Kirkwal

Kirkwall was a town of ineffable delight. By comparison with the isolation of the Island it was all bustle and excitement.
The narrow paved streets on which pedestrians, horse drawn vehicles and cars all made their way together were lined with brightly lit shop windows. In the harbor great ships lay at anchor bearing the names of faraway places like Aberdeen and even Leith; and, most exciting of all, up at the far end of the main street, sheltered by the buildings, there grew a tree! A tree was something so exotic in our experience that whenever we visited Kirkwall we could hardly wait to rush up the street to see if it was still there. It would not have surprised us if a panther had lurked among its branches waiting to pounce down on an unwary passer-by or if brightly plumaged parrots had hopped from twig to twig.

Piccadilly

After the stir and ceaseless traffic of the day, the silence of Piccadilly early in the morning, in the small hours, seems barely credible. It is unnatural and rather ghostly. The great street in its emptiness has a sort of solemn broadness, descending in a majestic sweep with the assured and stately ease of a placid river. The are is pure and limpid, but resonant, so that a solitary cab suddenly sends the whole street ringing, and the heavy pace of the horse resounds with long reverberations. Impressive because of their regularity, the electric lights, self-assertive and brazen, flood the surroundings with a strong and snowy brightness; with a kind of indifferent violence they cast their light upon the huge silent houses, and lower down throw into distinctness the long evenness of the park railings and the nearer trees. And between, outshone, like an uneven string of discolored gems, twinkles the yellow flicker of the gas jets.
There is silence everywhere, but the houses are quiet and still with a different silence form the rest, standing very white but for the black gaping of the many windows. In their sleep, closed and bolted, they line the pavement, helplessly as it were, disordered and undignified, having lost all significance without the busy hum of human voices and the hurrying noise of persons passing in and out.

Lisbon

The cleanness of Lisbon is dazzling. In January, the steep stone streets are washed several times daily by sudden tropical showers, and Nature is assisted by street-cleaners with brooms made of twigs. The Portuguese have a green thumb. Lisbon, in winter, is brilliant with orange calendulas, blooming everywhere, together with geraniums and succulents; oranges and lemons dangle form trees in the walled gardens like bright Christmas balls, the orange matching the orange sails of the little fishing boats on the blue Tagus. The seasons at this time of year are all awry. Autumn is present in the calendulas and oranges; spring in the first wicker baskets of camellias that come down form the nearby mountains to the florist shops; summer lingers in a few exhausted petunias; winter—last January, at least—came for a day in a fall of snow, which brought the population, marveling, out into the streets to touch it. As the new year gets under way, everything is growing, all at once; even the old tile roofs have windfall crops of grass and yellow mustard, which, if you look down from a window, over the rooftops to the Tagus, make the whole city seem fertile – a sort of semitropical paradise that combines the exuberance of the south, with the huge palms in the public squares, the oranges and the monumental statuary, and the neatness and precision of the north, seen in the absence of dirt and litter, the perfectly kept public gardens and belvederes, the black-and-white mosaic patterns (ships and ropes and anchors) of the sidewalks, and the bright tiles of so many house fronts, painted in green-and-white diamond or pink roses or solid Dutch blues and yellows.
Lisbon is a city built on hills, like San Francisco, and it is full of beautiful prospects, of which every advantage has been taken. It is designed, so to speak, for a strolling tourist, at sunset, to ensconce himself in a belvedere and gaze out over the Tagus, down to the pink-and-white dome of the Basilica of Estrela, or across a ravine of buff and pink and gold building to the old fortress of Sao Jorge.

Oxford Street

Early September morning in Oxford Street. The smell of charred dust hangs on what should be crystal pure air. Sun, just up, floods the once more innocent sky, strikes silver balloons and the intact building-tops. The whole length of Oxford Street, west to east, is empty, looks polished like ballroom, glitters with smashed glass. Down the distances, natural mists of morning are brown with the last of smoke. Fumes still come from the shell of a shop. At this is now the enormous thing – it appears to amaze the street. Sections and blocks have been roped off; there is no traffic; the men in the helmets say not a person may pass (but some sneak through). Besides the high explosives that did the work, this quarter has been seeded with time bombs – so we are headed, waiting for those to go off. This is the top of Oxford Street, near where it joins the corner of Hyde Park at Marble Arch.
We people have come up out of the ground, or out from the bottom floors of the damaged houses: we now see what we heard happen throughout the night.

