Match the words up with their meaning and give the Russian translation
| hover | to deliberately destroy a building |
| residential | extremely small |
| row | a piece of ground, especially one where you grow fruit or vegetables |
| tiny | a pattern of straight lines that cross each other to form squares |
| patch | rich enough to buy things for pleasure |
| affluent | a bridge that can be pulled up to let ships pass or to stop people getting into a castle |
| moat | reasonable and practical |
| drawbridge | to stay somewhere because you are waiting to do something or because you cannot decide what to do |
| demolish | a series of things or people arranged in a straight line |
| sensible | a deep wide hole, usually filled with water, that surrounds a castle as protection against attack |
| grid | being an area in which most of the buildings are houses |
| creeper | to give something a particular appearance or quality |
| presumably | to remove something quickly by pulling hard |
| assumption | used for referring to a place that is warm, safe, and comfortable |
| deduce from | a plant with long stems that grow along the ground, around other plants, or up walls |
| reluctance | a set of questions that you ask a large number of people or organizations |
| conceal | used for saying that you think something is true based on what you know, although you are not really certain |
| nest | a very large metal container used in the building industry for waste to be carried away by a truck when it is full |
| survey | to start living in a different house or flat |
| put a (personal) stamp on | something you consider likely to be true even though no one has told you directly or even though you have no proof |
| moving-in | to know something as a result of considering the information or evidence that you have |
| rip out | hide smth |
| a skip | lack of the will to do smth |
| banisters | made of light delicate cloth with patterns of small holes in it |
| compelled | clothing, carpet, or cloth which is very thin and almost has holes in it because it has been worn or used a lot |
| bound | old, with fibres that are coming apart |
| primary | being forced to do something |
| furnish | cloth decorated with a design of coloured stitches |
| shabby | a table with wheels used for serving food or drinks |
| frayed | feeling that you should do smth because you are expected to, or because it is morally right, even if you do not really want to do it |
| unkempt | a structure like a fence along the edge of stairs, designed to keep you from falling off the edge |
| fitted | coming or happening before other things |
| deep-pile | to provide furniture for a room or house |
| a hostess trolley | old and in bad condition |
| embroidered | built or made to fit a particular space |
| lacy | dirty and untidy |
| threadbare | the surface of a carpet or cloth, formed by the ends of fibres that have been cut |
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| naff | an extremely difficult or frightening situation |
| brag | full of problems, difficulties, or things that are confusing |
| site | being decorated with bright and colourful objects |
| broad-brush | to clean a place or building where farm animals live |
| unequivocal [ֽΛni'kwivəkl] | to put something in a particular place |
| run-down | to boast, to talk about your achievements or possessions in a proud way that annoys other people |
| eventing | a problem or action that interrupts something and prevents it from continuing |
| muck-out | silly, or lacking taste |
| festooned | without difficulty, problems, or delays |
| fraught with | in bad condition because no one has spent money on repairs |
| disruption | clear, definite, and without doubt |
| smoothly | very general and without many details |
| a nightmare | horse-riding competitions in which different skills are tested, usually over a period of three days |
| long-suffering | a difference between things |
| deflect | likely to experience something or be affected by something |
| genuinely | ordinary and not interesting or exciting, especially because of happening too regularly |
| beleaguered | impossible to explain or understand |
| crow | to say unpleasant things about someone or something that show you have no respect for them |
| mundane | to try to make a problem or difficult situation seem less important than it is |
| disparity | patient, despite having problems or being badly treated over a long period of time |
| staple | honestly or in a sincere way |
| unfathomable | honestly or in a sincere way |
| disparage | to direct criticism, attention, or blame away from yourself towards someone else |
| play down | having a lot of problems or criticism to deal with |
| play up | to talk very proudly about something you have done |
| subject to | a regular and important part or feature of something |
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| housewarming | a house joined to another house by one wall that they share |
| extension | to criticize someone severely |
| loft | someone whose job is to help people buy and sell or rent property |
| sneer at | windows or doors that have two layers of glass, so that the building will be warmer and quieter |
| censure | hit the spot, hit the mark |
| cosy | a small floor, platform, or balcony above the main floor in a room |
