The Cultural Subcommittee posted the fourth and closing item of the midsummer programme on Friday morning, in the Clerk’s hand, in his now-familiar role as keeper of the panel’s notices. The reeds had been waiting on it since Items One and Two went up on the ninth. It is the surprise of the running order. The long-resident frog of the southern waters has agreed to appear. He will deliver, the notice says, “a brief reflection on the central position.” His piece closes the evening.
The frog’s agreement was secured “after some weeks of representations,” the Clerk later confirmed. It comes with conditions, which the Clerk called “characteristic.” They have not been published in full, in line with the panel’s usual practice. Our correspondent is given to understand they include the frog’s preferred station, which is not the willow’s principal speaking position but a small floating leaf the Cultural Subcommittee will provide. They also include his stipulation that the length of his contribution will be, in the notice’s word, “indefinite.” The panel has accepted that as stated and has built into the timekeeping schedule whatever latitude the conditions require.
The substance of the reflection has not been disclosed. The notice gives only “the central position.” This paper reads that as the great central lily pad of the southern waters, whose place has stood vacant since it sank on the seventeenth of April. That vacancy is the longest-running open matter in the southern waters, and it is one the frog has, here and elsewhere, declined to be hurried over.
Approached at his station on Friday afternoon, the frog would not elaborate, on the content or on his reasons for agreeing. He put it briefly:
I have given the panel an undertaking. I have not given the panel a script.
Our correspondent let it rest there. The frog was last seen on Friday evening at his usual station beneath the second willow, in conversation with no one, at the kind of deliberation he has before preferred to be left to. The lengthening evenings, the phrasing has it, are nearly here.
The Cultural Subcommittee’s pleasure was expressed in plainer terms than the panel usually allows itself. This paper still refers to the acting chair by office alone, at the chair’s preference. At the close of Thursday’s meeting the chair called the agreement “the conclusion the running order had wanted from the start, even if it had taken until now to obtain it.” The Clerk was asked to confirm or temper the remark. He said only that “the Cultural Subcommittee was, in the panel’s general view, satisfied with the announcement now made.” The gap in register between the two is the gap the gazette has come to expect.
So the four-item order is fully posted. The eldest gosling opens with her chosen recitation. The smallest follows with the longer overture. Hettie and the co-honker, Mabel of the north bank, take the duet in the third position. The long-resident frog closes with his reflection. The Clerk has noted, under advisements, that “no portion of the running order is, at this stage, anticipated to require revision.” Whether the frog’s conditions, or anyone’s, will yet force a revision, the gazette will not guess.