Whispering Smith published in the Littlehampton Gazette July 11th 2013

I HEAR that LA Town Council have generously earmarked a possible grant of 3000 pounds, subject to a firm and acceptable proposal, towards providing LA with a cinema, albeit a voluntary run cinema, and many will say that it is better than nothing at all. Well, it is not, this compromise is simply not acceptable. I still believe LA deserves a professionally run film theatre and should not settle for anything less. We lost our Windmill Cinema under dark and somewhat seedy circumstances and we want it restored. To meekly accept the voluntary alternative is just a get out of jail free card for Arun District Council and Inspire Leisure who should, by rights and with our money, be providing us with a quality entertainment centre now and not in some promised, distant and imagined LA of the future. A voluntary run part time cinema, as admirable as the project may be, belongs in a village hall or, as in the case of Chichester’s excellent New Park Cinema, as a supportive and alternative supplementary to an existing cinema complex. Over the past three weeks I have been to both  Brighton and Worthing to see such diverse movies as Man of Steel, World War Z and Behind the Candelabra. On each occasion I have found there to be  other people from LA in the audience. Such a diversity of films in such a short space of time could not, with the best will in the world, be provided by a voluntary run cinema. I know this may well not be a popular point of view but I do honestly believe it to be the right one. We, and visitors to our town, deserve much better, in fact, we deserve the very best…

LAST year or the year before I did not see a single hedgehog road kill but, so far this year, I have now seen three in the very local LA area. I was beginning to think they had vanished forever and it is a sad confirmation that the spiky little critters are still out and about and still lack any road sense. The three were all large adults and perhaps, with a little care and a little less haste, their deaths could have been avoided.

ST VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE: LA’s last picture show was 148 days ago and counting…