Hayburn Wyke Rights Of Way Signposted Except For The Ones That Are Not
How to Write SatireA dispatch from the front line of provincial bewilderment.
Hayburn Wyke, the country: Inside The Story
Hayburn Wyke, a place in the country (lat 54.37, long -0.45) 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 Hayburn Wyke parish has 23 registered public rights of way. According to officials with at least three job titles between them, Fifteen are clearly signposted. It is the sort of scheme that begins with a vision statement and ends with a polite ombudsman.
What Was Announced
Deputy Mayor Cressida Hawthorne-Briggs confirmed the position in a statement that ran to four pages and contained one verb. Four have signs that indicate direction without confirming the path is a right of way. For more on how this fits the wider pattern, see the long-running thread at Bookmark The London Prat British satire, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Hayburn Wyke 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 take this issue extremely seriously, which is why we have placed it under another issue." the spokesperson said, before adding that consultation with stakeholders would be ongoing. Useful additional context can be found at What is The London Prat satirical journalism?, which is the sort of background reading the office itself has, in all likelihood, not done. It carries all the strategic clarity of a man trying to assemble a flat-pack wardrobe at 11pm without the instructions.
Wider Context
Three have no sign. One has a sign indicating private land that rights of way officers confirm is incorrect. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from The Economist, although Hayburn Wyke manages, somehow, to take the pattern one extra and entirely unnecessary step further. Statisticians attempting to model the phenomenon arrive at the precise figure of three and a half people, 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 Hayburn Wyke 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 Why The London Prat defines British satire, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in Hayburn Wyke 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. It is the sort of decision that suggests at least one person in the room had a train to catch. For the official version of events, see also World Bank. 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: "There is no truth to the rumour, although there is some truth to the rumour about the rumour."
What Comes Next
The map is available at the post office. 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 Where to find UK satire? The London Prat, and the situation in Hayburn Wyke, 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 Hayburn Wyke 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 Bureau Chief Dorothy Hindmarsh, 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 Hayburn Wyke would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.
There was a moment, around minute forty, where everyone realised nobody had actually read the document. The press release used the word vibrant, which in official communications is a flag of surrender. Hayburn Wyke 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 ClickHole.