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1.21. A) Scan the article from a British newspaper and say what are the major

types of dwelling in Great Britain? What is the most favourite one? Why? Are there any age-related preferences among the public?

b) Divide the text into several logical parts describing a certain aspect of life.

c) Read the text again and explain what makes the Russian idea of “dom” (house/home) different from the British idea of ‘house’ and ‘home’?

d) How different or similar are the Russian and British lifestyles? What household problems can the British run into on a daily basis? Do the Russians have similar problems?

e) What household services can Russian people get in their area? How are they different from those provided in Britain?

he entrance hall is small. There is a hall-stand and a mirror on the wall. A telephone is on a special table under the mirror.

We are happy to have such a nice flat and try to keep it clean.

Houses and Homes

The English are distinctive in their aversion to flats and their devotion to rows of small brick houses. Travel from Western France across Europe to the Urals and you will see cities surrounded by modern blocks of high-rise flats. The details of architecture will vary, but all coun­tries have found that the obvious solution to cheap new housing to accommodate families moving in from the countryside or demanding improved con­ditions within the towns is to build blocks of flats.

Of course some English people enjoy flat-life, but for the vast majority of them, the basic idea of a home is a brick house with rooms upstairs and downstairs. Here lies a confusion of terms in translating them to and from Russian. The English use the word 'house' for a dwelling intended for one family. They would never say of a 'block of flats' that it is a 'house', and hence 'DOM' has no exact equivalent in English. The English always distinguish 'flat' from 'house', not because a house is grander (it may be a tiny section of a row of dwellings) but because a flat is still unusual, except in city centers, where it is unusual to live anyway. The word 'home' is much more personal, much warmer: Russian 'home' is the place where people live which they have created — its furnishings but also its atmosphere, their sense of other people who live in it, their feelings about its past as well as its pre­sent. Something of the Russian feeling about the privacy of kitchens is found in the English word 'home'.

Some of the grandest of all houses are found in the country. These are large country houses or stately homes, which in some cases are still oc­cupied by members of the land-owning families who originally built them. Many such houses are of historical and architectural importance, and stand in extensive grounds. Old or architecturally interesting houses may be designated as listed buildings by the government.

Flats are found mainly in towns, although they may also be self-contained units in converted country houses or hotels, etc. Modern flats are often "purpose-built" in the form of large apartment blocks or tower blocks, but many large houses in towns have also been converted into flats. Flats may be owned by the people who live in them, or rented from a private land­lord or some local authority. Local authorities are the main providers of rented accommodation.

The brick house is a legacy of the industrial revolution. Employers had to build accommoda­tion for the millions of workers pouring into the cities and at that time the cheapest solution was to build rows (terraces) of small houses, each with two small rooms downstairs and two small rooms upstairs. Lavatories were common to several houses and out in the back yard. The rooms were small because they were heated by open fires, not by stoves, and families tended to huddle in one room, usually the kitchen. Bedrooms were unheated, and to this day many English people find it impossible to sleep except in a cold room with the windows wide open.

As equipment improved, houses became more compact. Today houses are being built all over southern England which are brilliantly designed but tiny — four rooms, kitchen, bathroom and lavatory covering less area than many former Soviet three-roomed flats. That is the small type, and of course many houses are much bigger, with larger rooms and more of them. But essentially such houses are of the same pattern.

Today, with central heating built into all new homes, the 'two downstairs rooms' have often been knocked into one (though in large houses there may be additional small rooms downstairs). Often the kitchen area is open to this large room. The English have small halls (the climate means that people rarely wear heavy winter coats and in any case they do not wrap themselves up as the Russians do so they don't need much cloakroom space) and they often have a bathroom and lavatory together upstairs, but a separate lavatory downstairs.

Almost all such houses will have their own back garden. However tiny, this is much preferred to communal land. The English like to have their own fences, their own little garden shed, and, preferably, their own strip of land outside their front door. The British nation is known as a nation of gardeners.

