What incident began the series of traffic accidents?

We have all experienced days when everything goes wrong. A day may beginwell enough, but suddenly everything seems to get out of control. Whatinvariably happens is that a great number of things choose to go wrong atprecisely the same moment. It is as if a single unimportant event set up a chainof reactions. Let us suppose that you are preparing a meal and keeping an eye onthe baby at the same time. The telephone rings and this marks the prelude to anunforeseen series of catastrophes. While you are on the phone, the baby pullsthe tablecloth off the table smashing half your best crockery and cuttinghimself in the process. You hang up hurriedly and attend to baby, crockery, etc.Meanwhile, the meal gets burnt. As if this were not enough to reduce you totears, your husband arrives, unexpectedly bringing three guests to dinner.

Things can go wrong on a big scale as a number of people recentlydiscovered in Parramatta, a suburb of Sydney. During the rush hour one eveningtwo cars collided and both drivers began to argue. The woman immediately behindthe two cars happened to be a learner. She suddenly got into a panic and stoppedher car. This made the driver following her brake hard. His wife was sittingbeside him holding a large cake. As she was thrown forward, the cake went rightthrough the windscreen and landed on the road. Seeing a cake flying through theair, a lorry driver who was drawing up alongside the car, pulled up all of asudden. The lorry was loaded with empty beer bottles and hundreds of them slidoff the back of the vehicle and on to the road. This led to yet another angryargument. Meanwhile, the traffic piled up behind. It took the police nearly anhour to get the traffic on the move again. In the meantime, the lorry driver hadto sweep up hundreds of broken bottles. Only two stray dogs benefited from allthis confusion, for they greedily devoured what was left of the cake. It wasjust one of those days!

New words and expressions 生词与短语

prelude

n. 序幕，前奏

unforeseen

adj. 意料之外的

series

n. 系列

catastrophe

n. 大祸，灾难

crockery

n. 陶器，瓦器

suburb

n. 郊区

collide

v. 猛撞

learner

n. 初学者

panic

n. 惊慌，恐慌

windscreen

n. (汽车的)挡风玻璃

alongside

prep.在……的旁边，与……并排

slide (slid, slid)

v. 滑

stray

adj. 迷失的，离群的新概念英语2mp3下载

confusion

n. 混乱

greedily

adv. 贪婪地

devour

v. 狼吞虎咽地吃

本文参考译文

我们大家都有过事事不顺心的日子。一天开始时，可能还不错，但突然间似乎一切都失去了控制。情况经常是这样的，许许多多的事情都偏偏赶在同一时刻出问题，好像是一件无关紧要的小事引起了一连串的连锁反应。假设你在做饭，同时又在照看孩子。这时电话铃响了。它预示着一连串意想不到的灾难的来临。就在你接电话时，孩子把桌布从桌子上扯下来，将家中最好的陶瓷餐具半数摔碎，同时也弄伤了他自己。你急急忙忙挂上电话，赶去照看孩子和餐具。这时，饭又烧糊了。好像这一切还不足以使你急得掉泪，你的丈夫接着回来了，事先没打招呼就带来3个客人吃饭。

就像许多人最近在悉尼郊区帕拉马塔发现的那样，有时乱子会闹得很大。一天傍晚交通最拥挤时，一辆汽车撞上前面一辆汽车，两个司机争吵起来。紧跟其后的一辆车上的司机碰巧是个初学者，她一惊之下突然把车停了下来。她这一停使得跟在后头的司机也来个急刹车。司机妻子正坐在他身边，手里托着块大蛋糕。她往前一冲，蛋糕从挡风玻璃飞了出去掉到马路上。此时，一辆卡车正好从后边开到那辆汽车边上，司机看见一块蛋糕从天而降，紧急刹车。卡车上装着空啤酒瓶。成百只瓶子顺势从卡车后面滑出车外落在马路上。这又引起一场唇枪舌剑的争吵。与此同时，后面的车辆排成了长龙，警察花了将近一个小时才使车辆又开起来。在这段时间里，卡车司机不得不清扫那几百只破瓶子。只有两只野狗从这一片混乱中得到好处，它们贪婪地吃掉了剩下的蛋糕。这就是事事不顺心的那么一天!

(兼职编辑：张博)