China Miéville - Looking for Jake and Other Stories

4. Research notes.

5. Field reports.

6. AOB.

1. Last minutes:

Motion to approve JH, Second FR. Vote: unanimous.

2. Nomenclature:

FR proposes namechange. ‘BWVF’ dated. CT reminds FR of tradition. FR insists ‘BWVF’ exclusive, proposes ‘S (Society) WVF’ or ‘G (Gathering) WVF’. CT remonstrates. EN suggests ‘C (Coven) WVF’, to laughter. Meeting growing impatient. FR moves to vote on change, DY seconds. Vote: 4 for, 13 against. Motion denied.

[ Someone has added by hand: ‘Again! Silly Cow.’ ]

3. Funds/Treasury report.

EN reports this quarter several payments made, totalling £—.

[ The sum is effaced with black ink. ]

Agreed to keep this up-to-date to avoid repeat of Gouldy-Statten debacle. Subscriptions are mostly current and with

[ This is the end of a page and the last I have of these minutes. ]

[ The next piece is a single sheet that looks word-processed. ]

1 September 1992

M E M O

Members are kindly asked to show more care when handling items in the collection. Standards have become unacceptably lax. Despite their vigilant presence, curators have reported various soilings, including: fingerprints on recovered wood and glass; ink spots on cornices; caliper marks on guttering and ironwork; waxy residue on keys.

Of course research necessitates handling but if members cannot respect these unique items conditions of access may have to become even more stringent.

Before entering, remember:

• Be careful with your instruments.

• Always wash your hands.

[ The next page is numbered ‘2’ and begins halfway through a paragraph. Luckily it contains a header. ]

BWVF PAPERS, NO. 223.JULY 1981.

uncertain, but there is little reason to doubt his veracity. Both specimens tested exactly as one would expect for VD, suggesting no difference between VD and VF at even a molecular level. Any distinction must presumably be at the level of gross morphology, which defies our attempts at comparison, or of a noncorporeal essence thus-far beyond our capacity to measure.

Whatever the reality, the fact that the two specimens of VF mortar can be added to the BWVF collection is cause for celebration.

This research should be ready to present by the end of this year.

Problems of knowledge and the problematic ofKnowing . Considerations of VF as urban scripture.

Kabbala considered as interpretive model. Investigation of VF as patterns of interference. Research currently ongoing, ETA of finished article uncertain.

Tracking the movements of VF is notoriously difficult. [ Inserted here is a scrawl—‘No bloody kidding. What do you think we’re all bloody doing here? ] Reconstructing these patterns over the longue durée [ the accent is added by hand ] is perforce a matter of plumbing a historical record that is, by its nature and definitionally, partial, anecdotal and uncertain. As most of my readers know it has long been my aim to extract from the annals of our society evidence for long-term cycles (See Working Paper 19,Once More on the Statten Curve ), an aim on which I have not been entirely unsuccessful.

I have collated the evidence from the major verified London sightings of the last three decades (two of those sightings my own) and can conclusively state that the time between VF arrival at and departure from a locus has decreased by a factor of 0.7. VF are moving more quickly.

In addition, tracking their movements after each appearance has become more complicated and (even) less certain. In 1940, application of the Deschaine Matrix with regard to a given VF’s arrival time and duration on-site would result in a 23% chance of predicting reappearance parameters (within two months and two miles): today that same process nets only a 16% chance. VF are less predictable than they have ever been (barring, perhaps, the Lost Decade of 1876–86).

The shift in this behaviour is not linear but punctuated, sudden bursts of change over the years: once between 1952 and ’53, again in late 1961, again in ’72 and ’76. The causes and consequences are not yet known. Each of these pivotal moments has resulted in an increased pace of change. The anecdotal evidence we have all heard, that VF have recently become more skittish and agitated, appears to be correct.

I intend to present this work in full within 18 months. I wish to thank CM for help with the research. [ This CM is presumably Charles Melville, to whom the package was addressed. Clipped to the BWVF papers is this handwritten note:

Yes, Edgar is a pompous arse but he is on to something big.

What is it Edgar N. is onto? Of course I wondered, and still wonder, though now I think perhaps I know. ]

[ Then there is a document unlike the others so far. It is a booklet, a few pages long. It was when I started to read this that I stopped, frowned, looked again at the envelope, realised my inadvertent intrusion, and decided almost instantly that I would not stop reading. ‘Decided’ doesn’t really get the sense of the urgency with which I continued, as if I had no choice. But then if I say that, I absolve myself of wrongdoing which I won’t do, so let’s say I ‘decided’, though I’m unsure that I did. In any case, I continued reading. This document is printed on both sides like a flyer. The first sentence below is in large red font, and constitutes the booklet’s front cover. ]

Principal witness:FR.

Secondary:EN.

On Thursday 11th February 1988, so far as it is possible to tell between 3:00 a.m. and 5:17 a.m., a little way south of Plumstead High Street SE18, Varmin Way occurred.

Even somewhat foreshortened from its last known appearance (Battersea 1983—see the VF Concordance), Varmin Way is in a buckled configuration due to the constraints of space. One end adjoins Purrett Road between numbers 44 and 46, approximately forty feet north of Saunders Road: Varmin Way then appears to describe a tight S-curve, emerging halfway up Rippolson Road between numbers 30 and 32 (see attached map). [ There is no map. ]

Two previously terraced dwellings on each of the intersected streets have now been separated by Varmin Way. One on Rippolson is deserted: surreptitious enquiries have been made of inhabitants of each of the others, but none have remarked with anything other than indifference to the newcomer. Eg: in response to FR’s query of one man if he knew the name of ‘that alley’, he glanced at the street now abutting his house, shrugged and told her he was ‘buggered if he knew’. This response is of course typical of VF occurrence-environs (See B. Harman, ‘On the Non-Noticing’, BWVF Working Papers no. 5).

A partial exception is one thirty-five-year-old Purrett Road man, resident in the brick dwelling newly on Varmin Way’s north bank. Observed on his way toward Saunders Road, crossing Varmin Way, he tripped on the new kerb. He looked down at the asphalt and up at brick corners of the junction, paced back and forward five times with a quizzical expression, peering down the street’s length, without entering it, before continuing on his journey, looking back twice.