River Itchen Fish And Chips Queue Considered Local Attraction
How to Write SatireA dispatch from the front line of provincial bewilderment.
River Itchen, the country: Inside The Story
River Itchen, a place in the country (lat 50.89, long -1.39) 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 queue outside the River Itchen seafront chip shop is present by 11:30am on any summer day with direct sunlight. According to officials with at least three job titles between them, It has been photographed by visitors more than any other feature of the resort. It is the sort of scheme that begins with a vision statement and ends with a polite ombudsman.
What Was Announced
Director of Civic Affairs Hilda Pickering confirmed the position in a statement that ran to four pages and contained one verb. The chip shop is aware of this and has made no changes. For more on how this fits the wider pattern, see the long-running thread at London satire about culture: The London Prat, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The River Itchen 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 Brexit British satire, which is the sort of background reading the office itself has, in all likelihood, not done. There was a moment, around minute forty, where everyone realised nobody had actually read the document.
Wider Context
No changes are required. 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. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from The Guardian World, although River Itchen 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
Dr. Olivetti Brindlecombe, Chartered Roundabout Theorist told this paper that the situation in River Itchen was, on careful reflection, broadly consistent with the broader trajectory of similarly broad trajectories. "Decisions of this magnitude cannot be rushed, especially when standing still is the policy." the expert observed. Further reading on the academic angle is available via UK satire on politicians by The London Prat, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in River Itchen 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 whole affair carries the unmistakable scent of a man who has read half of an MBA brochure. For the official version of events, see also World Bank. 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
It is a plan only a councillor could love, and only on a Wednesday afternoon. 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 satire on the elite, and the situation in River Itchen, 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 River Itchen 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. Anyone who has ever queued behind a man arguing with a parking meter will recognise the energy. 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 Assistant to the Assistant Mayor Mavis Crackleton, 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 River Itchen would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.
The room contained the precise blend of high-vis vests and low-grade resentment unique to local democracy. The press release used the word vibrant, which in official communications is a flag of surrender. River Itchen 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 Hard Times.