This page carries the official 8 Going Places Class 12 NCERT Flamingo chapter PDF — the complete short story by A. R. Barton, printed exactly as it appears in the Class 12 English textbook. The download is right below, followed by a scene-by-scene walkthrough, character and theme notes, the chapter’s vocabulary and grammar work, and a question-by-question breakdown for revision.
Get the official NCERT Class 12 English Flamingo Chapter 8 Going Places PDF from the NCERT textbook portal at ncert.nic.in — the Government of India’s official source for every school textbook, where the full Flamingo reader is published chapter by chapter, free, and where any revised edition is always the version shown there.
| What the chapter holds | Count | Where it is used |
|---|---|---|
| Printed pages | 12 | |
| Exercise questions | not fully captured | our text of this chapter is incomplete; the printed book has more |
| In-text questions | 4 | |
| Official NCERT PDF | Download the chapter PDF | the chapter exactly as NCERT publishes it |
Chapter 8 Going Places Class 12 at a Glance
Before you open the PDF, know what you are getting: this is a short story, not a poem or an essay, so the chapter reads like fiction and then hands you language work. The table below lists the chapter’s headline counts — the quickest way to see the balance of story text and exercise material before you start reading.
What Going Places Contains
This section maps the chapter before you read it: who wrote the story, whose world it enters, and how the chapter is built.
A. R. Barton is a modern writer who lives in Zurich and writes in English. The chapter’s author note says the story explores the theme of adolescent fantasising and hero worship.
The story follows Sophie, a schoolgirl from a working-class family. She and her classmate Jansie are both earmarked for the biscuit factory; the men of the family follow United football club; and the young star everyone is talking about is Danny Casey.
The chapter is organised as story text followed by exercise blocks, each doing a different job:
- Think as you read — short comprehension checks placed inside the story.
- Understanding the text — questions on character and family background.
- Talking about the text — two discussion prompts.
- Working with words — metaphorical expressions.
- Noticing form — present participles.
- Thinking about language — colloquial words.
- Writing — an interview task on a role model.
- Things to do — an extension task on hero-worship stories or films.
Going Places: Themes and Key Ideas
This section is about the one big idea the story is built on. A theme is the central concern that the characters and events keep returning to, and the unit’s own THEME line names it directly: adolescent hero-worship and fantasising.
Everything in the story — the boutique plan, the claimed meeting, the canal vigil — feeds that single concern. The key ideas that grow out of it:
- Fantasy versus reality: Sophie dreams of a boutique, then a manager’s job, then acting, then fashion design. Reality is the biscuit factory that is already waiting for her.
- Hero worship: Casey is the idol. Sophie believes she has met him, her father is awed by the game, and little Derek boasts about Ireland’s chances at the World Cup.
- Class and family pressure: the father dismisses Sophie’s claims as “wild stories”; Jansie keeps reminding her to be sensible.
- Escape: Sophie longs to reach the wider world she imagines her brother Geoff moves in, and her fantasy is her way of getting there.
Going Places Scene by Scene: Where Fantasy Takes Over
This section walks the story’s arc so you can locate any event quickly — and spot the exact moments where imagination replaces reality, which is the question the whole chapter circles around.
| Beat in the story | What happens | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Street talk | Sophie tells Jansie she will open a boutique, then adds manager, actress and fashion designer; Jansie reminds her both are factory-bound. | Plants the dream-and-destiny conflict that drives the whole story. |
| Dinner at home | The father eats with his face still grimy and sweat-marked from the day; little Derek mocks; the mother works at the sink; the room is steamy and cluttered. | Shows the tired, fixed life Sophie wants to escape. |
| Geoff’s room | Sophie says she met Danny Casey in the arcade outside Royce’s window; neither had pen or paper for an autograph; Geoff is doubtful but is the first to hear. | The fantasy claim begins — with no proof surviving the meeting. |
| The match | The family’s weekly pilgrimage to watch United; United win two-nil; Casey scores, going round two defenders and beating the goalkeeper. | Casey becomes real to the whole family, which makes Sophie’s fantasy feel truer to her. |
| The canal wait | After dark she waits on a bench beneath a solitary elm; the pangs of doubt grow; he never comes; she walks home past her father’s bicycle propped outside the pub. | Reality begins to defeat fantasy — she already rehearses how she will face the doubters. |
| The arcade | “Excuse me, but aren’t you Danny Casey?” — and the text says she “pictured him again”; the conversation and last Saturday’s goal run through her head. | The story has slipped into imagination. The ending is replayed, not remembered. |
The craft signal students miss is in that final scene. Until that point the narrator reports events; in the arcade the wording shifts to “she pictured him again” — a scene being imagined, not witnessed. The replayed conversation and the replayed goal confirm it: this is fantasy, the same fantasy that has been running all along.
