单选题

What is the speaker’s impression of the country towns?

A Pleased.

B Excited.

C Disappointed.

D Disgusted.

解析：
推理判断题。关于说话者对乡间小镇的印象，录音开头便指出“这些乡间小镇很奇怪，它们并不像参考手册上所描述的那样美丽和舒适”，接着说话者以以事例具体说明这些小镇条件是多么不好。录音最后指出夜晚时小镇成为了一个spooky place(阴森恐怖的地方)。由此可推断，说话者认为小镇一点都不像自己期望的那样，因此感到很失望。
【录音原文】
　　In the evenings we go out and see what takeaway is on offer. These country towns are strange places. They aren’t like what you’d think from the descriptions in guide books. You expect them to be pretty and cosy with nice flesh air and happy people, good flesh country food, locally killed meat and free-range eggs and apples and pears from the fruit farms. The reality is different.
　　For one thing they have great sprawling industrial estates, at least one in each town and some have two. And even if they’re small, they have suburbs of little new houses. You never see any people walking about the industrial estates among the factories, but they must be there because at 4:30 or 5:00 the cars start coming out, thousands of them, they come pouring out, clogging up the roads and queuing at traffic lights. Sandor says they built those factories to stop the local people going away, and if this is true, it certainly worked. You can’t really go out in those towns in the daytime, you can’t move for people shopping, the crowds of them, though what they find to buy, God knows. Every other shop is a bank or a building society and the real shops are run-down branches of unpopular food chains and souvenir knick-knack places and stores selling sports gear.
　　Each town has about 15 pubs and one, or at most two, good restaurants where Mr. and Mrs. Apsoland could afford to eat, but Sandor and I never could in my wildest dreams. Well, Sandor’s wildest dreams, the noisy ones he often has. I never dream. Then there’ll be the Chinese restaurant and the Tandoori takeaway and the fish-and-chip shop. Only this last is usually closed by the time you want to eat in the evening. By that time, the whole of the town is closed and has become a spooky place.