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Adopt an Artefact
Dear Manager of the Roads and Highways
Department,
Last year you wrote to all residents of
this borough explaining that funding available for maintenance of
roads, drainage etc. was insufficient to meet requirements due to
financial cutbacks. You proposed the idea of ‘Adopt an
Artefact’ whereby members of the public, such as myself,
could adopt a section of road or sewer or perhaps an associated
item such as a drain cover or traffic bollard.
I and many of my fellow senior citizens,
anxious to help our community, stepped forward. I know my
neighbour, Mrs Smith, has taken great pride in the paving slab
she adopted - often inspecting and cleaning it. Mr Henderson, who
lives across the road, has approached his road sign with great
conscientiousness. I gather this extended to him taking
appropriate measurements and informing you that it was, in fact,
five miles to Watford and not six, as erroneously stated on the
sign.
Regretfully, few of us read the small print
of your eighty-four page adoption agreement in the detail with
which, perhaps, we should have done. In particular in relation to
the financial implications of adoption.
We understood that our initial outlay of
one hundred pounds covered the cost of the photographs of
ourselves next to our adopted artefact, our signed adoption
certificates and a contribution to maintenance. Rather few of us,
at the time, had grasped that we were personally responsible for
ongoing maintenance costs. Initially, this was not a major
problem to myself, as my adopted traffic lights required little
more than a bulb every couple of months at a cost of around five
pounds.
Mr Henderson was the first to identify a
major difficulty with the scheme. Delighted as he was to see his
sign replaced with one accurately reflecting the distance to
Watford, he was greatly distressed to receive an invoice for £1,243.84
for the manufacture and erection of the new sign.
No one, of course, could have predicted
that Mrs Ransome’s daughter would have jilted Mr Andrew’s
son and the lad would have, as a result, consumed ten pints of
lager and a bottle of Southern Comfort. Even less could one have
predicted that Mr Evans would have left his JCB outside the pub
with the keys in the ignition. The fact remains, however, that
along with the other significant demolition undertaken that
night, my traffic lights were crushed beyond repair.
It was thoughtful of your contractor to
take the trouble to retain the damaged lights, pole and
surrounding tarmac and return them to me as my property. As I
live in a small, first floor, pensioner’s flat, however,
these remains are now occupying much of my living space. Also the
replacement cost of £8,724.41 represented my life savings, so I
must now face an uncertain future surrounded by just photographs
and mementoes of my family - and of course the remains of the
traffic lights. I, therefore, give notice that I wish to withdraw
from your Adopt an Artefact scheme.
Yours sincerely,
Alfred Wetherby.
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