Disgusted of Stamford Green

I came across this poster outside the 'Epom Playhouse' this morning, with the good news being that as well as a hospital, Epsom also runs to a theatre, although, to be fair, it is a theatre which we generally use to see films which flit through the commercial cinema in Upper High Street too quickly for us to catch them - assuming that they make it there at all.

The bad news is that whoever designed this advertisement for an offering by the Mid Surrey Theare Company saw fit to build in a very life like graffiti. One has to look twice to decide whether the graffiti is there by design or whether it is a later addition. A building in which, to my mind, is legitimising the activities of the twerps with spray cans. How are we supposed to explain to our children that graffiti is bad if apparently respectable people are doing what amounts to the same thing?

Perhaps I should raise the matter with our Residents' Association who can then raise the matter with our Leisure & Culture committee (see http://www.epsom-ewell.gov.uk/EEBC/). Or perhaps I should stop that portion of my rates which goes to subsidise the operations of the Playhouse, and then make a scene in the magistrates' court when I am summoned to explain myself.

Probably not worth complaining about the general tattiness of the advertisement (note, for example, the white weight holding it down from the wind), a general tattiness made possible by someone inventing a cheap process to transfer full colour images to large sheets of plastic. A process which does nearly as much damage to our visual environment as cheap booze in supermarkets does to our pavement environment. So much better in the days when one had to stick up paper posters on odd bits of wall, paper posters which nicely biodegraded before the word had been invented.

Note also the statue of a very young and very lightly clothed young lady rear right. I wonder if the Playhouse is wise to publically exhibit such a thing in a month when we are seeing, if not finding, peddoes and worse under all sorts of unlikely beds.