Notices enough washed into the reeds this week to earn a column of their own. So here it is. The Clerk consented to set the type, on the understanding that this paper prints only what it is handed, in the words the parties picked, in the order they came. His forbearance in the matter is noted. He would sooner it were not.
Position vacant
The Warden of the Sluice seeks a Deputy Weather-Instrument Keeper. The last holder has gone unfound since the fog of the eleventh, and stays so. The work: read the humidity each hour, in drakes. File the readings before the water takes them. Keep the principal instrument somewhere it can be had back. Apply to the Warden at the sluice, between the second and third honks of the morning.
Lost
One pebble. Smooth. Grey, or near enough; the owner says “a sort of grey.” Last in the Clerk’s keeping at Monday’s Subcommittee, where it drew an adjudication of considerable length and no settled outcome. The owner will not be named. Regular readers can name him. He would like it back.
For your attention
The Cultural Subcommittee reports, with diffidence, that a midsummer programme of music and recitation is well advanced for beneath the Old Willow. Those who performed at the spring recital are pressed to return. Hettie, the standout of that recital, will accept an engagement on terms still to be settled through her mother, who notes the terms are not the sort settled in a column. Letters of interest go to the Clerk of the Subcommittee in the usual way.
Reduced rates
Pondweed, fresh enough for feeding and, handled gently, for small festive arrangements, is going at the south reeds for less than it has all season. Bring your own conveyance. The supply is finite. Nothing may be held over against a later visit.
To be advertised in due course
A position of considerable centrality in the southern waters has stood empty some weeks now. Readers who recall the seventeenth need no further description. The Subcommittee has announced no procedure for filling it. This notice records only that the position is, for now, vacant. Interested parties are counselled to wait.
Found
A small whistle, of the sort the Warden of the Sluice puts to his lip to call the deputy on matters of consequence, was found on the south reeds late Sunday by a passing drake of no particular acquaintance. It comes undamaged but for the cord, which is gone, and which the finder never turned up beside it. Word has reached the Warden. Should he wish to press the claim, he can name its other marks: there are marks on it the finder has withheld from print, on the plain principle that a whistle falls soonest to one who can say what it looks like before ever clapping eyes on it again. Until somebody does, the drake keeps it on the Warden’s behalf, at the south reeds, through the customary hours. Of it he makes no use. A whistle of that kind is not sounded by a drake of no particular acquaintance without consequences he has thought the better of.
A note from the Clerk
The Reed-Bed Subcommittee meets, when it meets, on Wednesdays (ish). Leave further notices at the usual reeds, and the column will appear, this paper expects, with some regularity (ish). New business runs through the customary channels.
It does not, this once, run by pebble. Pebbles will still be taken in. A hearing in any one session they cannot be promised.