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The brown word: Death on the Throne @gatehouselondon

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We’re warned at the start of the show with an upbeat number that this is not the usual sort of musical. And it turns out to be just that. But with boundless enthusiasm and energy from its two leads, who deploy a range of voices and breathtaking energy to create a series of voices for puppet characters, a bedtime story becomes a silly oddball tale about four souls stuck in purgatory. With puppets. And various toilet humour references. It’s currently playing at Upstairs At The Gatehouse . The piece starts as a bedtime story. Daddy (Mark Underwood) is about to read a bedtime story for Louise (Sarah Louise Hughes). But her stomach felt funny, and soon, she went to the bathroom. Then, for reasons that seem to only make sense in the confines of the show, they start telling the story of four people who died in unfortunate circumstances in the bathroom. Depicted as puppets, they’re stuck in purgatory as St Peter doesn’t have enough space for each of them in the afterlife. And so begins a puppe...

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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Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

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