England Exits Somber Mourning Period To Resume Joyless Normalcy

LONDON—Following Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral and her people’s farewell to their longest-serving monarch, sources confirmed Monday that England had begun exiting its somber mourning period in order to resume its regular joyless normalcy. When Elizabeth passed on Sept. 8, English citizens reportedly paused their dismal everyday lives and entered a gloomy grieving period from which they were only now starting to emerge, becoming dour and wretched once again. According to reports, the melancholic mood brought on by the monarch’s death had begun to lift, and a new period of ordinary melancholy had descended on the country’s 56 million people as they went about their colorless existence with the same sadness they’d always known and felt deep in their bones. Having shed their funereal black clothing and donned once more their traditional dreary wardrobes, residents told reporters they were finally moving past the grim, cheerless conversations about what the queen had meant to England and were back to discussing their customary topics of dispiriting tedium. While they acknowledged no one could replace Elizabeth II, the English vowed to move beyond the sorrows of losing the regent who had defined the past seven decades of their existence and return to the generally demoralizing experience of living in a country racked by constant cold and rain. For their part, members of the British media announced they would be concluding their deeply stupid coverage of the queen’s passing and returning to their regularly scheduled deeply stupid programming.