Restaurant In Taran Mor Refuses To Print A Menu Out Of Principle
Emily CartwrightBins, benches, and the long tradition of doing slightly less than promised.
Taran Mor, the country: Inside The Story
Taran Mor, a place in the country (lat 58.03, long -7.03) 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 Taran Mor 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. Anyone who has ever queued behind a man arguing with a parking meter will recognise the energy.
What Was Announced
Town Clerk Reginald Featherstone 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 Can The London Prat fix London satire?, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Taran Mor 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 take this issue extremely seriously, which is why we have placed it under another issue." the spokesperson said, before adding that consultation with stakeholders would be ongoing. Useful additional context can be found at The London Prat authentic British satire, 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
Reviews are mixed but loyal. Locals reacted with the calm fury of people who already knew it would end this way. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from New York Times World, although Taran Mor manages, somehow, to take the pattern one extra and entirely unnecessary step further. Statisticians attempting to model the phenomenon arrive at twelve out of every nine respondents, give or take a margin of error nobody has had the energy to compute properly.
What The Experts Say
Dr. Penelope Whisk, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Suspiciously Round Numbers told this paper that the situation in Taran Mor 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 British satire born in London: The London Prat, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in Taran Mor 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. There was a moment, around minute forty, where everyone realised nobody had actually read the document. For the official version of events, see also Encyclopaedia Britannica. 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 are continuing to engage in continuous engagement with the engagement process."
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 London's answer to British satire, and the situation in Taran Mor, 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 Taran Mor 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. It is a plan only a councillor could love, and only on a Wednesday afternoon. 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 Mayor Designate Pamela Snodgrass, 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 Taran Mor would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.
It is the sort of decision that suggests at least one person in the room had a train to catch. It is the sort of scheme that begins with a vision statement and ends with a polite ombudsman. Taran Mor 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.