You all need to know the words and phrases we use to describe daily actions, so I recommend this article to tell you the things that a gentleman and lady do, more or less, every day.

Gentleman:

  I wake at about seven o’clock and then it is time for me to get up. I like a cold bath every morning, so I put on my dressing gown and slippers and go to the bathroom. The water feels very cold on winter mornings, but I rub myself with the towels and soon I feel quite warm.

  Then I shave, brush my teeth and wash my face and go back to the bedroom to dress. I brush and comb my hair, take a clean handkerchief out of the drawer and go downstairs for breakfast at a quarter past eight. After breakfast I sit and read my morning paper, or in the summer, have a walk round my garden. I go into my study at nine o’clock and meet my students there, and the day’s work begins. At twelve-thirty I have a break for lunch. I usually have this at home, but sometimes I go out for lunch and have a chat with my friends before beginning work again at two o’clock. I generally finish my work by about five o’clock. Then I have a cup of tea and a biscuit, and in summer I spend an hour or so in the garden and play a few games of tennis, or I go to the golf club and have a round of golf.

  We have dinner at about seven-thiry or eight o’clock, and then we sit and talk, listen to the radio or look at television, or Mrs. Priestley plays the piano. Sometimes, in the summer, we take out the car and go for a drive in the country; in the winter we go to the cinema or the theatre. But that is not often. I have a lot of work to do, and usually after dinner or supper I go to my study and read or write until twelve or one o’clock. That’s my day. Now, here is Mrs Priestley to describe a woman’s day.

Lady:

  I, too, get up soon after seven and go downstairs to help Susan, our cook, with the work. She clean out the stove and fills it up with coke, so that we get plenty of hot water all day. Then she takes out the ashes from the sitting room fire and relays it with paper and sticks and coal. Then it is all ready to light, and only needs a match put to it. While she is doing that, I get the breakfast ready. I put the table-cloth on the dining-room table and put out the knives, forks and spoons, and the cups, saucers and plates. Then I go and cook the breakfast. I soon have the bacon and the eggs cooking in the frying pan. I make toast and boil the kettle for tea or coffee, and we are ready to sit down at a quarter past eight.

  After breakfast, Susan and I clear away the dishes. Then she washes and dries them, and I go to domy shopping. Sometimes I go to the shops – to the butcher’s to order the meat and to the grocers to buy tea, coffee, sugar, etc. but often I ring them up and order what I want by phone.

  Then Susan and I go upstairs to make the beds, dust upstairs and downstairs, and do the carpets with my vacuum cleaner. It is about eleven o’clock by this time, so I change my clothes and begin to get ready for lunch. After lunch I do some sewing or go for a walk and visit my friends.

  Then Mr. Priestley joins me for afternoon tea in the sitting room – usually bringing one or two of his students with him. We have bread and butter (cut thin) , jam or honey, cakes and biscuits.

  My husband has already told you how we spend our evenings – in summer, tennis, golf of a drive in the car; in winter, music, the cinema, a concert; sometimes dinner in town and a theatre afterwards. Sometimes, in fact very often, we just have a quiet evening at home. You see, John is at the university and Margaret is now at a boarding-school and comes home only at the weekends; so, except when they are on holiday, there are only the two of us at home. On these quiet evenings we have a very simple supper round the fire in the sitting-room, and when that is over my husband sometimes works in his study at a book that he is writing, but quite often he says that the has done enough work for the day, and then he sits in his armchair at one side of the fire with his pipe and, for a change, a detective story. I sit on the other side with my book or my sewing; and Sally, out cat, lies on the carpet before the fire or jumps up in my husband’s knees. He is certainly Sally’s best friend, and wherever he is, in the house or in the garden, there you will find Sally, too. And when the wind is blowing through the trees outside and the rain is beating on the windows, our warm fire seems warmer and more cheerful than ever – and I oftern think that these “quiet” evenings are the best evenings of all.