The copy shop after dark

An original imagined literary non-fiction-style account of collecting printed programmes.

At eleven, the copy shop was the brightest room in the street. Its windows held a pale duplicate of the pavement, and every passer-by briefly acquired a second face above the paper display.

I had come for two hundred programmes. On my screen, they had been a modest file with a reassuring name. Here they occupied the table in uneven towers, each one waiting to be checked, folded and persuaded into the same shape as its neighbour.

The printer drew another sheet into itself. It paused with theatrical gravity, then supplied a page as though granting a favour. Somewhere behind the counter, a cutter made a short, final sound. The room smelled of warm paper and a day which had not yet been allowed to end.

The assistant lifted one programme towards the light. I watched the small movement of her eyes across the page. She found a faint line I had missed and set the copy aside. The rejected tower was shorter, but it seemed to contain a much longer account of the evening.

When the boxes were ready, their weight took me by surprise. I had carried the file here in a pocket. Now I needed both arms to take it through the door. Outside, the street looked dimmer than before, and the neat phrase print ready no longer sounded like the name of a finished job.

Examine the methods the writer uses to reveal the work concealed by the idea of printing a file.