Text 1: The Saturday repair table, by Amina Sayeed

An original contemporary newspaper feature.

At ten o'clock on Saturday morning, Rowan Hughes carries a blue bicycle into the old bus depot on Mill Street. The building now contains a community repair club, where volunteers help people mend things rather than throw them away. Rowan has come because the bicycle's chain keeps slipping, and he wants to ride it to school without having to walk the last mile.

He expected to find a room full of adults. Instead, a girl about his own age is sorting screws into small trays, while a retired mechanic called Lena is examining a lamp with a magnifying glass. The tables are crowded with tools, mugs and half-finished objects. Somewhere near the back, a radio is playing too quietly to identify the song.

'I only meant to watch,' Rowan tells Lena. She hands him a pair of safety glasses and asks him to turn the pedals slowly. At first he grips the bicycle as though it might escape. The chain drops again, and he looks towards the door. Lena does not take over. She asks him what he has noticed.

Gradually, Rowan begins to describe the problem for himself. He cleans the chain, adjusts a small part and tests the pedals. The first test produces a harsh clatter. Two people at the next table look round, but nobody laughs. Lena says that a noisy mistake is still useful information, and Rowan tries again.

By midday, the chain is moving smoothly. Rowan wipes his hands on a cloth and discovers that the black marks have reached his forehead. He is pleased when the girl with the screws points this out, although he pretends to be offended. The room is noisy, cramped and full of smells he cannot name, but he no longer seems eager to leave it.

Before he goes, Rowan writes his name on the club's list of returning visitors. He rides the bicycle in a careful circle outside the depot, then turns back to wave. The repair has not made the machine new. It has made it his again, and that appears to be enough.

Text 2: The door marked Reading Room, by Eliza Marsh

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

This diary entry was written in 1882.

I went to the Free Reading Room this afternoon because Aunt May said that the books there might answer the question I have carried for a week: why the moon changes its shape. At home we possess a Bible, a cookery book and a volume missing its first forty pages. None of these was likely to help me.

The rain had made the pavement shine, and I nearly turned back when I saw the door. It was tall and dark, with the words READING ROOM painted above it in letters that seemed to command silence before I had even entered.

Inside, the air was warm and still. Long tables stood beneath green-shaded lamps, and men bent over newspapers without speaking. I kept my hands together so that nobody should see how they trembled. The attendant looked at me, then at the wet hem of my dress.

'Are you seeking a particular book?' he asked.

I told him about the moon. He smiled, but not in mockery, and led me to a shelf near the far wall. The book he selected was heavier than I expected. When I opened it, the pages showed the moon as a bright circle, a narrow curve and all the shapes between. I forgot to be afraid of the room.

For an hour I read while the rain tapped at the windows. The men at the tables remained strangers, yet the lamps made a small island around each reader. I felt that I had been admitted to a company without being required to speak.

When the attendant came to say that closing time was near, I copied the name of the book carefully into my notebook. The tall door no longer looked like a warning as I left. It looked like an invitation which I had only just learned how to accept.

Both of these texts are about a first visit to an unfamiliar place to find help with a problem.

Compare:

• why Rowan and the diarist enter the places and what each gains from the experience
• the surroundings and the company each person has
• the writers' attitudes towards the experiences
• how language and structure convey these attitudes

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