Irresistibly irritating.

I had a chance to explore a little of south west London this week. And by explore I mean I got the train from Waterloo to Teddington for four days. It was nice, except that I've taken an irrational dislike to Wimbledon. I'm not sure why, but it boils down to the giant advert at the railway station advertising the shopping centre that is tacked on to platform 1, forcing you to run the gauntlet of everything that rampant commercialism has to throw at you - a Clintons Cards, several bookshops and a small cafeteria - to get out onto the street. Actually I don't have a clue what's in there, I've only been through once and I came home a different way. The giant advert states that Centre Court Wimbledon is 'Irresistibly local - next door, in fact!" It's entirely resistably local - look, here I go on the train, byeee!

But there are many things that irk me here - the name, for instance. It's irresistibly wanky. The place is quite obviously local, because they have in fact hung the sign on the side of it. You'd have to be irresistibly stupid not to notice - perhaps they're hoping that the people who remain, those who haven't got off the train already and are steeling themselves Gladiators-stylee for that dash across the spinny silver thing and the travelator; that perhaps they will quiveringly fall off the train beset by a sudden urge to splurge. How can you resist something that remains quite solidly in your locality anyway? It's just vapid and frothy advertising-speak, for the love of Horlicks.

The exclamation mark at the end gets on my nerves too - I hate it when folks feel the need to substitute character for jaunty punctuation. Look at me, I'm easy-going! Fun to be around! Quite likely to stab you in your sleep! I'm following you now! I'm next door, in fact! Maybe this is an irritation and immunity brought on by my current state of poverty - time was I would have been hypnotised by the lure of a huge shopping centre ("Wimbledon Centre Court! Just like the tennis club, how witty of them.") and trampled in, searching for shoes and never to be seen again.