At a market and a rehearsal

Text A: an original contemporary practice extract.

My folding table behaved perfectly until I placed my boxes on it. Then one pair of legs folded inwards, sending my carefully arranged notebooks sliding towards the floor. I was still trying to hold the table upright when the woman setting up the next market stall came over.

She found a small catch beneath the tabletop and pressed it into place. Instead of securing the other side herself, she held the table steady while I searched for the matching catch. “You will know where it is next time,” she said. She had struggled with the same kind of table at her first market. When a late arrival began fighting with his own table, I was able to show him what she had shown me.

Text B: an original contemporary practice extract.

At my first rehearsal, my music stand kept sinking until the pages were almost level with my knees. I pulled the top upwards three times, but it slid down again as soon as I let go. A player in the row behind noticed what was happening and came across before the conductor arrived.

He loosened the collar around the central pole, raised one section and tightened it again. Then he returned the stand to me so that I could adjust the final section myself. He explained that completing the last step would make the method easier to remember. A few weeks later, I recognised the same puzzled expression on a new member’s face and pointed out the collar before her music reached the floor.