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.

逃學(xué)的小鬼通常都難以想象。安靜地釣一天魚、花八小時(shí)在影院一遍又一遍地看同一部電影，通常就是他們能做到的了。他們都被一個(gè)逃學(xué)的小鬼整出了陰影，這小鬼穿越了1600英里。他搭便車到多佛，傍晚時(shí)分，他上了一艘船，想找個(gè)地方睡覺。

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.

當(dāng)他第二天醒來時(shí)，他發(fā)現(xiàn)這艘船已經(jīng)去到了加萊。他逃跑時(shí)沒人注意到他。在那里，他搭一輛卡車去了巴黎。司機(jī)給了他一些餅干和一杯咖啡，把他放在了城郊。

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.

雖然他很希望，但他攔的下一輛車沒有帶他去到巴黎市中心，但帶著他去了法國-西班牙交界的佩皮尼昂。在那里他被一個(gè)警察抓到，并經(jīng)由當(dāng)?shù)夭块T送回了英格蘭。他無疑為千萬逃學(xué)少年創(chuàng)造了一個(gè)記錄。