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Bear with me: Sun Bear @ParkTheatre

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If The Light House is an uplifting tale of survival, Sarah Richardson’s Sun Bear gives a contrasting take on this. Sarah plays Katy. We’re introduced to Katy as she runs through a list of pet office peeves with her endlessly perky coworkers, particularly about coworkers stealing her pens. It’s a hilarious opening monologue that would have you wishing you had her as a coworker to help relieve you from the boredom of petty office politics.  But something is not quite right in the perfect petty office, where people work together well. And that is her. And despite her protesting that she is fine, the pet peeves and the outbursts are becoming more frequent. As the piece progresses, maybe the problem lies in a past relationship, where Katy had to be home by a particular hour, not stay out late with office colleagues and not be drunk enough not to answer his calls. Perhaps the perky office colleagues are trying to help, and perhaps Katy is trying to reach out for help. It has simple staging
Dark and Damp
After staring at government files all day trying to put them in order I decided that despite the light drizzle, I would go for a walk around Hampstead Heath again. It was nice to walk in open spaces and a light rain (the first rain that has occurred since I have been here). Little did I know that the Underground was shutting down as I walked around taking in the open space. Well New York had its outage, it was time for London I guess to follow suit...

While it is possible to walk home from Hampstead Heath, by the time I wanted to the light rain became a little less light than I was hoping for. Still I had some sense of direction so I just headed in that way. I could have pulled out my London A-Z but I thought I would keep walking for a bit and not try and stuggle in the rain with silly things like where I was heading.

About 20 minutes later I realised that I had walked to South Hampstead when I really needed to go west. Fortunately I spotted a tube station on my line and walked over to a nearby bus stop. Busses passing through were intimately packed so I didn't fancy my chances getting on one in a hurry.

The weather had turned a little cooler so I decided to see if my Orange WAP phone could tell me the location of the nearest coffee shop. It could, but then a bus arrived that I managed to force my way on. I rode on the front platform for the 5 minutes it took to get home. Technology is good, but getting home was good too.

People were still struggling to get home by 10.30 with the buses still packed as I walked over to Easy Internet on Kilburn High Road.

Seeing double
You really can see the same person in London more than once. Tonight it was a girl on a bike who nearly ran over Skye the other day. The other day it was a couple with their dog casper. On Saturday they were at Hamstead Heath and on Monday they were at the Notting Hill Carnival. Both times I saw them I was with Skye. "Perhaps we should become friends with them," I suggested to Skye. But then we realised that the guy was crouching down and showing plumber's butt - and particularly hairy plumber's butt - and the woman was a bit of a lush. We both agreed that plumber's butt men and lushes weren't the sort of people we needed to know.

If tonight you weren't washing your hair...
* Sky News re-enacts the day's proceedings from the inquiry into the death of British scientist Dr David Kelly. Tonight would have been gripping as it would have been Tony Blair's testimony. Well it would have been a cure for insomnia. Some punter's have commented on the PM's cold detachment over the whole affair. Nowadays the only thing that seems to get him passionate is a good price on a flat. But hey, it's summer news...

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