The Reed-Bed Subcommittee met at the customary hour on Wednesday and took up the lights at the upper bend for the third sitting running. It resolved to defer. It did so by the usual means and at the usual safe distance from any view that might, in the event, embarrass a party in the room. The matter goes on to a future session, by which the available information might be expected to have moved past where it now stands. Where it now stands, the Clerk said in his opening reading, is this: three reports of lights are on file at the office, dated the twenty-second, the thirtieth, and the third instants. A further private observation has been passed along by word of mouth, its author not yet having put it in writing. And the gazette’s own correspondent conducted, on the eighth instant, what the Clerk called, with the small flourish he saves for the rare times he uses the word, “an inspection.” The reading went into the minutes without amendment.
The Junior Member of the Subcommittee rose in his usual manner, which the season has taught me to know by its particular brevity. He noted that the Perseid meteor shower was due that night and the next, and moved that the Subcommittee minute an inquiry into whether the shower might account, in whole or part, for any of the observations now before it. The motion was put. The motion was deferred. One member was heard to say, at the very edge of audible from the public reeds, “we know what they are,” and then said no more. It was the same member, I believe, though the identity is by the body’s custom not given, who has twice before cast the dissenting vote on motions of this stripe. The Clerk did not record the remark. The Junior Member sat back down and said no more.
The Clerk of the Exchequer was, as he has now been at each of the three sessions where the lights have come up, at the back of the chamber. He did not speak. He gave no sign of asking to. A passing drake, within my hearing at the close of business, asked the Clerk of the Reed-Bed Subcommittee whether the Exchequer Clerk’s presence amounted to any formal part in the proceedings. The Clerk would not characterise it. He said only that the two offices stand, as he has had occasion to say before, “cordial but procedurally distinct,” and left it at that.
A lesser item, the entry of the gazette’s own dispatch of the eighth into the minutes, was taken as a matter of record. My visit to the upper bend was noted. My finding, that no lights showed on the night I was there, was noted. The fishing party of mallards’ standing offer to answer further questions was noted. So was the long-resident frog’s reported presence at the upper bend over the days of the visit, with the small qualifying clause that the frog had declined to comment on the matter of his being there. No one offered to read any further into these notes.
Other business moved in the usual form. The wall marking at the sluice was noted under miscellaneous observations. Drake Halford’s seventh filing stayed under review. The Channel Sprint’s category question, raised in the coot’s letter of the thirteenth of July, was deferred. The easing of the crust index was minuted without comment. The Clerk recorded the close at “approximately the customary hour.”
The Perseids, the Clerk reminded the chamber as it rose, are due tonight. The Deputy’s morning note has the sky clear after sundown. The gazette means to be out there, if the night allows.