Text 2

I've been shocked, but not altogether surprised, when I think of the efforts the human race (adult variety) has made, and makes to keep itself from being bored on journeys. Look what happens when it crosses the sea on board a great ship. Everything is organized to prevent boredom - games and concerts, swimming pools and cinema shows - all sorts of things go on, day in day out. Airports have huge bookstalls and everybody busily buys magazines and papers to read. In the air there's a continual succession of meals, drinks and sweets brought by helpful air-hostesses. No station, except the smallest, is complete without its railway bookstall, and if you make a journey along any main line for any length of time and look at your grown-up companions, you'll find them always hiding behind their papers and magazines.

Nowadays even those who go by car can’t do without the radio - at least a lot of adults can’t. It's all part of the general idea that journeys are deadly boring, and that they have got to drug themselves with something to get through. Very few people over the age of thirty look out of the window.

Questions:

1. What are the main ideas of the texts? Are they similar or different?

2. How is modern traveling different from that of the Victorian period? How can modern people get similar sensations?

3. What makes travelers different from tourists? Do you prefer to spend you holidays as a traveler or as a tourist? Why?

4. What makes modern journeys boring? Do your think they are boring? Why? Why not?

3.3. A) Read the continuation of Text 2 and pick up all the words and

expressions connected with waiting and moving. Use them in your

sentences.

b) Answer the questions after the text.

Not long ago I was traveling by air from London Airport to Prestwick in Scotland. It takes ages to get into the air these days - three-quarters of an hour to get through the London traffic on a bus, perhaps another half-hour at the airport until the flight is ready. On some air journeys you spend as much time on the ground as you do in the air between terminals! Waiting for the flight to be announced on the loudspeaker, I looked at the passengers who were going to travel in our aircraft. They were all slumped about in chairs, idly turning over the leaves of magazines, muttering to each other, obviously bored stiff. All, that is, except the passengers who were in their teens or younger. These were buzzing round the waiting-room with a great deal of zeal - indeed, impatience - looking closely at all the maps of air-routes, working through the time-tables of the different services.

When the flight was at last announced, a boy of about fifteen slipped, quite politely, to the head of the queue, and was one of the first to board the aircraft when we were out on the tarmac. I knew he’d traveled by air before when I saw he’d bagged a seat in the rear of the aircraft, by a window that I knew was one of the best for a view of the world below. I sat down behind him. Just after we’d taken off, and everybody had loosened their seat belts, we both fished traveling atlases of Britain out of our bags.

“Mine’s the same as yours,” I said, over his shoulder. “I like following the flight; and it’s a good day for seeing the ground,” he said.

It was a good day; we flew all the way to Scotland between six and eight thousand feet, and there was not a cloud in the sky. Now and then we got up to look out of the port window, to pick up an expected town, or a wood, or a lake.

We were not far from Birmingham when the captain of the aircraft came through on one of his periodic visits to the passengers. George was looking out of the window and mumbling away on his running commentary. The captain tapped him on the shoulder. “Navigator, eh?” he said. “You seem to know where we are - would you like to meet our navigator and look at his plot (= map)?”

“Would I?” said George. You couldn’t see his tail for smoke as he scuttled forward through the crew door.

On most longish flights captain once or twice passes a bit of paper down to the passengers which gives the aircraft's speed, height, position, and E.T.A. (= estimated time of arrival); or else he announces it over the loudspeaker; or he does both. After some time a voice came over the speaker: “Shortly,” it said, “we will see Windermere to our right - I mean starboard (= the side of an aircraft that is on the right when you are facing forward). Below us now, on our port side (= the side of an aircraft that is on the left when you are facing forward), is Morecambe Bay.” It sounded rather a young voice. Sure enough, along came Windermere, a silver ribbon in a landscape of great green hills, crowned with spring snow. And the voice told us when we were flying over Sea Fell, the highest mountain in England, and showed us Carlisle and the Solway estuary, and the hills of the Lowlands, also powered with snow. Some of the grown-ups even put down their magazines for a moment and looked out of the window.

Just before the air-hostess warned us to fasten our safety-belts for landing, George came back with a beaming face. “Wizard show,” he said, “the navigator’s a good type; he showed me all his things and even let me give the position on the loudspeaker.”

Questions:

1. Where was Mr. Fisher once going to? Was he travelling by sea or by air?

2. How was the behaviour of the young passengers different from the behaviour of the adults in the departure lounge?

3. What did a fifteen-year-old boy do when the flight was announced?

4. Why did the boy choose a seat in the rear of the aircraft?

5. What did the boy do when the plane was high up in the air?

6. What was the weather like on the day of the flight?

7. Why would Mr. Fisher and his young fellow-traveller get up from time to time from their seats?

8. What did the pilot suggest George could do?

9. What places did the passengers see from above? What did they look like?

10. How did the captain communicate with the passengers? How has the system changed since then?

11. Why was George’s face beaming when he returned to his seat?