Hello student! Hoy te llevamos a una casa inglesa sin que te muevas del sofá.  🛋️ Y ya de paso vamos a aprender un montón de vocabulario útil en inglés. Si sigues este blog, ya sabes de buena tinta lo raritos que son los ingleses, ¿verdad?

Pues imagínate vivir bajo el mismo techo que ellos. Only kidding! Hemos grabado este vídeo mostrándote 10 cosas que seguramente de sorprenderán de las casas en Reino Unido.

Make yourself at home and let’s begin!

Hey! Al final de este post encontrarás la transcripción del vídeo + ejercicios.

10 cosas raras de una casa inglesa

1. Barreño para fregar los platos: en el fregadero, casi todos los británicos tienen un barreño con espuma y agua caliente. Aquí van dejando los platos sucios, para que luego sea más fácil fregarlos y no se sequen los restos de comida.

El problema es que muchos no parecen ser muy amigos del estropajo y esto les sirve como excusa para enjuagar los platos y listos para ser usados de nuevo. Casi siempre encontramos platos secándose con restos de jabón en ellos. Not good! 🛀

2. Lavadora: si tienes la suerte de tener un cuarto pequeño que usas como lavadero, por supuesto vas a tener allí tu lavadora, pero ¿qué pasa si tienes una casa pequeña? ¿Dónde vas a poner la lavadora? ¿En el baño? Qué locura, estará mucho mejor en la cocina, así puedes meter los trapos sucios sin necesidad desplazarte.

3. Grifos separados: seguro que esta ya la has oído mil veces. Es un martirio tener que elegir entre abrasarte las manos o congelarte. En las casas antiguas, encontrarás un grifo de agua fría y otro de agua caliente, mejor dicho, muy caliente.  Antiguamente, el bidón que surtía el agua caliente estaba en el desván o el sótano y por miedo a que fuera contaminado, se decidió que hubiera un grifo que surtiera agua fría del suministro público, así si se te colaba una ratita en el bidón, podías seguir bebiendo agua sin jugarte el tipo. 🚰 🐀

4. Moqueta: la encontrarás siempre en todas las habitaciones y en algunas casas también en las escaleras y en el salón.  Moquetas forever! Carpet is always a must!

5. Cordón para encender la luz en el baño: nada más entrar al baño, mira al lado de la puerta o detrás y verás una cuerda blanca o quizás amarillenta con menos suerte. Tira de ella sin miedo, simplemente es la forma más segura de encender la luz, ya que no hay interruptores en los baños.

6. Enchufes en el baño: ni rastro de ellos. Olvídate de secarte el pelo en el baño, los enfuches siempre están en un lugar más seguro y lejos del agua para evitar descargas eléctricas. Sí encontrarás en algunos baños un pequeño enchufe de baja potencia para maquinillas de afeitar.

7. Desconexión de la toma de corriente: si quieres desenchufar un electrodoméstico, no es necesario que tires del enchufe, simplemente pulsa el interruptor y se cortará la toma de corriente. 

8. Arañas: como habrás comprobado en el vídeo, si sufres de aracnofobia, sería conveniente tachar el Reino Unido de tu lista de futuros viajes. 🕷️

9. Ventanas que se abren verticalmente: conocidas como ‘sash windows’, este tipo de ventanas no se abre hacia dentro, sino que se abren de arriba a abajo o bien de abajo arriba, por lo que son mucho más seguras al poder simplemente abrir una pequeña ranura para ventilar.

10. El jardín: no todas las casas tienen un jardín, pero en Reino Unido es más común vivir en una casa baja que en un piso, por lo que normalmente hay una terraza o un jardín. Los británicos suelen ser muy considerados y en lugar de poner espantapájaros, dejan comida para que los pájaros no pasen hambre cuando visiten su casa.

Transcripción del vídeo

Oh No thank you I don’t want to buy anything sorry.

Hola Mr Bartlett, somos nosotros.

Oh sorry sorry I thought it was someone trying to sell me something. Well, welcome to my dad’s house. He’s on holiday so we can do whatever we want.

