Text 1: The radio on table six, by Hannah Brierley

An original contemporary blog.

By nine o’clock, I had placed Mum’s old radio at the far end of table six and told my sister I would leave when the coffee ran out. Around me, people were opening cases and arranging screws in little dishes. I kept my hands in my pockets until Priya, one of the volunteers, asked what the radio had been doing before it stopped. I could only say that it had once filled Mum’s kitchen and now made no sound at all.

Priya did not take the radio away. She put a screwdriver beside it and waited while I removed the back. A spring shot across the table. For a moment, neither of us could see where it had come from, and I pushed the loose pieces towards her. She moved her own repair to one side and called Mr Hanley over. He brought a magnifying lamp, while Priya named the tools and showed me which wire to follow.

The first sound from the radio was two thin notes and then silence again. Someone at the next table suggested checking the battery contacts. This time I found the dirty connection myself. When the music returned, it was no louder than a whisper, but I carried the radio to the testing shelf without being asked. I missed the coffee. Before leaving, I wrote my name beside next Saturday’s session and showed the next visitor how to keep the spring from escaping.

Text 2: A wet day at Lowmarsh, by Imogen Vale

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

In this diary entry from 1887, a member of a town naturalists’ society describes a day spent surveying the shells along an estuary shore.

The Lowmarsh survey began with notebooks, numbered bags and a sky the colour of the estuary. I had left my waterproof cape at home, for the society’s notice spoke of a walk of two hours, and I supposed that my part would chiefly consist in writing down what others found. Miss Grace, who led the party, set us in pairs and pointed us towards the line of marker flags along the shore.

The first flag was gone by the time we reached it. The tide had come further up the bank than at the previous survey, and the rain soon turned the figures in my book into grey smudges. When Miss Grace announced that the route must be shortened, I took out my railway timetable and began to look for an earlier train. Our first bag was already full, yet the party had counted only half the stretch.

Miss Grace divided the remaining work between the fishermen’s shelter and the shore. A gentleman I had not met before lent me his oilskin-covered notebook and took the exposed section himself. Under the shelter I sorted the labels and read out the numbers while two others checked the bags. We finished with fewer records than were intended. Miss Grace asked who would return when the tide was lower, and my name was upon her list before I had decided whether my wet boots were worth it.

Using information from both texts, explain how the participants' responses to difficulties changed as the events progressed, and how other people contributed to those changes.

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