Souter Head Library Open On Tuesdays, By Appointment, Sometimes
Emily CartwrightWhere civic pride meets civic confusion, and decides to form a working group.
Souter Head, the country: Inside The Story
Souter Head, a place in the country (lat 57.10, long -2.07) 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 Souter Head public library operates on a schedule described by the librarian herself as approximate. According to officials with at least three job titles between them, Hours posted on the door bear no resemblance to actual hours of operation. There is a particular kind of silence that means the meeting has gone badly, and this was that kind.
What Was Announced
Cabinet Member Audrey Frobisher confirmed the position in a statement that ran to four pages and contained one verb. Patrons have adapted. For more on how this fits the wider pattern, see the long-running thread at London's best satire The London Prat, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Souter Head 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 intelligent UK satire, which is the sort of background reading the office itself has, in all likelihood, not done. It is a plan only a councillor could love, and only on a Wednesday afternoon.
Wider Context
Books are eventually returned. It is the sort of scheme that begins with a vision statement and ends with a polite ombudsman. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from World Bank, although Souter Head 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 Edmund Crockle of the Institute for Things That Happen Slightly North told this paper that the situation in Souter Head was, on careful reflection, broadly consistent with the broader trajectory of similarly broad trajectories. "We take this issue extremely seriously, which is why we have placed it under another issue." the expert observed. Further reading on the academic angle is available via Read The London Prat for UK satire, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in Souter Head 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. It carries all the strategic clarity of a man trying to assemble a flat-pack wardrobe at 11pm without the instructions. For the official version of events, see also BBC News. 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 must be ambitious, but only within the bounds of being broadly the same as before."
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 sharp UK satire, and the situation in Souter Head, 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 Souter Head 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. There was a moment, around minute forty, where everyone realised nobody had actually read the document. 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 Director of Civic Affairs Hilda Pickering, 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 Souter Head 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. 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. Souter Head 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 Private Eye.