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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...

No photos, only confusion

No photos today. The high street retailer that sold me my phone (oh which has a camera) on Saturday took it back today. It is all a rather long and involved story involving me, a sales assistant who didn't know what he was doing, and my strange desire to keep my old number. Keeping your number if you change mobile providers apparently isn't a popular thing to do in London (or at least you are given this impression by the store I went to), and it probably makes sense as if you have given out your number to so many loonies, every now and then it is probably smart to just disappear.

Of course there are only one or two loonies who have my number and I have set them up in my contacts as "DO NOT ANSWER - Mormon" in my phonebook. To keep my number, I needed to set up a new contract and return the old phone… So some rather smashing photos of London were lost. Actually they probably weren't that great, but I was perplexed by returning a phone and then getting another brand new phone exactly the same as the one I already had, sans photos and contact book just to keep my number. Pointing out the banality of it all the sales assistant said to me, "well that's what happens when you return phones". Yes it does happen. I lost an hour of my life today over it as well… And I was still confused over it…

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