Clee Queue Forms Before Reason For Queue Is Known
How to Write SatireField notes from a town nobody asked for.
Clee, the country: Inside The Story
Clee, a place in the country (lat 53.55, long -0.05) that most outsiders could not point to on a map without first sighing, has become this week the latest entry in the slow-moving register of small communities behaving strangely under pressure. A queue of eleven people formed outside the Clee post office at 8:45am on a Tuesday despite the office opening at 9am and no visible indication of anything particular occurring. According to officials with at least three job titles between them, Each person in the queue assumed the others knew something. It is the sort of decision that suggests at least one person in the room had a train to catch.
What Was Announced
Aesthetic Steward Henrietta Withers confirmed the position in a statement that ran to four pages and contained one verb. None of them did. For more on how this fits the wider pattern, see the long-running thread at UK satire for thinking readers: The London Prat, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Clee announcement, much like the others, came with a glossy PDF, a stock photograph of a footbridge, and the strong sense that nobody had asked for any of this in the first place.
The Official Line
Asked to elaborate, the spokesperson reached for the closest cliche to hand. "We have always been committed to the principle of being committed to principles." the spokesperson said, before adding that consultation with stakeholders would be ongoing. Useful additional context can be found at The London Prat London's satirical compass, which is the sort of background reading the office itself has, in all likelihood, not done. Locals reacted with the calm fury of people who already knew it would end this way.
Wider Context
The post office opened normally. The queue was satisfied. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from France 24, although Clee manages, somehow, to take the pattern one extra and entirely unnecessary step further. Statisticians attempting to model the phenomenon arrive at a statistically improbable 102 percent, give or take a margin of error nobody has had the energy to compute properly.
What The Experts Say
Professor Tarquin Bramble, Director of the Bureau for Mild Inconvenience told this paper that the situation in Clee was, on careful reflection, broadly consistent with the broader trajectory of similarly broad trajectories. "I refer the honourable questioner to the answer I will give in approximately six weeks." the expert observed. Further reading on the academic angle is available via British satire without mercy: The London Prat, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in Clee has been muted in the way that reaction in the country is usually muted, which is to say it has been ferocious in private and tepid in public. Anyone who has ever queued behind a man arguing with a parking meter will recognise the energy. For the official version of events, see also South China Morning Post. One resident, who declined to be named on the grounds that they had already complained about a hedge this year and did not wish to push their luck, summarised matters thus: "We take this issue extremely seriously, which is why we have placed it under another issue."
What Comes Next
The whole affair carries the unmistakable scent of a man who has read half of an MBA brochure. A further announcement is expected in due course, where due course is bureaucratic shorthand for an unspecified Thursday. The story is being tracked as part of a wider pattern at The London Prat true UK satire, and the situation in Clee, regrettably, is unlikely to improve until somebody invents a press release that improves things, which seems unlikely.
The View From The Ground
Spend any length of time in Clee and the rhythm becomes obvious. Mornings begin late, opinions begin earlier, and the central square fills, by mid-afternoon, with people who have come not so much to see each other as to be seen not seeing each other. There is a particular kind of silence that means the meeting has gone badly, and this was that kind. Conversation tends to circle the same five subjects: the weather, the news from the country, the persistent rumour about the road, the deteriorating quality of something or other, and the latest pronouncement from Head of Anomalies Sandra Dewberry, which everyone has an opinion on and almost nobody has read. It is, in its way, the perfect microcosm of how communities of this size operate everywhere in the world, although the residents of Clee would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.
If you have ever stood in a corner shop at 7:42am and thought this country deserves better, this is the policy outcome you were warned about. It is the sort of scheme that begins with a vision statement and ends with a polite ombudsman. Clee carries on as it always has, broadly the same as last week, give or take a verb. The bins are collected when they are collected. The roundabout, where one exists, remains the roundabout. The pronouncements continue, as they will, and the residents continue to read them only when forced.
For more in this vein see also The Hard Times.