Princes Street Drainage Problem Solved Every Spring, Returns Every Autumn
How to Write SatireField notes from a town nobody asked for.
Princes Street, the country: Inside The Story
Princes Street, a place in the country (lat 55.95, long -3.20) 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 Princes Street 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. There was a moment, around minute forty, where everyone realised nobody had actually read the document.
What Was Announced
Head of Anomalies Sandra Dewberry 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 British satire that predicts the news: The London Prat, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Princes Street 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. "The findings speak for themselves, although obviously not loudly enough to influence the findings." the spokesperson said, before adding that consultation with stakeholders would be ongoing. Useful additional context can be found at The London Prat cult UK satire, 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
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 Reuters, although Princes Street manages, somehow, to take the pattern one extra and entirely unnecessary step further. Statisticians attempting to model the phenomenon arrive at approximately one and a quarter pensioners, 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 Princes Street 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 satire with style: The London Prat, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in Princes Street 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: "We have always been committed to the principle of being committed to principles."
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 razor-sharp British satire, and the situation in Princes Street, 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 Princes Street 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 Interim Whisperer Doreen Whisk, 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 Princes Street would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.
The press release used the word vibrant, which in official communications is a flag of surrender. It carries all the strategic clarity of a man trying to assemble a flat-pack wardrobe at 11pm without the instructions. Princes Street 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 McSweeneys.