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

I used to think Mrs Vale’s recipe cards were only instructions. Each one named a dish, listed ingredients and gave a cooking time. Then I started helping to sort them in the community kitchen.

The card for apple cake said, “Add more sugar if the fruit is sharp.” Underneath, in a different ink, someone had added, “Only a little!” On the soup card, a note squeezed into the margin read, “Enough for whoever turns up.” These brief comments made the cards feel less like a set of rules and more like a record of people paying attention to one another.

Nobody in the kitchen could tell me who had added each note. Some might have been Mrs Vale’s own; others might have come from helpers long after she stopped cooking there. Last Saturday, a new volunteer stood by the soup pan, worried that there would not be enough for the lunch club. Without thinking, I read her the note in the margin. She laughed, tipped in another handful of lentils and stopped counting bowls.