcakes, each iced in a different colour. Chloe’s been busy, and there’s a real sense of playing tea parties in a secret den! But what else should I have expected from a woman with such a varied and interesting career?

Chloe originally trained as a make-up artist, having left her home in the country at nineteen to try and make her name as a model in London, and soon got work in adverts and the fashion business. ‘I went to Japan to work for a short period, but felt very homesick at first,’ she recalls. ‘It was very demanding work and, though I met loads of nice people, it was too much to take in at nineteen. If I’d stayed longer, I might have settled in better.’

Alongside the modelling, Chloe was also beginning to make contacts in the music business. ‘I’d been the typical kid, singing with a hairbrush in front of the mirror, dreaming of being a star one day,’ she laughs. She joined a girl band which ‘broke up before we got anywhere’, before becoming the lead singer with the band Whoosh, which features on a best-selling clubbing album. Unusually though, Chloe also sings with two other bands, one based in Sweden and another in London, and each of these has a distinct style.

It was her work with Whoosh that originally led to Chloe’s link with Sweden. She was offered a song-writing job there with a team that was responsible for songs for some major stars, but gradually became more involved in writing music for her own band.

Although she now divides her time between London and Sweden, her first stay there turned out to be much longer than she’d bargained for. ‘The rooms are very tall over there and so people have these rather high beds that you climb up to,’ she explains. ‘I fell as I climbed up the ladder and cracked three ribs. Although the people at the hospital were very kind, I was stuck there for a while, which was very frustrating. Sneezing and laughing were so painful at first, let alone singing!’

It was while recovering from her injuries that Chloe hit upon the idea of staging what she calls vintage fairs. ‘It was snowing in Sweden and I wanted something nice to look forward to.’ Chloe had always loved vintage clothes, particularly from the 1950s, and decided to stage an event for others who shared her passion. The first fair was held in her home village and featured stalls selling all sorts of clothes and crafts dating back to the 1950s. It was a huge hit, with 300 people turning up.

‘When I had the idea of the first fair, it was only meant to be a one-off, but we had so many compliments, I decided to go ahead with more,’ says Chloe. ‘There’s something for all ages and people find old things have more character than stuff you buy in modern shops. It also fits perfectly with the idea of recycling.’ Looking round Chloe’s caravan, I can see what she means.