Text 1: Above the clouds, by Imogen Price

An original contemporary magazine feature.

At 5.40 each morning, Mara Venn leaves the warmth of the bunk room and steps on to the summit. In calm weather, the instruments are ten metres from the door. This morning, with sleet blowing sideways, reaching them feels like crossing a continent.

Mara is one of four observers who take turns living at the mountain weather station. The building stands at the end of a narrow track, 1,180 metres above sea level, and for most of the winter it can be reached only on foot. Its windows are small, its walls are thick and every outside handle has a rope attached to it, so that nobody loses a glove while opening a door.

Much of the equipment is automatic. Sensors measure wind, rainfall and temperature, then send the results to computers far below. This made me wonder why Mara was needed at all. She smiles at the question. Yesterday, a lump of ice blocked the rain gauge. Last week, the wind tore a cable loose. ‘Machines are very clever,’ she says, ‘until mountain weather gets into them.’

Every hour, Mara checks the instruments, records the state of the sky and reports any sudden change. Between observations, she clears ice, answers messages and cooks on a stove that seems permanently to contain a pan of soup. The work is repetitive, but the weather is not. At midday, the cloud tears open and the valleys appear below us, green and sunlit. Mara stops speaking. After a minute, the cloud closes again, like a curtain.

By evening, the wind is striking the walls hard enough to shake the cups. I find myself watching the clock, longing for the next report simply because it gives us something to do. Mara, who has spent seventeen winters here, remains patient. She goes out once more and returns coated in ice, carrying a page of figures as carefully as if it were a winning lottery ticket.

I had imagined a lonely person battling dramatically with storms. Mara is quieter and more practical than that. Her achievement is not that she defeats the mountain, but that, hour after hour, she notices exactly what it is doing.

Text 2: Watchers on the headland, by From Our Correspondent

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

In this newspaper report, published in 1886, a correspondent visits a coastal signal station where three men observe the weather and passing ships.

Upon the highest point of Bellweather Head stands a low stone station, inhabited by three signalmen whose duty it is to watch the sea. The place is reached by a flight of two hundred steps cut into the cliff, and I arrived at the top with little breath left for conversation. Mr Preece, the senior man, greeted me as though I had merely crossed a parlour.

Their instruments are few: a barometer, a rain vessel and a brass gauge for measuring the wind. Observations are entered in a great book at fixed hours. The men also record the ships that pass the headland and raise warning signals when bad weather approaches. Such work demands a sharp eye. A bank of mist which appeared to me no different from the rest caused Mr Preece to reach at once for his telescope. Within minutes, the mist had swallowed a fishing boat and hidden the rocks below.

During a gale, spray flies over the roof and the whole station trembles. One of the younger men told me that he once crawled on hands and knees to secure a broken signal rope, while his companions held a line tied about his waist. He described this adventure cheerfully, but Mr Preece interrupted him: ‘There was nothing fine in it. The rope required fastening, and so we fastened it.’

The men live together for six days at a time. Their room contains three bunks, a blackened kettle and shelves crowded with logbooks. They pass quiet hours carving pieces of wood or reading old newspapers aloud. There are disagreements, naturally. Mr Preece objects to whistling; Mr Owen whistles whenever he believes Mr Preece to be asleep. Yet when the bell sounds, all private quarrels vanish and each man moves to his post without a word.

I had thought their life would be one of heroic rescues and tremendous storms. In truth, courage here consists chiefly of attention: looking through the same window, reading the same instruments and keeping the same careful record, even when nothing appears to happen. As I descended the steps, the three men were already bent once more over their book, preserving another ordinary hour from being forgotten.

Both of these texts are about people who observe the weather while working in exposed places.

Compare:

• what the writers say about the observers and their work
• how the writers present the observers to readers

You must use the text to support your comments and make it clear which text you are referring to.