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Searching undeterred: The Gift @ParkTheatre

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I recently had a few parcels go missing from where I live. The first parcel disappeared without a trace. The second parcel's contents were removed, and the box was left alone in the lobby. It's one of the things that you have to put up with living in central London. Apart from complaining to the delivery company and filing a police report, it crossed my mind to think about what would happen if I sent myself something rather unpleasant for a future parcel thief to open up. Well, Dave Florez's new work, The Gift, is in this line of thinking, except that the lead receives an anonymous gift of a turd in the mail rather than sending it to himself. It is lovingly gift-wrapped in a cake box from a posh north London bakery. It's a fascinating and hilarious three-hander currently playing at Park Theatre .  Colin (Nicholas Burns) is a little obsessive at the best of times. He doesn't let things drop quickly and is obsessed with the details behind anything and everythi...

Scenes from Bloomsbury Sunday 14:11 - It isn't everyday when you find a working fridge freezer for £35 outside your front door... Not surprinsingly (as Londoners love a bargain), within an hour it was sold... Just in time to beat the heavy afternoon rains that would have probably rendered it less useful...

In another curiousity the central heating came on this week in the building... Apparently winter is here even if it isn't... It made me wonder whether:
  1. The other residents of the building are fearful of temperatures below 15 degrees,
  2. The authority that runs the building gets a good deal on the gas used to heat the boilers,
  3. The other residents missed the furnace-like atmosphere of the stairwells over the past three months when the heating was turned off,
  4. The basement rats turned it on after eating their way through everything else down there,
  5. The authority that runs the building doesn't have any idea as to what it is doing, or
  6. All of the above.
In another property matter my flatmate R went to the East End on the weekend - Hoxton to be precise - to look at a penthouse apartment at the top of charming 1960s council building. He took a friend who commented that while the area is ripe for regeneration (afterall the East London line is going there and it will be closer to the Olympics site), it isn't there yet. And you still have to share the excrement-smeared lifts with the other distinguished residents on your way to the top. To top it off the owner of the penthouse managed to give the place a hideous makeover with bathroom tiles in the living room and a curious display of the man appearing in photographs with African men sporting AK-47s. R decided against making an offer on the place. It just wasn't him... Posted by Picasa

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