MINUTES OF THE QUARTERLY MEETING, HELD IN THE ROOM ABOVE THE CLEARING FLOOR. Present: the Chair; four Holders; the Secretary, minuting. The previous minutes were taken as read. Nobody reads them. That is what taken as read is for.
ITEM 1. The quarter’s acquisitions were noted: premises, various, for continuity of service; sunset inventory, various; the residue of one estate, purchased at the reserve, ash inclusive. The Chair observed that residues perform. No discussion.
ITEM 2. The deceased book is performing above forecast. Retention of the living book remains within tolerance. The Holders received the figures standing, the figures being the kind you stand for.
ITEM 3. The crossing. The rate for the coming year was set at three hundred, the same coming year the errata slip corrects and the datum moves in. A Holder asked whether an attribution would be offered for the increase. The Chair ruled that no attribution be offered. Conditions in the channel were mentioned, and the Chair asked that the mention be struck. It is struck. You are reading where it stood.
ITEM 4. Weather receipts for the quarter were tabled: rain delivered as purchased, seventy-one of ninety-one days; the shortfall carried forward. The hill was raised under any other business and deferred, as it is deferred every quarter, the hill being older than the agenda.
ITEM 5. An interruption at the summer sale was reported, one person, from the floor, during the lot of the fourteen refusals. Order was restored. The phrase is the report in its entirety, which is the phrase’s work.
ITEM 6. The unattachable asset in the fish market was raised again. Counsel repeated that there is nothing to attach to. A Holder asked what the asset eats. The question was ruled outside the agenda. The asset has since removed itself from the quarter, direction unminuted; the file remains open; the file will remain open; some files are kept open the way doors are kept open, in hope.
ITEM 7. The office of effects reported one identification completed in an irregular hand. The reader accepted it. The policy of the reader is acceptance. The item was noted without discussion, and the Chair asked that the word irregular be struck. It is struck. The stroke is minuted; the word survives in the width of the stroke.
ITEM 8. Correspondence: a demand for repayment in full, received through the form provided for exactly this, was settled in the usual way, by settlement of the demander. The account concerned continues. The accounts concerned always continue. Continuing is the business.
The minute is adopted without signature, as all minutes are; the Board signs nothing, and this is recorded here since a member asked, once, whether it ought to. The same member has, twice, paid a household’s arrears from her own account and asked that it not be minuted, and it is minuted, since the Secretary minutes everything.
ITEM 8A. Informal transfers between households of retained vocabulary. The Chair asked whether the practice is material. The Secretary reported that it is not yet measurable, and that measurement would require the households to declare it. Carried forward.
ITEM 9. A Holder observed that the city had been quiet this quarter. The Chair replied that quiet is a product, and referred the Holder to Item 4.
ITEM 10. Condolences. The Secretary’s mother. Condolences are not minuted. The sentence stating that they are not minuted was ordered minuted, the Chair being of the view that the record should show its mercies.
ITEM 11. The Secretary’s renewal falls due within the quarter. The item was moved to the top of the next agenda. There was no discussion. There was a pause, which is not a minuted category. The Secretary is thanked for her thirty-one years. The thanks were read aloud to her as she wrote them down.
ITEM 12. Item 12 was taken in camera. It occupies four minutes of the recording and no lines of the minutes.
ANY OTHER BUSINESS. There was none. There is never any other business. The business is all one business.
The meeting rose. The carafe was carried out unpoured, as it is carried out every quarter, the water in it the oldest employee in the room. The Secretary closed the book, and initialed it, and her initials are the only handwriting in the city that the record reads and does not own, for as long as an item at the top of an agenda can be said to be long.