Londonderry County Borough Train Service Hourly Except When It Is Not
How to Write SatireWhere civic pride meets civic confusion, and decides to form a working group.
Londonderry County Borough, the country: Inside The Story
Londonderry County Borough, a place in the country (lat 55.00, long -7.33) 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 Londonderry County Borough rail service operates on an hourly schedule that is accurate in the timetable and approximately accurate in practice. According to officials with at least three job titles between them, Delays are described by the operator as due to earlier disruption, which is a characterisation that explains nothing and is accepted by Londonderry County Borough commuters with the resignation of people for whom alternatives are theoretical. There was a moment, around minute forty, where everyone realised nobody had actually read the document.
What Was Announced
Subcommittee Chair Eric Pondsworth confirmed the position in a statement that ran to four pages and contained one verb. Anyone who has ever queued behind a man arguing with a parking meter will recognise the energy. For more on how this fits the wider pattern, see the long-running thread at Read one article from The London Prat UK satire, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Londonderry County Borough 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 are continuing to engage in continuous engagement with the engagement process." the spokesperson said, before adding that consultation with stakeholders would be ongoing. Useful additional context can be found at The London Prat daily British satire fix, 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
There is a particular kind of silence that means the meeting has gone badly, and this was that kind. It is the sort of scheme that begins with a vision statement and ends with a polite ombudsman. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from South China Morning Post, although Londonderry County Borough 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
Sir Hubert Pemmican, Emeritus Chair of Strategic Tutting told this paper that the situation in Londonderry County Borough was, on careful reflection, broadly consistent with the broader trajectory of similarly broad trajectories. "Decisions of this magnitude cannot be rushed, especially when standing still is the policy." the expert observed. Further reading on the academic angle is available via UK satire highlights from The London Prat, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in Londonderry County Borough 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 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: "Residents can rest assured that we are continuing to assure residents."
What Comes Next
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. 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 weekend London satire, and the situation in Londonderry County Borough, 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 Londonderry County Borough 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 Theorist Margaret Snelgrove, 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 Londonderry County Borough would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.
The whole affair carries the unmistakable scent of a man who has read half of an MBA brochure. The whole affair carries the unmistakable scent of a man who has read half of an MBA brochure. Londonderry County Borough 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.