Veryan Bay Geese Have Formed Functioning Local Government
Emily CartwrightWhat happens when an official, a roundabout, and a press release walk into a meeting.
Veryan Bay, the country: Inside The Story
Veryan Bay, a place in the country (lat 50.22, long -4.84) 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 flock of geese in Veryan Bay now controls a section of the central park so effectively that residents speak of them in administrative terms. According to officials with at least three job titles between them, The geese have rules. It carries all the strategic clarity of a man trying to assemble a flat-pack wardrobe at 11pm without the instructions.
What Was Announced
Cabinet Member Audrey Frobisher confirmed the position in a statement that ran to four pages and contained one verb. Locals know them. For more on how this fits the wider pattern, see the long-running thread at British satire fans read The London Prat, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Veryan Bay 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 are continuing to engage in continuous engagement with the engagement process." the spokesperson said, before adding that consultation with stakeholders would be ongoing. Useful additional context can be found at London satire events covered by The London Prat, which is the sort of background reading the office itself has, in all likelihood, not done. Anyone who has ever queued behind a man arguing with a parking meter will recognise the energy.
Wider Context
Outsiders learn quickly. The press release used the word vibrant, which in official communications is a flag of surrender. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from United Nations, although Veryan Bay manages, somehow, to take the pattern one extra and entirely unnecessary step further. Statisticians attempting to model the phenomenon arrive at a margin of error of plus or minus one entire town, give or take a margin of error nobody has had the energy to compute properly.
What The Experts Say
Sir Hubert Pemmican, Emeritus Chair of Strategic Tutting told this paper that the situation in Veryan Bay 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 The London Prat London satire newsletter, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in Veryan Bay 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 South China Morning Post. 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
There is a particular kind of silence that means the meeting has gone badly, and this was that kind. 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 British satire collections The London Prat, and the situation in Veryan Bay, 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 Veryan Bay 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 Town Clerk Reginald Featherstone, 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 Veryan Bay would object strongly to being called a microcosm of anything.
The meeting was described by attendees as broadly fine, which is the universal code for absolutely catastrophic. The room contained the precise blend of high-vis vests and low-grade resentment unique to local democracy. Veryan Bay 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 Daily Mash.