REC/1979/02
Remarks at the first reconciliation
- Kind:
- Sound recording
- Date:
- 17 February 1979
- Origin:
- North House receiving room
- Access:
- Open. Transcript reproduced with the agreement recorded in the accession.
Remarks from the close of the first reconciliation of the Common Record, kept because somebody had been asked to record the totals and left the machine running.
Transcribed from tape · [pause] and [bells] as marked by the transcriber
— I will say the same thing I said at the beginning, because several of you were in the kitchen.
— This is not an exercise in agreement. If it were an exercise in agreement we could have done it by lunchtime and gone home pleased with ourselves. It is an exercise in making disagreement answerable, which is slower and much less enjoyable.
— Two of the books in front of me do not agree about the same fortnight in November. I am not going to decide which of them is right, because I do not know, and neither does anybody in this room who is being honest about it. Both books stay. The difference is entered beside them, in words, with the date, and with the name of the person who noticed it.
— You will find that unsatisfying. It is meant to be slightly unsatisfying. A record that resolves everything is a record that has been tidied by somebody with an opinion.
— There is a further point and I would like it minuted. An absence in the book is not the end of a matter. A person can stop attending and the consequences of what they undertook can go on for years — the roof is still off, the fund is still short, the promise is still somebody's. We do not get to close the entry because the person has gone quiet.
— So please do not confuse a responsibility with the thing you can currently point at. They are not the same size, and the second one is always the smaller.
— A questioner, not identified: [Inaudible; approximately eight seconds.]
— No. I mean exactly what I said and not the more interesting thing you would prefer me to mean. Ask it again with fewer adjectives and I will answer it.
[A bell, single, at some distance.]
— That is not the North bell. Leave it in the record.
[Chair. Paper. The machine is stopped.]
Cassette held at North House. The box is dated 1978 in one hand and 1979 in another; the minute book fixes the meeting to February 1979 and the catalogue follows the minute book. Transcribed 1981 by M. Sandoval and checked against the tape in 2004. The first hour of the meeting was not recorded. Transcript prepared from the tape. The bracketed lines are the transcriber's, not the speaker's. Transcript published; no restored audio file is held for public playback.
Catalogued at the North House · reproduction permitted for study · redactions are not itemised
Elsewhere in the catalogue
Read together
Made about the same matter by different hands. They are not in agreement and neither has been set aside.
- Recorded account: G. Idris (ORA/1996/01)
Asked the same question about the reconciliation, seventeen years later, and answers it differently.
- Recorded account: P. Amit (ORA/1994/05)
A steward's account of the same fortnight of work, given from the other side of the post.
Related records
- Minutes, March 1985
The stewardship returns to the same question of what an entry is for, six years on.