Facultatea de Sociologie i Asisten Social Specializarea Asiten Social, Anul I

Profesor coordonator: Dr. Lector Mirelan Boteanu Studeni: Ana-Maria Bisoceanu Ioana Butnaru Calia Georgiana Bianca Cojanu

Introduction

Weird thing, but the lifestyle of all people is subordinated to their main occupation in life. More strong and rebellious of individuals are organizing their own lives by straightforward choice of their future profession, career and shape their destiny regardless of any rooted traditions. Luckily or not those are exceptions of the rules. Usually the occupation that takes the most part of human life is everyday work, worse luck it is unpleasant activity performed for yielding profit. Blessed are people, who have found a balance between dedication to their nation and earning more than just to keep the pot boiling. The lifestyle of British people in that perspective is nothing extraordinary in comparison with Continental Europeans, who tend to work for prosperity of their own country or at least have a fake idea of it. Just the same British have the idiosyncrasy in way of living, sure enough. The causes of it are as simple as mentality and centuries-old genes. In this essay the basic social customs, traditions and family life of British will be covered. Likewise some stereotypes and labels having respect to British people will be expounded so to get acquainted with this nation from different standpoint. In spite of peculiarities in different aspects of life, British are usual Europeans having its own indulgences.

PEOPLE.WORK.ECONOMY
In every country there are plenty of stereotypes about residents, some are true but most of them are very wrongful. Cardwell described stereotype as a fixed, over generalized belief about a particular group or class of people. As to British stereotypes, most of them are significantly accurate. The better part of stereotypes belonging to British character is: politeness, sophistication, calmness, rationalism and spectacular sense of humour. Quite portion of these features owns each British. To start with politeness must be said that it is a pure sign of formality. It is a mistake to expect from British politeness deep sympathy or considerable concern. If they ask their usual Are you alright? with compassionate intonation it means no more than hello. Besides it is simply a gesture of their next courtesy in a frame of good cold manners. Do not swallow it and heaven forbid you to take it personally and answer sincerely to the question. On the other hand British politeness use to take a good form of action. Here a little of experience must be cued in. Working in a warehouse of undefiled English company they

used to have a sheer number of inside doors; everyone was always in hurry and on prowl here and there through these innumerable doors; nevertheless each time someone who went in front of you was holding the door after oneself, so it doesnt spring back into your face. This is not the case of exception, but the rule. Another trait to be enlightened is intercommunication. British are more likely to talk with you about great or not so great weather today than about own business. They are quite talkative despite attributed to them quality of restraint. Nevertheless very true is statement and stereotype that British are snobs; this character trait is developed through the centuries by consistency of British authority, steady power and economy. However stereotypes are stereotypes; although you can not label every person with generalized notions, they do inform you in their own way about British manners and are useful when you deal with people of certain nationality. Native British middle-age people usually are not aspiring to do hard unskilled labour and are rather lazy from this perspective; they prefer working in office or do manager job, or follow in ones father footsteps, since after their birth the bank account is taking care after them. The economy of UK both subjectively and objectively is schemed in a way that allows infants till the certain age not to worry about their pocket money and future at least in the first instance. Despite this fact many of teenagers start to work very early, literally at the age of 14, and even earlier to prove their independence. Many teenagers will get up in the early hours to deliver newspapers to houses in their local area before going to school. They are known as Paperboys or Papergirls. Looking after young children in their home whilst their parents have gone out for the evening is a popular job for teenagers, as they get paid for watching children and television all at the same time! Teens also do other jobs, included working in some local shops, washing cars, working in a riding stables, do a domestic work in hotels or in bed and breakfasts. To start working teenagers need to have a work permit. An application form for the work permit can be obtained from school or local Education Welfare Office. Sure that they get paid very little, it depends on the kind of work, but could be anything up to 3 per hour; the National minimum wage does not apply to workers under 16. As concerns teenagers leisure time, they can allow themselves to my opinion more than an average kid in Eastern Europe; they regularly attend gigs, systematically arrange parties and clambakes, going out a lot, like to live it up and are basically under influence of social life or those, who lead such a life. Thus at the top of their priorities are music, parties, messaging and friends. Most probable diagnosis is that they take life in both hands and eat it. Truly, the race is got by running. There are doubts only about who is the bigger consumer, parents or their children. So British teens interests are very slightly different from any other, who was raised in the atmosphere of capitalism, where the whole system is built on overgrowing production, consumption and consequently draining natural resources and killing the land. Consequently about 75% of British jobs are in service industries - hotels, restaurants, travel, shopping, and computer and finances. It is the fastest growing business and employs over twenty million people. The working week is, on average, the longest of any country in Europe. In 1998 a new law was passed saying that workers do not have to work more than 48 hours a week if they do not want to. However, about 22% of British workers do work more than a 48 - hour a week.

