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33
Read and translate the text without a dictionary.
THE MAN WHO TOOK NOTICE OF ALL THE NOTICES
My Uncle Tom worked on the railway. It wasn't a big station. Only about two trains a day
stopped there, and Tom was a station master, a chief porter, and a signal operator – all in one; in
fact, Tom did any work that came along, and there wasn't a happier man in the whole England.
The chief cleaner (Tom) cleaned the waiting room of the station every day; the chief ticket
collector (Tom) sold and collected the tickets – sometimes there were as many as four tickets a day –
and the chief clerk (Tom) counted the money every evening.
Tom ran the station very well. He was very strict about the rules. He knew what was allowed a
passenger to do and what wasn’t allowed; where a passenger was permitted to smoke and where
smoking was forbidden.
He was there for fifty years and then he had to retire. The representative of the Railway Company
thanked Tom and gave him a small check as a present. Tom was very pleased but he said: “I don't
need money, but can I have, instead, something that will remind me of the happy days I have spent
here? Could the company let me have a part of an old railway carriage, just one compartment? It
doesn't matter how old and broken it is. I want to put it into my back garden and every day I could go
and sit in it.”
About a week later a compartment was sent to him. Tom put it into his back garden, cleaned it,
painted it and polished it.
One day, about a year after Tom retired we decided to visit him. It was a bad day for a visit, it was
raining hard. We knocked but there was no answer. We went into the garden, sure enough, he was there,
but he wasn't sitting in the carriage, he was outside, on the step of the carriage, smoking a pipe.
“Hello, Tom,” – I said, “why are you sitting there, why don't you go inside the carriage out of the
rain?” “Can't you see?” – said Tom, “the carriage is a non-smoker!”
Ex.33. Go back to the text and find the English equivalents to the following words and phrases.
начальник станции; сигнальщик; контролёр; на самом деле; зал ожидания; управлять
(руководить) станцией; строгий; запрещать; позволять; уйти на пенсию; представитель
компании; напоминать о счастливых днях; не имеет значения; вагон для некурящих.
TEXT C
Read and translate the text using a dictionary if necessary.
HOW TO AVOID TRAVELING
(after G. Mikes)
Travel is the name of a modern disease, which started in the mid-fifties and is still spreading.
The patient grows restless in the early spring and starts rushing about from one travel agency to
another, collecting useless information about the places he doesn’t intend to visit. Then, he or
usually she, will do a round of shops* and spend much more than he or she can afford. Finally in
August, the patient will board a plane, a train, a bus or a car and go to foreign countries along with
thousands of his fellow-countrymen, not because he is interested in or attracted by some place, nor
because he can afford to go but simply because he cannot afford not to. The result is that in the
summer months (and in the last few years during the winter season too) everybody is on the
move**.
What is the aim of traveling? Each nationality has its own different one. The Americans want to
take photographs of themselves in different places. The idea is simply to collect documentary proof
that they have been there. The German travels to check up on his guidebooks. Why do the English
travel? First, because their neighbor does. Secondly, they were taught that travel broadens the
mind***. But mainly they travel to avoid foreigners. I know many English people who travel in
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