2015-08-21
4478
Traditionally the British like to live independently in their own houses. No wonder their favourite saying is "My home is my fortress". They do not like to live in flats. In recent years the percentage of people who have their own houses has increased greatly, and more than half of all families in the country live in homes built after 1945. When you buy a house you do not need to have all the money to pay for it. You can make a loan for the house and pay it out over a period of 20 or 25 years.
Basically people live in three types of houses, all depending on your income: in terraced houses, and in detached or semi-detached houses.
The older type of housing is the terraced house. These houses, especially in old industrial centres, were arranged in long rows or terraces all standing together and with each house containing its own door, a front room and a back room on each of its two floors, with perhaps a small room above the entrance hall.
The other type of house is the detached house standing on its own land and not attached to another building. Such houses are generally more expensive to buy than semi-detached houses, which are houses attached on one side only to another, usually very similar house.
These houses have their tiny front and back gardens and offer the necessary privacy and comfort which every Britisher wants to enjoy. Traditionally they have the dining-room, the living-room for receiving guests and the kitchen on the ground floor, and the bedrooms upstairs. The number of bedrooms, bathrooms and the size of the house depends upon its price. Some houses have large gardens, especially in the countryside. Now that most families have their own cars it isn't difficult to get to work in the industrial centres, and so many people buy houses not only in the suburbs of cities, but also in the countryside
in small old villages, where they can enjoy the fresh air and the quietness of rural life. Of course, life in these small places is
quite different from life in big cities like London, Birmingham or Manchester. And it is not depressing, as it may seem to some outside visitor from a big industrial centre.
Usually the local schools organize evening
classes not only for those adults who wish to
prepare for examinations leading to
professional qualifications. Many people
attend classes connected with their hobbies,
folk-dancing, dog training,
physical training, car maintenance,
archaeology, learning foreign languages, gardening and many, many others. Some are most exciting as cave exploration, or handicraft work. With improving living standards more and more people become involved in such activities.
The local churches too play an important role in organizing the life of rural communities, helping the aged people. There are many youth clubs, some but not all of them connected with churches which carry out different social activities. Great numbers of people, especially women, spend much of their free time working together for charity, making clothes or food, or collecting money for the benefit of the various types of people who are in need due to age, or illness, or poor earnings. It is a wonderful sight to see how much is collected and brought to the churches during the traditional autumn harvest festival, or at Christmas. Some of this goad work is now co-ordinated with, services provided by the local authorities.
The British people have the experience of good organization and they work in various committees to achieve their aims in helping others. Much money is to be collected, and for this purpose they organize different campaigns. For example, during Easter week they may organize a ten miles' walk collecting money from the residents of the rural community. They report in the local press how much is collected and to whom every penny goes. These charity workers may stand in the streets with collecting boxes into which passers-by put money, receiving in exchange little paper "flags" or "flowers" to pin on their coats. Before 11th of November every year, which is known as Remembrance Day when the dead of both world wars are remembered, you will see thousands of people all over the country wearing paper poppy flowers on their coats. Other events are organized such as "bazaars" or "sales of work" with speeches made by people of social importance, such as mayors, bishops, members of parliament. In the
course of these activities people meet their friends and enjoy themselves by doing good to the public.
Public libraries which are supported by the local authorities are very well developed, and everywhere allow people to take books without any payment. The books are kept on open shelves, and the librarians are very helpful to get books from other libraries through the exchange system.
One of the most popular hobbies of the British is gardening, and the people take pride in their gardens. The front gardens may be very small, but the patch of grass is very neatly cut, with flowers and bushes here and there. Every gardener has his or her secrets of decorating the gardens. In every place they have their competitions for the best garden, and every house owner will be very proud to win the cup. Flower shows and vegetable shows, with prizes for the best exhibits, are very popular. For example, the Chelsea Flower Show is the most important flower show in Britain; it is held in May every year in the grounds of Chelsea Hospital (London) and is attended by the Queen.
