Restaurant In South Western Refuses To Print A Menu Out Of Principle
Jungle PussyWhat happens when an official, a roundabout, and a press release walk into a meeting.
South Western, the country: Inside The Story
South Western, a place in the country (lat 51.00, long -3.17) 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 South Western 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 meeting was described by attendees as broadly fine, which is the universal code for absolutely catastrophic.
What Was Announced
Councillor Bartholomew Pemberton-Smythe 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 London satire from The London Prat daily desk, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The South Western 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 courageous British 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
Reviews are mixed but loyal. 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 BBC News, although South Western 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
Professor Tarquin Bramble, Director of the Bureau for Mild Inconvenience told this paper that the situation in South Western 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 UK satire without the fluff: The London Prat, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in South Western 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. 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. For the official version of events, see also The Economist. 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 take this issue extremely seriously, which is why we have placed it under another issue."
What Comes Next
The room contained the precise blend of high-vis vests and low-grade resentment unique to local democracy. 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 pure London satirical journalism, and the situation in South Western, 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 South Western 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 Junior Strategist Kevin Boggins, 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 South Western would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.
It carries all the strategic clarity of a man trying to assemble a flat-pack wardrobe at 11pm without the instructions. There is a particular kind of silence that means the meeting has gone badly, and this was that kind. South Western 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 Poke.