That gives you a method for answering “Did she really meet him?” — track the proof. There is no autograph, no witness, and the arranged meeting by the canal never happens. Then watch where the writing turns from memory into imagination.
Who’s Who in Going Places: Sophie, Jansie, Geoff and the Father
Most of the chapter’s questions test characters, so map each figure before you answer. The comparison table is the fastest way to separate the two girls, and the notes below cover the rest of the family.
| Point of comparison | Sophie | Jansie |
|---|---|---|
| Attitude to the future | Dreams of a boutique, a manager’s job, acting, fashion design. | Accepts that both girls are factory-bound and tells Sophie to be sensible. |
| The Casey story | Repeats it, adds the arranged meeting, wants it believed. | Senses Sophie is covering, but promises to keep the secret. |
| Reaction to doubt | Resents not being believed. | Worries for Sophie rather than judging her. |
| Role in the story | The dreamer — the fantasy. | The realist — the reality check. |
The father. He comes home grimy and sweat-marked from the day’s work, eats with little ceremony, and treats Sophie’s story with disdain — “wild stories”, he calls it, and warns she will talk herself into trouble. But he is not simply angry: he is quietly reverent about football, the man who “once knew a man who had known Tom Finney”.
Dismissive of Sophie, awed by the game.
Geoff. He is three years out of school, an apprentice mechanic, silent — words had to be prized out of him. For Sophie he symbolises the outside world: his motorcycle, his silences, the places he travels to that she has never seen.
She is jealous of his silence and longs to be admitted into his world; he is the first person she tells her secrets to.
The mother is mostly a silent presence, stooped over the sink. Sophie notices the incongruity between the delicate bow on her apron and her crooked back — the small grace inside a hard life.
Financial indicators (the material for the background question): the small steamy room cluttered with dirty washing piled in the corner, the father’s exhausted face after work, Geoff’s shapeless shiny jacket, shop work dismissed as badly paid, and both girls earmarked for the biscuit factory.
Going Places: Word Meanings and Expressions
This section is the reference for the chapter’s two vocabulary tasks: the inference box at the start and the metaphorical expressions in Working with words. Each meaning below comes from reading the word inside its context, which is exactly what the exercise asks you to do.
| Expression | What it means | Clue in the context |
|---|---|---|
| incongruity | Something that looks out of place | The delicate bow on the mother’s apron against her crooked back |
| prodigy | A young person of extraordinary talent | Casey, called the young Irish prodigy |
| chuffed | Very pleased, delighted | Jansie says the father “would be chuffed as anything” |
| solitary elm | An elm tree standing alone | The wooden bench where lovers sometimes come |
| arcade | A covered passage of shops | Where Sophie claims the meeting with Casey happened |
| amber glow | Warm yellow lamplight | The table lamp cast across Geoff’s bedroom wall |
| wharf | A riverside platform for loading goods | The lamps shining from across the canal |
| pangs of doubt | Sudden sharp feelings of doubt | Sophie waiting by the canal as the time passes |
The five expressions in Working with words are all metaphorical — none is meant literally. “Words had to be prized out of him” means speech was extracted from Geoff with great effort, like stones from the ground. “A tightening in her throat” is the physical feeling of sudden sadness. “Keeps his head on his shoulders” means staying sensible.
