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High anxiety: Collapse - Riverside Studios

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It’s a brave or maybe slightly provocative production to use Hammersmith Bridge on their artwork for a show called Collapse, which is about how everything collapses—poorly maintained bridges, relationships, and jobs. Nothing works. That’s probably too close to home for Hammersmith residents stuck with a magnificently listed and useless bridge on their front door. It gets even weirder when you realise the piece is staged in what looks like a meeting room with a bar. However, keeping things together in the most unlikely of circumstances is at the heart of Allison Moore's witty and engaging four-hander, which is currently having a limited engagement at Riverside Studios . The piece opens with Hannah (Emma Haines) about to get an injection from her husband (Keenan Heinzelmann). They’re struggling for a baby, and he’s struggling to get out of bed. But he managed to give her a shot of hormones before she started worrying about the rest of the day. She’s unsure she will keep her job with ...
The week that was...
Today I enjoyed sleeping in. It was well worth it after working up to 10 hours a day in an office that was a little bit precious. Politics and office politics combined this week to set the grounds for an office turf war that may not be worth hanging about to see result for. Working for an office where arselicking of incompetent ministers and their flunkies is de rigeur... I could do that back home!

It doesn't matter. I took a call from a job placement agency who have a few things they want to put my name forward for so I will be following those up next week.

In a box near Whitehall
As it was announced this week that Tony Blair overrode his own security intelligence advice in going to war against Iraq, the whole boring affair was being overshaddowed by American pseudo-magician David Blaine being suspended in a box nearby. While many Londoner's are asking "why the hell doesn't he do his annoying stunts in his own country?", the punters are flocking to see him anyway. It really is just another variation on people watching. I intend to go later today!

£15,000 to have their baby
More bizarre news this week was the Asian couple who set up an internet site offering £15,000 for a woman to be a surrogate mother. In the UK, there is no distinction between Asia and the Indian sub-continent like there is in Australia so that is why they are Asian (which can get very confusing here) but I digress...

Watching this news item this week with my flatmates we were fascinated at how this two ever got together. He was a bit of a looker and said nothing and she wouldn't shut up and looked like hell. We concluded that conception was doomed to fail as either he was gay or that she was just psycho woman.

Friday night drinks
Friday night I caught up with Yvette and we went to a sensible English pub called The Cock just because for some reason we liked it. It must have been the large sign outside with the big bantam on it. Anyway inside it was pretty average. We were both in the mood for a chardonnay but the woman behind the bar told us in her thick accent from some Eurotrash country that only dry white wine was available. Riiiiiiiight I told her and just let her get away with that response.

After having our dry white wine (that wasn't a chardonnay) on the footpath, feeling a little peckish we went to Soho and had japanese at one of the great communal eating places in london. There are several places around the sensible traps of town where you can get a cheap eat (for under £10) and sit at communal tables and get a good feed, and this place was one of them. I went to a similar one that served Belgian food a few weeks back as well. The communal eating is novel and a great way to hear everyone's conversations.

Yvette and I agreed on a few things as well and have drawn up a tip sheet on being in London.
* Don't let anyone get away with lumping you with New Zealanders and South Africans. They are from quasi third world countries compared to Australia. We have nothing in common with them. Even their chocolate bars are different. And reject the Antipodeans label!
* While one has to annunciate words to be understood, at all other times one should be lazy with our vowels because most people here can't write good or talk proper anyway.
* Avoid long-term Australians with their rounded vowels. They try to be sophistimicated and put you down in London but they were more than likely to be the ones back in Australia who didn't use tweezers and grew up on the wrong side of the tracks.

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