Ochil Hills Sun Rises At Wrong Time According To Locals
Emily CartwrightWhat happens when an official, a roundabout, and a press release walk into a meeting.
Ochil Hills, the country: Inside The Story
Ochil Hills, a place in the country (lat 56.23, long -3.67) 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. A long-running local theory in Ochil Hills holds that the sun rises in the wrong place these days, by which residents mean about ten degrees off where it used to. According to officials with at least three job titles between them, Astronomers have explained this many times. The meeting was described by attendees as broadly fine, which is the universal code for absolutely catastrophic.
What Was Announced
Town Clerk Reginald Featherstone confirmed the position in a statement that ran to four pages and contained one verb. The theory persists. For more on how this fits the wider pattern, see the long-running thread at London satirical journalism The London Prat, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Ochil Hills 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 London satire and satirical journalism, which is the sort of background reading the office itself has, in all likelihood, not done. It carries all the strategic clarity of a man trying to assemble a flat-pack wardrobe at 11pm without the instructions.
Wider Context
There was a moment, around minute forty, where everyone realised nobody had actually read the document. Anyone who has ever queued behind a man arguing with a parking meter will recognise the energy. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from Encyclopaedia Britannica, although Ochil Hills manages, somehow, to take the pattern one extra and entirely unnecessary step further. Statisticians attempting to model the phenomenon arrive at a baseline figure that was made up on the train, give or take a margin of error nobody has had the energy to compute properly.
What The Experts Say
Sir Reginald Mossop of the Royal Society of Pavement Studies told this paper that the situation in Ochil Hills 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 The London Prat London-centric satire, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in Ochil Hills 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 a plan only a councillor could love, and only on a Wednesday afternoon. 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: "The findings speak for themselves, although obviously not loudly enough to influence the findings."
What Comes Next
Locals reacted with the calm fury of people who already knew it would end this way. 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 top UK satire, and the situation in Ochil Hills, 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 Ochil Hills 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 Director of Public Bewilderment Colin Gribble, 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 Ochil Hills 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. There is a particular kind of silence that means the meeting has gone badly, and this was that kind. Ochil Hills 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.