The Reed-Bed Subcommittee met on Wednesday afternoon for the first of its regular sessions after the special session of the twenty-third, and in proceedings the Clerk afterward called “uncomplicated,” deferred all four items on its agenda by acclamation. The session ran forty minutes. About a third of that went to reading the minutes of the last one. The Clerk noted the count of deferrals, recorded it, and at the appointed hour declared the session closed.
The four deferred matters were taken in order. First, a procedural question of whether the records review of the fourth and fifth, now commended by the vote of the twenty-third, needed any further action. Second, the Travelling Drake’s question, held over from last session, of formally recognising the lily pad vacancy. Third, Drake Halford’s fifth filing, whose ultimate disposition was held not, at the present moment, ripe. Fourth, a procedural note from the Cultural Subcommittee about the south bank approach, which the Clerk said would be handled in the ordinary way as the date of the midsummer programme nears. None of the four drew discussion of any length. The Junior Member, seated in his usual place toward the rear, was seen throughout to be taking notes. He did not, on this occasion, speak.
Under miscellaneous observations the Clerk noted, and invited no discussion upon, a matter recorded here in the terms his note allowed. The Channel Sprint rematch, talked of at the spring race for “the feast of next moon,” has slipped from the moon now passed and stands carried to the next moon at which the Clerk of the Race may attend, conditions allowing. The deferral is recorded in the form usual to such matters, the responsible officer being, in the Clerk’s phrase, not at present of the company. With the feast put off and the Clerk of the Race still away, no further action falls to the Reed-Bed Subcommittee for now. The matter waits for that gentleman to return in his own time. The coot of the Channel Sprint was not at the session. His pebble stays in the Clerk’s keeping, pending the same return.
The heron question was noted, as at every session since the bird’s return, as “unchanged.” The sluice question was noted as “unchanged.” The wall marking at the sluice came up under miscellaneous observations and went no further. The season’s deferral count was not formally tallied, though the Clerk, asked, called it “comfortably within range,” a phrase this paper will not, on this occasion, try to price.
The Junior Member left the reeds at the close in no other member’s company, walking toward the southern approach at a pace best called deliberate. Asked politely whether he cared to comment on the day, he indicated by a small movement of the head that he did not, and this paper let him go. Readers will recall that he took the records-review result of the twenty-third in a silence of four breaths. Wednesday’s silence, by the count, ran a good deal longer.
The Subcommittee will meet, as it meets, on the next Wednesday (ish), to take up whatever the week has produced. Four matters came before it. Four matters left exactly as they arrived. The pattern, in the manner of all old patterns, has found its feet again.