| estate-agent | to speak in an unpleasant way that shows you do not respect someone or something and you think you are better than them |
| be on a par | warm and comfortable, and making you feel relaxed, snug |
| traffic warden | organizing a party that you give in a house that you have just moved into |
| double-glazing | an extra part or room added to a building |
| put a finger on | someone whose job is to check that vehicles are legally parked |
| a semi-detached house | be of the same quality as or at the same level as |
| a terraced house | to happen in a way that is different from what usually happens or what you expect |
| minuscule | beginning to bend in the middle or hang down because of weight or pressure |
| token | to take care of someone or something |
| smidgen | smth you are talking about at the present time |
| may not | to remove parts of a tree or plant, for example to make it grow better |
| tend | an unexpected visit |
| prune | a very small amount of smth |
| stop for a chat | remaining after you have finished using the amount you want or need |
| in question | used to say that smth is not fairly likely to be true or happen |
| intrusion | extremely small in size or amount |
| left-over | done simply in order to show people that you are doing smth, and not because what you do has any real importance or effectiveness |
| sagging | to pause so you can have a friendly conversation |
| defy | a house in a row of similar houses joined together on both sides |
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| tut | a line of bushes or small trees growing close together around a garden or field |
| puff | an advantage or good quality that something has |
| abide by | the ability to be polite, calm, and patient in difficult situations |
| grudging | completely, often used for emphasizing how bad someone or something is |
| forbearance | not interesting, exciting, or original, and therefore boring |
| scruffy | to say smth in a way that shows you are annoyed and offended |
| utterly | a low thick bush, especially one that has been planted in a garden |
| bland | untidy or dirty |
| profusion | to follow a rule, decision, or instruction |
| trellis | done in an unwilling way |
| verge on | to show that you do not approve of smth, especially by making the sound represented by 'tut' |
| merit | a large quantity of something |
| shrub | an upright frame for plants to grow on, made of narrow pieces of wood that cross over each other |
| hedge | to almost be in a particular state |
| bog-standard | to make a judgment or guess about a situation, action, or person based on the information that you have |
| fellow | very bright and colourful in an ugly way |
| dweller | natural, not conceived |
| trendy | used for talking about people who are similar to you or in the same situation as you |
| to gauge [ei] | behaving in a way that shows that you do not think someone or something is good or important enough for you |
| rule-of-thumb | extremely fashionable, but often silly or annoying |
| garish | to notice something or someone |
| regimented | not happening frequently or regularly, occasional |
| pastry-cut | intended to be humorous and not meant seriously |
| uncontrived | someone who lives in a particular type of place |
| odd | a simple practical rule that helps you in doing something |
| to spot | organized and controlled by strict rules |
| sniffily | standard and dull |
| tongue-in-cheek | ordinary and not special in any way |
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| rambling | the main idea or most important point of smth that someone has written or said |
| huffy | strange because of being very different to other things which happen or exist in the same situation |
| gist | long and confusing |
| incongruous | angry and upset because people have offended you or will not do what you want |
Exercises
A. Fill in the blanks with the suitable words and expressions:
Conceal, reluctance, nest, rip out, tiny, moat and drawbridge, demolish, residential, assumption, deduce from, grid, sensible
1. Many castles have ______________ .
2. Does he live downtown? – No, his house is located in the __________ area.
3. They live in such a ___________ flat that there’s barely enough room for the two of them.
4. Where is the museum? – It was ______________ a year ago.
5. A _______________ solution to his predicament would be to get divorced.
6. This town was built on a _______ .
7. Do you think he’s a professional actor? – My ___________ would be that he isn’t.
8. What can you __________________ this letter?
9. His _____________ to call her clearly indicates the fact that he does not want to start building a family ______________ with her.
10. Why did he _____________ the wall when he moved in? – He want to ____________ the fact that the house is really small.
B. Answer the questions using the following words and expression:
Frayed, unkempt, primary, lacy, brag, compelled, unequivocal, festooned, furnish, fraught with
- What made you enter this university?
- What is your main goal in life?
- What are you going to do with your apartment when you get one?
- Do you like it when people wear old jeans?
- Why is it important to clean your place?
- Do you want to go to the Antarctic?
- What kind of women’s underwear do you consider attractive?
