"typical Ely"

The Day In Douglas Adams & John Lloyd's The Meaning of Liff, a faux-dictionary which employs proper names to put words to those elements of life which don't already have them defines an Ely as "The first, tiniest inkling you get that something, somewhere, has gone terribly wrong."

Ironically, that's the creeping experience of the actual people of Ely in the weeks leading away from the wedding of Kate and Wills as the bunting put up to celebrate the royal union have been left up and if the Cambridge News's account is anything to go by the local residents have become strangely angry about the whole thing.

"The bunting needs taking down. It looks scruffy – in my opinion it should only be up if there’s a celebratory or community event that’s on. If it’s up all the time then it reduces the excitement of the events it should be up for in the first place."

Presumably as it slowly dawned on local pedestrians that the bunting was still up, their brains began to seek reasons.  The general consensus  seemed to be that the local council was being a bit slow to activate, indeed a bit worksop, or as one local resident puts it "typical Ely".

Except, and it's the council's fault for not communicating this properly to their wage payers, the bunting has been left up to save money.  The extraordinary cost of hiring a hoist led them to decide that they might was well leave the coloured triangles in situ until Christmas when they'd be replaced by the festive lights.

I actually quite like the bunting.

Though I understand the idea that leaving it up is like having your Christmas decorations around your house all year ruining the temporary spectacle, this is just a one off. Plus, does this have to be single application bunting? Can't the meaning be simply transfered to celebrating life itself or less grandly the existence of Ely?

In any case, the bunting will come down eventually, and a wembley has been averted which as Liff puts it would have been "the hideous moment of confirmation that the disaster presaged in the ely had actually struck." or that the good people of the town would spend the rest of their lives seeing these tiny flags blowing in the wind.