Text 1: The wall that taught me to wait, by Megan Idris

An original contemporary magazine memoir.

I arrived at the farm imagining a peaceful week of arranging sun-warmed stones while skylarks performed overhead. In the photographs I had seen, dry-stone wallers looked less like labourers than philosophers who happened to own hammers. By ten on Monday morning, my gloves were wet, my back hurt and the wall had rejected everything I offered it.

Eleri, who was teaching me, watched as I selected the flattest stones and placed them in a neat row. I was pleased with the handsome faces I had made them show to the field. Eleri pressed one stone with her boot. Six others moved.

"You have built a pile with good manners," she said. "It still has no strength."

There was no mortar to disguise a poor decision. Each stone had to reach into the wall rather than merely decorate its edge, and the gaps inside had to be packed firmly with smaller pieces. I had placed several upright seams directly above one another. When we removed the wooden supports, a whole section folded forwards with a soft, expensive sigh.

For the rest of that day, I disliked the stones. They were the wrong shape, the wrong size or apparently perfect until turned over. Eleri would pick up one I had rejected, rotate it twice and settle it exactly where it was needed. My own hands seemed both clumsy and impatient.

During the second day, however, I began to look for weight rather than beauty. I learned to turn a stone until it stopped rocking and to listen for the dull knock that meant it was properly held. Progress was maddeningly slow. By Thursday, we had completed only three metres of waist-high wall, yet I no longer wanted to hurry. The wall had started making decisions with us: one long stone tied the two sides together; one awkward hollow waited half an hour for the piece that would fill it.

On Friday afternoon, the farmer opened the gate and a flock of sheep pressed along the new wall. One scratched its shoulder against the stones I had laid on Tuesday. Nothing shifted. Eleri did not congratulate me. She only nodded towards the next collapsed section, half-hidden by nettles.

At the start of the week, I had wanted to leave behind something impressive. Instead, I felt proud that our work seemed to belong there, firm and unannounced. The skylarks had been singing all week, I realised. Until then, I had been too busy to hear them.

Text 2: Pages from an apprentice bookbinder's diary, by Eliza Wren

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

In these entries from 1883, Eliza Wren records her first months as an apprentice in a bookbinder's workshop.

3 February

My aunt has found me a place with Mr Vale, the bookbinder. His window is full of grand volumes with red leather backs and gold leaves curling about their titles. I watched him heat a brass tool and press it upon a cover, leaving a bright star behind. I thought at once that I should like to make beautiful things and have people admire them.

He gave me six hundred printed sheets to fold.

17 March

Still I fold. Each sheet must be turned so that the numbers follow correctly when it is cut. Yesterday I carried a finished stack to Mr Vale, who opened one sheet and found the edge scarcely the width of a thread out of place. He pushed the whole stack back to me. By supper, my fingers were black with print and all six hundred sheets had passed through my hands again.

The gold tools remain locked in their case.

9 May

I am sewing books now. I made a row of stitches so even that I expected praise, but Mr Vale pulled one gently and showed me the slack hidden beneath it. He cut away an hour's work.

"A book remembers every lazy pull," he said.

I was ashamed and angry, though I knew he was right. The thread must be tight enough to hold the pages and loose enough to let them open. It is troublesome work because the best part of it cannot be seen.

28 June

We have repaired an atlas from the village school, spoiled when rain came through the roof. Its pages arrived swollen and stained, and the cover hung by two threads. For many days I cleaned the paper, flattened each sheet beneath boards, sewed the sections and fitted a new cloth back. Mr Vale made me undo only three stitches.

The schoolmistress collected it this morning. She opened the atlas at a map that had once been wrinkled like washing on a line. It lay almost flat. "The children will never know it was damaged," she said.

She did not ask who had mended it, and my name appears nowhere. In February, that would have disappointed me. I had wanted my name stamped in gold. Today I was pleased that it was absent.

In both texts, the writers describe learning a craft.

Compare how their attitudes towards becoming skilled develop. You should also compare how each writer uses language, structure and form to convey the demands and rewards of the work.

Support your response with detailed references to both texts.