2 Dom

Miejsce zamieszkania, opis domu, pomieszczeń domu i ich wyposażenia

Ćwiczenie 1.

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An English Home

The English are obsessed with privacy. That is why a detached house, preferably surrounded by a large garden is considered to be the most desirable type of accom­modation. If it is a country house, it is also a status symbol. Terraced houses are very common in the suburbs, although they are frequently cramped with tiny rooms, they seem to give an illusion of privacy and are therefore more popular than flats. Blocks of flats in housing estates are commonly associated with low-rent housing for the poorest; infested with crime and vandalism, they are often dangerous places to live.

Another feature of home which English people value very much is cosiness. They try to make their houses cosy by furnishing them with old items of furniture and by having an open fire. If they cannot have a real fire they will at least have some gas flames on artificial coals in the fireplace; still the hearth is considered to be the symbol of family warmth and security.

Cosiness and privacy are also important in the design of an English home. The areas where strangers are entertained, like the living room and the dining room, are carefully separated from the private area of the family e.g. the bedrooms. The living room, sometimes called the lounge or the sitting room is taken for granted, so that a two-bedroom flat actually consists of three rooms.

The Kitchen

He followed her down the hall wooden table with a simple vase of
into the kitchen at the back of the dried flowers. On the left-hand wall
house. It was about twenty feet was a working fireplace in between
long and was obviously used as two floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. To
a sitting room, a working place each side of the hearth was a wicker
and an office. The right-hand side armchair fitted with patchwork
of the room was a well-equipped cushions. There was a huge desk
kitchen with a large gas stove and facing one of the wide windows,
an electric oven, a dresser to the which gave a view of the paved
right of the door holding courtyard filled with herbs in elegant
a collection of gleaming pots, and terracotta pots. The room, which
a long working surface with a contained nothing superfluous,
wooden chopping board. In the nothing pretentious, was both pleas-
centre of the room was a large ing and extraordinarily comforting.

A Heaven or a Hell

Jemima Barnes, her husband seizing the bull by the horns

and three young children every week and deserting

moved from west London to cities in search of the perfect

a hamlet in Somerset about rural idyll.
two years ago. "We thought it According to the Agency,

would be the best decision of most migrants moving into

our lives. We thought it rural England are not retired

would be better for the kids couples, exhausted by

and that we'd have more a lifetime of inner-city

time for each other. I'd bustle, but young, active

always been very self- people who see the

sufficient and good at countryside as a panacea for

making friends, but there's modern life and city ills.

something different about "It's part of the British

the countryside. We're so mentality to long for the

isolated here. I'm horribly countryside. We idealise it -

lonely." it's in our nature to do so,"

She is desperate to return says Susy Smith, editor of

to London. "But is it fair to Country Living magazine, who

move the children again?" moved from London to

she asks. "And London a small village nearly three

house prices have risen so years ago. British people have

dramatically recently that we always dreamed of a cottage

couldn't afford to buy back with roses round the door,

a house of anything like the but the recent rise in those

size or quality of the one we determined to make that

sold to come here." dream a reality is all part of

A recent study by the the same search for inner

Countryside Agency found peace that has led to the

that more than half the interest in alternative

population would live in the therapies and alternative

countryside if it could, while religions,
around 1,500 people are

Pytania

1. To what extent is privacy as important for Poles as it is for the English? Justify your opinion.

2. What kind of accommodation is most desirable in Poland? Why do you think so?

3. Would you agree with the opinion that Poles idealise the countryside like the British? Why? Why not?

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