Английский язык. Темы для экзаменов. Уровень С1 - стр. 4

Every other week, or sometimes every week, we could go at the weekend to stay with my grandmother, who we called Nanna. My grandmother’s really lovely. She never stops making tea. Every 15 minutes of the day, she comes into the room with a big pot of tea and says: “Would you like a nice cup of tea?” She seems to spend half of her life in the kitchen cooking things for when people come to visit her. Now, she’s getting a little bit older, and I think she doesn’t do as much as she did, but she is a really wonderful person. She takes care of the elderly neighbours around her, visits them frequently, and for some of them who can’t really walk or get help, she goes and fetches the shopping. She always has pets, as well. Every time we went to visit her, my Nanna had a little bird in the corner of the room, in a cage, and she used to talk to it and talk to it. She’s had several, and they come and go, but some of them could really talk very well – some of them not so well, which was a bit disappointing for her, but she still loved them very much, anyway. Also, I’ve heard that she now has a rabbit in the garden, which I haven’t seen but I’d really like to. At my grandmother’s, my brother and I used to read, play and watch television. My grandma used to play with us a little bit, but I think she didn’t have as much idea of how to play with children as my mother did. She used to look after us very well, though. She loved us very much, in fact.

My other grandmother, who is my grandmother on my father’s side (my father’s mother), also had a broken marriage. She divorced my grandfather before I was born, so I never saw them together. Occasionally, we used to go and visit her. Our relationship with her was always a bit strained. Our family always used to see her as being a little bit crazy, a bit of a crackpot or something like that. Over the last few years, I’ve visited her a few times and I get on very well with her now, because we have something in common, which is our Christian religion. My father was never in the least religious and he used to see her as a bit of an oddball. I feel sorry for her really. I think she is very lovely.

I never met my mother’s father, he died before I was born, but I knew my father’s father when I was smaller. After he split up with his wife he lived together with his sister, who was my great aunt. She never married, or even had a boyfriend as far as I know. She was really an old spinster. They lived a very, very routine life. Every time we went to see them exactly the same things would happen. Every day of their life seemed to be the same. They would wake up, and then my great aunt would make the breakfast, bring it in to my grandfather, my grandfather would read the paper until a certain time, when he would listen to something on the radio, etc, etc.