Page 16 - Exercise 2

Page 16 - Exercise 2

Families

My name’s John and I live in a typical British family.

We live in a house with a garden. It’s in Bexleyheath, a suburb of London. Our house has got three rooms downstairs — a living room, a dining room and a kitchen. Upstairs there are three bedrooms and a bathroom. We didn’t live in this house when I was born. We moved here when I was five years old, because my ‘ parents wanted a bigger garden.

Four people live in our house — my parents, my older brother and me. Until two years ago there were five of us, but my older sister left home when she was twenty-one. She still lives and works in London, but she shares a flat with two friends in another part of the city. It’s good, because when she moved out, I got her bedroom, so I don’t share with my brother now. There’s one other member of the I family in our house, too - our cat.

My parents don’t come from London. My dad is from Scotland and my mum grew up in Liverpool. They both moved to London after university to get jobs. So we don’t see our aunts and uncles very often, because they all live a long way from London.

My mum’s parents now live in Cornwall. I call them Nana and Granddad. They moved to Cornwall when Granddad retired. They’ve got a small house by the sea.

My grandpa (my dad’s dad) died a few years ago. Grandma (my dad’s mum) lives in Bexleyheath, but she doesn’t live with us. She lives in an old people’s home.

So that’s my family. Of course, not all families are the same. Divorce is common in Britain, so a lot of children live in a single-parent family or in a family with a step­ parent and step-brothers and sisters. But we’re a very typical British family.