This is the strange story of a dysfunctional community of eclectic paraphernalia that lives at the bottom of the river Thames…

“Hats off to the summer!” shouted the Straw Bowler with the too-tight decorative silk ribbon embellishing its perfectly round midriff. And with the slightest gust of a summer breeze it gracefully took off from the brow of the innocent owner like a chinook rescuing its convoy from a flaming battlefield…. up, pause, and away. Spinning gracefully in front of our eyes, it rose out of our reach before changing course and gliding gracefully onto the surface of the waiting water.

With one last turn, it hovered on the surface just long enough to make its peace with this world, then slowly descended in front of our very eyes and beyond our reach.

Farewell our dear friend. ‘Much loved. Gone too soon. Will never be replaced’, read its epitaph on our lips as we came to terms with our ill-timed loss.

“Let him have it!” were the last words to be heard as the rope was cast adrift. Words that have previously resulted in death for the innocent, a miscarriage of justice on the highest scale.

Like history repeating itself, the victim plunged to its resting place amidst an atmosphere of panic and confusion.

Curling snake-like between two random points of unwantedness, it weaved its way into the other world without so much as a bye your leave. Gone and soon to be befriended by the Straw Bowler as he aimlessly wandered the dark corridors of Subterranea in search of a mate …

“I can fly ….!” bellowed the Tea Towel as he released himself from the rail. Following his lifetime ambition and with nerves of steel, he released his last flapping corner and took to the autumn breeze.

For one full second he lived the exhilaration he’d always dreamt of ever since being nothing but a damp square on a cold, heartless marble kitchen sink in middle-class suburbia.

He swooped across the bow of the boat, somersaulting with gay abandonment as he reached heights he’d fantasised about as a mere rag … and then descended peacefully and purposefully onto the choppy wave before taking on water and sinking to a new world. A new beginning. New adventures and now with a story to tell …