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       The metro system in London，widely known as the Tube，is the world's oldest underground railway.However，it's more than just a transport system.

       It is not unusual to see people reading thick books on the Tube，crowded at the door during rush hour.But there's another way     Londoners enjoy literature on the underground，as poems are scattered around randomly.

      The project of the poems has been running since 1986 and poems appear three times a year，six at a time.Two of the poems are always written by living poets.American writer Judith Cherniak，editor and founder of Poems on the Underground，said that most of them are chosen randomly，either from great poets or from unknown enthusiasts of English poetry.

       Conceived(构思)by Cherniak，these poems aim to bring poetry to passengers，and show a wide range of styles.They are classical or contemporary，domestic or international.

      Love or hate poetry，this project “has proved to be an excellent way of introducing poetry，with passengers often wanting to read     more，” according to the government organization Transport for London.“This has led to the publication of a series of Poems on the Underground books，which is now in its 11th edition.”

       This new edition contains poems that have been displayed in carriages over the years.The poems are classified into sections such as love，music，nature，war，and loss.

   “Our Tube system has become quite the bastion(堡垒)of British culture，”The London Insider magazine commented.

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       Blind tasting is a very strange activity. Contrary to what many imagine, it has nothing to do with blindfolds. It involves tasting a wine without seeing the label and it can deliver shocking surprises. I tasted seven champagnes(香槟) blind with a group of professionals recently. There was a shock when they discovered the wine most of them preferred carried a label they regarded as their least favorite. That sort of result is especially common with champagne, the most image­driven rather than quality­driven wine of all. But it happens all the time when wine is tasted blind.

       Because I'm interested in how wines really taste instead of how I think they should, I taste wine blind as often as I can, especially when assessing similar young wines. But blind tasting when you know absolutely nothing about the wine in front of you is something completely different. The most difficult Master of Wine exams include three sessions during which you have a dozen glasses in front of you and nothing more helpful than a printed exam paper asking you to identify (鉴定) each wine as closely as possible, and assess its quality.         

        Now that the MW is behind me, I taste wine completely blind only very rarely, and never in public. So my blind tastings these days are round the dinner table with good friends and once a year when I act as a judge, with Hugh Johnson,  in the Oxford & Cambridge wine­tasting competition. This is the most extraordinary match, always held before the Boat Race but taken just as seriously nowadays. This year's taste­off took place at the end of last month, as usual in the Oxford and Cambridge Club on Pall Mall in London.   

阅读理解

       Blind tasting is a very strange activity. Contrary to what many imagine, it has nothing to do with blindfolds. It involves tasting a wine without seeing the label and it can deliver shocking surprises. I tasted seven champagnes(香槟) blind with a group of professionals recently. There was a shock when they discovered the wine most of them preferred carried a label they regarded as their least favorite. That sort of result is especially common with champagne, the most image­driven rather than quality­driven wine of all. But it happens all the time when wine is tasted blind.

       Because I'm interested in how wines really taste instead of how I think they should, I taste wine blind as often as I can, especially when assessing similar young wines. But blind tasting when you know absolutely nothing about the wine in front of you is something completely different. The most difficult Master of Wine exams include three sessions during which you have a dozen glasses in front of you and nothing more helpful than a printed exam paper asking you to identify (鉴定) each wine as closely as possible, and assess its quality.         

        Now that the MW is behind me, I taste wine completely blind only very rarely, and never in public. So my blind tastings these days are round the dinner table with good friends and once a year when I act as a judge, with Hugh Johnson,  in the Oxford & Cambridge wine­tasting competition. This is the most extraordinary match, always held before the Boat Race but taken just as seriously nowadays. This year's taste­off took place at the end of last month, as usual in the Oxford and Cambridge Club on Pall Mall in London.