The Reed-Bed Subcommittee reconvened on Thursday afternoon, on the provisional schedule set at last Monday’s close and confirmed since with what the Clerk calls “characteristic latitude.” A quorum was present. The Warden of the Sluice attended in his customary capacity. The session opened with the now-traditional silence, broken only by a small administrative cough from the Clerk, which the Clerk has asked be left out of the minutes.
The principal business was the contested census filing of Drake Halford of the east shore. It was last before the Subcommittee on the twentieth, when the filing went missing and the matter could not proceed. Drake Halford was again present, this time with what he formally called his “amended household,” now numbering five. Two of the original household have indicated that they would rather not be entered into the present proceedings, on procedural grounds, and would prefer to be considered separately at a future session. The Drake gave his testimony with exemplary patience. It did not, this paper records, advance the matter in any material way.
The Clerk reported that the original filing remained, as of the opening, formally lost. A search of the relevant pigeonholes had been made in the days before, with help from the deputy of the Warden of the Sluice. Nothing was recovered. A second filing, submitted last week to bridge the absence of the first, had been received, and had then been, the Clerk now confirmed, “filed in such a place as it has not yet been possible to locate again.” A third filing followed. Drake Halford produced it on the spot, and it was accepted into evidence and placed at once by the Clerk in a position the Clerk has assured the Drake will be remembered.
The Subcommittee deliberated, briefly. A motion to proceed without the original filing was raised, and declined on procedural grounds. A motion to declare the original irrecoverable and the third filing definitive was raised, and declined on much the same grounds. A motion to defer the whole matter to a later session, pending the recovery of either the original or a fourth filing of equal authority, was raised, and carried by acclamation. This paper notes the acclamation with a degree of professional fatigue. The census is now in its second formal deferral. A third is, in the Clerk’s phrase, “well within the range of plausible scheduling outcomes.”
Other matters, for the record. The small pebble of the coot of the Channel Sprint, still in the Clerk’s keeping, featured for the fourth time, and was again referred to the Clerk of the Race. A junior member asked that the Subcommittee consider, at some future session, appointing a Deputy Clerk to relieve the present Clerk of certain burdens; this was met with the now-customary constructive silence. The Warden gave notice that the principal humidity gauge has returned to satisfactory working order, and that the deputy is now formally restored to her duties.
The next session is provisionally fixed (ish) for the Wednesday following. The Subcommittee adjourned at a respectable hour, the Clerk recording a session that “achieved a quorum, an attendance, two procedural declines, and one substantive deferral, which in the Clerk’s view represents progress of a kind.” Asked to comment, the Warden declined.