Too many eggs

Ah, the exuberance of youth. Fizzing with teenage hormones and full of boundless beans, it feels like there's nothing you couldn't do - if only you could be bothered to set your mind to it.

When you're young, the world is your metaphorical oyster and you can choose to fritter away your time in any number of exciting and productive ways. You could irritate fellow bus users by loudly playing bland R'n'B through the inadequate speaker on your mobile phone. Perhaps you'd like to congregate with some pals and lurk about in the street, unnerving passers-by. Or maybe you'll opt to make your mark on society in the literal sense, with the aid of a Magic Marker.

If you choose the latter, be careful - it's easy to get carried away and over-egg your graffiti pudding. Take the culprit responsible for the blue-inked penwork in today's example, an East Lothian District Council notice on the wall of a public car park in Musselburgh. If you like your puddings over-egged, this one's for you.

If the writer had crossed out games and added the letter s to the word ball, the handiwork could've become a sly dig at a lacklustre, nondescript council. Another option was to simply write the words in my trousers beneath the official message on the otherwise unaltered sign, turning it into a self-deprecating and amusing joke about the writer's lack of testicles.

Instead though, swept up in the excitement of trying to get the idea across, a foolhardy attempt has been made to combine both options. The resulting muddle just doesn't make sense.

What a wasted opportunity. What a disappointing mess. Very poor.