Dear Spurtle,

After reading the arguments on New Town gardens [Breaking news: 29 May; 8 June], I must conclude that both your correspondents have recently received knocks to the head, perhaps from low-hanging local branches. 

However, as a service to your readers, I’m more than happy to transform their prolix offerings into something more digestible. 

Essentially, either the gardens become accessible to the vile Edinburgh masses or they remain the preserve of the local living dead.

Personally, however, I feel neither of these scenarios is fully satisfactory. I’d therefore like to propose a way forward. We turn the gardens into a zoo.

During business hours, anyone would be able to purchase a ticket and, at a safe distance, observe the colourful, peculiar creatures who pass much of their time there. 

Come nightfall, visitors would return to their slums, and local animals – human and otherwise – would be left to their own sordid devices.

Everyone wins.

New Town Flaneur

[AI image: www.perchance.org]