Dusk by Saki

Norman Cortsby sat on a bench in the Park, with his back to strip of bush-planted sward, fenced by the park carriage drive. Hyde Park Corner, with its rattle and hoot of traffic, lay immediately to his right. It was some thirty minutes past six on an early March evening, and dusk had fallen heavily over the scene, dusk mitigated by some faint moonlight and many street lamps. There was a wide emptiness over road and sidewalk, and yet there were many unconsidered figures moving silently through the half-light or dotted unobtrusively on bench and chair, scarcely to be distinguished from the shadowed gloom in which they sat. The scene pleased Gortsby and harmonized with his present mood. Dusk, to his mind, was the hour of the defeated. Men and women, who had fought and lost, who hid their fallen fortunes and dead hopes as far as possible form the scrutiny of the curious, came forth in this hour of gloaming, when their shabby clothes and bowed shoulders and unhappy eyes might pass unnoticed, or, at any rate, unrecognized. The wanderers in the dusk did not choose to have strange looks fasten on them, therefore they out in this bat-fashion, taking their pleasure sadly in a pleasure-groundthatcamehad emptied of its rightful occupants. Beyond the sheltering screen of bushed and palings came a realm of brilliant light and noisy, rushing traffic. A blazing, many-tiered stretch of windows shone through the dusk and almost dispersed it, marking the haunts of those other people, who held their own in life’s struggle, or at any rate had not had to admit failure. So Gortsby’s imagination pictured things as he sat on his bench in the almost deserted walk.

dry, baked earth

Pale, dry, baked earth, that blows into dust of fine sand. Low hills of baked pale earth, sinking heavily, and speckled sparsely with dark dots of cedar bushes. A river on the plain of drought, just a cleft of dark, reddish-brown water, almost a flood. And over all, the blue, uneasy, alkaline sky.
A pale, uneven, parched world, where a motor-car rocks and lurches and churns in sand. A world pallid with dryness, in human with a faint taste of alkali. Like driving in the bed of a great sea that dried up unthinkable ages ago, and now is drier than any other dryness, yet still reminiscent of the bottom of the sea, sand hills sinking, and straight, cracked mesas, like cracks in the dry-mud bottom of the sea.
So the mud church standing discreetly outside, just outside the pueblo, not to see too much. And on its fa.ade of mud, under the timbered mud-eaves, two speckled horses rampant, painted by the Indians, a red piebald and black one.
Swish! Over the logs of the ditch-bridge, where brown water is flowing full. There below is the pueblo, dried mud like mud-pie houses, all squatting in a jumble, prepared to crumble into dust and be invisible, dust to dust returning, earth to earth.
That they don’t crumble is the mystery. That these little squarish mud-heaps endure for centuries after centuries, while Greek marble tumbles asunder, and cathedrals totter, is the wonder. But then, the naked human hand with a bit of new soft mud is quicker than time, and defies the centuries.
Roughly the low, square, mud-pie houses make a wide street where all is naked earth save a doorway or a window with a pale-blue sash. At the end of the street, turn again into a parallel wide, dry street. And there, in the dry, oblong aridity, there tosses a small forest that is alive: and thud—thud—thud goes the drum, and the deep sound of men singing is like the deep soughing of the wind, in the depths of a wood.