In the 1960s, architects pulled down many rows of old Victorian houses with no bath­rooms and minimal facilities and put up new shining blocks of flats. Within a few years many of these blocks had become slums, hated by the people who had been moved from the terraces. Many of them have since been demolished, and few blocks have been built since. Architects have gone to semi-detached and terraced houses, each one neat, tidy and pri­vate.

Russian people have a habit of describing any­thing built before or about 1955 as 'old'. In England a house does not qualify as old unless it was built at least a hundred years ago.

If you consider homes of a British and a Russian family, it seems that there are far more interesting contrasts between Russian flat life and British house life. Most of the advantages are to the British, but not all. If in Russia you have hot water at all, you have endless supplies of it. (Many British people still find it shocking, washing up dishes under running hot water! A life time has taught them that they have to pour a rationed amount of water into a bowl and wash up in that. Even if with modern central water heating it is not so necessary. Often they don’t rinse the dishes after washing them up in the foamy water.) Even modern Russian flats often have good wooden parquet ['pa:kei] floors, a luxury in England which has for long lacked wooden supplies. Besides Russian people have discovered the art of making extremely comfortable simple beds.

B

British milkman, 19century

ritish homes have similar basic furniture - beds (double beds for married couples), tables, chairs, armchairs, cupboards, shelves (now British families are less fond than they used to be of glass-fronted shelves), lamps, radio, television, stereo, record players and, of course, DVD or CD players. People in Britain can choose their styles and materials; they can select their favourite patterns and shapes for lamps, crock­ery, cutlery, towels, linen, chairs and their furnish­ings, curtains, and materials.

Floors in English dwellings are generally carpeted with modern synthetic carpets. Kitchen floors are covered with vinyl ['vainil] or tiles. Their kitchens and bathrooms are full of useful consumer goods and useless gadgets.

Fridges are smaller than in Russia, but many families have freezers where they can keep prepared frozen food or freeze their own home-grown food. (Hence there is far less jam-making and home-preserving than in Russia.) The English usually can buy excellent kitchen knives and other tools, expensive but good-quality pans and sauce­pans, and all sorts of plastic contrivances where the Russians have wooden ones. Washing machines are almost universal for family homes; individuals can take their dirty clothes to a launderette. Tumble driers, which dry the clothes but leave them unfresh are common in America but not in Britain.

For cleaning their homes English people have vacuum cleaners, as well as brooms, brushes, dusters and all kinds of polishes and creams for dirty windows, damp, filthy baths and so on. As usual the British may not run out of detergent or toilet paper, and they may have all sorts of electrical gadgets (which sometimes don't work), but daily life has many similarities with that in Russia: sinks do get blocked, damp walls grow mould, children spill sticky food onto carpets and telephones mysteriously refuse to make connections.

Besides the above mentioned technologies and stuff used inside the house, British people can get certain outside services in their area. In Britain many households receive daily deliveries of post, milk and a newspaper, usually in time for breakfast. A milkman does a milk round, visiting a number of houses in an area. In towns, electrically op­erated milk floats are used and other goods, such as potatoes, eggs, fruit juice, etc. can also be supplied by the milkman. There is a daily postal delivery to every house, however remote. In towns, older schoolchildren can earn pocket money by delivering newspapers (called doing a paper round) before they go to school.

Older children and students also earn money by doing the baby-sitting. This and other services are often advertised on a display board in the window of a newsagent's or any small local shop. Repair men, also called odd job men, electricians, gardeners, window cleaners, painters and decorators, plumb­ers, domestic cleaners (called daily helps) and child minders (= women who look after children during the day while the parents are at work) also often advertise their services in this way. Services are also advertised in the "clas­sified ads" section of local newspapers.

Many services can be ordered by telephone and a special telephone direc­tory, the Yellow Pages, lists firms according to the services they provide. You can order a cooked meal to be delivered from a Chinese restaurant or a pizza restaurant. If you want to send a present to someone, you can arrange for chocolates, flowers, etc. to be delivered. Many of these delivery services use motorcycles.

Shops and offices in town centers provide services such as dry cleaning, shoe repairs, photocopying and the use of fax machines. In launderettes you can wash and dry clothes in coin-operated machines.