4 questions on this paper's topics

Source AThe station nobody owns

Source A is a letter to a local newspaper, written in 2026 by a commuter responding to plans to redevelop a railway station.

1. 1The artist’s drawing shows our station without a single person waiting. There are trees, glass doors and one improbably clean bicycle. The benches that commuters have occupied for years do not appear.
2. 2I want the leaking roof repaired. I want a lift that works. I am less sure that I want the station described as a “destination”, as though arriving somewhere else were an unfortunate habit we ought to break.
3. 3The proposed café will be pleasant for anyone who can afford to linger. But a place to sit should not depend on buying a drink. The old benches have supported tired nurses, wet schoolchildren and people with nowhere pressing to go.
4. 4At the consultation I said this badly. I mentioned the benches three times and forgot to mention the lift. The architect looked sympathetic in the way one looks at a broken object that cannot be included in the new design.
5. 5Afterwards a cleaner stopped me. She liked the brighter lighting in the plans, she said; she would like somewhere to rest on her break as well. Her two wishes were not enemies.
6. 6Perhaps that is what the drawing lacks: the untidy possibility that improvement can mean keeping something. Repair the roof. Install the lift. Leave room for a person whose only ticket is tiredness.

Written for this course. The people and events are invented for practice.

Source BWalden

Source B is from Walden (1854), a book by the American writer Henry David Thoreau. Sleepers are the wooden beams laid under railway lines.

1. 1If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads?
2. 2And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season?
3. 3But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads?
4. 4We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.
5. 5Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad?
6. 6Each one is a man, an Irish-man, or a Yankee man.
7. 7The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them.
8. 8They are sound sleepers, I assure you.
9. 9And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon.
10. 10And when they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an exception.
11. 11I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854). Public domain; transcribed from Project Gutenberg eBook #205. Verbatim non-fiction extract; only whitespace, editorial line numbering and marked omissions differ from the linked text.

Source AAn evening at the repair table

Source A is a magazine article written in 2026 by someone who takes a broken lamp to a community repair evening.

1. 1I arrived at the repair evening with a lamp and the private hope that somebody would declare it beyond saving.
2. 2That would excuse the expensive replacement I had already chosen. I had even measured the space it would occupy.
3. 3At the door, a volunteer asked what was wrong. I said the lamp was dead, as if submitting a certificate.
4. 4She wrote flickers on a paper label. Her smaller, more accurate word made my verdict look rather theatrical.
5. 5The room was a patient jumble of open radios, coat linings and bicycles. Nobody appeared embarrassed by the exposed insides of things.
6. 6At one table a man was trying to teach a zip to remember its teeth. At another, a child watched a clock being opened.
7. 7My lamp joined a queue of injured possessions. I felt an unreasonable need to explain that I usually looked after things.
8. 8The repairer introduced herself as Nessa and asked me to sit beside her. I had expected to hand over a problem and disappear.
9. 9She turned the lamp so that we could both see. Its underside was less elegant than its shade, a fact I found oddly reassuring.
10. 10As she examined it, she asked where it had come from. I told her it had stood on my grandmother’s desk.
11. 11This information changed nothing about her careful movements, but it changed the silence in which I watched them.
12. 12I remembered the pool of light on my grandmother’s letters, and how she would turn the shade towards me when I drew.
13. 13Nessa did not promise a miracle. She explained what she was checking, in words that neither displayed her knowledge nor disguised mine.
14. 14The lamp lit. Its familiar yellow circle spread across the scratched table, modest and complete, while the other conversations continued.
15. 15Nobody applauded. I was grateful for that. A small recovery might have become embarrassing if somebody had made a ceremony of it.
16. 16I asked what I owed. Nessa pointed to a donations tin and then to the label, where she had written the fault.
17. 17On the way home I carried the lamp upright, despite the inconvenience. It had acquired no new parts that anyone could admire.
18. 18The replacement was still waiting in my online basket. I removed it and discovered that the empty space did not demand to be filled.
19. 19I would like to claim that I now repair everything. In fact, I still abandon things too readily and sometimes arrive late.
20. 20But I have stopped using dead when I mean I do not know what is wrong. It is a useful distinction beyond lamps.

Written for this course. The people and events are invented for practice.

The uncollected parcel

Original practice fiction, written in 2026.

1. 1At half past six, Mara reached the village shop. The window was dark, but a strip of yellow light lay under the side door.
2. 2She carried an empty basket. Her mother had asked for bread; the baker had already sold his last loaf.
3. 3Beside the door stood a parcel wrapped in brown paper. Rain had softened one corner, leaving the string slack.
4. 4Mara read the label twice. It bore her father’s name, although he had left the village before she could remember.
5. 5She raised her hand to knock, then lowered it. A voice inside was saying that some things were better left where they were.
6. 6When the latch clicked, Mara stepped back into the road. She held the basket against her chest as if it contained something breakable.
7. 7The shopkeeper appeared with a lamp. Behind him the shelves gleamed, and a new loaf rested on the counter.
8. 8“I was expecting you,” he said. He looked at the basket, then at the parcel. Mara wished he had looked at neither.

Original fiction written for this course.

The listening room

Original contemporary fiction; Mara has returned to a disused coastal signal tower to collect a box belonging to her father.

1. 1The tower looked smaller from the road. Mara remembered a building that divided the sky; now a delivery van concealed its door.
2. 2She waited for the van to leave before approaching, although nobody had told her that she must arrive alone.
3. 3Inside, the staircase curled tightly around a darkness that smelt of cold iron. Her bag scraped against each turn.
4. 4On the first landing, a painted arrow promised a view. She followed it into a room without any windows.
5. 5The windows were there, of course, beneath boards. Thin seams of daylight trembled around them like poorly kept secrets.
6. 6A chair faced the blank wall. Beside it stood the box she had come for, labelled in her father’s painstaking capitals.
7. 7She touched the label, then withdrew her hand. The cardboard had softened at the corners, almost accommodating her fingers.
8. 8Once, he had let her sit here while he worked. She remembered being trusted to announce the arrival of boats.
9. 9He had always thanked her, even when she mistook a bird for a sail. That courtesy embarrassed her now.
10. 10An engine sounded outside. She returned to the landing, but through its narrow glass she could see only the road.
11. 11When she went back, the chair seemed to have turned. It had not; the dragging mark beneath it was old.
12. 12She told herself this aloud. Her voice made the small room sound occupied, which was not the comfort she expected.
13. 13In the box were gloves, a cracked mug and a notebook. All ordinary things, arranged with an unreasonable amount of space between them.
14. 14She opened the notebook at the last page. There was a list of boats and, below it, her name.
15. 15For a moment the list seemed to be waiting for her to understand its order. She checked the date again.
16. 16It was the day she had left home. The ink beside her name was darker, pressed almost through the paper.
17. 17Someone below tried the outer door. Mara closed the notebook before she knew that she had decided to hide it.
18. 18The handle clicked twice, then stopped. She waited beside the box, listening to the silence change around her.
19. 19At last she put the notebook in her bag and lifted the mug. Underneath lay a second label, face down.
20. 20Outside, the engine started again. This time she did not move towards the window; she turned the label over.

Original fiction written for this course.