My Hobby

A "hobby" is a special interest or activity that you do in your time off. Some people have animals as hobbies. They keep rabbits, or go fishing. They train dogs to do tricks, or keep pigeons to race and carry messages. Some are crazy about plants. They try to grow cacti or rare tropical flowers in their kitchens and sitting rooms.

Others are mad about their car or their motorbike. They spend their Saturdays and Sundays washing them, painting them, or buying new bits and pieces to make them go even faster.

Children and teenagers are great collectors. They collect stamps, or postcards or matchboxes, or pictures of a favourite footballer or pop star.

Many people make things as a hobby. Some teach themselves at home, but a lot of people go to evening classes at their local college. Just look under letter B in a list of London or New York evening classes and you'll find: Ballet, Batik, Bengali, Body building, Breadmaking and Byzantium.

But not everyone goes to evening classes to learn about his special interest. No one helped these people to do what they did.

A "hobby" is usually something that a person does alone. But American (and British) families sometimes like to do things together, too.

American families often have quite a lot of money to spend on their recreation. They can all enjoy their holiday home or their boot somewhere in the country away from home.

Americans love to get out of town into the wild. and many go for holidays or long weekends into the thirty-live fabulous national parks. These magnificent areas of countryside include tropical forests, high mountains, dry deserts, long sandy coasts. grassy prairies and wooded mountains full of wild animals. The idea of these parks, which cover 1% of the whole area of the USA. is to make "a great breathing place for the national lungs", and to keep different parts of the land as they were before men arrived. There are camping places in the national parks as well as museums, boat trips and evening campfire meetings.

Americans really enjoy new "gadgets", especially new ways of travelling. In the winter, the woods are full of "snowmobiles" (cars with skis in the front). In the summer they ride their "dune buggins" across the sands or take to the sky in hang gliders.

But Americans do not only spend their free time having fun. They are very interested in culture too. Millions take part-time courses in writing. painting and music, and at weekends the museums, art galleries and concert halls are full.

Scotland

Scotland lies to the north of England. People who live in Scotland arc Scots.  The capital of Scotland is Edinburgh, but Scotland has no separate Parliament, for the Scottish MPs (Members of Parliament) sit with the English ones in Westminster in London. Edinburgh is not the largest city in Scotland. Glasgow, which lias a population of over one million, is twice as large as Edinburgh. Even so, Edinburgh remains the centre of the life of Scotland. Here are the administrative centres of the Navy, the Army, and tlie Air Force, the chief banks and offices; and the famous university. 

Edinburgh, unlike Glasgow, has no large factories. Publishing is its well-known industry. It has been famous for its printers since the early years of the sixteenth century, when the first Scottish printing-press was set up within its walls. The publishing of books is today a very important industry. Much printing is done for London publishing houses, and there are many paper-mills near Edinburgh. Edinburgh is a beautiful city. The first thing you see in Edinburgh is the Rock -— the very large hill in the middle of the city, on which stands Edinburgh Castle.. The Castle looks like a castle from a fairy-tale, and parts of it are more than a thousand years old. From the top of the Castle there is a beautiful view of the hill and the sea.

 Besides the Castle there are many other interesting buildings, such as Holyrood Palace which is the old royal residence, the Art Gallery, the University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh is famous for many things: its festivals (plays and music), its college of medicine, its museums and libraries, and for its writers Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson and others.