The first two items of the midsummer programme went up at the Reed-Bed Clerk’s office on Tuesday morning. The documents were in the Clerk’s hand, posted in his other capacity, as Clerk of the Cultural Subcommittee. They indicate that the panel advanced the running order at a meeting late on Monday evening, and that the relevant notices were on the reeds by Tuesday’s second honk. The duet stays the third item. It has held that place since the appointment of the co-honker was announced on the twenty-first of last month, and the new notices do not move it. Item Four is still not announced. The panel says only that it will come “within the week.”
Item One is a short recitation by the eldest gosling, on verses she chose herself. The Clerk confirmed the choice is hers alone and that the panel will not review the text before she delivers it. Hettie’s mother, asked as the senior gosling-parent now active in cultural matters, said she was satisfied with the arrangement. The eldest had “given the question her own consideration.” The eldest herself was not available, being occupied with what her mother called “further consideration.”
Item Two is the one this paper finds the more affecting. The smallest of the goslings returns. She has not appeared in these pages since the spring recital of the fourteenth of April, when she prepared the longer overture and then could not deliver it at its advertised length, having briefly lost her place in the third movement. This time, the announcement says, the piece runs “at its full intended duration.” The smallest gosling has been rehearsing “with what the panel considers a notable steadiness.” She, too, was unavailable for comment.
The Clerk, asked for the panel’s view of the order as it stands, would say only that “the arrangement satisfies the customary balance of items of different character.” Further particulars would issue in the ordinary course. Asked whether Item Four was agreed in principle, he replied that the panel had “given Item Four such consideration as it presently warrants.” He left it there. So did this paper.
A remark as the meeting broke up got further. Our correspondent has been asked to describe it as offered in passing, not for printing, and not from the Clerk. One member let drop that Item Four had drawn “more correspondence than the panel had expected,” and that the eventual announcement, when it came, would “satisfy those who had been patient and surprise no one who had been listening.” It carries no formal weight. The remark is set down for what it is, which is the impression of one bird at the end of a long evening.
Drake Halford of the east shore has registered to attend as a spectator. He read the posted notice at the second honk and was heard to say the running order “had, at last, the look of a programme.” A travelling drake of no particular acquaintance read the same notice a few minutes later. He offered only that the willow was “the right venue, in his view.” Both remarks are reproduced as made.
So the programme now stands at four: the eldest’s recitation, the smallest’s overture, the duet, and a fourth item to come. Rehearsals continue beneath the Old Willow. June’s longer evenings, the phrase has it, approach.
What the patient have been promised, and what no one listening will find a surprise, is the open question of the week. The running order is posted in the reeds.