Dictation

— Alistair Wren, third of March, nineteen seventy-six. I am going to describe a procedure and then carry it out, so that the carrying out is on the same tape as the description.

— The procedure. I state what I expect to find. I then open the folder and read what is there. I do not stop the machine between the two, and I do not go back.

— I expect to find eleven sheets, numbered in my hand at the top right, the eighth of them being the sheet on which I set out the anomalous continuity between Copy A and Copy D. I expect the eighth sheet to carry a coffee mark in the lower margin, because I made it.

— Opening the folder. Eleven sheets. Numbered at the top right, in my hand. The eighth sheet carries the coffee mark in the lower margin, as I said it would.

— The eighth sheet is a list of the incumbents of a parish in Northumberland between sixteen forty and seventeen ten. I have never worked on the incumbents of a parish in Northumberland. The hand is mine. The paper is mine. The coffee mark is mine and is where I said it was, and I said it was there before I opened the folder.

— I am not going to speculate on the tape. I record that the procedure was carried out as described and that its result was not the expected one.

— I will do it again on Friday with a witness present, and I will ask Aldiss to hold the folder in the interval.

— One further matter for the record, and then I shall stop. I have twice this month written the word recurrence where I intended to write another word. I mention it because a man ought to keep account of his own errors, and because both instances are in the fair copy and not the draft.

— End of dictation.