Text A: an original contemporary practice extract.

For nine months, the town-hall clock displayed the correct time in complete silence. I had never thought of its chimes as important until the machinery was removed for repair. The clock still performed its practical duty, yet the square felt strangely unfinished, like a stage set waiting for the actors to arrive.

When the bell sounded again, people looked up before remembering why. A café worker stepped into the doorway, two cyclists stopped talking and a child attempted to count the strokes aloud. None of us needed the clock to tell us the hour; phones and watches could do that more accurately. What returned was not information but a moment briefly shared by people who happened to be within hearing distance.

The chimes will not please everybody, and the council was right to end them during the night. Tradition becomes an excuse when it refuses to notice how people live now. During the day, however, this old sound gives no instructions and demands no response. It simply interrupts the town’s separate routines for a few seconds. The repair restored a small piece of public life that silence had made easier to recognise.

Text B: an original contemporary practice extract.

The restored clock announced itself while I was reading beside an open window. Its first chime surprised me; the next three made sure surprise became interruption. By the end of the week, I knew exactly how far the sound travelled through our flat, including the rooms from which the clock itself could not be seen.

Supporters describe the bell as a sound shared by the town. Shared things are usually available to use, leave or ignore. A chime enters every nearby room without asking whether somebody is working, sleeping after a night shift or trying to settle a baby. Calling it traditional does not make those lives modern inconveniences that should arrange themselves around the clock.

I do not want the bell removed completely. On market days and public occasions, it can add character to the square, and daytime hourly chimes would preserve much of what people value. What I question is the assumption that restoration means returning automatically to the previous pattern. Repairing the machinery gave the council an opportunity to decide when the sound still serves the town. Instead, the old timetable was treated as though it were another original part that could only be put back.