Christine

READING SKILLS

Read the text. Are the statements true (T) or false (F)?

1 The speakers were carefully selected for the interview. c

2 Paula is in London on business. c

3 Sam has plenty of time for the interviewer. c

4 Christine’s lifestyle in the States was better than in London. c

5 Amir moved to Britain as a child. c

/ 5

CHANGING PEOPLE, CHANGING TIMES

A Today Magazine special

‘Change is the only constant,’ said the writer Isaac Asimov, but exactly how much do we change as we grow older? As part of our series of articles on modern Britain we asked a random selection of people on London’s busy streets that very question last weekend.

Paula

Paula is smart, trendy and successful, every inch a confident and independent young professional. A loans manager in a bank not far from Cork in the Republic of Ireland, much in her life seems unchanged, but under the surface things are considerably different. ‘When I was younger I lived on a small farm near Cork with my parents, and went to school close by. I still live there now, on the same farm, still with my parents, but underneath little has stayed the same.’ While her address may not have changed, she does not feel tied to one place in the way that her parents do, and she loves that feeling of freedom. ‘Back then, people didn’t use to travel much. In fact, I didn’t leave my village until I was a teenager, but now I travel quite a lot. I love visiting places – that’s why I’m in London right now – and I try to go somewhere most weekends. I feel as much at home in New York or London as I do in Ireland.’

Sam

With his jeans, t-shirt and jacket Sam looks like a typical Londoner travelling about town, and his accent confirms his local origins. Formerly an electrician with a large construction firm and now running his own one-man company, he tells us he’s not in a hurry and can spare a moment to talk to us – but his frequent glances towards the bus stop tell a different story, as does his hurried speech. ‘Well, I’ve got a family to support these days so that’s a worry,’ he says, and he sees the parallels with his own childhood very clearly. ‘I remember when I was a kid back in the 1970s things were quite tough, much more so than today, I think. We never had any money to spare and my dad always seemed to be angry. My mum didn’t work, unlike my wife today. Now my father is like a different person, so easygoing and calm about things. My kids love him and I try to be as relaxed as he is, but it’s not easy, even though we don’t have the same kind of financial worries today.’

Christine

American Christine’s extravagantly coloured clothes could mark her out as a student but, in fact, she stands on the other side of the school desk. ‘The biggest change in my life is obviously that I live in the UK now instead of the US!’ Her choice of career was not one she would have expected in her youth. ‘You know, it’s funny but I never used to pay too much attention in school. I suppose I might have liked it more than I realised at the time, though, because now here I am teaching and I love it!’ In spite of the thousands of miles across the Atlantic she has travelled, Christine does not feel her life has changed dramatically. ‘I went to school in New York and then studied there too and a lot of things are similar here: in the States I travelled on the subway a lot, now it’s the Tube, I lived quite near the centre of New York, now it’s the centre of London and I still go jogging in the park and go to the theatre whenever I can, so I suppose I can say that most things in my life have stayed the same. That’s good because I liked my lifestyle in the States, even though I think London suits me better. I still ride my bike to work as well but one thing’s different and that’s where I ride. I can’t get used to riding on the left and I don’t think I ever will, however long I spend here!’

Amir

Tall, slim of build and athletic, 25-year-old student Amir looks like he could be a professional sportsman. A member of Britain’s sizeable Muslim community, Amir feels that relations have changed between Britain’s different communities since his schooldays. ‘Back then it was difficult being from an ethnic minority and having a different religion to most of the other kids in my class. Most of them didn’t even know what a Muslim was and assumed I was from India – most of them had never heard of Pakistan – even though my parents and I were all born in the same town as they were. We’d never even been to France, let alone Asia! I used to hear comments about me that weren’t very nice, about me not being English and so on, but I can’t remember the last time somebody spoke like that to me so I suppose how people think about these things must have changed a lot, and that’s good.’