Children who play truant from school are unimaginative. A quiet days fishing, or eight hours in a cinema seeing the same film over and over again, is usually as far as they get. They have all been put to shame by a boy who, while playing truant, travelled 1,600 miles. He hitchhiked to Dover and, towards evening, went into a boat to find somewhere to sleep. When he woke up next morning, he discovered that the boat had, in the meantime, travelled to Calais. No one noticed the boy as he crept off. From there, he hitchhiked to Paris in a lorry. The driver gave him a few biscuits and a cup of coffee and left him just outside the city. The next car the boy stopped did not take him into the centre of Paris as he hoped it would, but to Perpignan on the French-Spanish border. There he was picked up by a policeman and sent back to England by the local authorities. He has surely set up a record for the thousands of children who dream of evading school.
New words and expressions 生詞和短語
record-holder 紀(jì)錄保持者
truant n. 逃學(xué)的孩子
unimaginative adj. 缺乏想像力的
shame n. 慚愧,羞恥
hitchhike v. 搭便車旅行
meantime n. 其間
lorry n. 卡車
border n. 邊界
evade v. 逃避,逃離
逃學(xué)的孩子們都缺乏想像力。他們通常能夠做到的,至多也就是安靜地釣上一天魚,或在電影院里坐上8個小時,一遍遍地看同一部電影。而有那么一個小男孩,他在逃學(xué)期間旅行了1,600英里,從而使上述所有逃學(xué)的孩子們都相形見絀了。他搭便車到了多佛,天快黑時鉆進(jìn)了一條船,想找個地方睡覺。第二天早上他醒來時,發(fā)現(xiàn)船在這段時間已經(jīng)到了加。當(dāng)男孩從船里爬出來時,誰也沒有發(fā)現(xiàn)他。從那里他又搭上卡車到了巴黎。司機(jī)給了他幾塊餅干和一杯咖啡,就把他丟在了城外。男孩截住的下一輛車,沒有像他希望的那樣把他帶到巴黎市中心,而是把他帶到了法國和西班牙邊界上的佩皮尼昂。他在那兒被一個警察抓住了,之后被當(dāng)局送回了英國。他無疑為成千上萬夢想逃避上學(xué)的孩子們創(chuàng)造了一項(xiàng)紀(jì)錄。