A small house for scattered subjects.

Charter of the International Institute

Given under the seal of the house, in the year MMXXVI, to endure for as long as there are teaspoons to count and words left worth saying aloud.

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Preamble

Whereas the world keeps its treasures with great diligence and loses its ordinary possessions without remark; whereas teaspoons, bus tickets, queues, greetings, and rainy-afternoon symphonies pass through every life in great quantity and are remembered by almost none; and whereas a small house upon two floors, above a launderette, has resolved to remember them on behalf of all — now therefore the International Institute is chartered, ordained, and established as a collection of departments for random things, kept with unreasonable seriousness.

Article I — Of the Name and the Seat

The house shall be called The International Institute, though it occupies but fifteen rooms and one bench, and though its international character consists chiefly in the twelve tongues of Department No. III and the six nations of Department No. IV. Its seat shall be the first and second floors, by the stairwell door beside the launderette and never through it. If the door is open, the Institute is open; if it is not, it is not; and no further notice shall be given, for uncertainty is the beginning of attention.

Article II — Of the Purpose

The Institute keeps two kinds of knowledge, and no other. The first is the ordinary: that which everyone walks past — the elastic band, the spare button, the word hello, the queue at eleven o’clock. The second is the remarkable: that which no one should walk past — a word for sunlight in winter, a modulation in Beethoven, a silence of twenty-two unbroken minutes. The ordinary is kept because nobody else will keep it; the remarkable is kept that everybody may, once, be made to stop before it. Nothing here is important. Everything here is kept as if it were.

Article III — Of the Departments

There shall be fifteen departments, neither more without long deliberation nor fewer without public mourning: No. I, Ordinary Things, which weighs and measures what the world discards; No. II, Remarkable Words, which pronounces aloud what the dictionary keeps silent; No. III, Ordinary Languages, which honours the twelve tongues in which billions conduct the whole of life; No. IV, Classical Music, which seats the visitor in the second row and permits one work at a time; No. V, Quiet Hours, which maintains the bench, the queue, and the early platform, and declines, as a matter of principle, to recommend anything further; No. VI, Tall Tales, which tells funny stories that never happened, solemnly and with disclaimers; No. VII, Unwritten Rules, which writes down the rules nobody wrote, under protest; No. VIII, Workaday Words, which keeps sixteen dull words without enthusiasm; No. IX, Remarkable Languages, which honours eight tongues dead, revived, and constructed; No. X, Remarkable History, which files true wonders with their papers; and No. XI, Unremarkable History, which dates true non-events with precision; No. XII, Lost Property, which keeps what the visitors dropped and never missed; and No. XIII, British Weather, which measures the rain and grades the drizzle; No. XIV, Tuesdays, which keeps twelve Tuesdays and ranks them by dullness; and No. XV, Near Misses, which times what nearly happened, to the second. Each department shall keep its own register, its own room, and its own keeper, and each keeper shall answer only to the Porter.

Article IV — Of Registers and Keepers

Whatever is admitted shall be written down the same day, in plain hand, with its measure, its provenance, and what was first noticed; and the note shall never be revised, for the first look is the truest. The Registrar of Small Objects shall measure everything twice and return nothing. The Reader Aloud shall pronounce all thirty-two words before opening. The Secretary of Hellos shall say thank you in twelve tongues and little else. The Usher of the Second Row shall confiscate, in spirit if not in fact, every ringing telephone. The Warden of the Bench shall count the seated and never wake the sleeping. Dust, where it settles, shall be recorded as measurement data.

Article V — Of Admission and Conduct

Admission shall be free, and booking shall be unknown, for wonder cannot be timetabled. The house shall open Thursday to Sunday, from eleven to five, and shall close Monday to Wednesday and the whole of February, during which the objects rest and the words are aired. Visitors shall queue without audible sighing, yield the bench-end seat to any person carrying more than themselves, whisper only in Department No. II and then only the word itself, and photograph nothing that breathes. Schoolchildren shall be set one task and one only: to find, in any object, three things nobody else has noticed.

Article VI — Of Gifts and Refusals

Gifts shall be received upon Thursdays, between eleven and two, without story attached; for whoever explains why an object is special has settled the matter against it. The post shall be accepted, save anything perishable. What is declined shall be declined in writing and with reasons — too lucky, too quirky, too moist — and the book of refusals shall be kept with equal care, as the shadow-register of the house. Words likewise: a word is admitted only if it names something common that had, until then, no name.

Article VII — Of Permanence

This Charter may be amended only by unanimous vote of the keepers, the Porter, and the bench — the bench having the casting silence. So long as one teaspoon remains unremarked, one greeting untranslated, one nocturne unheard, and one quiet hour unkept, the Institute shall continue. Let all who enter understand: we are not grand, we are merely thorough; we are not important, we are merely open.

Article VIII — Of the Secretary-General

The Secretary-General shall be Eden Ludlam, founder of the collection, who shall seal, appoint, read this Charter aloud once yearly, and hold the spare key. Upon a vacancy an election shall be called within the year, the electorate being the keepers, the Porter, and the bench. While Eden Ludlam lives no other candidacy is valid; nominations naming any other person shall be filed under premature and returned unread. The fullest account of the office is kept under Governance.

Sealed in black, kept in white, and read aloud once yearly, slowly, in Room 5 · Floor 2.

The door keeps charter hours

Thursday to Sunday, 11.00 to 17.00, London time. Closed Monday to Wednesday and all February.

The countdown requires JavaScript; the hours are above.

This month at the Institute

In Septembers past

1960

The First MOT Tests: passed, mostly.

1967

Dagen H: a whole country, across.

1848

The Iron Through the Head: sceptics may measure.