Coming Home

The ship first appeared as a small speck on the horizon. We had grown impatient at the delay and cheered when we caught sight of it. For most of us this was a important event, because the small object that had come into view was a troopship. Husbands, fathers, brothers and friends were coming home after an absence of four years. We were informed over the microphone that the ship would be in the harbour in about three-quarters of an hour’s time. We did not need telling and cheered more loudly that ever.
The harbour had already witnessed such a colourful spectacle. It was decked out with flags and because the day was warm, we were all wearing gay summer frocks and looking out best for the occasion. The time we waited seemed endless; but little by little the speck took the form of a ship and , in a short time, it came so near that we could make out its name: Candia, printed in large letters on the prow.
Now the crowd of about five hundred could hardly be held back. People were jumping up and down, waving; and little boys climbed on to stationary vehicles to get a better view. As the tugs piloted the great ship into the harbour, everybody peered eagerly at the troops lined along the railing. Soldiers on board waved to us wildly, shouting out the names of people they recognized or wanted to see. The two young men in the crowd who were holding a big banner with ‘Welcome Home!’ painted on it almost fell over in their excitement to lift it higher. An old man put his hat on the end of his walking-stick and twirled it round and round until it slipped off and fell into the sea. Women were crying; others laughing; and some did not quite know whether to laugh or cry. Someone called out ‘There’s your daddy!’ and a small boy of four was held high in the air to see his father whom he had never seen before. Now the troops were directly above us. Our excitement had mounted to peak, for soon they would disembark!

Pleasure Spots

His blue-prints pictured a space covering several acres, under a series of sliding roofs
– for the British weather is unreliable – and with a central space spread over with an immense dance floor made of translucent plastic which can be illuminated from beneath. Around if are grouped other functional spaces, at different levels. Balcony bars and restaurants commanding high views of the city roofs, and ground-level replicas. A battery of skittle alleys. Two blue lagoons: one, periodically agitated by waves, for strong swimmers, and another, a smooth and summery pool, for playtime bathers. Sunlight lamps over the pools to simulate high summer on days when the roofs don’t slide back to disclose a hot sun in a cloudless sky. Rows of bunks on which people wearing sun-glasses and slips can lie and start a tan or deepen an existing one under a sunray lamp.
Music seeping through hundreds of grills connected with a central distributing stage, where dance or symphonic orchestras play or the radio programme can be caught, amplified, and disseminated. Outside, two 100-car parks. One, free. The other, an open-air cinema drive-in, queuing to move through turnstiles, and the film thrownonagiantscreenfacingcarsa row of assemble cars. Uniformed male attendants check the cars, provide free aid and water, sell petrol and oil. Girls in white satin slacks take orders for buffer dishes and drinks, and bring them on trays.
(from Pleasure Spots by George Orwell) At the Funfair

Funfair

On entering the funfair, we were greeted with laughter and music. Everywhere people were traveling at high speeds; being lifted up into the sky and dropped; driving small car and bumping into each other; shooting at targets; throwing balls at bottles, or simply standing and staring.
We were not quite sure where to begin, but on seeing a stand marked ‘ The Ghost Train’, we went towards it eagerly. When we had bought our tickets and taken our seats we were immediately carried towards a closed door. For a dreadful moment we thought we would crash into it but it slid open and we were completely in the dark. We could not understand why so many people were screaming. In a moment we realized why. A light went on in front of us and big gorilla grinned hideously at us. The train went straight towards it and at the very last moment turned away: only just in time! We barely had the chance to recover, when a skeleton appeared. It screamed, extended a bony arm and made us scream as well. A little ahead a cackling witch was lying in wait for us. The train went towards every monstrous creature that lurked in the dark, always turning away just before it was too late.
We were relieved when a door opened and we found ourselves in the open air again. But to our amazement that train did not stop. It reentered the haunted house! This time we heard strange noises and louder screams that before. Invisible hands came out of the dark and brushed through our hair or across our faces. Doors opened and closed before our eyes and monsters reached out for us. We held on tightly and shut our eyes when we saw yet another closed door ahead. This time we were sure we would hit into it. All of a sudden and brought us back to a happier world of people, lights and laughter.