Dancing and pop music festivals are very popular in the country attracting thousands of young people. For example, the Glastonbury Pop Festival held annually in summer in Somerset (south-west England) is visited by youngsters from all over the country. It continues for more than a week and the police have much work to do to keep order.
A very British reality is the fish and chip shop, also known as the chippy, where it is possible to buy a piece of fried fish and chipped potatoes known in many restaurants as French fries. The dish may be taken away, wrapped in paper, or if tables are provided, to be eaten in the shop. Some young people buy the chips alone so as to save money. American influence is becoming more widespread and the Macdonald eateries all around Britain are a vivid indication. Here you can order a big "Mac", that is a hamburger with a Coca-Cola or juice quite cheap.
The pub is another British institution, where alcoholic and nonalcoholic drinks and, usually, snacks or meals are sold. Of course the most popular drink is beer or ale, which is stronger than beer. That is why most pubs are owned by a brewery where beer is made.
The pub is a traditional institution of almost all towns and villages, and is often a place of "character" or even historic interest. It is a very popular place to visit, a kind of a club, where you can rest, talk with friends, listen to music and play games such as darts or billiards, and enjoy good beer and eating. Darts is a game in which feathered arrows, called darts, are thrown at a board divided into sections with numbers on them. The aim is to score a particular number of points, usually 301 or 501.Many pubs have a darts team which plays matches against teams from other pubs. Most pubs are open twice daily or all day, and many have a garden where food and drink can be taken in summer. Inside the building there maybe several bars. Children under 16 are not allowed to come into a pub, although they may sit outside together with their parents in the garden. All pubs have interesting names many of which reflect their long history.
Much social contact takes place in people's homes. On Sunday afternoons many families have friends or relations in for tea. Sometimes people are invited for lunch, or a cocktail party at lunch time. In summer everybody will gather in the garden having informal drinks with sandwiches and moving around talking with whoever you like to. If the weather is bad, or it is cold then the guests gather in the living-room. Dinner parties have a limited number of guests, all depending upon the size of the table. But the general tendency is that these gatherings are becoming very free and easy: you take the food and drinks at a buffet, and move around to talk to as many people as you like, and you may sit wherever you like. Just feel comfortable and at home.
English Qardens and Qardeners
Elizabethan gardens were planned almost as carefully as the house itself. All was neatness with straight walks and flower-beds bordered by tiny hedges of box to form a complicated geometrical pattern known as a "knot". Covered walks, bushes cut in fantastic shapes, fountains and lawns were all arranged with trim accuracy.
Travellers brought new plants from abroad, and the flowers which still remain our favourites today; roses, carnations, violets, lilacs. Many of them were used in making jams, soap and toilet water for the fingers after dinner.
The herb garden was of great importance to the housewife. She used herbs not only for cooking, for medicines and ointments, but also for hanging up in the rooms to sweeten the air. The gardens of some famous herbalists included from 300 to 1,000 different kinds.
Passion for gardening in Great Britain brought forward many distinguished garden designers. Among them was William Kent, the first of the professional landscape gardeners. He started work as apprentice to a coach builder in Yorkshire.
William Kent tried to make the gardens more natural by planting dead tree stumps "to give the greater air of truth to the scene". Formal flower-beds were replaced by a lake, temples, ruins and statues to form what he called "landscape pictures". His landscape plan of the grounds can still be seen in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. These "landscape pictures", however, were designed for the estates of very rich people, who could afford to pay immense sums of money for such schemes.
Kent's most famous pupil was Lancelot Brown, better known by his nickname "Capability" Brown. It derived from his habit of saying, when looking at the grounds of a future garden, that they had "capabilities" of improvement. He is the most outstanding of all the landscape gardeners of the 18th century. He was originally a gardener, unlike the others. He carried out much of the work planned by William Kent. He began as an independent designer of gardens in 1750, and a few years later a garden designed by Capability Brown was in the forefront of fashion.
Brown's greatest power was probably his management of water, and he created many "natural" lakes. The lake created at Blenheim is considered to be his masterpiece, and Capability Brown himself became nationally known as the "Landscape Architect of England".
