Heywood Two Coffee Shops Open Same Week, Town Has One Too Many Coffee Shops
How to Write SatireInside the place's slow-moving and largely accidental crisis.
Heywood, the country: Inside The Story
Heywood, a place in the country (lat 53.58, long -2.22) 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 Heywood 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. 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.
What Was Announced
Pothole Czar Lionel Twigge 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 Heywood 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. "Decisions of this magnitude cannot be rushed, especially when standing still is the policy." 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. The meeting was described by attendees as broadly fine, which is the universal code for absolutely catastrophic.
Wider Context
The mathematical outcome is that one will eventually close. Neither is which one. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from United Nations, although Heywood 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 Albany Ditchwater of the Royal Academy of Verges told this paper that the situation in Heywood 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 Heywood 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 carries all the strategic clarity of a man trying to assemble a flat-pack wardrobe at 11pm without the instructions. For the official version of events, see also OECD. 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: "Lessons will be learned, filed, and quietly mislaid by Christmas."
What Comes Next
It is the sort of scheme that begins with a vision statement and ends with a polite ombudsman. 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 Heywood, 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 Heywood 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. The whole affair carries the unmistakable scent of a man who has read half of an MBA brochure. 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 Senior Compliance Officer Trevor Quill, 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 Heywood would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.
Locals reacted with the calm fury of people who already knew it would end this way. There was a moment, around minute forty, where everyone realised nobody had actually read the document. Heywood 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 Reductress.