The English home

Many English families live in flats, but most live in tneir own houses. On the ground-floor they usually have the dining-room, the sitting-room, the kitchen, and the hall. In the hall there is a stand for hats, coats and umbrellas. A staircase leads from the hall to the landing on the first floor. On this floor there are bedrooms, a bathroom and a lavatory.

In front of the house they usually have a small garden, in which they grow flowers. At the back of the house there is a much larger garden with a lawn and some fruit-trees. There is also a vegetable garden where they grow all kinds of vegetables, such as potatoes, cabbages, onions and tomatoes.

Lots of people live in flats: sometimes the flat is one floor of a house, sometimes it is a big block of flats, when a person lives in one room, we call this a “bed-sitter” (a bed-sitting room): the bed-room, the sitting-room and the kitchen are all in one.

Although Britain has done much to improve the housing conditions in its country, there are two sides to every picture. One which is the face side, or the sunny side, and the other - the shady side of English reality, the slums of London’s East End and other big industrial centres, where none of the above mentioned features can he seen.

There you will not find flowers in front or behind the houses. Bad sanitary conditions, with practically no conveniences vhatsoever, no playgrounds for the children. The streets are long lines of brick houses black from soot that reminds one of the days that the houses were heated by coal. The inhabitants of East End have never known central heating/ Now instead of coal stoves there are gasheaters which the family budget cannot allow. So they only heated room in the house is the sitting-room. Rent in England is exceedingly high, so is electricity.