Press day

An original literary non-fiction-style account of a community grape-pressing day.

The first crates arrived with names written on their sides. People waited beside them as if they expected each grape to return to its own household. Beside the press, a woman explained that this year's fruit would be processed together and the juice divided afterwards. A man studied the marks on his crate, asked how the shares would be measured and then carried it to the washing table.

At first, nobody wanted the unremarkable jobs. Three volunteers offered to turn the handle. Nobody volunteered to carry the empty crates back to the gate. The woman beside the press handed the first handle-turner a brush and asked him to help clean a tray. He laughed, inspected his clean shoes and began.

As more fruit arrived, the work spread across the yard. A teenager who had been taking photographs put his phone away when the washing queue grew. Two neighbours argued briefly about where to stack the crates, moved them twice and discovered that the second arrangement blocked the tap. They moved them back without reopening the argument.

By lunchtime, I could no longer tell who had brought fruit and who had merely come to watch. A small child was collecting fallen labels. Someone had placed a chair beside the bottle table for a volunteer who could not stand comfortably for long. When the handle was offered to her, she declined and continued filling bottles. There was a queue for those now, and no queue for the photographs.

What do you learn about how people take part in the grape-pressing day?