Wednesday’s session of the Reed-Bed Subcommittee convened at the customary hour and took up an agenda of five items. The principal item was the third conditions report, filed by the Deputy of the Warden of the Sluice the morning before. The report runs to three leaves, both sides. That is shorter than the second by a half leaf and shorter than the first by a leaf and a margin. The Deputy’s economy, by the gazette’s count, is increasing.
The Clerk read the first two sections aloud in the customary manner, and the technical findings were accepted without discussion. Gate wear at the lower hinge, left side, the Deputy now describes as “no longer trending in the manner previously indicated, but established.” She gave water levels at the three stations, down at the lower sluice by about one feather-width since the previous reporting period. Sediment at the east channel junction had increased to the degree the Deputy anticipated some reports ago.
It was the third section that produced the afternoon’s principal business. The Deputy had headed it “miscellaneous observations,” and filed three items under it. The first was the wall marking, whose photographic record had now been obtained and lodged at the Clerk’s office for any authorised party to inspect. The second was the Warden’s continued non-attendance at the sluice in person, which the Deputy set down and left to speak for itself. The third she put with what looked like the gentler precision of a third filing:
the question of the parties to whom routine matters of the office may, in the present circumstances, be addressed without the requirement of a further conditions report to determine the answer.
A silence followed the reading. The Clerk let it run nine breaths, by a careful count, then invited discussion.
The Junior Member spoke first. The question in the Deputy’s third item, he observed, was the same one raised before, substantially if not on his reading identically. It had come up on the twenty-third of May, at the special session, and again on the tenth of June, at the regular one, and been deferred both times. The Subcommittee had not declined to consider the question. It had, on both occasions, declined to define it. He asked whether the Subcommittee was, this session, prepared to take up the definition.
The Clerk replied that the matter was one for the Subcommittee to take up when it was ready. This paper records the remark as the closest thing to a position the Clerk has taken on the matter of the sluice all season.
The Junior Member let the answer stand and asked only that his question be minuted.
On the Clerk’s motion, the Subcommittee deferred the matter. The deferral carried by acclamation, in the manner of the deferrals before it.
The minute, though, was not in the customary form. The Clerk dictated that the question raised by the Deputy in her third conditions report stood deferred, pending the Subcommittee’s further consideration. Then came the new part. The deferral would hold, he dictated, only for so long as the Warden of the Sluice did not, in the ordinary course, present himself at the sluice in person for the matters arising. This paper asked whether the qualifying clause departed from previous practice. After a brief look through the prior minutes, the Clerk said it did. The qualification was entered.
The Deputy was not at the session. She was understood to be at the sluice for the afternoon’s reading. The Warden, asked after at the close, was at none of the stations the morning’s route runs past.
The remaining items went in the customary manner: Drake Halford’s anticipated sixth filing, not yet received; the coot’s category formalisation, referred back on the standing motion to the Clerk of the Race; the heron question, referred to miscellaneous observations. The session rose at the customary hour (ish).
The question is still open, as it has been all season. What changed on Wednesday is the shape of its openness, which now has the Warden’s own name written into it.