- Do you like it when people talk about how rich and strong they are?
- What is your opinion on capital punishment?
- What do you usually put on a Christmas tree?
C. Translate using the following words and expressions:
P lay down, play up, subject to, put a finger on, left-over, defy, smoothly, token, disruption, a nightmare, genuinely, disparity, in question
- Что явилось причиной остановки работы двигателя?
- Разговор тек довольно ровно, пока не пришла Марта.
- Переезд в Лондон оказался сущим кошмаром.
- Он казался действительно заинтересованным, но его телефон звонил не переставая.
- В нем заметно очень резкое несоответствие между манерами и образованием.
- Он любит преуменьшать свои достижения и преувеличивать недостатки.
- Его нежелание есть мясо явилось объектом многих шуток его друзей.
- Я знаю, что в его логике есть какая-то ошибка, я просто не могу точно на нее указать.
- Вот символ любви моей, сказала принцесса.
- Та машина, о которой мы говорим, стоит слишком дорого.
- Утром он доел оставшийся суп.
- Этот гимнаст, кажется, бросает вызов законам тяготения.
D. Answer the questions using suitable words and expressions:
- What rules do you abide by when you are invited to dinner?
- What kind of behavior appears utterly unacceptable to you?
- When was last time you were on the verge of tears?
- What were definite pluses in life of cave-dwellers?
- What label is trendy now? Why?
- How do you gauge the level of someone’s liking you?
- What is the rule-of-thumb when you are stopped by police?
- What is the gist of “War and Peace”?
GRAMMAR
1. Конструкция AT BEST переводится В ЛУЧШЕМ СЛУЧАЕ, а AT WORST – В ХУДШЕМ СЛУЧАЕ:
At best he’s a thief and at worst – a murderer. – В лучшем случае он вор, а в худшем – убийца.
TRANSLATE
We could at least paint the name or number reasonably clearly and in a position where it might be visible from the street. But we do not. Our house numbers are at best highly discreet, and at worst completely obscured by creepers or porches.
3. Конструкция THE + СРАВНИТЕЛЬНАЯ СТЕПЕНЬ 1 … THE + СРАВНИТЕЛЬНАЯ СТЕПЕНЬ 2 … переводится ЧЕМ … ТЕМ:
The more money he got the less happy he became – Чем больше денег он зарабатывал, тем несчастнее становился
The further he drove the slower his car moved – Чем дальше он ехал, тем медленнее двигалась его машина.
TRANSLATE
The more closely I researched this question, the more it became clear that the way in which we arrange, furnish and decorate our homes is largely determined by social class.
4. Выражение WHICH BRINGS ME TO переводится как ЭТО ЛОГИЧЕСКИ ПОДВОДИТ МЕНЯ К.
TRANSLATE
Which brings me to a further complicating factor.
5. Конструкция AS TO + ВОПРОСИТЕЛЬНОЕ СЛОВО переводится как ЧТО КАСАЕТСЯ, ПО ПОВОДУ ТОГО, НАСЧЕТ ТОГО:
I have no information as to why he did – У меня нет никакой информации по поводу того, почему он это сделал.
TRANSLATE
The current value of your house may be the subject of endless discussion and speculation – although current property prices, including the estimated value of your own property, must always be described as ‘silly’, ‘crazy’, ‘absurd’ or ‘outrageous’. This perhaps gives us a clue as to why value can be discussed while price cannot.
6. Глагол MAY в отрицательной форме передает идею запрещения:
You may not sell this phone. – Этот телефон продавать запрещено.
Government property, you may not use. – Собственность государства, использование запрещено.
TRANSLATE
Your own front garden, you may not enjoy
7. Слово SUBJECT часто имеет значение ОБЪЕКТ или ТЕМА:
He was the subject of many jokes – Он являлся объектом большого числа шуток
TRANSLATE
The garden-sofa sitters may be the subject of much tutting and puffing among their more conservative neighbours.
8. Конструкция TO BE SAID + INF является конструкцией Complex Subject и переводится ГОВОРЯТ:
He is said to be a good doctor. – Говорят, он хороший доктор.
TRANSLATE
Only the Japanese can be said to make a comparable effort in planting flowers.
