Notices have gathered at the reeds in number enough to bring this column out a second time. The first such collection appeared in the spring, as longer-standing readers will recall. The Clerk has again agreed to set the column. This paper undertakes only to print what is handed to it, in the terms the several parties have chosen for themselves, and amends nothing beyond what the setting of type requires. Items run in the order they were filed at the customary pigeonholes.
Position informally settled
The Warden of the Sluice’s advertisement for a Deputy Weather-Instrument Keeper was first lodged on the twenty-first of April, for any party willing to take readings at the agreed intervals. It has since been overtaken, by what is here recorded as natural settlement, by the Deputy of the Warden of the Sluice herself. She has, in the interval, taken on the duties as a matter of practical convenience. Her readings are now filed, on her own initiative, at the intervals the advertisement once had in mind. Her conditions reports carry the figures a separate post was to have supplied. The position, this notice grants with regret, no longer exists in the form in which it was advertised. The Clerk will move at a future session for its formal closure, subject to the customary conditions.
Position of central significance, still pending
The position of considerable centrality in the southern waters, advertised here on the twenty-first of April under the heading “to be advertised in due course,” remains, as this is written, to be advertised in due course. Readers of the seventeenth of April will need no further description of it. The Subcommittee has announced no procedure for the position’s reassignment at any session since the eighteenth of last month. The long-resident frog of the southern waters has, on at least one occasion of record, declined to be hurried. The matter is offered here once more in plain acknowledgement that the position is, for this season, vacant. Interested parties are again advised to wait.
Expressions of interest, autumn programme
The Cultural Subcommittee invites preliminary expressions of interest from any party minded to take part in an autumn programme, the particulars of which are still to be settled at a future special session. Performers from the spring recital, the May Day observance, and the midsummer programme are all welcome to consider returning. New parties are not, in principle, excluded, subject to such terms as the Subcommittee may in due course set out. Letters of interest may be sent to the Clerk of the Cultural Subcommittee in the usual way. The Clerk has asked it be made plain in this notice that the invitation does not, of itself, amount to a commitment to a programme.
A note from the Clerk
The Clerk wishes it known that the Reed-Bed Subcommittee meets, when it meets, on Wednesdays (ish), and that new business should be lodged through the customary channels. Pebbles, which were receiving particular attention when the previous notice on the matter appeared, will continue to be received. They cannot, the Clerk emphasises, be guaranteed a review within any one session. That holds the more firmly at present, while the Clerk of the Race’s arrangements for the rematch Channel Sprint are still in their early stages of organisation. The Clerk further wishes it known that the season’s deferral count, on which one of the season’s earlier motions had asked for a tally, has not yet been formally tallied. It stands, in the meantime, “comfortably within range.”
A further note
The whistle came back to the Warden on the fifth instant. Readers will recall it was held some weeks by a drake of no particular acquaintance, the cord still missing. It has been entered in the records of the sluice. No further notice is required.
Further notices may be lodged at the usual reeds. The column will return, in all likelihood, the next time its substance runs to the heading.