The lost weather report

Text: an original contemporary personal-essay-style practice extract.

For months, I described my grandfather as a man who rarely said anything about himself. Then I found the notebook in which he had recorded the weather for twenty years. Most entries were brief: wind direction, rainfall, the first appearance of frost. It looked like a life determined to avoid becoming a story.

On one page, the temperature was followed by the words “too wet to mend the shed”. On another, “sun at last” occupied more space than the rainfall figure. I began to notice where measurements gave way to irritation or pleasure. The notebook did not explain his friendships or tell me why he had made certain decisions. It showed the conditions in which ordinary days had been spent, and sometimes how those conditions felt.

I copied a few entries rather than treating every line as a hidden confession. The record remained chiefly a weather record. Yet I could no longer say that he had left nothing personal behind. When I saw rain on the shed roof the next morning, I remembered his impatient sentence. A small complaint had travelled farther than either of us had expected.

Analyse how the writer uses language and structure to interest and engage the reader.

In your answer, consider:

• language features and techniques
• structural techniques
• the effect on the reader.

Support your views with detailed reference to the extract.