MATCH UP DIALOGUE PARTS
PART 1 (first sentence)
| What is that round thing hovering above the city? | The carpet was threadbare. We were compelled to rip it out. | In a gist, this book describes women in lacy underwear beleaguered with love and relationship problems. | The walls of their house are covered with creepers, the hedges are overgrown with shrubs and the dweller is an old man in a red robe. |
| What makes you thing it’s a real castle and not just a house of some affluent person? | This dog in question was so tiny that I did not see it. | How do we conceal from Jenny that we broke her hostess trolley? | The survey showed that the rule-of-thumb way to live there is to abide by all laws. |
| You are utterly forbidden to put up a café on this site. It’s a residential area! | The moving-in process was fraught with difficulties, on a par with getting a job. | This gymnast seems to be defying the laws of gravity. It’s like his feet are fitted with springs! | The minuscule tool is used to gauge bicycle speed. |
| All these semi-detached houses are built in such neat rows. | Why was that building demolished? | I smoothly asked him to come to our housewarming party and he grudgingly agreed. | Traffic wardens tend to get huffy when it’s raining. |
PART 2 (reply, reaction)
| Yes, the architect did not seem to want to put a personal stamp on it. They are all pastry-cut. | I deduce from your words that the new house was unkempt, shabby and with sagging floors. | Yet the sensible decision would have been to slow down when you see people crossing the street. | I’ve seen it before. It’s a trendy device that’s primarily used by city cyclists. |
| I think you are playing down the importance of customs there. | My assumption is it’s a UFO. | Well, it has a moat and a drawbridge. | He’s unfathomable! I did the same and he just deflected! He’s such a hard guest to get! |
| I was on a verge of reading it but the way you sneered at it made it sound like a reader’s nightmare. | Well, the broad-brush plan is to blandly buy a new one and say that we threw the old scruffy one away. | I see you want to furnish everything in a Japanese style with the odd Eastern sofa thrown in. | But the estate agent fellow said that I could as long as it’s not too garish. |
| Your bog-standard English house with a huffy Englishman inside, right? | Presumably, it was so run-down that the Town Council made an unequivocal decision to do away with it. | So that’s why there are so many disruptions of car flow on a rainy day! | He’s genuinely amazing. And there is such a disparity between his talent and age! |
HOME RULES
Some of the rules of Englishness do not require years of participant observation research to discover.
Hover above any English town for a few minutes, and you will see that the residential areas consist almost entirely of rows and rows of small boxes, each with its own tiny patch of green. In some parts of the country, the boxes will be a greyish colour, in others, a sort of reddish-brown. In more affluent areas, the boxes will be spaced further apart, and the patches of green attached to them will be larger. But the principle will be clear: the English all want to live in their own private little box with their own private little green bit.
THE MOAT-AND-DRAWBRIDGE RULE
What you cannot see from your helicopter, you will learn as soon as you try to visit an English home. You may have the address and a map, but you will have great difficulty in finding the house you are looking for.
We could not, even if we wanted to, demolish and re-design our muddled towns on a ‘sensible’ American grid system – but if we wanted to make it easier for others to find our house, we could at least paint the name or number reasonably clearly and in a position where it might be visible from the street.
But we do not. Our house numbers are at best highly discreet, and at worst completely obscured by creepers or porches, or even left off altogether, presumably on the assumption that our number may be deduced from those of our immediate neighbours.
Apart from reminding me that there is an element of typically English reserve in our reluctance to display our house numbers, as well as a fixation with privacy, my initial taxi-driver interviews were not terribly helpful, but I persisted, and eventually one gave a succinct and astute response. He explained: ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle, right? He can’t actually have the moat and drawbridge, but he can make it bloody difficult to get to’. From then on, I thought of the English practice of concealing our house numbers as ‘the moat-and-drawbridge rule’.
NESTBUILDING RULES
We are a nation of nestbuilders. Almost the entire population is involved in DIY, at least to some degree. In a survey conducted by some of my colleagues about fifteen years ago, only two per cent of English males and 12 per cent of females said that they never did any DIY.
