Dear BANES,

I have acquired one of your deckchairs from Prince’s Garden and am pleased to keep it in my living room.

Most likely a person(s) of antisocial persuasion threw your deckchair out of Prince’s Garden into the River Avon. This statement is mere conjecture but I did find one of your deckchairs caught in the roots of a bank side tree at the foot of our shared garden. It is this deckchair that I now keep. Personally I think BANES should do more to protect Prince’s Garden and property therein from local riff raff outside of the garden opening hours. Furthermore I feel that a carrot, as well as a stick, policy needs to be implemented in order for BANES to be effective: there needs to be more for the young of Bath to do.

I would have returned your property, honest, if it were not for the degradation it had suffered. I will have you know that as a young teenager I returned an abandoned supermarket trolley. In such degradation I doubt BANES would have wanted the deckchair due to the great lengths involved in restoring it, as I have done, and so expect BANES would merely dispose of it. Therefore it is only right, in terms of best use of the world’s resources, that I keep this deckchair to reuse its materials.

I had to wash the deckchair, dry it, and, as it still stank of manky, swampy mud, I had to dissemble and painstakingly sand the components, which then I lovingly applied teak oil to. I am reliably informed that the timber is either Teak or more likely Iroko, the more sustainable material of the two. The seating material had to be replaced as not only the material is a nasty polyester but it was badly worn. A lovely off white and soft cotton seating was made as a replacement.

I trust BANES will approve of my industrious good doing and may I inform BANES that I am happy to accept any more discarded deckchairs in the hope that I amass a set.

Yours sincerely,
Robert Rieder