The midsummer programme falls on Sunday the twenty-first, and over the rehearsal week the weather for that evening had become a matter of general interest. So this correspondent went to the sluice on Friday morning to apply, in the customary fashion, for a forecast. The application was made on behalf of these pages, and behind them for the Cultural Subcommittee, the audience expected at the south bank approach, and the four performers expected to perform.
The first approach was to the Warden of the Sluice. He was at his customary station and, on this occasion, available. The application was put plainly: would he permit a short forecast to be published, of the conditions at the south bank approach on Sunday evening, with particular reference to cloud, wind, and precipitation between the late afternoon and the close of twilight. The Warden considered it for what came to about four breaths. Then he replied.
“The weather is generally what the weather generally does.”
This correspondent asked whether he wished to elaborate. He indicated that he did not. Asked whether he would characterise the prospects of cloud, wind, or precipitation in any further particular, he said those prospects, taken together, were “as they are,” and that this was the position he would be most comfortable resting on. This paper thanked him and went round to the south side of the gate, where the Deputy was at her post.
The Deputy of the Warden of the Sluice took the application, put to her in the same terms, with the deliberateness she has shown such matters before. She conferred briefly with the principal humidity gauge, which stood on the gate beside her. Then she conferred with a smaller instrument not previously described in these dispatches. She came back with a forecast and asked, in fairness, that it be reproduced as filed. The request is honoured here.
“Conditions on the evening of Sunday the twenty-first instant: clear at the outset, with a fifteen-percent prospect of cloud after sundown, of a character the gauge presently characterises as benign. Wind, light from the south-west, falling further by the close of twilight. Humidity, expected to rise to ten drakes, perhaps eleven, during the late evening; should it rise above eleven, conditions for sustained honking in the upper register may be marginally affected. Precipitation: not anticipated. Subject to revision should the gauge so indicate.”
She added, when pressed, that a forecast was a forecast and not a guarantee. Conditions on the pond had, in her professional memory, more than once declined to behave as forecast. The prudent course, she said, was to consult the gauge at sundown rather than rest on a forecast issued at the prior dawn. She would consult it herself at sundown on Sunday. She would issue a revised forecast at that hour, she said, if the Clerk asked for one.
The two forecasts stand above, side by side, in the order received. This paper offers no comment on the contrast and does not consider itself fit to choose between them. The Warden has forecast in the register the Warden has kept for such matters all season. The Deputy has forecast in hers. Both, on a fair reading, are in the spirit of the office that issued them. This correspondent noticed, before leaving the sluice, that the Deputy had her notebook and a wax pencil with her. The Warden was at his station. The sluice was sound. The water was steady, and the question of Sunday is now, as far as the offices of the sluice can put it, on the record and out of their hands until the gauge speaks again.