Museum objects

Source A: a newly written contemporary non-fiction-style account.

“I visited the town museum on Wednesday with my grandmother. Admission was free, and we arrived just after ten. The newest exhibition displayed household objects from the last century. My grandmother recognised a hand-operated washing machine near the entrance. I recognised almost nothing. A label explained how the machine worked in three short sentences; my grandmother took considerably longer and was much more interesting.

The machine stood behind a rope, polished and harmless. In her account it became heavy, stubborn and forever hungry for hot water. She described wet sheets dragging at her arms and steam clouding the kitchen windows. I had been admiring the neat wooden handle; she remembered the ache it left in her wrist. The object had escaped its working life and entered a comfortable retirement where visitors praised its character.

That afternoon I read every label more slowly. Facts mattered, but they could not tell me whose hands had done the work or what else those hands might have wished to do. Before leaving, we recorded my grandmother's memories for the museum's audio collection. She worried that nobody would want to hear such ordinary details. I thought of the clean machine and the missing steam, and told her that was precisely why they should.”

Source B: a newly written letter in a nineteenth-century voice. This is a period-voice simulation, not an archival document.

“Dear Uncle, the museum has accepted the small chest of tools that belonged to my late father. I am relieved that they will be preserved, though I confess to a peculiar sadness at seeing them arranged beneath glass. At home they occupied no elegant order. The most frequently used chisel lay nearest the edge, and the lid bore the marks of being closed by a man whose other hand was generally full.

Here every implement has its proper interval and number. The labels are accurate, as far as I can judge, and the curator has taken great care. Yet the arrangement suggests a stillness I never associated with Father's work. His workshop was a place of interruption: a customer at the door, a board slipping, a question called from the house. These tools were the means by which he answered such demands, not ornaments considered separately from them.

I have therefore sent the curator a few recollections, including Father's habit of sharpening a blade before discussing a difficult commission. Whether this was prudence or a way of gaining time, I cannot say. I hope the uncertainty will be allowed to remain. A useful museum should preserve what is known without pretending that a life can be labelled as tidily as its possessions.”

Refer only to the first paragraph of Source A. Select exactly FOUR true statements. Write their four letters in the answer box.

A. The narrator recognises every object.

B. The label is longer than the grandmother’s explanation.

C. They arrive after midday.

D. The visit is on Wednesday.

E. The narrator goes with their grandmother.

F. The grandmother recognises a washing machine.

G. The exhibition contains only paintings.

H. Admission is free.