These numbers show that most of their time, British, on average of course, devote to job. Essentially that after a work that does not bring satisfaction (happens when the human being is not fulfilling ones purpose by doing what one is pleased to thus making oneself useful to humankind), they try to find it in other things; may be it is the reason for their heavy drinking. Yet hundred of thousands years they run like on rails; rooted traditions, interior social class system which changed to multiculturalism with time, British Empire that de facto never experienced such devastating wars on its territory as continental Europe and Russia did, lulled people asleep. Everything what have happened and not to British land and its people was kneading their set of mind, character and habits, [leaving an imprint on their genes]. Actually it has formed all that presents today neoteric British.

FAMILY.LIVINGSPACE
The family in Britain is changing. The once typical British family headed by two parents has undergone substantial changes during the twentieth century. In particular there

has been a rise in the number of single-person households, which increased from 18 to 29 per cent of all households between 1971 and 2002. By the year 2020, it is estimated that there will be more single people than married people. Fifty years ago this would have been socially unacceptable in Britain. In the past, people got married and stayed married. Divorce was very difficult, expensive and took a long time. Today, peoples views on marriage are changing. Many couples, mostly in their twenties or thirties, live together without getting married. Only about 60% of these couples will eventually get married. In the past, people married before they had children, but now about 40% of children in Britain are born to unmarried (cohabiting) parents. In 2000, around a quarter of unmarried people between the ages of 16 and 59 were cohabiting in Great Britain. Cohabiting couples are also starting families without first being married. Before 1960 this was very unusual, but in 2001 around 23% of births in the UK were to cohabiting couples. People are generally getting married at a later age now and many women do not want to have children immediately. They prefer to concentrate on their jobs and put off having a baby until late thirties. What is considerably wrong since women put the career first, but family and the substitution of notions appeared. Woman compares herself with man, working hard and misunderstands that both have different purposes in this life; hence they became more worldly concerned. This is mainly due to more marriages ending in divorce, but some women are also choosing to have children as lone parents without being married. Thus the number of single-parent families is increasing in Britain. On average 2.4 people live as a family in one home. This is smaller than most other European countries. More people are buying their own homes than in the past. About two thirds of the people in England and the rest of Britain either own, or are in the process of buying, their own home. Most others live in houses or flats that they rent from a private landlord, the local council, or housing association. People buying their property almost always pay for it with a special loan called a mortgage, which they must repay, with interest, over a long period of time, usually 25 years. Most houses in England are made of stone or brick from the local area where the houses are built. The colours of the stones and bricks vary across the country

England has many types of homes. In the large cities, people often live in apartments; but in most towns, there are streets of houses joined together in long rows. They are called terraced houses. The most popular type of home in England is semidetached, closely followed by detached then terraced.

VISKEY.SPORTING
To save digging far down and examine only the outness and gingerbread, namely discussing the appearance of British life, picture does not look so grim. British really do like spending their time in pubs with good company, but some of them, who are not devoted to ale, are devoted to getting behind sport; especially teenagers like surprisesurprise to play football. The national English sport is cricket although to many people football (soccer) is seen as actual national sport. Football is undoubtedly the most popular sport all over Britain, and has been played for hundreds of years. In the English Football League there are 92 professional clubs. These are semi-professional, so most players have other full-time jobs. Hundreds of thousands of people also play football in parks and playgrounds just for fun. Other preferred sport games are: rugby (originated from Rugby school in Warwickshire), tennis (the worlds most famous tennis tournament is Wimbledon; it started at a small club in south London in the nineteenth century; it is traditional for visitors to eat strawberries and cream whilst they watch the tennis), netball (largest female team sport in England), golf (Scotland is traditionally regarded as the home of golf; there are over 400 golf courses in Scotland alone), horseracing (the sport of Kings is a very popular sport with meetings being held every day throughout the year; the Derby originated here, as did The Grand National which is the hardest horse race in the world Horse racing and greyhound racing are popular spectator sports; people can place bets on the races at legal off-track betting shops), University Boat Race (in the nineteenth century, students at Oxford and Cambridge, Britains two oldest universities, were huge fans of rowing; in 1829, the two schools agreed to hold a race against each other for the first time on the Thames River; the Oxford boat won and a tradition was born; today, the University Boat Race is held every spring in either late March or early April), darts (a very popular pub game; the game of darts, as it is today, was invented in the north of England in a town called Grimsby; however, the origins of the game date back to at least the Middle Ages), fishing (Angling) Angling is one of the most popular sports in the UK, with an estimated 3.3 million people participating in the sport on a regular basis; fishermen can be seen sitting beside rivers and lakes. Someone told me: Once, I saw a group of aged people playing some game in a green lawn, the name of which I did not know that time; (surely, later I got know that the local seniors at the weekends use to play this game called bowls). They were using round balls rolling them to the other side of field in a different manner, so no matter how hard I tried I could not understand the goal of the game. But what have amazed me at one stroke, afterwards making to draw a parallel between our elderly people, who are, least to say not so active as British and mostly are living for their families not for themselves, I saw in 6

perspective genuine interest to what British have been doing and quite a lust for life in their eyes. That was aged people weekend in all its beauty, different way of living and mentality the nation obtained was clearly visible.

