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Last week, I visited my friend Pete in his new home, where he lives with his wife and daughter. Pete used to spend his holidays traveling around the world – visiting the pyramids in Egypt or scuba diving (水肺潜水) in the Caribbean. Nowadays, he prefers to spend his holidays and weekends making his house look more beautiful. Like hundreds of thousands of other British people, he's found the joy of DIY (do it yourself) home repairs. This means that if there's anything that needs fixing around the house, he will try to do the job himself.
Pete showed me his new kitchen, which he put together himself, and his newly-painted walls. I asked him where he got the idea to do these things. He told me that his favourite source (来源) of ideas is a DIY program on TV.
This got me thinking about how popular DIY programs are in the UK. Each main channel (频道) has at least one home or gardenmakeovershow. There are even channels totally on the subject.
I suppose it's not really surprising that DIY programs are so popular. There are two common sayings in Britain – “an Englishman's home is his castle (城堡)” and “there's no place like home” – which show how important our houses are to us. With the social changes of the last ten years or so, many people can't afford to buy bigger houses. So they are looking at how they can make their house better without spending a lot of money. DIY, clearly, is the perfect choice.