In this video I’m going to show you ten things that are going to surprise you about an English house, but before you come in you have to take off your shoes. You’re wearing your shoes! Yeah, but these are my house shoes, they’re very clean.

Once you’ve come in, we have to speak only in English, ok? This is an English house. Ok, I accept cause I’m very interested.

There you go. Oh that’s a very kind gesture. These are my dad’s slippers, but he won’t mind. Are they smelly? Oh they look quite new. Yeah there’re fine.All right, perfect. Uhhh they’re cosy.

So this is actually a very old building is over a hundred and fifty years old you can see it has original beams it’s a brick house and it’s well it’s like a cottage. Many many years ago it used to be a pub so it’s actually haunted as well there are a few ghosts here. Oh come on!

Are you warm enough? Do you want a cup of tea or something to drink? I’m alright. Let’s go to the kitchen and I’ll make something. Shall I put the kettle on? No I just had a coffee, so don’t worry.

So one thing that I think might surprise you is what we find in the sink. If you take a look down here you will find a washing up bowl, I think a lot of Spanish people complain about this, but it’s actually very useful. Let me explain why if I drop a glass in here and it hits the plastic it’s not gonna break, is it?

However if you hit it on this metal sink, it could damage the glass okay? That’s one of the reasons. Now the other reason is that is if you’re doing your washing up and you want to get rid of some dirty water from a pan then you just pour it down the side, just pour it down the side and then you still have clean water here if you need to use the sink you can just take the whole lot out and then you can use the sink for something else. This is actually quite useful, especially in a house that only has one sink.

Right, I’m not totally convinced Phillip and I’m sure all the Spaniards are with me on this, this bucket is always in my way. This bowl, this bowl. Putting your hand in here it’s quite scary because you never know what you’re gonna find.

Don’t hate me okay British people but I’ve seen you, I’ve observed you and I’ve seen that people don’t wash the dishes properly. 

It’s like, mmm okay a little bit of a rinse. You rinse it a bit and that’s done, perfect! And then you have some delicious wine tasting or fairy liquid. Dishes, dishes, dishes, dishes yeah Isabel always has problems with the SH sound dishes dishes okay. Sorry about that!

They are wilting or they have wilted. Your sunflowers have wilted, but look, they’re still beautiful. Write it down wilted WILTED, the flowers have wilted.

Let’s move on. This is the folding door, this is actually the downstairs toilet and utility room so you can see here we’ve got the toilet we’ve got the boiler okay, you see that? This is the boiler where we get the hot water then we’ve got a sink here and the washing machine down here. Okay now if this house didn’t have a utility room, where do you think we would put the washing machine? Any guesses Isabel?

In Spain, usually if you don’t have a utility room then you would have it in the bathroom, I think that makes sense. Well in many houses they put the washing machine in the kitchen. Okay, yeah very interesting, let’s see what number three is. Okay number three is the taps, look at this here we have the cold and the hot separate tap.

Now in many houses in the UK these days modern houses have mixer taps like the rest of Europe, but it’s still quite common to see separate taps and this is because a lot of old houses used to have the hot water supply tank in attic and the hot water supply tank could be easily contaminated. In order to avoid contaminating the clean main supply we used to always keep the hot and cold separate. How do you wash your hands?

Give us a demonstration please. Okay, you turn on the hot, turn on the cold, it’s actually great for saving water because when you wash your hands you just want to get it over with as quickly as possible, so could be good for Spain because there’s there’s a lot of drought in Spain. Anyway that’s the utility room and this toilet it has a very powerful flush so always make sure that you are standing before you flush the chain.

So this is carpet okay, it goes from wall to wall and this is a rug okay? Alfombra. Carpet moqueta. No Spanish! Who would have a rug on top of a carpet, what’s that for? Good question, anyway it’s really probably to keep the carpet clean.

