Official Certificate of General English Writing Exam

Read the email first before take a test.

Hi John,

How are you? It’s been ages since we last spoke. I hope everything is going well.

Sorry, I haven’t been in contact recently. I’ve been meaning to write to you for the last couple of
months, but I haven’t got round to doing it. Sorry for my laziness.

What have you been up to lately? I remember you telling me that you were thinking about moving
house. Did you do it or are you still in the same place?

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but since the last time, we spoke I left my job. I’m now working at
Omega in Manchester. It’s a similar job to what I had before, but I have more responsibility (and
more hours, unfortunately) and the pay is better (which is nice). Are you still working at Tyson or
have you changed too?

I’ve also bought a new car (a Honda Civic). You know how I don’t like to spend money, but I had to
buy a new car since the car I had (the blue Ford escort) kept breaking down. The last time it
happened, I was in the middle of nowhere. I had to wait for 2 hours until the breakdown service
arrived!

Apart from that, nothing much has changed. I’m still living in the same house in Sheffield and still
going trekking in the mountains every other weekend.

A funny thing happened to Julia and me when we were trekking in Wales about 2 months ago. We
were walking up Snowden when it suddenly started to snow. I thought that it wouldn’t last for long,
so we continued going up. But it did and it got a lot worse. So we decided to turn back and return to
the car.

Unfortunately, when we eventually got back to the car, we couldn’t move it because of the snow.

After an hour of trying to dig it out, it still wouldn’t move. At that point, we had to decide whether
we’d stay in the car the night or walk back to the nearest village, which was 10 miles away. We
decided to walk to the village.

It took over three hours to walk to the village. As you can imagine, Julia wasn’t happy. She blamed
me for everything and refused to talk to me for most of the journey. An interesting weekend to say
the least.

In summer (so, fortunately, no snow!) we’re planning to go to the Pyrenees in Spain for a week.
You’ve been there, haven’t you? Have you got any suggestions for places which we should visit
when we are over there?

Are you still going to watch Leeds United? They are not having a good season this year. But that’s
nothing new!

Have you heard anything from Jeff? I was thinking the other day about when we all went to London
for the weekend. Do you remember how drunk he was on a Saturday? You had to take him back to
the hotel in a taxi and put him to bed. Always trouble, but such a nice guy.

We really should meet up sometime. Go out for a few drinks at the pub? Let me know if you fancy
it.

Anyway, I have to get back to doing some work.

Hope to hear from you soon.