The first of June fell on a Monday this year and brought with it the start of what some are pleased to call the meteorological summer. The pond marked the occasion by not marking it. The Warden of the Sluice, found in the late morning at his usual post above the east channel, would not confirm that anything had changed. “The season changes when it changes,” he said, “and not when somebody decides to write it down.” This paper sets the remark down anyway.
The Deputy of the Warden of the Sluice took a different line, though not, on inspection, an opposing one. She had filed a short barometric note with the Clerk of the Reed-Bed Subcommittee before the second honk. Pressure within the seasonal range. Humidity at nine drakes, down half a drake on the late-spring average. Wind from the south-west, light. She would not call the readings summer-like or otherwise. She did allow, on a direct question, that she had taken them with the change of season in mind. The gesture is noted here and left to stand.
The older drakes were consulted at the western end of the south bank in the usual way, which is to say by coming close enough to hear and then listening. They converged, after a short exchange, on a verdict: “no different from yesterday.” A second drake settled the morning with an amendment. “No different from the year before, either, in the parts that matter.” Which parts those were, he did not say, and this paper let the question rest.
The lesser observations of the day ran short. The bread queue at the east bank feeding point moved at about seven crusts to the hour, near enough to last week. The water at the upper sluice ran clear. The north-bank reeds were coming into the shade the older drakes call “the right green.” Drake Halford completed his morning circuit carrying, for once, no paperwork. The dabchicks held their formation at the seaward end of the west pier. The heron stood at its usual remove and had not moved since first light. A small leaf, lately off the south-bank willow, drifted past this paper’s position and went on, in its own time, toward the southern waters.
Late in the morning the Deputy was at the lower gate, conferring with the Clerk, who had walked from the reeds to take the day’s filings in person. That is rarer than it once was. The Clerk took the barometric note, took also a small further item the Deputy had set aside under her mark, and went back to the reeds at the pace of a working morning. The Warden did not attend any part of it. His not attending has, by now, become a season of its own.
So the pond entered the new season the way the older drakes recommend. Without ceremony. Without granting that the date matters to anyone who was not asked. Whether the longer evenings now formally begin, or had already begun on Sunday, when the rehearsal of the duet reached its longest pass yet, is a question readers may settle among themselves.