[00:01.080]--- Lesson 73 The record-holder
[00:06.920]--- First listen and then answer the question.
[00:13.240]--- Did the boy go where he wanted to?
[00:19.560]Children who play truant from school are unimaginative.
[00:25.800]A quiet day's fishing, or eight hours in a cinema seeing the same film over and over again, is usually as far as they get.
[00:35.600]They have all been put to shame by a boy who, while playing truant, travelled 1,600 miles.
[00:45.600]He hitchhiked to Dover and, towards evening, went into a boat to find somewhere to sleep.
[00:53.760]When he woke up next morning, he discovered that the boat had, in the meantime, travelled to Calais.
[01:03.320]No one noticed the boy as he crept off.
[01:07.280]From there, he hitchhiked to Paris in a lorry.
[01:12.520]The driver gave him a few biscuits and a cup of coffee and left him just outside the city.
[01:20.160]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.
[01:31.560]There he was picked up by a policeman and sent back to England by the local authorities.
[01:39.440]He has surely set up a record for the thousands of children who dream of evading school.
[01:47.720]--- end