Claires Bedroom

Claire Williams is 20 years old. She is a student and lives at home with her parents in a town called Whitehaven. Her bedroom is a mess. Or at least it was a mess. Time and again, her parents asked her please to tidy it, but somehow she never managed to do it. Then her father, Steve Williams, had a bright idea. He took photographs of her messy bedroom and put them on an internet site so that the whole world could see them. The effect was dramatic. Claire was so ashamed that she tidied her bedroom. Her younger brother tidied his bedroom too. But Claire wanted revenge. She found some photographs of her Dad dancing round with a handbag at a party. She also photographed his garage, which was at least as messy as her bedroom had been. She put these photographs on the internet so that the world could see. In fact tens of thousands of people have visited the Williams family’s website. Some have posted photographs to shame someone in their own family. However, the number of visitors has been so great that the website hosting company now charge Mr Williams quite a lot to host his site. He is looking for advertisers and a sponsor. Assuming that his site is still active, you can view it from the link on the podcast website. The photograph of Claire’s bedroom that started it all has however disappeared. Vocabulary note : messy is a colloquial word which means untidy or dirty. A messy room means an untidy room. A messy child means a child who looks untidy and dirty and probably has half her breakfast down the front of her clothes.