09 First day

First day In September 1925, when I was just nine, I set out on the first great adventure of my life – boardingschool. My mother had chosen for me a Prep School in a part of England which was as near as it could possibly be to our home in South Wales, and it was called St Peter's. The full postal address was St Peter's School, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. Weston-super-Mare is a slightly seedy seaside resort with a vast sandy beach, a tremendous long pier, an esplanade running along the sea-front, a clutter of hotels and boarding-houses, and about ten thousand little shops selling buckets and

第一天1925年9月，我刚满9岁，就开始了我人生中的第一次重大冒险——寄宿学校。 我母亲在英格兰的一个地方为我选了一所预科学校，离我们在南威尔士的家尽可能近，那所学校叫圣彼得。 完整的邮寄地址是萨默塞特郡韦斯顿超级海圣彼得学校。 超级海韦斯顿是一个略显破旧的海滨度假胜地，有广阔的沙滩，巨大的长码头，沿着海滨的露天广场，杂乱的旅馆和寄宿公寓，以及大约一万家卖水桶和水桶的小商店

spades and sticks of rock and ice-creams. It lies almost directly across the Bristol Channel from Cardiff, and on a clear day you can stand on the esplanade at Weston and look across the fifteen or so miles of water and see the coast of Wales lying pale and milky on the horizon. In those days the easiest way to travel from Cardiff to Weston-super-Mare was by boat. Those boats were beautiful. They were paddle-steamers, with gigantic swishing paddle-wheels on their flanks, and the wheels made the most terrific noise as they sloshed and churned through the water. On the first day of my first term I set out by taxi in the afternoon with my mother to catch the paddle-steamer from Cardiff Docks to Weston-super-Mare. Every piece of clothing I wore was brand new and had my name on it. I wore black shoes, grey woollen stockings with blue turnovers, grey flannel shorts, a grey shirt, a red tie, a grey flannel blazer with the blue school crest on the breast pocket and a grey school cap with the same crest just above the peak. Into the taxi that was taking us to the docks went my brand new trunk

黑桃，石头棒和冰淇淋。 在一个晴朗的日子里，你可以站在韦斯顿的广场上，隔着15英里左右的海水，看到威尔士的海岸在地平线上呈现出苍白的乳白色。 在那些日子里，从卡迪夫到超级马雷韦斯顿最便捷的方式是乘船。 那些船真漂亮。 它们是蒸汽船，两侧装着巨大的、嗖嗖作响的桨轮，当它们在水中颠簸翻滚时，轮子发出最可怕的声音。 在我第一学期的第一天，下午我和母亲乘出租车出发，去赶从卡迪夫码头到超级马雷韦斯顿的轮船。 我穿的每件衣服都是崭新的，上面有我的名字。 我穿着黑色的鞋子，灰色的羊毛长筒袜，蓝色的翻边，灰色的法兰绒短裤，灰色的衬衫，红色的领带，灰色的法兰绒运动上衣，胸前的口袋上有蓝色的校徽，还有一顶灰色的校帽，帽檐上方也有同样的校徽。 我的新皮箱装进了载我们去码头的出租车

and my brand new tuck-box, and both had R. DAHL painted on them in black. A tuck-box is a small pinewood trunk which is very strongly made, and no boy has ever gone as a boarder to an English Prep School without one. It is his own secret store-house, as secret as a lady's handbag, and there is an unwritten law that no other boy, no teacher, not even the Headmaster himself has the right to pry into the contents of your tuck-box. The owner has the key in his pocket and that is where it stays. At St Peter's, the tuck-boxes were ranged shoulder to shoulder all around the four walls of the changing-room and your own tuck-box stood directly below the peg on which you hung your games clothes. A tuck

和我的新餐盒，都是R。 达尔用黑色颜料在上面作画。 储物箱是用松木做的小箱子，做得很结实，没有一个男孩不带储物箱去英国预科学校。 这是他自己的秘密储藏室，就像女士的手提包一样秘密。有一条不成文的法律规定，别的男孩、老师，甚至校长本人都无权窥探你的储物箱里的东西。 车主把钥匙放在口袋里，钥匙就放在口袋里。 在圣彼得教堂，储物箱肩并肩地排列在更衣室的四面墙周围，你自己的储物箱就在你挂游戏服的挂钩下面。 一个塔克

box, as the name implies, is a box in which you store your tuck. At Prep School in those days, a parcel of tuck was sent once a week by anxious mothers to their ravenous little sons, and an average tuck-box would probably contain, at almost any time, half a home-made currant cake, a packet of squashed-fly biscuits, a couple of oranges, an apple, a banana, a pot of strawberry jam or Marmite, a bar of chocolate, a bag of Liquorice Allsorts and a tin of Bassett's lemonade powder. An English school in those days was purely a money-making business owned and operated by the Headmaster. It suited him, therefore, to give the boys as little food as possible himself and to encourage the parents in various cunning ways to feed their offspring by parcelpost from home.

盒子，顾名思义，是一个你存放你的东西的盒子。 在那时候的预科学校里，焦虑的母亲们每周都会给饥肠辘辘的儿子们寄来一包塔克食品，而一个普通的塔克食品盒几乎在任何时候都可能装着半个自制的葡萄干蛋糕、一包压扁的苍蝇饼干、两个橙子、一个苹果、一根香蕉、一罐草莓果酱或马麦酱、一块巧克力、一袋甘草杂烩和一听巴塞特柠檬汁粉。 在那个时代，英国学校纯粹是一个赚钱的企业，由校长拥有和经营。 因此，他自己给孩子们尽可能少的食物，并用各种狡猾的方法鼓励父母从家里用包裹邮寄给他们的孩子，这对他很合适。