When I started the Tuesday Night Experiencer Support Group in 2006 I picked Tuesday because the hall was free. The CWA has it Monday, the line dancers have it Wednesday, Thursday is bingo, and nobody wants Friday because of the Royal. So, Tuesday. I thought nothing of it.
I think a great deal of it now.
The attendance book
I have kept a book since the first meeting. Name, date, plate brought, and in the back, in a separate section, every experience reported by a member with the night it happened. Ten years. Four hundred and some meetings. Warren says it is the single most important dataset the Collective holds, and he includes the tape in that, which I think is generous of him.
Here is what the book says.
| Night of the week | Reported experiences, 2006–2015 | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 11 | 5% |
| Tuesday | 131 | 61% |
| Wednesday | 14 | 6% |
| Thursday | 9 | 4% |
| Friday | 22 | 10% |
| Saturday | 19 | 9% |
| Sunday | 10 | 5% |
Sixty-one percent. On the one night a week we are all in the same room, with the door open, under fluorescent lights, in a building with a tin roof. You tell me that’s a coincidence. Keith told me that was a coincidence and that is one of the reasons Keith is no longer welcome.
Theories
They know we’re busy. This was Warren’s first reading and it is still the Collective’s official position. On Tuesday nights the experiencers of Wandoona are gathered, distracted, and holding a plate. We are, in Dr Faraday’s words, “a soft target with a tea urn”. It would be the obvious night to take us.
The hall itself. Dr Faraday measured the CWA Hall at 6 Fu on a Tuesday and 1 Fu on a Thursday, which he says points to the building being “activated” by our presence. Noreen says it points to Thursday being bingo and Lyle not being allowed in.
Reporting bias. Keith’s theory, delivered by letter, is that people remember the Tuesday ones because they tell the group on Tuesday and the group writes them down. I have read this letter several times and I can see what he is getting at and I don’t like it.
Bin night.
Bin night
Bin night in Wandoona is Tuesday. Everyone puts the bins out between seven and ten, which is exactly when the meeting is on, which means every experiencer in town is out the front of their house in the dark, alone, bending over, at the same time once a week.
I put this to the group in 2012 and the room went quiet in a way I have only heard once before, which was the forty-fourth time, at the back fence, when they put me down because of the weather.
Since then we have moved the bins to Monday morning. Experiences on Tuesdays have fallen to 54%. I regard this as a result, and the Council, who I wrote to, regard it as “not a matter for Council”, which is what they said about the Burnt Circle and about the streetlight outside the hall that only flickers when I’m under it.
The other 39%
I want to be fair to the Fridays, because there are twenty-two of them and they are mostly from the Royal, and I think they are real. People are more open on a Friday. The sky is more open on a Friday. Gary, for what it’s worth, has only ever come on a Tuesday, in thirty years, except once, which was a Friday, which he was clearly not comfortable with and left early.
What I tell new members
I tell them three things. Bring a plate. Nobody here will laugh at you. And if you have to go out to the bins, go in pairs, and keep one hand on the wheelie bin, because in my experience they can lift a person but they have not yet worked out the bin.
Tuesdays, 7 pm, the CWA Hall. There is a sign-in book. You will be in it. That is the point.
— Cheryl
Document U8MC-16-0504. Status: CONFIRMED. This file is retained indefinitely, or until the Men in Beige ask for it, whichever is never.