Hello everyone, and welcome back to English with Lucy. Today, we're going to be talking about
more weird British things. In particular, we are going to talk about our strange,
strange homes. Most people who travel to the UK are surprised by some of the things that they find
in our homes and in our hotels. We've got really strange plugs. Why do our plugs look like that?
I'll explain it. Why do we have carpet in our bathrooms? And why do we have separate, hot
and cold taps so that you can either freeze your face or burn your face? There is no in between.
The fun part of this video is finding out whether you relate to any of these, whether it's the same
in your country or completely different, or maybe you're British and it's completely different for
you as well. Let me know in the comment section. To help the learners of English that are watching
this lesson, I have made it a listening and vocabulary lesson. Whenever I say an interesting
word or phrase, it will appear on screen with the definition. I have also created a free PDF with
further examples. It's got every word and phrase used in this lesson plus much more. If you'd like
to download that, you can click on the link in the description box and it will be sent directly to
your inbox. Let's get started with the lesson. The first weird thing about British homes.
Now, not all British homes. In fact, not so many anymore, have this. But in my house, we do have
this. It wasn't my choice, but it is here. It is carpet in the bathroom. Now why oh why oh why
would anyone put carpet in the bathroom? A couple of reasons. Here in the UK, it gets very cold
and it's very expensive to heat our homes, carpeted areas retain more heat.
It also feels nice under our feet. It's something that you see in houses that haven't been renovated
in a while or old-fashioned houses. It is incredibly unhygienic. I think I have
mentioned this before, but I have had a situation where a toilet overflowed in a carpeted bathroom
and it was awful. It was absolutely horrendous. Let's move on to this next one then. It is
separate, hot and cold taps or faucets as you may call them in other countries. Now
more modern houses have mixer taps. We have one bathroom up here with a mixer tap and one bathroom
with the separate, hot and cold tap. Why are they different? Well, one bathroom was renovated more
recently. Whenever any of my friends come over from abroad and they see these separate taps,
they are flabbergasted. You can either burn your hands or freeze your hands. And when you wash your
face, you have to splash water in equal measures to not burn or freeze. The answer is, is that
you can fill the sink with water and then splash warm water on your face. But it's not practical.
There is a solid reason behind this though. In the old days, cold water came from a main
supply and it was safe for drinking, but hot water was stored in our attic,
in our loft. The hot water was not safe for drinking and they didn't want them to mix
at all. Who knows how long that water had been sitting in that tank? Lots of houses now still
do have those tanks in the attic. I think where I grew up at my parents' house, we had a tank
in the attic and one day they found a dead bird in it. So that's why a lot of people don't mix
their hot and cold taps. It's also something that's quite traditional to have the nice
separate taps. For me, it's just too impractical. Number three is chain pool toilet flushes. How
fancy are these? I went to a very old school and I remember we had these chain pool,
original toilets. Well I'm not sure if they were original, but they were very old.
Now you still do see the modern ones, but it's kind of a mock old fashioned style. Originally
toilets had to have their tanks mounted up high, to allow for gravity to push all the water
through. You would pull the chain. So you didn't have to stand up whilst doing your business.
Number four is push button toilet flushes. I hate this so much because whenever I have a long
thumbnail, I always catch it on the edge. Lots of other countries have these, but it is something
that my foreign friends have remarked on when they come over. They are designed to allow you
to control how much water is used when you flush. So there's a small button and a big one. The big
one is for big business. The small one is for small business. They're designed to save water,
but they are horrible for anyone with long nails. Number five, let's talk about the plugs finally.
In the UK, we have three pronged plugs and arguably they are some of the safest plugs
around. They might look inefficient, you can't switch, there's only one way you can put them
in. I know with the two prongs, you can do it either way, but these are all about safety.
In a plug socket, with two holes, a child could stick a fork in or something metal,
and they could get electrocuted. With these plugs, it's nearly impossible to get electrocuted.
This is a grounding problem, and it's longer, slightly longer than the other prongs.
When you push this into one of our sockets, it lifts some flaps that are covering
these two prongs that hold the current. This grounding prong unlocks the socket basically.
Another thing that people notice is that most of our wall sockets have switches,
on and off switches. It's red when it's on and it's white when it's off. The reason for
this is quite obvious. It allows you to switch off and appliance without actually having to
unplug it. One annoying thing about these sockets though, is that because they've got a flat back,
they are so painful if you tread on them. And I know with the other two pronged ones,
the likelihood of you treading on one isn't as high. Perhaps the thought behind this
is because they are so painful when you tread on them, they don't want people living them on the
floor up turned. So they prefer them to stay in and to be switched on and off at the plug.
Number seven, something that people, especially people from America seem to notice is that we
often have a washing machines in our kitchens. This is because we have much less space in our
houses. Our houses tend to be a lot smaller than houses in America. When I went to the
US for the first time, I was blown away by how big everything was. The kitchen islands were so
big. You'd have to walk all the way around to pick up something you left on the other side.
