Note 5: neither used to nor would can be used when we want to say how often something happened or for how long something continued:
They visited Tahiti five times in all.
She was living (or; lived) in New York for seven years.
Suggested Exercise (09):
Write a children's story, perhaps using personified creatures of the wild ("Mr Toad" etc.). Here are phrases associated with myths, children's stories and fairy-tales:
Once upon a time there was... There once lived... In days of old In times of old In the beginning Many years ago Long, long years ago Time was when... Legend has it that... Tradition has it that... My story starts with... The story goes that... Little did he/she know that... (cf. p. 71) To cut a long story short   - '-^^ And so they all lived happily ever after. So ends the tale of...
Anyway Now To go on Well
Now is a curious word, and especially used by professional storytellers, as in the following example, part of a fairy-tale:
Very many years ago there ruled over England a king who was called Richard Coeur de Lion, which in French means lion-hearted, because of his great bravery in battle. It may seem strange that an English king
38
should have a French name, but more than a hundred years before this king reigned a French duke named William came to England, defeated the English in a great battle, and declared himself king of England.
Now King Richard had decided to set off for the Holy Land to capture Jerusalem from the Saracens, who at that time ruled in Palestine....
L
INpwJis not a tempoja^lexpression; rather its purpose is to introduce new facts and expedite the narrative, especially after^short d^re^sion, as in the above one about William the Conqueror. In this passage ^fl^w^?(followed by a comma) would also be possible, but would sound higMvJnformal. A more formal equivalent of Anyway and Now is To goj»L(always followed by a comma).
Well is a very colloquial word, but it often occurs in informal English generally, and especially narrative, as in the following example:
To cut a long storyshort, within two days the boy had smashed up a carV bfoEehT into several shops, and been arrested for drunken and disorderly conduct.
Well, you can imagine the father's surprise when there was a telephone-call from the local police station....
Both Now and Well begin sentences, and their function is to command the concentration of the reader or listener. Now merely introduces new material (especially after a digression); Well also introduces new material, but tends to have the nuance "In view of all ■this^.   ^ .„..r
Incidentally, it is important to note that the genre of fairy stories and children's tales tends to prefer words of Anglo-Saxon origin to Latin ones, if there is an easy choice, as in the following examples:
1. He set out for the woods, acutely^ aware that he would never come back. (Latin) ^
He set out for the woods, keenly aware that he would never come back. (Anglo-Saxon)
2. This one thing distinguished her from the others. (Latin) ^ \
This one thing sethst apart from the others. (Anglo-Saxon + Mediaeval French)
39