After the meeting with George Brown and the other members of the planning team, Tim Smith gets the documents ready for the planning application. This process is described in the following text, which is riddled with idiomatic expressions.
There are thousands of idioms in every language. The meaning of some of them is fairly easily understood, because the German idiom is an almost a direct translation of the English expression, such as in "it’s on the tip of my tongue – es liegt mir auf der Zunge"; others are similar but use different words, for example, "to kill two birds with one stone", which, in German, is equivalent to "zwei Fliegen mit einer Klappe schlagen". There are estimated to be at least twenty-five thousand idiomatic expressions in the English language. It’s good to know at least a few of them.
Choose the correct idiomatic expressions in the following text explaining the process of submitting the planning application for the Browns’ house. Then listen to the text and check your answers.
The architect, Tim Smith, is up to his eyes in work and struggling to keep his head above water. He therefore had to pull out all the stops to get the planning application for Helen and George Brown completed on time.
The design process was intense and the architect wasn’t always on the same wavelength as the client, but after some give and take, they quickly reached agreement on most aspects relevant for the application. It was the roof shape they didn’t see eye to eye on. The architect went out on a limb and suggested a flat roof, but this went down like a lead balloon with the clients.
They had set their hearts on a saddle roof. Anyway, after some to-ing and fro-ing, they met halfway and opted for a low mono-pitched roof. These disagreements are now water under the bridge. All design elements relevant for the application are resolved and the architect submitted the planning application yesterday.
Tim Smith knows the ropes and should therefore be on the right track for obtaining planning permission. Keeping fingers crossed that all goes well, within four to six weeks, the approval should be in the bag.
They can then turn the first sod at the beginning of May.
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