Okay and number five is in the bathroom let’s go in the bathroom. It’s a bit dark in here Philip it’s bit dark isn’t it? Let’s look for the light, where’s the switch? No switch no, no switch. Where’s the switch? In order to turn the light on you need to pull this cord and there you go. In British bathrooms we don’t have switches because it’s against health and safety regulations if you’ve got wet hands it’s not very safe to switch on a light with a switch so this is the solution. 

Okay and what about that noise in the background? Yes when you pull the cord the light comes on and the extractor fan also comes on automatically.

Mr Bartlett hmm I think you’ve missed something and this is that in England I usually cannot dry my hair in the bathroom. Here I usually have to go to the bedroom, to the living room or I don’t know, to the kitchen, garden, and why is that? Well what’s missing? No sockets! English people, water and electricity don’t mix. Look! Oh magic! Uhhh impressive, it would be pretty hard to electrocute yourself in this bathroom right right yeah and something else I’m noticing while I’m here, is this. Well, I’m sure we have it in some houses in Spain but it’s not so common, however I always see it in England and what is it for? 

It’s a towel dryer, so you take your wet towel just hang it on there like that and then it’s nice and warm. It is lovely in the winter,isn’t it? Here you got some medals from the first World War my great-grandfather

Back in the kitchen, Phillip’s going to give us a demonstration. No, don’t do that! Don’t do it. Don’t worry, all you have to do is switch this and now it’s completely safe to lick whatever you’ve been making with the blender. And you can press the button, I’m pressing the button,  I’m pressing the button. It’s safe, it’s safe, it’s completely safe. This is a great safety feature that British plug sockets have, they have an extra switch.

You can switch things on and off you can’t actually put anything in here because you see these are closed? That’s right. So in order to open them you need to put this one in first, and then they open. It’s very safe it always lands like this and if you step on it ouch. So you like the plug sockets right? I love them yes. But you don’t like the washing up bowl. I’m not convinced about your washing skills.

You can never miss this one in an English house, don’t worry if you find a spider just grab a glass and a piece of paper and catch it we don’t kill them okay? We just let them free okay so let me demonstrate. Please let it free as soon as possible.

Take the glass, put it over the spider don’t worry don’t worry it’s all under control.Then we the paper under, oh don’t hurt his legs there you go and then of course we let the spider go. I also like to make a wish as well. Just let it fly. And talking about windows, we get to the next point.These are double glazed windows and they open by sliding down and up, like this they close.

Double glazing is important in England because it gets pretty cold in the winter, it get a bit chilly. Notice as well there aren’t any roller shutters which are very common in Spain every house has roller shutters that come down, we don’t have those here. Okay, but for us what is a bit different is the way you open the windows because we usually open the windows towards you so part of the window stays in the room, so maybe a child could hit their head on it. I’ve never seen windows like this in Spain. 

I think they’re sash windows. Then this is to lock it isn’t it? Yeah but not all houses have these windows, there are lots of different types of windows, yeah but they are very common. There’s another spider. Oh goodness.

Shall we go into the garden? Okay, let’s go into the garden. Oh Gordon Bennet look at that lovely hanging basket, a lady from Hitchin taught me that. Oh look, ladybird. Gordon Bennet! If you live in a house, you might have a little garden like this one this one’s a nice size here you can see we’ve got tomatoes growing yeah, my dad’s tomatoes. We must make a ‘gazpacho’!

You can grow your own vegetables and usually you’ll find something like this to feed the birds you got here some nuts. Do you want to feed the birds?

You should feed the birds? I’ve seen a black squirrel coming here. The squirrel goes on there and it comes down and it tries to eat the birds’ food. It would be great if it if it turned up now. I saw a grey squirrel earlier today I think it was taking some tomatoes. Oh eating my tomatoes? This one is very interesting. Do you know what this is called? This is called rhubarb, ruibarbo.

Mr Bartlett we have to say goodbye! Oh I’d never seen these flowers before.

So well the battery’s running out so we have to say goodbye and Philip’s mum is coming to pick us up we’re gonna go for a drink at the pub, cause it’s Friday and this is what English people do so yeah. Time to say goodbye I hope you liked this video!

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