Kitabı oku: «Трое в лодке, не считая собаки / Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)», sayfa 5
Later we found that George was a miserable impostor.
George forced us to take plenty of socks, in case we got upset29; also plenty of handkerchiefs, and a pair of leather boots as well as our boating shoes.
Chapter IV
Then we discussed the food question. George said:
“Begin with breakfast.” (George is so practical.) “Now for breakfast we need a frying-pan, a teapot and a kettle, and a methylated spirit stove30.”
“No oil31,” said George, with a significant look; and Harris and I agreed.
We had taken an oil-stove32 once, but ‘never again’. We spent that week in an oil-shop. It oozed. We kept it in the nose of the boat, and, from there, it oozed down to the rudder, and it oozed over the river, and spoilt the atmosphere. Sometimes a westerly oily wind blew, and at other times an easterly oily wind, and sometimes it blew a northerly oily wind, and maybe a southerly oily wind.
We tried to get away from it at Marlow33. We left the boat by the bridge, and took a walk through the town to escape it, but it followed us. The whole town was full of oil. We passed through the church-yard, and it seemed as if the people had been buried in oil. The High Street 34 stunk of oil; we wondered how people could live in it.
At the end of that trip we took an awful oath never to take paraffine oil with us in a boat again.
For other breakfast things, George suggested eggs and bacon, which were easy to cook, cold meat, tea, bread and butter, and jam. For lunch, he said, we could have biscuits, cold meat, bread and butter, and jam – but no cheese. Cheese, like oil, makes too much of itself. It wants the whole boat to itself. It gives a cheesy flavour to everything else. You can’t tell whether you are eating apple-pie or German sausage, or strawberries and cream. It all seems cheese. There is too much odour about cheese.
George suggested meat and fruit pies, cold meat, tomatoes, fruit, and green stuff. For drink, we took some wonderful sticky concoction of Harris’s, which you mixed with water and called lemonade, plenty of tea, and a bottle of whisky, in case, as George said, we got upset. But I’m glad we took the whisky.
We didn’t take beer or wine. They are a mistake up the river. They make you feel sleepy and heavy.
We made a list of the things to be taken, and a pretty lengthy one it was, before we parted that evening. The next day, which was Friday, we got them all together, and met in the evening to pack. I said I’d pack.
