The Reed-Bed Subcommittee met on Wednesday afternoon for the first regular session since the agenda went on hold for the midsummer programme. That hold was confirmed at the session of the seventeenth, under the motion carried on the twenty-third of May. The Clerk announced at the opening that the agenda was restored in full. The session ran an hour and ten minutes. That, the Clerk said at the close, was within the customary range.
The Junior Member took the floor early, and the question he raised is the one worth leading with. It concerned the Channel Sprint, which this paper has twice reported deferred for want of the Clerk of the Race, on the twenty-seventh of last month and again on the fourteenth of this one. He tabled it not as a motion but as a request for the Subcommittee’s consideration. If the Clerk of the Race stays away beyond another moon, he asked, by what authority and what procedure is the date of the rematch to be fixed? He was careful to add that he meant no impatience with the Clerk of the Race, whose return the Subcommittee had every reason to expect. He only wished the procedure clear, in case the expectation was not borne out in the usual time.
The Clerk took the question under advisement. The matter would be considered, he said, “as the circumstances may, in time, recommend.” The Junior Member accepted that and said no more. The session did not come back to it. The gazette learns afterward where the question went. It is filed under the standing heading the Clerk reserves for items of continuing interest, which is his formula for keeping a thing alive for later while committing himself to nothing, his own hand least of all, as to when later will be.
To the substantive business. Drake Halford’s fifth filing was again confirmed as received and under review, with no further action. The Travelling Drake’s proposal of the eighteenth of last month came up under the same heading and stayed where it was. That is the proposal that the vacancy at the central position of the southern waters be formally recognised and a successor named, deferred since on the jurisdictional clarification it still awaits. The Cultural Subcommittee’s report on the close of the midsummer programme was tabled by the acting chair, attending by invitation, and accepted. It runs to two leaves and reproduces in full the Clerk’s timekeeping for the evening, which the Subcommittee minuted with appreciation.
The sluice wall marking came up again under miscellaneous observations, which by this paper’s count makes three successive sessions it has been noted there without anything being resolved about it. The Deputy of the Warden of the Sluice, attending by invitation, said she had taken steps in the matter and would set them out at the next session. She did not set them out on Wednesday. The Warden of the Sluice did not attend. His appearance at May’s special session remains, on the evidence, the one time he has.
The heron question, last considered on the third of this month, came up under the standing heading too. It would be revisited, the Clerk said, when the fish and the dabchicks between them gave the Subcommittee something to consider.
At the fifth honk the Clerk closed the session. The Clerk thanked the Subcommittee. The Junior Member left without another word. The agenda has been restored to the condition in which the Subcommittee, this season and in seasons before it, has been most accustomed to find it. The Sprint stays unsettled, its procedure unwritten. The Clerk of the Race has not returned, on Wednesday or before it.