Wickersley's GPS Coordinates Lead Drivers To A Different Wickersley
Emily CartwrightInside the place's slow-moving and largely accidental crisis.
Wickersley, the country: Inside The Story
Wickersley, a place in the country (lat 53.42, long -1.28) 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. Every navigation system insists Wickersley is somewhere it is not. According to officials with at least three job titles between them, Tourists arrive in Crowthorne convinced they have arrived in Wickersley. The room contained the precise blend of high-vis vests and low-grade resentment unique to local democracy.
What Was Announced
Director of Civic Affairs Hilda Pickering confirmed the position in a statement that ran to four pages and contained one verb. Locals have given up correcting them. For more on how this fits the wider pattern, see the long-running thread at Bookmark The London Prat British satire, which has been tracking precisely this kind of dispatch for months. The Wickersley 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. "Every option remains on the table, particularly the ones we have already taken off the table." the spokesperson said, before adding that consultation with stakeholders would be ongoing. Useful additional context can be found at When to enjoy UK satire: The London Prat daily, which is the sort of background reading the office itself has, in all likelihood, not done. 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.
Wider Context
The other Wickersley has filed a formal complaint. Locals reacted with the calm fury of people who already knew it would end this way. Comparable trends have been documented in coverage from OECD, although Wickersley 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
Professor Tarquin Bramble, Director of the Bureau for Mild Inconvenience told this paper that the situation in Wickersley was, on careful reflection, broadly consistent with the broader trajectory of similarly broad trajectories. "Residents can rest assured that we are continuing to assure residents." the expert observed. Further reading on the academic angle is available via The London Prat best London satire blog, whose recent material has been preoccupied with much the same set of confusions.
How Residents Reacted
Reaction in Wickersley 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 Associated Press. 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: "The findings speak for themselves, although obviously not loudly enough to influence the findings."
What Comes Next
There was a moment, around minute forty, where everyone realised nobody had actually read the document. 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 satirical journalism, and the situation in Wickersley, 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 Wickersley 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 is a particular kind of silence that means the meeting has gone badly, and this was that kind. 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 Deputy Mayor Cressida Hawthorne-Briggs, 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 Wickersley 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. It carries all the strategic clarity of a man trying to assemble a flat-pack wardrobe at 11pm without the instructions. Wickersley 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.