An unplanned Tuesday
Text C: an original fiction extract.
For his mother's retirement party, Ben had made a list of things she would finally have time to do. He put gardening at the top, although the only plants at home belonged to his father. Beneath it came travel, reading and long lunches. The list looked like a life being generously opened. His mother read it while still wearing her laundry supervisor's work shoes. She asked whether Tuesday afternoon had already been booked.
Ben laughed because he thought she was joking. The party was not until Saturday, her last shift was Friday, and everybody wanted to help. A colleague had suggested a gardening voucher. His uncle was planning to announce that she would never have to look at a clock again. Ben was choosing songs from the year she had started work. He had found a list online and assumed that she would remember every one.
On Thursday, she brought home the little sign which had stood on her desk. It carried her name and the words Shift Supervisor. She put it face down beside the kettle. Ben asked whether she wanted it on the party table. She said perhaps, then asked him to help return some borrowed chairs. In the car, she described the last rota she had prepared. Someone else would change it next month. She sounded relieved until she mentioned a new worker whose questions she would no longer hear. Ben said she could always visit. She replied that visiting was not the same as being expected.
At home, his uncle telephoned to ask what she intended to do with herself. Ben handed her the phone and heard her give the same cheerful answer she had given three other people: plenty. Afterwards, she sat on the stairs without taking off her coat. Ben sat one step below. She said she was looking forward to finishing. She also disliked being asked to present an attractive new life before she had left the old one. Some mornings she might miss knowing where she was needed. That did not mean she wanted the job back.
Ben played her part of his music selection. She recognised two songs and asked why the others had been chosen. He explained about the year. She said she had kept hearing new music after that year; some of it came from the radio while she drove him to school. She named a song he knew well and hummed the opening. He joined in before remembering that he had called it his music only last month. Then he asked what she really wanted for Tuesday. She said she would decide on Tuesday.
On Saturday morning, the gardening voucher became a book token which could be exchanged if she preferred something else. Ben mixed her requested songs with some older ones instead of turning the room into a single remembered year. Her colleagues began arriving with cakes, flowers and stories he had never heard. Before the speeches, his mother turned the desk sign over and placed it beside the plates. Then she took off her work shoes, which she had worn out of habit, and put on the ones she had chosen for the party.
You are Ben. Give your speech at your mother’s retirement party.
In your response:
Base your response on Text C, developing its ideas in your own words. Write about 250 to 300 words. Up to 10 marks are available for reading and up to 10 marks for writing.
60 exam-style questions on CIE IGCSE English Language 4.5.1 Extended response to Text C. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.