“Weekly pilgrimage” turns their regular trip to watch United into a devoted ritual. And “ghost past” describes Casey gliding past defenders smoothly, effortlessly, like a ghost.
The chapter also asks you to notice three colloquial words — informal, spoken English: chuffed (delighted), nosey (inquisitive) and gawky (awkward, ungainly). They are teenage slang in action, which is why the story uses them in speech rather than in narration.
Present Participles in Going Places: Noticing Form Made Simple
This section makes the chapter’s grammar point usable. The common failure is mistaking the participle for the main verb, so the whole exercise is about telling the two apart.
An -ing verb is a present participle. Used with forms of be it builds the continuous tense, as in “Sophie was coming home from school.” Used alone, it does something else: it reports an action happening at the same time as the main verb.
The story’s opening line shows the pattern. Sophie says something — “said” is the main action, the word that carries the tense. “Coming home from school” is what she was doing at that same moment. One sentence, two actions, no second clause needed.
Test the other examples the same way. In “Jansie, knowing they were both earmarked for the biscuit factory, became melancholy” — the main verb is became; knowing is the state she was in at that moment. In the street door line, Sophie turns in, “leaving Jansie standing in the rain” — leaving and standing are both participles adding a second simultaneous action.
The check you should always run: find the word that carries the tense — that is the main verb. If the -ing word is not carrying the tense, it is a participle describing a simultaneous action.
Common Mistakes Students Make in Going Places
This section names the chapter’s characteristic errors before you make them. The story is deliberately ambiguous and the text is full of small traps, so rushing costs easy marks.
| Mistake | Correct rule | How to check your answer |
|---|---|---|
| Answering yes, Sophie really met Danny Casey | The evidence points to imagination: nobody believes her, no pen or paper exists for the autograph, the canal meeting never happens, and the closing scene is explicitly pictured and replayed | Ask what physical proof the story gives — if there is none, and the final scene reads as imagining, the meeting is fantasy |
| Writing England for Casey’s country | Casey is Irish — the story calls him a young Irish prodigy, a long way from the west of Ireland, and the boy talks of Ireland winning the World Cup | United is the club he plays for, not his nationality; re-read the match scene and the Derek line |
| Calling Jansie unkind or a gossip | She is a realist, not a gossip — she senses Sophie is covering but keeps the secret as promised | Check what Jansie actually does: she worries, she hushes, she tells Sophie “You can trust me” |
| Reducing the father to simply angry | He is dismissive and suspicious of Sophie’s story, but quietly reverent about football — the man who once knew a man who knew Tom Finney | List his attitude to Sophie’s tale separately from his attitude to the game |
| Treating the -ing verb as the main verb in Noticing form | The main verb carries the tense; the participle adds a simultaneous action | Find the word that changes with time (“said”, “became”) — that is the main verb |
How Going Places Is Asked in Exams
This section connects each NCERT exercise block to the revision action it demands, so you revise the right things instead of re-reading the whole story.
| NCERT block | What it tests | How to prepare |
|---|---|---|
| Think as you read | Quick comprehension — whether people believe Sophie, where the girls will work, Casey’s country | Re-read the short scene each question points to and answer in one line |
| Understanding the text | Characters and background — Sophie vs Jansie, the father’s temperament, Geoff’s symbolism, family income | Use the Who’s Who section and the comparison table above |
| Talking about the text | Discussion — dreams and disappointments, the costs and benefits of teenage fantasising | Form your own view and support it with story evidence |
| Working with words | The meaning of metaphorical expressions | Use the expressions table above |
| Noticing form | Present participles showing simultaneous action | Apply the tense test to each example |
| Thinking about language | Colloquial words and teenage slang | List informal words and their plain meanings |
| Writing | Framing interview questions for a role model | Practise open-ended questions that ask for opinions and experiences |
| Things to do | Extension — find other stories or films about hero worship | Watch or read one and compare it with the story |
One honest caution: textbook contents and the examinable syllabus are not always identical. The blocks above show what the chapter asks you to be able to do; what a particular examination selects from them is decided by the current official CBSE syllabus, so check it before the exam.
