Lesson 73



The record-holder



First listen and then answer the question.



Did the boy go where he wanted to?



Children who play truant from school are unimaginative.



A quiet day's 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.




record-holder  [riˈkɔ:d]    [ˈhəuldə]  纪录保持者


truant  [ˈtruənt]  n. 逃学的孩子


unimaginative   [ˌʌniˈmædʒinətiv]   adj. 缺乏想像力的


shame   [ʃeim]   n. 惭愧，羞耻


hitchhike  [ˈhitʃhaik]  v. 搭便车旅行


meantime   [ˈmi:ntaim]   n. 其间


lorry  [ˈlɔri]  n. 卡车


border   [ˈbɔ:də]   n. 边界


evade   [iˈveid]   v. 逃避，逃离