The Territorial-marking Rule
The most common motive for DIYing among our car-park sample of typical nestbuilders was that of ‘putting a personal stamp on the place’. This is clearly understood as an unwritten rule of home ownership, and a central element of the moving-in ritual, often involving the destruction of any evidence of the previous owner’s territorial marking. ‘You’ve got to rip something out when you move in,’ one young man explained. ‘It’s all part of the move, isn’t it?’
He was right. Watch almost any residential street in England over a period of time, and you will notice that shortly after a For Sale sign comes down, a skip appears, to be filled with often perfectly serviceable bits of ripped-out kitchen or bathroom, along with ripped-out carpets, cupboards, fireplace-surrounds, shelves, tiles, banisters, doors and even walls and ceilings.
This is a ‘rule’ in a stronger sense than an observable regularity of behaviour: this kind of obsessive territorial marking is, for the majority of English people, an obligation, something we feel compelled, duty-bound to do: ‘You’ve got to rip something out . . .’
CLASS RULES
The English obsession with home-improvements is not just about territorial marking, of course. It is also about self-expression in a wider sense: your home is not just your territory, it is your primary expression of your identity. Or at least that is how we like to think of it.
The more closely I researched this question, the more it became clear that the way in which we arrange, furnish and decorate our homes is largely determined by social class. This has little or nothing to do with wealth. Upper-class and upper-middle-class homes tend to be shabby, frayed and unkempt in a way no middle-middle or lower-middle would tolerate, and the homes of the wealthiest working-class nouveaux-riches are full of extremely expensive items that the uppers and upper-middles regard as the height of vulgarity.
In the homes of the middle-middles and below, the ‘lounge’ (as they call it) is likely to have a fitted carpet (among the older working classes, this may be a patterned carpet; among nouveaux-riches, deep-pile). The higher castes prefer bare floorboards, often part-covered with old Persian carpets or rugs.
The middle-middle ‘lounge’ might have a cocktail cabinet, and their dining room a hostess trolley. The contents of lower-middle and some upper-working ‘front rooms’ will often be obscured by net curtains but they are likely to be dominated by large television sets and, among the older generations, may boast embroidered or lacy covers on the arms of chairs and carefully displayed ‘collections’ of small objects (spoons, glass animals, Spanish dolls, figurines) from package holidays or mail-order catalogues.
Matching and Newness Rules
The lower-middle and working-class lavatories, which they call toilets, may have matching coloured loos and basins, which they call bathroom suites, and even matching coloured loo paper. Those of the upper-middles and above will almost always be plain white, although you will sometimes see a wooden loo seat.
At the highest and lowest ends of the scale (upper-middle and above, lower-working and below) you will find old, threadbare and mismatched furniture, while the classes in between favour brand-new ‘suites’ of matching ‘settees’ and armchairs, ‘sets’ of matching dining tables and chairs, and yet more ‘suites’ of bedroom furniture with matching bedspreads, cushions and curtains.
In fact, an English person’s social class can be gauged immediately from his or her attitude to expensive brand-new furniture: if you think it is ‘posh’, you are no higher than middle-middle at best; if you think it is ‘naff’, you are upper-middle or above.
The Brag-wall Rule
Another helpful class-indicator is the siting of what Americans would call your ‘brag wall’. In which room of your house do you display prestigious awards you have won, or photographs of yourself shaking hands with famous people? If you are middle-middle or below, these items will be proudly on show in your sitting room or entrance hall or some other very prominent place. For the upper-middles and above, however, the only acceptable place to exhibit such things is the downstairs loo.
The Satellite-dish Rule
From the outside of an English house (…) you can make a quick broad-brush class assessment based on the presence (lower class) or absence (higher class) of a satellite dish.
… A house with a satellite dish can be classified at the lower end of the social scale until proven otherwise by the presence of unequivocal upper-middle or upper-class features.
The Eccentricity Clause
Which brings me to a further complicating factor: taste is often judged, in social terms, not by the deed but by the doer. If someone is securely established as a member of a particular class, his or her house may feature a number of exceptions to the rules I have mentioned without any danger of reclassification downwards or upwards.
