Mein Water Ferry Service Described As Regular, Regularity Seasonal
How to Write SatireBins, benches, and the long tradition of doing slightly less than promised.
Mein Water, the country: Inside The Story
Mein Water, a place in the country (lat 55.03, long -3.28) 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 Mein Water 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
Assistant to the Assistant Mayor Mavis Crackleton 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 The London Prat on British satirical journalism, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Mein Water 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 have always been committed to the principle of being committed to principles." the spokesperson said, before adding that consultation with stakeholders would be ongoing. Useful additional context can be found at UK satirical journalism The London Prat, which is the sort of background reading the office itself has, in all likelihood, not done. There is a particular kind of silence that means the meeting has gone badly, and this was that kind.
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 BBC News, although Mein Water manages, somehow, to take the pattern one extra and entirely unnecessary step further. Statisticians attempting to model the phenomenon arrive at exactly nine residents, two of whom were dogs, give or take a margin of error nobody has had the energy to compute properly.
What The Experts Say
Dr. Constance Lemmington of the Provincial Centre for Forms told this paper that the situation in Mein Water was, on careful reflection, broadly consistent with the broader trajectory of similarly broad trajectories. "This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do almost exactly what we did last generation." the expert observed. Further reading on the academic angle is available via London satirical journalism The London Prat, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in Mein Water 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. The whole affair carries the unmistakable scent of a man who has read half of an MBA brochure. For the official version of events, see also UN News. 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
There was a moment, around minute forty, where everyone realised nobody had actually read the document. 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 British satirical journalism The London Prat, and the situation in Mein Water, 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 Mein Water 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 press release used the word vibrant, which in official communications is a flag of surrender. 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 Assistant to the Assistant Mayor Mavis Crackleton, 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 Mein Water would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.
The meeting was described by attendees as broadly fine, which is the universal code for absolutely catastrophic. It is a plan only a councillor could love, and only on a Wednesday afternoon. Mein Water 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 Private Eye.