Read the two new texts about invented local projects.

Text One: A report about a fictional archive project.

A county archive invited residents to lend personal notebooks containing descriptions of the weather. The pages included phrases such as ‘frost held until noon’, ‘a soft wet day’ and ‘the sky looked like tin’. These descriptions helped the researchers understand how the weather affected ordinary routines. Writers mentioned washing that would not dry, paths becoming difficult to use and outdoor work being postponed.

The researchers did not treat the phrases as exact measurements. One writer used ‘storm’ for a brief period of heavy rain, while another used the word only when trees or buildings were damaged. Some entries had been written several days after the weather occurred, and a few notebooks did not identify the writer's exact location.

The archive copied each description without changing its wording. It recorded the date and location when these were known and marked dates inferred from surrounding pages as uncertain. Broad labels helped readers search the collection, but the original descriptions remained beside them. The researchers did not replace words such as ‘freezing’ with an invented temperature.

Text Two: An account of a fictional gardening-history project.

A gardening society examined old notebooks kept by local plot holders. Entries included phrases such as ‘the soil was shut tight’, ‘the air felt heavy’ and ‘rain came sideways’. Notes about delayed planting, damaged supports and overflowing containers helped the society interpret what the writers had experienced.

However, similar phrases did not always describe similar conditions. ‘First frost’ sometimes referred only to frost noticed on one shaded plot. An entry written after a weekend could summarise several days without making clear when the weather changed. Missing pages also meant that a period of silence could not be treated as evidence that nothing unusual happened.

The society's index recorded the writer's phrase, the stated date and place, and any effects described on the same page. Editors separated what the writer had directly observed from conclusions they drew later. Where the evidence remained unclear, they recorded more than one possible interpretation instead of selecting a single answer.