I had a friend of impeccable working-class credentials – a school cleaner, living on a run-down council estate – who had a passion for the upper-class equestrian sport of eventing (also known as Horse Trials, and also, incidentally, favoured by Princess Anne). She kept a horse (free in return for mucking-out) at a nearby riding school, and her council-house kitchen was festooned with rosettes and photographs of herself competing in local hunter-trials and one-day events. Her working-class friends and neighbours accepted her ‘posh’ horsey doings and decorations as an innocuous quirk, a somewhat eccentric hobby which in no way affected her status as their social equal.
HOUSE-TALK RULES
Whatever your social class, there are rules governing not only what you must do when you move into a house, but also how you should talk about it – or rather, to be more precise, how you should moan about it.
The ‘Nightmare’ Rule
When talking about your house-move, it must always be described as traumatic, fraught with difficulty and disruption, even if in fact the process was completed smoothly and without noticeable stress. This rule applies to the initial house-hunting, the purchase of the house, the move itself, any DIY undertaken upon moving in, and ‘having the builders in’: it is universally understood that all of these are ‘a nightmare’.
There is a modesty-rule implied here as well. The more grand or desirable your new residence, the more you must emphasize the troubles, inconveniences and ‘nightmares’ involved in its acquisition and improvement.
Done well, with just the right air of long-suffering humour, this kind of English moaning can be remarkably convincing, and highly effective in deflecting envy. I have found myself sympathizing – genuinely sympathizing – with the beleaguered new owners of just such bijou cottages and grand châteaux.
At one level, this ritual moaning is of course an indirect boast – an excuse to talk about one’s new property and convey its attractions without appearing to crow. At the same time, however, it can also be seen as another manifestation of English ‘polite egalitarianism’, a less invidious form of hypocrisy. The moaners, by emphasising the mundane practical details and difficulties of home-buying or moving, are focusing on problems they and their listeners have in common, matters with which we can all identify, and politely deflecting attention from any potentially embarrassing disparity in wealth or status.
Money-talk Rules
Similar modesty rules apply to the discussion of house prices, compounded by the usual English squeamishness about money-talk. Although conversations about house prices have become a staple at middle-class dinner parties, they are conducted in accordance with a delicate etiquette. It is absolutely forbidden to ask directly what someone paid for their house (or indeed any item in their house): this is almost as unforgivably rude as asking them what they earn.
The current value of your house, for some unfathomable reason, is a different matter, and may be the subject of endless discussion and speculation – although current property prices, including the estimated value of your own property, must always be described as ‘silly’, ‘crazy’, ‘absurd’ or ‘outrageous’. This perhaps gives us a clue as to why value can be discussed while price cannot: it seems that the current value of a house is regarded as a matter entirely outside our control, rather like the weather, while the price actually paid for a house is a clear indicator of a person’s financial status.
Improvement-talk Rules
Whatever your class or financial status, and whatever the value of the house you are moving into, it is customary to disparage the taste of the previous occupant. If you do not have the time, skill or funds necessary to rip out all evidence of the former owner’s bad taste, you must, when showing friends around your new house, sigh deeply, roll your eyes or grimace and say: ‘Well, it’s not what we would have chosen, obviously, but we’ll just have to live with it for the moment,’ or, more succinctly, ‘We haven’t done this room yet.’
When showing visitors the results of your DIY efforts, or talking about your home-improvements at a party or in the pub, a strict modesty rule applies. Even if you are highly skilled, you must always play down your achievements, and if possible play up your most embarrassing mistakes and blunders.
Class Variations in House-talk Rules
House-talk, like everything else in England, is also subject to class rules. Unless you have just recently moved in and are ‘housewarming’, or happen to live in a particularly odd or unusual house (such as a converted lighthouse or church), it is considered rather lower-class to give visitors guided tours, or to invite them to inspect your new bathroom, kitchen extension, loft conversion or recently re-decorated ‘front room’.
Unlike the higher castes, however, these modest middles will not be offended by praise, although it is generally advisable to be vague rather than specific in your compliments. The English tend to be terribly touchy about their homes, and if you are too precise, there is always the danger of praising the wrong aspect of their latest improvement, or praising it in the wrong terms – calling a room ‘cosy’ or ‘cheerful’, say, when your hosts were aiming for an impression of stylish elegance. It is best to stick to generic expressions of approbation such as ‘lovely’ or ‘very nice’ unless you know the people well enough to be more explicit.
