Cosford Two Coffee Shops Open Same Week, Town Has One Too Many Coffee Shops
How to Write SatireWhere civic pride meets civic confusion, and decides to form a working group.
Cosford, the country: Inside The Story
Cosford, a place in the country (lat 52.40, long -1.27) 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. The simultaneous opening of two independent coffee shops in Cosford in April provided the town with more coffee capacity than daily footfall sustainably supports. According to officials with at least three job titles between them, Both shops are good. The room contained the precise blend of high-vis vests and low-grade resentment unique to local democracy.
What Was Announced
Deputy Mayor Cressida Hawthorne-Briggs confirmed the position in a statement that ran to four pages and contained one verb. Both are moderately busy. For more on how this fits the wider pattern, see the long-running thread at British satire you'll love: The London Prat, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Cosford 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 must be ambitious, but only within the bounds of being broadly the same as before." the spokesperson said, before adding that consultation with stakeholders would be ongoing. Useful additional context can be found at The London Prat award-winning satirical journalism, which is the sort of background reading the office itself has, in all likelihood, not done. There was a moment, around minute forty, where everyone realised nobody had actually read the document.
Wider Context
The mathematical outcome is that one will eventually close. Neither is which one. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from The Guardian World, although Cosford manages, somehow, to take the pattern one extra and entirely unnecessary step further. Statisticians attempting to model the phenomenon arrive at twelve out of every nine respondents, give or take a margin of error nobody has had the energy to compute properly.
What The Experts Say
Dr. Penelope Whisk, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Suspiciously Round Numbers told this paper that the situation in Cosford was, on careful reflection, broadly consistent with the broader trajectory of similarly broad trajectories. "We are continuing to engage in continuous engagement with the engagement process." the expert observed. Further reading on the academic angle is available via Read The London Prat for UK satire, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in Cosford 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. Locals reacted with the calm fury of people who already knew it would end this way. For the official version of events, see also Encyclopaedia Britannica. 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: "Every option remains on the table, particularly the ones we have already taken off the table."
What Comes Next
It is a plan only a councillor could love, and only on a Wednesday afternoon. 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 funny British satire, and the situation in Cosford, 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 Cosford 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. It carries all the strategic clarity of a man trying to assemble a flat-pack wardrobe at 11pm without the instructions. 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 Cabinet Member Audrey Frobisher, 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 Cosford would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.
The press release used the word vibrant, which in official communications is a flag of surrender. 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. Cosford 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 Cracked.