Text A: an original contemporary practice extract.

I turned the radio on while sorting the papers that had gathered beside my desk. I expected it to be background noise; instead, the presenter’s account of a small village competition made me stop folding. I knew nothing about the place, yet the people speaking sounded close enough to interrupt my afternoon in a pleasant way.

The programme did not make the work disappear. I still had to decide which papers to keep and which to recycle. But the changing voices gave the room a sense of company without asking anything of me. When the broadcast ended, the silence seemed sharper than it had before.

I do not need a voice in every quiet moment. Sometimes I put the radio away and enjoy the room as it is. Still, I have begun to choose a programme when a routine task feels too solitary. It is a small kind of company, and small is exactly what I want.

Text B: an original contemporary practice extract.

I switched the radio on to make the kitchen feel less empty while I prepared supper. For a while it worked: a voice, a tune, another voice. Then I found myself listening for the next item instead of watching the pan. I turned it off and heard the room again, including the sound that told me the water was boiling.

This is not a complaint about the programmes. I enjoy them when I can give them my attention. But when I use them to fill every pause, I begin to treat silence as a problem to solve. It can be useful to notice what is happening around me, or simply to let a thought finish without someone else speaking over it.

I still put the radio on at breakfast, when I want a gentle start and have little to concentrate on. In the kitchen at supper, I prefer to hear the task. The same broadcast can be welcome company one hour and an interruption the next; it depends on what I need to attend to.