The Awful Estate-agent Rule
This extreme touchiness, evidence of the extent to which our identity is bound up with our homes, helps to explain the universal and apparently quite irrational English dislike of estate agents. You will rarely hear a good word spoken about estate agents in this country: even people who have never had any dealings with them invariably speak of them with contempt. There is a clear unwritten rule to the effect that estate agents must be constantly mocked, sneered at, censured and abused. They are on a par with traffic wardens and double-glazing salesmen – but while the offences of traffic wardens and salesmen are obvious, I found that no-one could quite put a finger on exactly what estate agents do to deserve their vilification.
GARDEN RULES
However small, the green bit is at least as important as the box. Tiny scraps of land, which almost anywhere else in the world would be regarded as too insignificant to bother with, are treated as though they were grand country estates. Our moats and drawbridges may be imaginary, but every Englishman’s castle has its miniature ‘grounds’. Take a typical, undistinguished suburban or ‘residental-area’ street, with the usual two rows of smallish, nondescript semi-detached or terraced houses – the kind of street in which the vast majority of English people live. Each house will usually have a minuscule patch of garden at the front, and a larger green bit at the back. In slightly more affluent areas, the patch at the front will be a little bigger, and the house set a few feet further back from the road. In less well-off areas, the front patch will shrink to a token tiny strip, although there may still be a front gate, a path to take you the one or two steps to the front door, and a plant or smidgen of greenery of some sort on either side of the path to prove that it still qualifies as a ‘front garden’.
‘Your Own Front Garden, You May Not Enjoy’
The front garden is likely to be more carefully arranged, designed and tended than the back garden. This is not because the English spend more time enjoying their front gardens. Quite the opposite: the English spend no time at all in their front gardens, except the time necessary to weed, water, tend and keep them looking ‘nice’.
This is one of the most important garden-rules: we never, ever sit in our front gardens. Even when there is plenty of room in a front garden for a garden seat of some sort, you will never see one.
Front gardens, however pretty and pleasant they might be to relax in, are for display only; they are for others to enjoy and admire, not their owners.
The Front-garden Social-availability Rule (and ‘Sponge’ Methodology)
If you do spend time squatting, bending and pruning in your front garden, you may find that this is one of the very few occasions on which your neighbours will speak to you. A person busy in his or her front garden is regarded as socially ‘available’, and neighbours who would never dream of knocking on your front door may stop for a chat (almost invariably beginning with a comment on the weather or a polite remark about your garden). In fact, I know of many streets in which people who have an important matter to discuss with a neighbour (such as an application for planning permission) or a message to convey, will wait patiently – sometimes for days or weeks – until they spot the neighbour in question working in his front garden, rather than committing the ‘intrusion’ of actually ringing his doorbell.
The Counter-culture Garden-sofa Exception
There is just one minority exception to the ‘your own front garden, you may not enjoy’ principle, and as usual, it is one that proves the rule. The front gardens of left-over hippies, New Agers and various other ‘counter-culture’ types may sometimes boast an old, sagging sofa, on which the inhabitants will sit, self-consciously defying convention and actually enjoying their front garden (which, also in defiance of convention, will be unkempt and overgrown).
The garden-sofa sitters may be the subject of much tutting and puffing among their more conservative neighbours, but in accordance with the traditional English rules of moaning, the curtain-twitchers will usually just air their grievances to each other, rather than actually confronting the offenders. In fact, as long as the sofa-sitters abide by their own clearly defined set of counter-culture rules and conventions, and do not do anything original or startling – such as joining the local Women’s Institute or taking up golf – they will generally be tolerated, with that sort of grudging, apathetic forbearance for which the English seem to have a peculiar talent.
The Back-garden Formula
The back garden, the one we are all allowed to enjoy, is often relatively scruffy, or at least utterly bland, and only very rarely the pretty, colourful, cottagey profusion of roses, hollyhocks, pansies, trellises, little gates and whatnot that everyone thinks of as a typical English garden. It is verging on blasphemous to say this, but I have to point out that the truly typical English back garden is actually a fairly dull rectangle of grass, with some sort of paved ‘patio’ at one end and a shed of no particular aesthetic or architectural merit at the other, a path down one side and perhaps a bed of rather unimaginatively arranged shrubs and flowers along the other side.
