Text 1: A day in the van with Dev, by Sophie Arkwright

An original contemporary online feature.

Dev Mistry’s shift starts at six, in a supermarket loading bay on the edge of Coventry. By half past, his van holds 118 green crates, sorted into chilled, frozen and everything else, and a tablet on the dashboard has worked out the order of his fourteen drops.

‘The app plans the route,’ he says, ‘but the app has never carried a slab of water up four flights of stairs.’ His third drop is exactly that: a block of flats where the lift has been broken since spring. He makes the climb three times.

Customers choose a one-hour slot, and Dev has to hit it. Roadworks, a bin lorry or a customer who does not answer the door can push the whole day back, and every late delivery means an apologetic phone call. Then there are substitutions. ‘If the shop has run out of semi-skimmed, I’m the one who hands over the full fat and watches their face.’

Most people are friendly. One elderly man has a cup of tea waiting every Thursday, and a little boy in Earlsdon waves from the window whenever the van pulls up. Dev finishes at half past three, having walked, by his phone’s count, eleven miles.

Text 2: Errand boy at the grocer’s, by Walter Brinsley

An original autobiography written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

Text 2 is from the autobiography of a man who worked for a grocer in a Midlands town in the 1860s.

I was twelve when I went as errand boy to Mr Corbould, grocer and tea dealer, at three shillings a week. I was in the shop by seven to take down the shutters and sweep, and I did not leave it until nine at night, or upon Saturdays until midnight, when the last of the working people had done their marketing.

My work was to carry the orders round to the customers’ houses. For the small parcels I had a basket upon my arm; for the larger orders, the sugar, the soap, the candles and the bacon, I had a handcart, which upon a wet day was a misery to push up Castle Hill. At the great houses I was not permitted at the front door, but must go down the area steps to the kitchen, where the cook would check every item against her book.

If an egg was broken or a parcel of tea got wet, the cost was taken from my wages. Yet there were kindnesses. One cook gave me a slice of seed cake every Friday, and an old lady in Mill Street, who lived alone, would always keep me talking, I think because I was the only visitor she had.

Using information from both texts, explain briefly what delivering groceries involved.

You should make it clear which text you are referring to.