Going Places: Story Recap and Unit Notes
This section is for the night-before read, when you have already gone through the story once and need the whole thing in sixty seconds.
- Sophie, destined for the biscuit factory, dreams of a boutique and stardom.
- She claims a chance meeting with football prodigy Danny Casey in the arcade — an autograph is asked for, but no pen or paper exists to make it proof.
- Her family doubts her; she waits for him by the canal; he never comes.
- The story ends inside her re-imagined meeting with him and the replay of his goal.
The chapter’s own closing notes tell you what the unit wants you to take away:
- THEME: adolescent hero-worship and fantasising.
- Talking about the text: a discussion on a subject of immediate relevance to school-leavers.
- Working with words: metaphorical expressions.
- Noticing form: present participles used to indicate simultaneity of action.
- Thinking about language: colloquial expressions and teenage slang.
- Things to do: an extension activity — relating the story to other stories or films, in any language.
Related Chapters and Resources
This listing is maintained for the 2026-27 academic session using the NCERT textbook information available to us. NCERT remains the authority for confirming the latest edition.
If you are working through the whole book, start from the Class 12 English notes hub, which hosts every Flamingo prose chapter and the Flamingo poetry notes — that poetry section includes Milton’s sonnet On His Blindness.
The previous Flamingo chapter, Chapter 7 The Interview, is a natural companion: both chapters look at celebrity, public image and the gap between what is real and what is imagined. Beyond English, the Class 12 hub gathers notes for every subject, and the CBSE notes home page is the doorway to the rest of the site.
Sources and Data Verification
This page is maintained for the current academic session against the NCERT Class 12 English (Flamingo) textbook, Chapter 8, “Going Places”, as published on ncert.nic.in. NCERT settles the textbook text and editions; CBSE settles the curriculum and the examination syllabus.
The page describes this one chapter only — not other Flamingo chapters or other Class 12 English books. Where a detail sits in the official PDF rather than on this page, the download block at the top is the direct way to check it.
Going Places: Frequently Asked Questions
Did Sophie really meet Danny Casey in Going Places?
Almost certainly not. She claims she met him in the arcade, yet neither of them has pen or paper for the autograph, so no proof survives; Geoff, her father and Jansie all doubt her; and the arranged meeting by the canal never happens.
The closing arcade scene is explicitly pictured — the text says she “pictured him again” — which marks it as imagination. The story keeps a deliberate ambiguity, but every physical detail points to fantasy.
What is the theme of the chapter Going Places Class 12?
The chapter’s own THEME line is adolescent hero-worship and fantasising. Sophie’s dreams of a boutique and stardom, and her imagined meeting with Casey, show how fantasy becomes an escape from a future she cannot change.
Why did Sophie lie about meeting Danny Casey?
Sophie’s fantasy is an escape. She is headed for the biscuit factory, she longs for the wider world her brother Geoff seems to move in, and hero worship makes the imagined meeting feel possible. She also desperately wants to be believed — being doubted is the burden she rehearses all the way home from the canal.
What are the differences between Sophie and Jansie in Going Places?
Sophie is the dreamer: she invents futures — boutique, manager, actress, fashion designer — and dresses up the Casey story until it sounds real. Jansie is the realist: she knows both girls are factory-bound, tells Sophie to be sensible, and yet keeps the secret she is trusted with.
Which country did Danny Casey play for in Going Places?
Ireland. The story introduces him as a young Irish prodigy, says he is a long way from the west of Ireland, and little Derek talks of Ireland winning the World Cup. United is the club he plays for, not his nationality.
What does Sophie’s brother Geoff symbolise for her?
Geoff symbolises the outside world — the life beyond the factory and the street. His silence, his motorcycle and the places he travels to are all unknown to Sophie, and she is jealous of that unknown world. In her vision she rides into it behind him, and her Casey fantasy is partly her way of claiming it for herself.
Reference: NCERT Class 12 English (Flamingo) textbook, chapter 8, official edition on ncert.nic.in.
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