The next generation saw a return to more contained styles introduced by Humphry Repton, a talented painter. The name of Repton has became so much a household word by the end of the 18th century that he has the distinction of being mentioned in one of Jane Austen's novels, Mansfield Park (1814). He started life as merchant, but had no liking for commerce. His tastes were for painting, poetry and music. The idea of becoming a landscape gardener gave him an opportunity to use his talent for painting.
In his garden designs he retained the wide spaces, but renewed flower-beds and terraces near the house. His changes coincided with renewed interest in individual flowers, trees and shrubs.
More modest gardens sprang up around the smaller country houses of the landowners and the new middle-class people. These gardens also reflected a growing interest in flower-beds. Topiary returned to fashion again. Formal lawns, previously ciit with scythes, became suddenly very popular among ordinary gardeners with the invention of Budding's lawn-mower in 1830. Although the task of keeping a garden is so essentially individual, for many people in Britain gardening is the basis of social and competitive relations.
Leisure and Sports
The attitude to leisure has been much influenced by the great love of the British of moving around and by the ease of travel. Industrial and professional workers have their annual holiday with pay, and so they can spend it as they like. Factory holidays are much concentrated in the period between mid-July and mid-August. Many people who have schoolchildren usually take their holiday also in summer, because British schools usually have only six weeks off in summer, from about mid-July to the end of August.
The coast is the most popular place where the British spend their annual holiday, and seaside resorts have many hotels. Food in British hotels and restaurants is quite cheap, but rooms are not. Few British people rent houses or flats for their holidays, but one of the traditional ways of spending a summer holiday is in a boarding-house, which may have a card in its window advertising "apartments" or "bed and breakfast".
In seaside towns there are whole streets of houses almost every one of which has such a notice in its window. Some boarding-houses provide all meals for their guests, others provide breakfast only. There are also lots of so-called holiday camps at the sea. Their name is misleading, because they are really holiday towns or villages. They consist usually of great numbers of small, very comfortable homes, rather like those of a motel, together with central dining halls, dance halls, swimming- pools, lots of attractions, shops, parking for cars - everything a family would need during a holiday.
Camping holidays in the proper sense of the word, with tents, are not so well developed in Britain as in France; the summer weather too often can be very unpleasant for tent-dwellers. On the other hand, caravans have become very popular. Some people bring their own caravans, pulling them behind their cars, others hire caravans, already in position. Very few British people have summer houses, of the type so
popular in Scandinavia, or of dachas so popular in Belarus, or Russia, to visit for holidays and weekends. A caravan, pulled by the family car, can provide good opportunities for holiday making.
The British love to take to new places. Many take their cars together with their tents and caravans and cross the Channel in ferries to get to some distant spot on the French, or Spanish coast to enjoy the sun and the warm waters of the sea. Some, when they are away, have problems with the local shops, especially those which sell handicraft. The British tourists lose much energy, thinking what to buy, struggling to convert the prices into English pounds and pence. When they get home again they can talk endlessly of their purchases and complain of what they were asked to pay for cups of tea or glasses of wine.
The British are great lovers of competitive sports. When they do not play or watch games they like to talk about them, and when they cannot do that they think about them. The game that is especially connected with England is cricket. Many other games too are English in origin; they have become popular in other countries, but cricket has become popular only in some countries like Australia, India, South Africa and the West Indies. So cricket continues to be a game which expresses the British spirit.
Organized amateur cricket is played between club teams mainly on Saturday afternoons. Nearly every village, except in the far north, has its cricket club. A first-class match, as played between English counties, lasts for up to three days, with six hours' play on each day. The game is thus indeed slow, and a spectator, sitting in the afternoon sun after his lunch of sandwiches and beer, may even have a little sleep for half an hour. The game is played between two teams, each of 11 people. They play on a grass field at the centre of which is the pitch (playing zone). The aim is for one team (the batsmen) to win a large number of runs by hitting the ball with a bat bowled (thrown) to them by the other team in the field (the fielders). The fielders try to send the batsmen out of the game as quickly as possible, for example, by catching a ball hit by a batsman before it touches the ground.
