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British Homes

There are 22 million homes in Britain - big homes and small homes, old cottages and new buildings, houses and flats. (Americans say "apartment" but British people say "flat"). Many British people love old houses and these are often more expensive than modern ones. They also love gardening and you will see gardens everywhere you go: in towns, villages and out in the country. Some are very small with just one tree and a few flowers. Others are enormous with plenty of flowers and enough vegetables and fruit trees. Two third of the families in Britain own their houses. Millions of these houses are the same with two or three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, dining-room and kitchen downstairs. To pay for their house, home owners borrow money from a "building society" and pay back a little every month.There are a great many different kinds of homes in Britain, but there are not enough! It is often very difficult for young people to find a home when they want to start a family. British homes are usually smaller than American homes. But like in America, in Britain the older generation of the family and their married children do not usually live together.
Wherever you may go around the world, it’s easy to conclude that if a home has four walls and a ceiling, everything else must be broadly the same. Well, even if that were true (and it’s not) there are still tiny differences between a house on the other side of the world and the house you normally live in that can be quite unsettling the first time you encounter them.
So, having conducted extensive research into American and British households (by comparing notes between the traveling experiences of Anglophenia writers) what are the things that are commonly recognizable to most British households that will come as a surprise to most American visitors?Here are some possibilities, be prepared:Pay As You Go meters
To avoid getting stung by unexpected bills for gas and electricity, some British households use a system whereby they go to a local shop and have credit placed on an electronic tag called a PayPoint key. Just as a pay-as-you-go phone gives you a set amount of credit to make and receive calls, so the PayPoint key gives you a certain amount of gas, electricity or even water. This is just a modern update on the old system which relied upon putting coins in a meter.No light switches and plug sockets in the bathroom
Due to a healthy fear of electrocution, British bathrooms don’t tend to be wired up for electricity, as it does not play nicely with water.