Especially in cities and townhouses, we don't have that much space. So we don't waste space
on a utility room, which is my dream. I actually finally have a utility room for them first time
ever here in this house. And it is glorious. But before that, I washed all of my clothes
in my kitchen. And it was very noisy when you were trying to relax, trying to cook, and you
had your washing machine and your dryer going around. And that's another thing.
We have washer dryers, which are washing machines that also dry our clothes, but I have never had
one that dries properly. It doesn't seem to do that good a job. So now I have a separate
washing machine and tumble dryer. Although I just tend to hang out my washing on a washing line.
Number eight. Sometimes we have light pull cords in our bathrooms. So if you go into a disabled
toilet, you might see a red cord that they can pull to call for help. We actually have these as
light switches in our bathrooms. And sometimes if you have one in your bathroom and you can become
so used to putting it to switch on the light, if you ever use a disabled toilet, which
unless you need to, you shouldn't, it's very easy to accidentally pull the help cord.
So in the UK, we have quite strict rules on electrics in our bathrooms.
People want to reduce contact with live electrical parts as much as possible. So you will often find
the light switch on the outside of the bathroom, not inside. But if that isn't available,
if you don't want to light switch outside of your bathroom, then you can have a cord to pull. Yeah,
we have that as children in all of our bathrooms. My mum, yeah, my mum has cords everywhere. She's
a very safe woman. I have seen bathrooms in the UK with the light switches inside.
It might be to do with distance from the shower or bath. Let me know if you're British. Tell me about
the light switch in your bathroom. I can't believe I'm asking you that, but I'm genuinely interested.
Number nine is we don't tend to have plug sockets in our bathroom. And if we do, they are often in
our lights. And I'll tell you about that. I've actually got them here in this house as well. I
think it's another more old fashioned thing. Plug sockets are not allowed in UK bathrooms unless
they can be fitted at least three metres from a shower or a bath. To overcome this, sometimes
lights would be fitted above the mirror with a plug socket for shaving. You are allowed shaving
sockets I think. I've seen those in bathrooms, but I've never ever seen a three prong socket
in a bathroom in the UK. Have you? I think it's illegal, we've got some really strict rules here.
Number ten, we don't have air conditioning. We tend not to have any air conditioning.
Some people might have it. You do find it in offices, libraries and places of work. But in our
homes, we don't have it because it just doesn't really get that hot here. We only have a couple
of unbearable weeks in the summer and then it's just back to normality. Our houses are built and
designed to retain as much heat as they possibly can for the winter. We have to heat our homes a
lot so it's very inefficient to have all the heat escaping. In those hot summer weeks, I don't say
summer months, summer weeks, the houses can get unbearable. In fact, if you look at any video
that I've posted in July or August, chances are, I've got a little sweat moustache and potentially
some sweat patches as well because my studio gets so, so, so hot. But we don't have any
air conditioning so there is nothing I can do about it. We do tend to use fans in the summer.
I've got one little bonus one as well. We don't have mosquito screens on our windows.
I know that this is a very common thing to have in countries where mosquitoes are a big problem.
But mosquitoes, I mean, we do have them, but it's not as severe as some of the more humid climates.
When I go abroad to a tropical country, I get eaten alive. I don't know what it is. I think
they can smell I'm new and inexperienced and they just ravaged me. We do get the odd mosquito,
but it's not a huge problem. So at least we've got that going for us. That is it for today's lesson.
I hope enjoyed it. I hope you learned something. Don't forget to download the PDF. It's got
all of the key phrases and vocabulary words that I've used in this lesson. Along with that
definitions and their examples. It's also got a quiz that you can use to test your
understanding of these new words and phrases. If you'd like to download that click on the
link in the description box, you sign up using your name and your email address, and I send
the PDF directly to your inbox. And because you've signed up to my mailing list, you then get my PDFs
every week automatically and conveniently. Let me know how it goes. If you'd like to improve
your vocabulary skills and your listening skills even further, then I have my vlogging channel
where I document my life here on a farm in the English countryside. And all of the vlogs are
fully subtitled. So you can replay, you can pick up new vocabulary words. You can try listening
without the subtitles. And then once again, with the subtitles to see how much you picked up on.
Don't forget to connect with me on my social media. I've got my Instagram at Lucy. And my
website, englishwithlucy.co.uk, where I have a fantastic free pronunciation tool. You can click
on the phonemes and you can hear me pronounce them. I will see you soon for another lesson.
Why do our chargers, (beep). Creates a huge problem. Got a quiz and it's got all of the
vocabulary words. It's got a quiz and I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm
literally at the very end here. Come on Lucy. Don't forget to download the quiz.