However, for the great mass of the British public the eight months of the football season are more important than the four months of cricket. There are plenty of amateur football (or soccer) clubs, but professional football is big business. Every large town has at least one professional football club. The players may not personally have any personal connections with the town for whose team they play. They are bought and sold with their agreement between the clubs.
Money has invaded the world of football through the football pools, which are a big system of betting on the results of these games. English league football is organized in four Divisions with 22 or 24 teams in each. Besides the League games there is also a knock-out contest each season for the Football Association Cup, and the Cup Final, which is played in May each year in London. This is, of course, the greatest event of the season.
Rugby football (or rugger) is played with an egg-shaped ball, which may be carried and thrown (but not forward). If a player is carrying the ball he may be tackled or attacked and made to fall down. Each team has 15 players, who spend much time lying in the mud or on top of each other and become very dirty, but they do not need to wear such protective clothing as men playing American football who look like ice- hockey players.
Rugby is a game very popular at the schools where they have good playing fields for that. Boys normally play rugger or soccer in winter and cricket in summer. Grass hockey is also widely played at schools by boys and girls. Schoolgirls like to play tennis.
In recent years rugby has become very popular among adults and this was quite obvious especially during the World rugby championship when England won the World Cup in the final match against Australia in 2003. The English team was greeted by thousands of fans in London, and the Queen welcomed the victors at Buckingham Palace.
Golf and tennis are played by great numbers of people. Golf courses are meeting places of people of different social background. There are plenty of tennis clubs, but every town provides numerous tennis courts in public parks, and anyone may play tennis on a court for a small payment. The greatest event in tennis is the Wimbledon international tennis championship held near London. The ancien mainly by middle-aged people. In the game a heavy wooden ball (bowl) is rolled over a smooth lawn (bowling green) in such a way that it stops as close as possible to a small white ball (jack). The game has from two to eight players, each bowling two or more bowls. The game may be played indoors in specially built halls.
Another popular spectator sport in British life is horse racing. There are many race tracks all over the country, and each of these has from two to about six "meetings" every year, with each meeting consisting of two, three or four days of racing. There are totalisators at the race-courses, but bookmakers are also allowed to take the bets of the spectators.
When there are races people all over the country bet on the results. A famous race-course is located near Epsom, where a popular annual horse race is held. The event is named after the Earl of Derby who first organized such a race in 1780. The Derby Cup usually attracts rich and well-to-do people because the tickets are very expensive. Such people also "show off" in their best clothes. For an ordinary working man a visit to horse races may be quite a rare thing, though he may make bets on most days of the week. However, he can easily go to dog races if he wants to. In nearly every town there is at least one greyhound racing track, on which races are held on Saturday afternoons and on several evenings a week after working hours. There are 89 tracks in Britain. The dogs race round a track after an electric "hare", which is really a trolley carrying a piece of meat. Bets are placed on the dogs.
Another popular game is bingo or lotto, which is usually played in halls or former cinemas. Players buy cards with rows of numbers and cross off the numbers as they are called out by a special announcer. The winner is the first player to cross out all the numbers on his or her card. Today it is also possible to play bingo by filling in cards which are published in the newspapers.
Athletic sports and gymnastics are practised at school. Jogging is becoming more popular today, but still it isn't as popular as in the United States or Canada. The same may be said about bicycle racing. On the other hand, rowing, in fours and eights, occupies a leading place in the sporting life of schools and universities which have suitable water nearby, and several regattas held mainly in summer are watched from the river banks by large crowds of spectators. Among these is the Henley Royal Regatta held every year in late June and early July on the river Thames at Henley near Oxford.
Britain was the first home of many of the modern world's most popular sports. However, the British cannot claim to be the best, even in these sports. The British pay much attention to the "sporting spirit", which means to play with respect for the rules and the opponents, to win a competition with modesty and to lose with good temper. They apply this sportsmanship not only to sports, but to a person's behaviour in everyday life.
