I want you to lay out all of your credit cards in a line, take a large pair of scissors and cut them into small pieces. Then put them in an envelope and send them to your bank, with a letter saying (more or less) “I trusted you and you deceived me. You’re got the whole into this ridiculous credit card trap, and if I now cut your cards in half, and take away your potential to tempt money away from honest people like me, maybe it will be your turn to learn what it’s like to run out of cash.”
我要你把所有的信用卡排成一行，拿起一把大剪刀把它们剪成小块。然后把它们装进一个信封，寄到你的银行，信上(或多或少)写道:“我信任你，而你欺骗了我。”你把整个人都卷进了这个可笑的信用卡陷阱，如果我现在把你的信用卡对半折，把你从像我这样诚实的人那里引诱钱的潜力拿走，也许该轮到你来体会一下现金花光的滋味了。”
As for me, I don’t want any more credit cards, no more status symbols, no more bad feelings about wishing I could show how superior I am to others. I’m not going to yearn any more for what I cannot afford or cannot have.
对我来说，我不想要更多的信用卡，不想要更多的身份象征，不想要更多的关于希望自己比别人优越的坏感觉。我不再渴望那些我买不起或不能拥有的东西。
Unit 4 Active reading (2) / P76 Look after yourself
Imagine me as an eleven-year-old girl, growing up in London. My parents, my brother and I lived in a flat overlooking the river, and while we weren’t wealthy by any means, it was an exceedingly happy and harmonious childhood.
想象我是一个11岁的女孩，在伦敦长大。我的父母、哥哥和我住在一套临河的公寓里，虽然我们一点也不富裕，但那是一个非常快乐和谐的童年。
Now, happy kids don’t know the meaning of unhappiness. They can’t imagine being unhappy, they take happiness for granted, and only want to be happier. My birthday was in a few weeks, and I had a somewhat unusual birthday present in mind which would make me very happy.
现在，快乐的孩子不知道不快乐的含义。他们无法想象不快乐，他们把快乐视为理所当然，只想更快乐。再过几个星期就是我的生日了，我心里有一件不寻常的生日礼物，它会使我非常高兴。
One day my daddy was seated at the dining room table, his forehead creased in concentration as he went through all sorts of papers, and writing out cheques to pay the household bills. Thinking about it, it was kind of a bad time to raise the matter of my birthday present: I didn’t want to alienate him with my request. My easy-going father always looked unnaturally somber when he was doing the bills.
一天，我爸爸坐在餐桌旁，他的前额皱了起来，全神贯注地翻看着各种文件，写着支票来支付家里的账单。考虑到这一点，现在提出我的生日礼物有点不合时宜:我不想因为我的要求而疏远他。我那随和的父亲在付帐时总是显得异常忧郁。
Let me tell you a bit about my daddy. He was born in St Lucia in the West Indies, one of eight children. I like to say that he ran away to the circus, learnt to ride the elephants and became a clown. But in fact, although he did work in a circus for a while, he was spotted by a film producer who hired him as an actor.
让我告诉你一点关于我爸爸的事。他出生在西印度群岛的圣卢西亚，家里有八个孩子。我想说的是，他跑到马戏团，学会了骑大象，成为了一名小丑。但事实上，尽管他曾在马戏团工作过一段时间，他还是被一个电影制片人发现，并雇他当演员。
After a few years, he decided to come to England and try his luck as an actor here. Although this was in the days when there were few black actors, he found work and appeared in a number of films, usually playing amiable servants alongside some well-known when you’re going to be offered
the next role. This made him very respectful towards money and the need to look after himself.
几年后，他决定到英国来试试当演员的运气。虽然那时候黑人演员还很少，但他找到了工作，出现在很多电影中，通常是扮演和蔼可亲的仆人，与一些知名演员一起出演下一个角色。这使他对钱非常尊重，而且需要照顾自己。
Then he met my mummy, a beautiful white Englishwomen, and married her. Mixed marriages were unusual and frowned on at the time, and I always admired their tremendous courage as much as their love for each other. He always said that when he married, he had to look after not just himself, but my mother and, in due time, the two of us children as well.
后来他遇到了我的妈妈，一位美丽的英国白人妇女，并娶了她。异族通婚在当时并不常见，也不被人们所接受，我总是钦佩他们的勇气和他们对彼此的爱。他总是说，他结婚后不仅要照顾自己，还要照顾我的母亲，到时候还要照顾我们两个孩子。
Anyway, back to my birthday present. I took a deep breath.
不管怎样，回到我的生日礼物。我深吸了一口气。 “Daddy?” “爸爸?”
He looked up slowly from his papers, his mind still absorbed by numbers.
他从报纸上抬起头来，脑子里还在想着数字。
“Hello, precious,” he replied.
“你好，宝贝，”他回答。
“It’s my birthday soon, and I was wondering if … if by any chance you’ve thought about my birthday present.”
“我马上就要过生日了，我想知道你有没有想过我的生日礼物。”
He just looked at me, his big, compassionate eyes smiling at me. “Your birthday? You’re just had a birthday!”
他只是看着我，他那充满同情的大眼睛对我微笑。“你的生日?你刚过完生日!”
“Daddy, that was last year. I have a birthday every year.” I knew he was joking, but it didn’t make it easier for me to say, “I wonder if I can have a puppy this year.”
“爸爸，那是去年。我每年都有一个生日。我知道他在开玩笑，但这并没有让我更容易地说，“我想知道今年我是否能养一只小狗。”
“A puppy?” There was a long pause. He looked at me seriously. He told me how much my mummy and he earned. Then he showed me our expenditure on household bills. Things like insurance, rent, heating … I had no idea that we had to pay all the bills. And what was left over, we couldn’t spend all at once, because we had to keep some savings “for a rainy day”, those times when he didn’t have any work.
“一只小狗吗?一阵长时间的沉默。他严肃地看着我。他告诉我他和妈妈赚了多少钱。然后他给我看了我们的家庭开支。保险、房租、暖气……我不知道我们得付所有的账单。剩下的钱，我们不能一下子花光，因为我们得存点钱“以备不时之需”，在他没有工作的那些日子里。
So I started to work out all the coats over the dog’s life. First of all, I reckoned how much it would cost to feed. I only wanted a fairly small puppy, but I knew it would grow. So I went to the supermarket to ascertain the piece of dog food.