Modern Boy - 2011
My name is Morgan and I live on a large housing estate on the outskirts of Cardiff
My family I’m 11 years old and I live with my mum and big sister. My dad doesn’t live with us any more because he and my mum had a divorce when I was small. He is married again now and lives about 2 miles away with my stepmum, her daughter and my new half brother. He is only 6 months old and is very cute but not as cute as me when I was a baby according to my mum!! My gran and grandad live very near to us and they take me to school, which is 3 streets away, in their car. They also come to fetch me if my mum has to work overtime. She works shift work in a big supermarket stacking the shelves and serving on the tills. She also sells makeup and perfume and stuff to her friends from a catalogue. She needs the money because she’s still paying for our Christmas presents! Our house
I live in a nice semi detached house with a small garden. My mum doesn’t like gardening so my grandad comes over to cut the lawn. Last year my mum had a new kitchen fitted and a small conservatory on the back. We don’t have a garage for the car just a drive, which is ok as we’d only fill the garage up with junk. School I go to the local school from Monday to Friday and we have lots of holidays. It’s ok, but the only thing is that they’ve banned us from using our mobile phones in school; they’ve even stopped us from taking our computer game consoles in too. They said we should be playing outdoors more. I felt that this was unfair so I told my mum and she came up the school to complain but they still wouldn’t let us. My sister goes to the local Comprehensive School and is a real swot. She says that she wants to be a lawyer or something when she grows up. My dad says I’m good at football and that I could be a famous footballer when I grow up with lots of money to buy big television screens to play my computer games on. Sounds good to me! My dad works for the Council and has his own office. Sometimes he sends me emails to keep in touch if he can’t get to a phone. Clothes My mum gets most of my clothes from the supermarket where she works but sometimes we get bargains in the Sunday Market. I had a new pair of football boots from my grandparents for my birthday. They were ok, but they weren’t the same make as my friends so my mum had the receipt and took them back to the shop to exchange them. I wear a tracksuit, T-shirt and trainers to school but when I’m hanging out with my friends I like to wear really fashionable clothes. My dad got me a Cardiff City football shirt but he’ll probably have to get me a new one next year because they’ll be changing the design. Food I’m lucky that I don’t have to go food shopping with my mum because she does it before coming home from work. I like to have a cocoa cereal in the morning with tons of milk and sugar. In school we have to eat healthily so for school dinner we aren’t allowed to have burgers, fish fingers, pizza and chips any more. Once they started putting vegetables with everything and jacket potatoes were with tuna and salad I decided to stop having school dinners and my mum said ok. My gran was furious and told my mum not to be so soft with me. Luckily my mum didn’t listen so I now have sandwiches, crisps, chocolate biscuits and a fizzy drink for lunch. It’s much better and my mum says I don’t waste so much food now. My grandad says that if I carry on eating like that I’ll have false teeth like him. What does he know? He does talk some rubbish sometimes! Travel I live just outside a very big city but we’re not really in the country. We use the car to get everywhere, to get to the countryside or to the beach for a barbecue, but we also use it for short journeys when really we could walk. However, we don’t drive into the city but use the Park and Ride car park and take the bus in. Using the Park and Ride is good because my dad says that parking in the city centre is difficult and expensive. If we go on holiday we usually go somewhere like Spain. It’s only 2 hours by plane and the airport isn’t far from our house at all. Helping the environment I don’t know if we’ll go this year because everyone is getting very worried about the ozone layer and global warming. They tell us in school that we have to reduce our ‘carbon footprint’ or something. My mum says it just means that we have to use the car less, so maybe we will go to Spain after all, as we don’t use a car to get there! Because of global warming our Council has decided to change the way we get rid of our rubbish. My mum sorts everything into different bags for glass, paper, cardboard and food waste. They are then put into different coloured bags and collected on different days from the front of the house. I think it’s good that we recycle our waste although my mum moans a lot when she has to do it. Days out Sometimes my dad takes my sister and me on days out. He took us on the train to London for the weekend so that my sister could go to the shops. We stayed the night in a hotel and then visited the British Museum so that my sister could look at how people lived in the past to help her with her school project. I’m glad I live now because I don’t think I could survive without my laptop. An easier life
After the visit to the British Museum, I realised how much easier our lives are now. I don’t know how people survived without television. My gran said she couldn’t live without her washing machine. We get our food from supermarkets and I don’t have to think about getting a job until I’m at least 16. If I’m ill I go to the doctors for free and even though I don’t like school much, I’d rather be at school than have to work down a coal mine or have to hunt for meat. The future My sister scares me sometimes by telling me that all the oil and coal are going to run out
one day and that we won’t be able to live like we do now. I told her that we’re sure to think of
another way to get power, probably from the wind or from the sun. She agreed with me but said that she’d
start doing her bit now by cutting down on the amount of electricity she used. Luckily for me she decided to
get rid of her telly from her bedroom and I have it now!
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