Tourists are unlikely ever to see an ordinary, typical English back garden. These very private places are hidden from the street behind our houses, and even hidden from our neighbours by high walls, hedges or fences.
And it must also be said that even the average, bog-standard English garden represents considerably more effort than most other nations typically invest in their green bits. The average American garden, for example, does not even deserve the name, and is rightly called a ‘yard’, and most ordinary European gardens are also just patches of turf. Only the Japanese – our fellow crowded-small-island-dwellers – can be said to make a comparable effort, and it is perhaps no coincidence that the more trendy, design-conscious English gardeners are often influenced by Japanese styles (witness the current fashion for wooden decking, pebbles and water-features).
Class Indicators and the Eccentricity Clause
Our taste is influenced by what we see in the gardens of our friends, family and neighbours. In England, you grow up learning to find some flowers and arrangements of flowers ‘pretty’ or ‘tasteful’ and others ‘ugly’ or ‘vulgar’.
(However) garden fashions change, and in any case it would be a mistake to be too precise and attempt to classify a garden socially on the basis of one or two flowers or features.
To gauge the social class of a garden owner, it is therefore better to look at the general style of the garden, rather than becoming too obsessed with the class-semiotics of individual plants – particularly if you can’t tell an old-fashioned rose from a Hybrid Tea. As a rule-of-thumb, gardens lower down the social scale tend to be both more garish (their owners would say ‘colourful’ or ‘cheerful’) and more regimented in appearance (their owners would call them ‘neat’ or ‘tidy’) than those at the higher end.
Higher-class gardens tend to look more casual, more natural, less effortful, with more faded or subtle colours. Like the ‘natural look’ in make-up, this effect may require a great deal of time and effort to achieve – perhaps more than the pastry-cut flower-beds and disciplined rows of flowers of the lower-class garden – but the effort does not show; the impression is of a charming, uncontrived confusion, usually with little or no earth visible between the plants. Excessive fretting and fussing about the odd weed or two, and over-zealous manicuring of lawns, are regarded, by the upper classes and upper-middles, as rather lower class.
The Ironic-gnome Rule
Leaving aside the proletarian neatness of nanny-gardeners, if you do spot an unexpectedly and unmistakably plebeian feature in such a garden, it is worth asking the owner about it. The response will tell you much more about the owner’s class than the feature itself. I once expressed mild surprise at the presence of a garden gnome in an upper-middle-class garden (I said something intelligent like ‘Oh, a gnome’). The owner of the garden explained that the gnome was ‘ironic’. I asked him, with apologies for my ignorance, how one could tell that his garden gnome was supposed to be an ironic statement, as opposed to, you know, just a gnome. He rather sniffily replied that I only had to look at the rest of the garden for it to be obvious that the gnome was a tongue-in-cheek joke.
But surely, I persisted, garden gnomes are always something of a joke, in any garden – I mean, no-one actually takes them seriously or regards them as works of art. His response was rather rambling and confused (not to mention somewhat huffy), but the gist seemed to be that while the lower classes saw gnomes as intrinsically amusing, his gnome was amusing only because of its incongruous appearance in a ‘smart’ garden. In other words, council-house gnomes were a joke, but his gnome was a joke about council-house tastes, effectively a joke about class. A subtle but clearly very important distinction. Needless to say, I was not invited back.
WRITE A DIALOGUE WITH THE WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS BELOW. TOPIC: YOU AND YOUR FRIEND ARE DISCUSSING THE RECENT RENOVATIONS YOU DID IN YOUR HOUSES
conceal
reluctance
nest
rip out
tiny
moat and drawbridge
demolish
residential
assumption
deduce from
grid
sensible
frayed
unkempt
primary
lacy
brag
compelled
WRITE A COMPOSITION WITH THE WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS BELOW.
TOPIC: WHY DO PEOPLE RENOVATE THEIR HOUSES/APARTMENTS?
unequivocal
festooned
furnish
fraught with
play down
play up
subject to
put a finger on
left-over
defy
smoothly
token
disruption
a nightmare
genuinely
disparity
in question
CHAPTER 8
RULES OF THE ROAD
PUBLIC TRANSPORT RULES
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