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No country for old women: Old Ladies - at Finborough Theatre

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The day after seeing The Old Ladies at the Finborough Theatre , I was describing the play to someone in great detail: about three old ladies who lived in a rickety house in southern England in 1935. Based on Hugh Walpole’s novel and adapted by Rodney Ackland, it is the sort of story with enough believability, humour and mild thriller to stick in your mind. Perhaps it is the lure of this dark, forboding tale of a life without money, to be alone and to be old, that makes you feel attracted to this poverty porn. But then again, given the state of the world, the cost of living, an ageing population, or just the fact that it’s a dog-eat-dog world, it might as well be an every little old lady-for-herself, too. It’s a well-acted and staged piece that moves at a brisk pace, so there isn’t much time to think about it too much. And in the intimate (or should that be claustrophobic?) space of the Finborough, there’s nowhere to avert your eyes. Even if you wanted to.  The scene is a grim Cathe...
Obsessions...

Recycling is not really a priority in this country. London has seven more years of landfill so that should be plenty of time to come up with a sensible solution. On train rides out of London you can spot the transfer stations by where the flocks of pigeons and seagulls are. Everything is packaged and sealed from sandwiches to cakes to three peppers (that's capsicums to you back home) red yellow and green that you can buy at the supermarket (Actually that is very of them to do that... the traffic light peppers are such a lure I almost bought a packet once even though I only wanted one).

So I figure to hell with recycling. But there are two recycling bins near me however so I try to use them. But there is this strange thing that a colleague has... He insists that the staples get removed. He stressed to me a week after starting work that you must remove the staples from the paper. I had visions of staples flying out wounding helpless paper recyclers or some other horror but he never said why. He just said that's the way it had to be done. So I started removing the staples one by one from all these documents before throwing them into the recycling. Two minutes later I thought what the fuck am I doing and tossed the lot in there. Staples and all. We don't have to remove staples in Austrlia! Several weeks have elapsed and no reports have come in about paper recyclers getting maimed so I think I am in the all clear.


Anglicans praying up the road

Just up the road from where I am during the day at Lambeth Palace, Anglican Leaders are working to keep the church together over the decision of the Episcopal Church in the United States to allow a gay bishop.

In what is really just another garden variety clash of cultures in London, leaders from the most colonised and most unenlightened parts of the world - Africa, Asia and Latin America (where tolerance, understanding, democracy all those values that really are important in Western society don't really exist) propose stripping the Episcopal Church of its status as a province of the Anglican Communi. It will be interesting to see who prays the hardest and whether the Western leaders are willing to sell out our own values (which are reflected in our laws and our way of life) just for the sake of unity.

Things to do
* Start planning trips that I won't be doing just on my own... Bologna in November is first off the mark... Why? Because that's what Ryannair had going as a special!
* Need to be having drinks in smarter locations to spot celebrities.
* Work back less (although I do get paid by the hour)
* Need gloves soon
* Start finding more free wi-fi hotspots... although the one in the heart of Soho is a very smart locale... its just I can't always get there!

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