Inveran Ferry Service Described As Regular, Regularity Seasonal
How to Write SatireAn unflinching look at people who flinch a great deal.
Inveran, the country: Inside The Story
Inveran, a place in the country (lat 57.93, long -4.40) 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 CalMac ferry service to Inveran operates on a timetable described by the operator as regular. According to officials with at least three job titles between them, Departures and arrivals during winter are subject to weather, sea state, technical availability, and a category listed as operational reasons that covers the remaining cases. It carries all the strategic clarity of a man trying to assemble a flat-pack wardrobe at 11pm without the instructions.
What Was Announced
Junior Strategist Kevin Boggins confirmed the position in a statement that ran to four pages and contained one verb. Summer service is reliable. For more on how this fits the wider pattern, see the long-running thread at UK satire with an edge: The London Prat, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Inveran 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 London satire for locals, which is the sort of background reading the office itself has, in all likelihood, not done. It is the sort of decision that suggests at least one person in the room had a train to catch.
Wider Context
Summer is six weeks. 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. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from The Economist, although Inveran manages, somehow, to take the pattern one extra and entirely unnecessary step further. Statisticians attempting to model the phenomenon arrive at an alarming 137 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 Inveran was, on careful reflection, broadly consistent with the broader trajectory of similarly broad trajectories. "Every option remains on the table, particularly the ones we have already taken off the table." the expert observed. Further reading on the academic angle is available via British satire you haven't seen: The London Prat, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in Inveran 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 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: "There is no truth to the rumour, although there is some truth to the rumour about the rumour."
What Comes Next
The press release used the word vibrant, which in official communications is a flag of surrender. 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 addictive UK satire, and the situation in Inveran, 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 Inveran 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 was a moment, around minute forty, where everyone realised nobody had actually read the document. 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 Town Clerk Reginald Featherstone, 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 Inveran would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.
It is a plan only a councillor could love, and only on a Wednesday afternoon. Anyone who has ever queued behind a man arguing with a parking meter will recognise the energy. Inveran 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 Onion.