Progress Review 32. Use of English B1+

Mma Ramotswe looked into her teacup. The red bush tea, freshly … , was still very hot, too hot to drink, but good to look at in its amber darkness, and very good to smell.

It was a pity, she thought, that she had become accustomed to the use of tea bags, as this meant that there were no leaves to … swirling around the surface or clinging to the side of the cup.

She had given in on the issue of tea bags, out of weakness, she admitted; tea bags were so overwhelmingly … than leaf tea, with its tendency to clog drains and the spouts of teapots too if one was not careful.

She had never worried about getting the occasional tea leaf in her mouth, indeed she had rather enjoyed this, but that never happened now, with these … packed tea bags and their very precise, enmeshed doses of chopped leaves.

It was the first cup of the morning, as Mma Ramotswe did not count the two cups that she … at home before she came to work.

One of these … as she took her early stroll around the yard, with the sun just up, pausing to stand under the large acacia tree and peer up into the thorny branches above her, drawing the morning air into her lungs and savouring its freshness.

Now at her desk, she raised the cup to her lips and … a sip of the bush tea. She looked at her watch.

Mma Makutsi was usually very punctual, but today she was late for some reason. This would be the fault of the minibuses, thought Mma Ramotswe. There would be enough of them coming into town from Tlokweng at that hour of the morning, but not enough … in the opposite direction.

Mma Makutsi could walk, of course - her new house was not all that far away - but people did not like to walk in the heat, … enough.

She had a report to write, and she busied herself with this. It was not an easy one, as she had to detail the weaknesses she … in the hiring department of a company which provided security guards.

They imagined that they screened out applicants with a criminal record when they … jobs with the company; Mma Ramotswe had discovered that it was simplicity itself to lie about one's past on the application form and that the forms were usually not even scrutinised by the official in charge of the personnel department.

This man, who had got the job through … about his qualifications and experience, rubber-stamped the applications of virtually anybody, but particularly the applications submitted by any of his relatives.

Mma Ramotswe's report would not make comfortable reading for the company, and she knew to expect some anger over the results. This was inevitable - people did not like … uncomfortable truths, even if they had asked for them.

Uncomfortable truths meant that one had to go back and invent a whole new set of procedures, and that was not always … when there were so many other things to do.

As she … the defects in the firm's arrangements, Mma Ramotswe thought of how difficult it was to have a completely secure system for anything.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency was a case in point. They … all their records in two old filing cabinets, and neither of these, she realised, had a lock, or at least a lock that worked.

There was a lock on the office door, … enough, but during the day they rarely bothered to use that if both of them went out on some errand.