glorious spring

One spring I went a walking tour in the country. It was a glorious spring. Not the sort of spring they give us in these miserable times, under this shameless government – a mixture of east wind, blizzard, snow, rain, slush, fog, frost, hail, sleet and thunder-storms – but a sunny, blue-skied, joyous spring, such as we used to have regularly every year when I was a young man, and things were different.
It exceptionally beautiful spring, for those golden days: and as I wanderwasedanthroughthewakingland,andsawtheevendawning of the coming green, and watched the blush upon the hawthorn hedge, deepening each day beneath the kisses of the sun, and looked up at the proud old mother trees, dandling their myriad baby buds upon their strong fond arms, holding them high for the soft west wind to caress as he passed laughing by, and marked the primrose yellow creep across the carpet of the woods, and saw the new flush of the field and saw the new light on the hills, and heard the new-found gladness of the birds, and heard form copse and farm and meadow the timid callings of the little new-born things, wondering to find themselves alive, and smelt the freshness of the earth, and felt the promise in the air, and felt a strong hand in the wind, my spirit rose within me. Spring had come to me also, and stirred me with a strange new life, with a strange new hope. I, too, was part of nature, and it was spring! Tender leaves and blossoms were unfolding from my heart. Bright flowers of love and gratitude were opening round its roots. I felt new strength in all my limbs. New blood was pulsing through my veins. Nobler thoughts and nobler longings were throbbing through my brain.
As I walked, Nature came and talked beside me, and showed me the world and myself, and the ways of God seemed clearer.
(from Dreams by Jerome K. Jerome)
shameless 不知羞耻的
blizzard 暴风雪
slush 雪水，半融雪
hail 冰雹
sleet 冻雨，雨夹雪
dawning 开始出现（春意）
blush 红色，红光
hawthorn 山楂
hedge 树篱
dandle 娇养小孩
myriad 无数，大量
primrose 报春花

Walk

I’ve walked to a hill mile from the house. It’s not really a hill but a mountain slope that heaves up, turns sideways, and comes down again, straight down to a foot-wide creak. Every-thing I can see from here used to be a flatland covered with shallow water. .°Used to be.±means several hundred millions years ago, and the land itself was not really .°here.±at all, but part of a continent floating near Bermuda. On the top is fin of rock, a marine deposition created during Jurassic times by small waves moving in and out slapping the shore.
I’ve come here for peace and quiet and to see what’s going on in this secluded valley, away from ranch work and sorting corrals, but what I get is a slap on the ass by a prehistoric wave, gains and losses in altitude and aridity, outcrops of mud composed of rotting volcanic ash that fell continuously for ten thousand years a hundred million years ago. The soils are a geologic flag – red, white, green, and gray. On one side of the hill, mountain mahogany gives off a scent like orange blossoms; on the other, colonies of sagebrush root wide in ground the color of Spanish roof tiles. And it still looks like the ocean to me. .°How much truth can a man stand, sitting by the ocean, all that perpetual motion,.±Mose Allison, the jazz singer, sings.
The wind picks up and blusters. Its fat underbelly scrapes the uneven ground, twisting like taffy toward me, slips up over the mountain, and showers out across the Great Plains. The sea smell it carried all the way from Seattle has long since been absorbed by pink grass – the rotting granite that spills down the slopes of the Rockies. Somewhere over the Midwest the wind slows, tangling in the hair of hardwood forests, and finally drops into the corridors of the cities, pas Manhattan’s World Trade Center, ripping free again as it crosses the Atlantic’s green swell.
Spring jitterbugs inside me. Spring is wind, symphonic and billowing. A dark cloud pops like a blood blister over me, letting hail down. It comes on a piece of wind that seems to have widened the sky, comes so the birds have something to fly on.
(from Spring by Geetel Ehrlich)
heave 起伏，隆起fin 鳍，鳍状物deposition 沉淀，沉积secluded 孤寂的，与世隔绝的altitude 高度，海拔mahogany 花梨木sagebrush 北美艾灌丛perpetual 永恒的，不变的buster 呼啸狂欢underbelly 下腹部scrape 刮擦，掠过，拂过taffy 太妃糖tangle 纠结，缠绕jitterbug 使激动不安，紧张billowing 翻腾的，汹涌的blister 水疱August

August

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