新编英语教程第三册Unit5.pdfVIP

Unit 5 TEXT I The Light at the End of the Chunnel Text In a hotel lobby in Sandgate, England, not two miles from the soon-to-be-opened English Channel Tunnel, stiff upper lips trembled. For the first time since the last ice age, England was about to be linked to France. Id rather England become the 51st state of the U. S. A. than get tied up to there, said a retired civil servant with a complexion the color of ruby port. He nodded toward the steel gray Channel out the window, his pale blue eyes filled with foreboding. Awful place, added his wife, lifting a teacup to her lips. They drink all the time, and the food is terrible. When I go to the Continent, I take my own bottle of English sauce. We dont care much for the French, her husband concluded. But the French. ... Here a pause, a shudder, as the gull-wing eyebrows shot upward. The French dont care for anybody. On the other side of the Channel, the entente was scarcely more cordiale. In Vieux Coquelles, a village a beet field away from the French terminal near Calais, Clotaire Fournier walked into his farmhouse. I went to England once, he said, sinking into a chair in the dining room. Never again! All they eat is ketchup. A tiny explosion of air from pursed lips, then the coup de grac e. You cant even get a decent glass of red wine! Well, by grace of one of the engineering feats of the century, for richer or poorer, better or worse, England and France are getting hitched. On May 6, 1994, Queen Elizabeth of Britain and President Francois Mitterrand of France are scheduled to inaugurate the English Channel Tunnel (Chunnel for short), sweeping aside 200 years of failed cross-Channel-link schemes, 1,000 years of historical rift, and 8,000 years of geographic divide. The 31-mile-long Chunnel is really three parallel tunnels: two for trains and a service tunnel. It snakes from Folkestone, England, to Coquelles, France, an average of 150 feet below the seabed. Drive ont