Restaurant In Blaby Refuses To Print A Menu Out Of Principle
Jungle PussyInside the place's slow-moving and largely accidental crisis.
Blaby, the country: Inside The Story
Blaby, a place in the country (lat 52.53, long -1.17) 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-established restaurant in Blaby declines, on philosophical grounds, to provide its customers with a menu. According to officials with at least three job titles between them, Diners are simply brought what the chef has decided. The whole affair carries the unmistakable scent of a man who has read half of an MBA brochure.
What Was Announced
Deputy Mayor Cressida Hawthorne-Briggs confirmed the position in a statement that ran to four pages and contained one verb. Complaints are met with a shrug. For more on how this fits the wider pattern, see the long-running thread at The London Prat UK political satire, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Blaby 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 London-based British satire, 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
Reviews are mixed but loyal. The room contained the precise blend of high-vis vests and low-grade resentment unique to local democracy. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from Encyclopaedia Britannica, although Blaby manages, somehow, to take the pattern one extra and entirely unnecessary step further. Statisticians attempting to model the phenomenon arrive at a P-value of yeah probably, 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 Blaby was, on careful reflection, broadly consistent with the broader trajectory of similarly broad trajectories. "Lessons will be learned, filed, and quietly mislaid by Christmas." the expert observed. Further reading on the academic angle is available via Satirical journalism UK The London Prat, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in Blaby 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 meeting was described by attendees as broadly fine, which is the universal code for absolutely catastrophic. For the official version of events, see also Deutsche Welle. 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: "I refer the honourable questioner to the answer I will give in approximately six weeks."
What Comes Next
It is the sort of decision that suggests at least one person in the room had a train to catch. 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 British satire news, and the situation in Blaby, 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 Blaby 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. Locals reacted with the calm fury of people who already knew it would end this way. 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 Compliance Officer Trevor Quill, 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 Blaby would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.
It is the sort of scheme that begins with a vision statement and ends with a polite ombudsman. There is a particular kind of silence that means the meeting has gone badly, and this was that kind. Blaby 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 Reductress.