Save Picturehouse?

'˜ERE I wuz talkin' to a gent from that there Arun Council a while back an' he said 'You don't need that theatre, Jan. It needs pullin' down'. I said, well then, where will people go? So he says there's no call for it an' lots of them luxury apartments would look much better. An' you can '˜ave one them multi-plastic picture houses with lots of screens. Nah, says I, I'd get confused with seven films all at once and it'd cost me about 50 quid. '˜No no, I mean seven in different parts.' Oh says I.

Well then, a few days back my neighbour says, ‘ere Jan, did you know that Arun says we can ‘ave our theatre after all and also the multi-plastic picture house. ‘Nah,’ says I, ‘really? What about them 180 luxurious apartments we needed so much?’ No says he, they’re not needed now. Oh says I, and they were before? Oh yes says my friend, they were our town’s future guaranteed. My god says I, what will we do?

But then I finds out that they don’t care if the Picturedome goes down the Swanee ‘cos of the multi-plastic thingee. Town Council shouldn’t ‘ave bought it, Arun reckons, that’s what comes of not mindin’ their business. Picturehouses are Arun’s job they do say. Well, I think it’s a shame that nice young Mr P Ano or somethin’ shippin’ ‘as gone to all that trouble to put the prices down and get folk queuin’ to get in. An’ he’s got two screens and in different rooms too, an’ that new-fangled digitsound. A real gay blade he is and such a nice boy.

Arun has gone to the expense of gettin’ one of them posh consultants to tell us what we need in Bognor (can’t see for the life of me why they need a medical man unless he does brain care) so we need to be touchin’ our forelocks an’ be grateful. Their kind of thinkin’ is what you gets an OBE for, so there.

Where my family hails from (Tintagel of historic and mythical respite) they don’t ‘ave no cinema nor theatre though they did ‘ave King Arthurs Car Park and Knights Pottery so there. My family owned ‘em. An’ Ye Old Tolle Chip Shoppe. An’ the ladies hairdresser was Denzil Flew an’ he married one

of our maids. Yeah really. Must be off now.

Old Jan Dangar

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