English Language Paper 1 Question 5

Please take my comments with a grain of salt (defi not an examiner!) but it's very good
Mark scheme-like comments
• Good use of sentence lengths: short (particularly last line) and long
• Good use of colons & semicolons
• Good use of 'ambitious' (this word's always on the mark scheme) vocab
• Good use of figurative language & imagery (e.g. I really like "the looming, concrete blocks of flats that cast gloomy shadows over the insect-like cars")
Personal preferences:
I like your opening, and this bit: "It’s strange to think that I am just a side character in each of their stories, and that they’re just side characters in mine."
I also like your ending and how you (perhaps unintentionally?) link it back to the start with the reference to the teacup: this is very powerful, so keep doing it!
Some suggestions/things I noticed and wanted to comment about:
• Does china pottery need a capital letter? I'm not sure
• "this café is famous for its coffee recipe, no one knows how they make it" - is this a comma splice?
• "Some say that they have a secret ingredient that they infuse with the coffee beans, others say it’s magic, and others, the more rational-minded, say it’s down to good training and a recipe that has withstood the test of time: it’s alleged to be a generational recipe that has been passed down for hundreds of years, maybe since the dawn of coffee beans." - this is very long and confusing; I think you could break this up into at least two sentences and/or maybe semicolons separating items in the list
• I don't think you can use musing as a noun - perhaps 'stop me from continuing to muse' although do something better that sounds a bit wordy (verbose if you want another good word in your toolkit lol)
• "to better see what commotion is occurring today" - very weird considering that there actually is not much commotion
• "Outside, the scenery isn’t picturesque at all, it’s almost an eyesore" - comma splice again
• "Sun struggles to permeate the thick fortress of clouds" - The Sun, although this might just be a typo
• "The window fogs up again, but I don’t wipe it down, there’s not much to see." comma splice at the second comma
• Perhaps you could squeeze in like one line of dialogue and/or an exclamation mark and/or a question mark just to show the examiner that you can use them - I know you can so don't give them an excuse to mark you down!
A final note from me, I prefer to do the story question as it lets you develop a character rather than just describing the setting & the senses - you kinda did both here but I recommend doing the story question as it's (supposedly) easier to get higher marks. I'm not sure how true this is, but I thought I'd mention it.
I'd rather not give it a rough mark because I'm no examiner in any regards, so I don't want to over/under mark you, but overall, it's a wonderful piece

Yes, to fix a comma splice usually you either want to use a full stop, a conjunction (e.g. and/but/) or a semicolon. Sometimes, depending on the sentence, you could use a dash/brackets.
Let's take the sentence "This café is famous for its coffee recipe, no one knows how they make it."
This café is famous for its coffee recipe is a main clause (i.e. makes sense on its own) as it's got a subject & verb.
No one knows how they make it is also a main clause.
You can't glue two main clauses together with a comma (it isn't powerful enough) so you need a conjunction, a semicolon if they're related statements, or a full stop. Basically, if there's a verb you can end the sentence, but if there isn't you can't.
e.g. for this case, I would change it to something like "This café is famous for its coffee recipe, yet no one knows how they make it."
Even if it's only 2-3 minutes, I'd recommend re-reading your writing just to spot any errors. Perhaps do question 5 first, then section A, then proofread your creative writing as you've almost refreshed your brain?