听播客学英语 106 银行假日
时间：2019-02-19 作者：英语课 分类：听播客学英语
英语课
Irene, who lives in Germany, is a regular listener to these podcasts. She has sent me an e-mail to suggest that I make a podcast about “bank holidays” in England and the way that we celebrate them.
Most countries have public holidays at various times of the year – that means, days when schools, offices and many businesses are closed, so that most people do not have to go to work. In England, our public holidays have the rather strange name “bank holidays”. The name comes from an Act of Parliament in 1871, which required the Bank of England to close on certain days during the year. The idea was that, if the Bank of England was closed, many other businesses would close as well, and that their employees could have a day off work. And that is in fact what has happened – the “bank holidays” have become general public holidays.
Some of the “bank holidays” are at the times of the important traditional Christian 1 festivals at Easter and Christmas. But the other holidays are not religious, they are secular 2. Unlike public holidays in many other countries, they are not on a fixed 3 date every year. Instead they are all on Mondays, so that people can take a long weekend break if they wish. Tomorrow, for example, is the May Day Bank Holiday, which is on the first Monday in May every year. We have another bank holiday, the Spring Bank Holiday, on the last Monday in May; and another bank holiday on the last Monday in August.
In Scotland and Ireland they have bank holidays on the feast days of their patron saints – St Andrew’s Day (30 November) in Scotland, and St Patrick’s Day (17 March) in Ireland. But although we poor English have a patron saint, St George, we do not get a holiday on St George’s Day on 23 April. This is not fair.
So, what do we English do on our bank holidays? We visit friends and relatives. Or perhaps we stay in bed until lunch-time. We dig our gardens and we mow 4 our lawns. We go to football or cricket matches. We go to huge out-of-town superstores to buy curtains and things for the kitchen. We do DIY jobs around the house, like painting the bedroom or putting up a new shelf in the bathroom. And if the weather is good, we get in our cars and we go to the seaside. There we sit on the sand and eat ice-creams. At the end of the day, we get back into our cars and drive home. We get stuck in enormous traffic jams on the motorways 5. The children argue and fight in the back of the car. We arrive home tired but happy late in the evening. A perfect bank holiday! It’s such a pity we have to get up in the morning and go to work.
adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒
- They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
- His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。
n.牧师，凡人；adj.世俗的，现世的，不朽的
- We live in an increasingly secular society.我们生活在一个日益非宗教的社会。
- Britain is a plural society in which the secular predominates.英国是个世俗主导的多元社会。
adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的
- Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
- Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。
v.割（草、麦等），扫射，皱眉；n.草堆，谷物堆
- He hired a man to mow the lawn.他雇人割草。
- We shall have to mow down the tall grass in the big field.我们得把大田里的高草割掉。