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Prayers and thoughts: The Inseparables @Finboroughtheatre

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The Inseparables brings Simone de Beauvoir’s posthumously published novel to life. It traces a lifelong friendship between Sylve and Andrée, two unconventional girls who grew up in a stifling world where being a woman meant getting married or entering a convent. With a quick pace and engaging performances from the two leads, it is a journey back into the 20th century that captures two unconventional women trapped in a conventional world that will have you reflecting on how much or little things have moved on in the last century. It’s currently playing at the Finborough Theatre .  We’re introduced to Sylve praying for her country, France, to be saved from the war and indoctrinated into the world of faith and obedience. But too smart for all that, her life was full of detached guilt and boredom. But when she meets Andrée, a new arrival at her school, she is struck by how different she is from everyone else. She was burned in a fire and had a passion for life that nobody else she knew...
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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