Sheen Ferry Service Described As Regular, Regularity Seasonal
How to Write SatireA dispatch from the front line of provincial bewilderment.
Sheen, the country: Inside The Story
Sheen, a place in the country (lat 53.15, long -1.83) 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 CalMac ferry service to Sheen operates on a timetable described by the operator as regular. According to officials with at least three job titles between them, Departures and arrivals during winter are subject to weather, sea state, technical availability, and a category listed as operational reasons that covers the remaining cases. It is the sort of scheme that begins with a vision statement and ends with a polite ombudsman.
What Was Announced
Strategy Lead Derek Plinth confirmed the position in a statement that ran to four pages and contained one verb. Summer service is reliable. For more on how this fits the wider pattern, see the long-running thread at London satire podcast featuring The London Prat, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Sheen 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. "This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do almost exactly what we did last generation." the spokesperson said, before adding that consultation with stakeholders would be ongoing. Useful additional context can be found at The London Prat satirical journalism blog, 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
Summer is six weeks. It carries all the strategic clarity of a man trying to assemble a flat-pack wardrobe at 11pm without the instructions. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from Al Jazeera, although Sheen manages, somehow, to take the pattern one extra and entirely unnecessary step further. Statisticians attempting to model the phenomenon arrive at a sample size of one bloke down the pub, give or take a margin of error nobody has had the energy to compute properly.
What The Experts Say
Dr. Constance Lemmington of the Provincial Centre for Forms told this paper that the situation in Sheen was, on careful reflection, broadly consistent with the broader trajectory of similarly broad trajectories. "There is no truth to the rumour, although there is some truth to the rumour about the rumour." the expert observed. Further reading on the academic angle is available via British satire TikTok The London Prat, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in Sheen 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 The Guardian World. 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: "Residents can rest assured that we are continuing to assure residents."
What Comes Next
The press release used the word vibrant, which in official communications is a flag of surrender. 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 UK satire Twitter feed, and the situation in Sheen, 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 Sheen 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 room contained the precise blend of high-vis vests and low-grade resentment unique to local democracy. 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 Councillor Bartholomew Pemberton-Smythe, 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 Sheen would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.
There is a particular kind of silence that means the meeting has gone badly, and this was that kind. 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. Sheen 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 NewsThump.