10 Weirdest Most Confusing Things About British Homes

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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 comments 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

okay 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 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 pull

toilet flushes how fancy are these

i went to a very old school and i

remember we had these chain pull

original toilets well i’m not sure if

they’re 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 these

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 know 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 prong 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 an appliance without

actually having to

unplug it one annoying thing about those

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 one

you know 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

leaving them on the floor upturned so

they’d 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 have we often

have

our washing machines in our kitchens

and this is because we have much less

space in our houses our houses tend to

be a lot

smaller than the houses in america when

i went to the u.s 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 in 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 the 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

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 you

know

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 switching of

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 a 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

are 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 meters 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 laws here

number 10

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 and 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 normally 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

ravage me we do get the odd mosquito

but it’s not a huge problem so at least

we’ve got that going for us

right that is it for today’s lesson i

hope you 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 their

definitions and their examples

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

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let me know how it goes if you’d like to

improve your vocabulary skills

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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

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listening without the subtitles

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e no air i will see you soon for another

lesson

why do our charges are suck it creates

a huge problem i’ve got a quiz and it’s

got all of the vocabulary words

uh 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

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