CHIPS

MICROWAVEABLE PIZZANCRINKLE

Those British people, never eat something healthy. If it was not a burger or fries, it was pints of coffee and lemonade. Due to their busyness, hurriedness and bustle they prefer to eat fast-food being or not aware of that it is in fact time bomb affecting the human body; though already for a long time such a way of eating has been highly publicized. Traditional British food had been based on beef, lamb, pork, chicken and fish and generally served with potatoes and one other vegetable. The most common and typical foods eaten in Britain include the sandwich, fish and chips, pies like the cornish pasty, trifle and roasts dinners. Some of British main dishes have strange names like Bubble & Squeak and Toad-in-the-Hole. In England, they have special foods attributed to certain festivals. For example, in the first Day of May, Maids of Honor cakes is made (small round puff pastry cheesecakes sometimes flavoured with almonds and rose water), in the Easter Day Chicken, Halloween Toffee apples, Christmas - turkey, vegetables, stuffing, bread sauce, cranberry sauce and mince pies. Main meal dishes in England: roast beef, roast meats, cottage pie, bangers and mash, Lancashire hotpot, fish and chips, Yorkshire pudding, Shepherds pie, Toad-in-theHole, Gammon steak with egg, Cumberland sausage, Bacon roly-poly, English breakfast. Unfortunately or not those dishes are cooked at home only due to holidays, in usual working day British rarely pamper themselves with a good homemade food. Common British laziness while not allowing them to eat more healthy and diversely food, contained at least a dozen of fresh vegetables or fruits per day, have led to supplementing the market with innumerable fast food restaurants of all sorts, such as Macs, fishnchips, kebab houses etc.

TRADITIONS.CUSTOMS
In all conscience, you can not speak about England without speaking about its traditions and customs. Englishmen are proud of their traditions and carefully keep them up. Maintained by British traditions and customs are a great number. Not to list all of them I will try to enlighten a couple of them more nonsensical and cheery ones. Many festivals and holidays in Britain are centuries old. Every town, village and hamlet in Britain has its own traditions, some involving months of careful planning and preparations of costumes and choreography, others requiring simply a worrying desire to make a complete and utter fool of oneself. Ample quantity of activities not only exists in reality, but British people hold them up and each year those traditions as I believe boost their spirits. Some of them are tremendously funny and just leave you wonder how these things could practically emerge in mind. To such customs belong May festive of Cheese rolling (Coopers Hill, Brookworth in Goucestershire) Forty thousand spectators congregate at Coopers Hill in the Gloucester village of Brockworth to watch the traditional Double Gloucester cheese hurtle down a steep slope, pursued by dozens of running, rolling competitors, the fastest of whom wins the cheese. Those unusual customs are great events either from hands-on introduction or for participating; only so ironical people, who British truly are, can adhere to those nonsensical traditions; to my mind due to the last thing they are so amusing. For example, Bog Snorkelling Championships, Waen Rhydd peat bog, near Llanwrtyd Wells in mid Wales. The aim for the competition is to swim two lengths of the 60-yard Waen Rhydd peat bog (which is really dirty by the way) with flippers and snorkel in the fastest time. There are different categories including juniors, fancy dress, womens and mens. The witty thing is that all ages are taking part in the Championship; and in fact as hilariously it looks from a side as difficult for participants is to reach finish marked with the wooden pole sticking out of brown water; especially it is not easy to do if you are dressed in suit or thick sumo wrestler costume. From world-known traditions celebrated in Britain I would definitely mentioned Christmas time in England. The word time stands in for a good reason. For Brits it is a special holiday full of presents and elements of Christmas and winter, prepared well in advance, I would even say in plenty of time; for the whole country is a huge event several months before the holiday; the shops begin to bring in and introduce the bunches of products, sometimes absolutely irrelevant from the first glance to the case, like for instance, all kinds of electrical toothbrushes or flatting irons. Everything is of use here! People spend a lot of their time queuing in the nearest post office to send a parcel to their close and distant relatives. Pre-holiday fuss seemed to take up residence in shops forever. Christmassy lights illuminated streets like never before. The city during that time hiving in the spirit of anticipation seems to be waiting for something And this something flies in the air dissolves in snowflakes, falling on heads of people and dazing them inly so to take with the warmest feelings the winter miracle through the whole year.

Conclusion

British stability and steady life; their strong sense of humour which sometimes can be hard for foreigners to understand; self-deprecating humour in difficult situations along with politeness and enflashed belief in their country and themselves; the ability of British to beef, but nevertheless fulfill their duties, altogether form the British character and corresponding way of living. Together with that, material support, sustainability and solicitude about the citizens, subjectively make British people proud of their country; with all package of traditions British are quite unimposing people, although in the nature of things one should not forget that no matter the nationality there are bad eggs. Britain remains a land of diversity, they drive on a left, they do not use kms, but miles, etc. A lot may be said about British diversity and bunch of peculiarities still is left overboard; study out quite a part of them, I can state with certainty that Britain is very broad-ranging and multifarious country while British lifestyle is close to any European one it has its peculiarities.

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