The Christmas pantomime was the high spot of the year, although Alan himself later recalled of Christmas 'that as a small child I was quite unable to predict when it would fall, I didn't even realise that it came at regular intervals.' Back at dreary Baston Lodge, his head was buried in maps. He asked for an atlas as a birthday present and pored over it by the hour. He also liked recipes and formulae, and wrote down the ingredients for a dock-leaf concoction for the cure of nettle-stings. The only books he had were little nature-study notebooks, supplemented by his mother reading The Pilgrim's Progress aloud. Once she cheated by leaving out a long theological dissertation, but that made him very cross. 'You spoil the whole thing, ' he shouted, and ran up to his bedroom. Perhaps he was responding to the uncompromising note of Bunyan's plain-speaking Englishman. But once the rules were agreed then they must be followed to the bitter end, without bending or cheating. His Nanny found the same when playing with him. 圣诞童话剧是一年的高潮，但艾伦却不怎么感兴趣。艾伦后来回忆说，小时候我觉得这剧总是没完没了，我不知道它是周期性上演的。后来，他们回到沉闷的巴斯顿住宅，艾伦喜欢上了研究地图。他过生日时，要了一个地图作礼物，并且马上钻研了一遍。他还喜欢药方，把治疗荨麻疹的酸模合剂的成分抄下来。他有一本书，是一小本自然科学笔记，这是他母亲读的《天路历程》的补充资料。有一次，艾赛儿在给他讲书时，偷懒跳过了一篇很长的理论论文，这令艾伦生气地喊叫「你全给搞糟了！」然后跑回了卧室。不管是谁，一旦答应了艾伦的要求，就必须坚持到底，不能变卦也不能骗他。幼儿园的南尼，也发现了这一点，在跟艾伦玩的时候：
The thing that stands out most in my mind was his integrity and his intelligence for a child so young as he then was, also you couldn't camouflage anything from him. I remember one day Alan and I playing together. I played so that he should win, but he spotted it. There was commotion for a few minutes. …
我现在印象最深的就是，他那么小的时候，就表现出一种正直和智慧，你不能跟他耍任何虚伪的东西。我记得有一次跟艾伦一起玩，我故意让他赢，但他马上就指出来，并且吵闹了好长时间……
In February 1919, Mr Turing returned after three years' separation. It was not easy for him to re-establish his authority with Alan, who had a good line in answering back. He told Alan once to untwist his boot-tongues. 'They should be flat as a pancake, ' he said. 'Pancakes are generally rolled up, ' piped back Alan. If Alan had an opinion, he said that he knew, or that he always knew; he always knew that the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden was not an apple but a plum. In the summer, Mr Turing took them for a holiday at Ullapool, in the far north-west of Scotland, this time a distinctly posh holiday, complete with gillie. While Mr Turing and John lured the trout, and Mrs Turing sketched the loch, Alan gambolled in the heather. He had the bright idea of gathering the wild bees' honey for their picnic tea. As the bees buzzed past, he observed their flight-paths and by plotting the intersection point located the nest. The Turings were vividly impressed by this direction-finding, more than by the murky honey he retrieved.
1919年2月，在三年的分离之后，朱利叶斯.图灵先生回来了。然而，现在再想在艾伦面前重建威信，可不是那么容易的，艾伦已经�............