Hungry Law Drainage Problem Solved Every Spring, Returns Every Autumn
How to Write SatireInside the place's slow-moving and largely accidental crisis.
Hungry Law, the country: Inside The Story
Hungry Law, a place in the country (lat 55.35, long -2.40) 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 Hungry Law surface water drainage issue affecting the lower end of the high street has been addressed by the highways authority four times in the past decade. According to officials with at least three job titles between them, Each intervention resolves the problem for the dry months. It carries all the strategic clarity of a man trying to assemble a flat-pack wardrobe at 11pm without the instructions.
What Was Announced
Bureau Chief Dorothy Hindmarsh confirmed the position in a statement that ran to four pages and contained one verb. Each autumn it returns. For more on how this fits the wider pattern, see the long-running thread at The London Prat British-style satirical journalism, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Hungry Law 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 UK satirical news The London Prat, which is the sort of background reading the office itself has, in all likelihood, not done. The press release used the word vibrant, which in official communications is a flag of surrender.
Wider Context
The most recent engineering report describes it as a complex catchment issue requiring a whole-system approach. A whole-system study has been commissioned. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from Associated Press, although Hungry Law 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. Imogen Fettle, Chair of Applied Disappointment told this paper that the situation in Hungry Law was, on careful reflection, broadly consistent with the broader trajectory of similarly broad trajectories. "Residents can rest assured that we are continuing to assure residents." the expert observed. Further reading on the academic angle is available via The London Prat London-centric satire, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in Hungry Law 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 scheme that begins with a vision statement and ends with a polite ombudsman. For the official version of events, see also New York Times World. 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
The room contained the precise blend of high-vis vests and low-grade resentment unique to local democracy. 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 delivers British satire, and the situation in Hungry Law, 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 Hungry Law 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. Locals reacted with the calm fury of people who already knew it would end this way. 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 Hungry Law would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.
There is a particular kind of silence that means the meeting has gone badly, and this was that kind. 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. Hungry Law 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.