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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...
Professional Conversation overheard in the office at lunchtime

F: I have been trying to contact Robert for the past hour and his mobile is engaged...
Officer (just walking in to the office): I have just spoken to him...
F: Ah how can you do that?
Officer: I have an emergency override phone...
F: Oooooh!

At several key points during the day the mobile phone network disappeared. As part of the plans for dealing with civil emergencies emergency and government services get priority on the mobile phone network to ensure that their calls get through. It also meant that at 7pm tonight I got a whole stream of texts that had been sent during the course of the day...

Aftermath.

This afternoon I had (in no particular order) a chocolate éclair, a packet of pretzels, two bananas, a thai chicken curry, half a tin of liquorice allsorts, a herbal tea, a coffee and a berocca. My colleague F had the same plus a trifle. Another colleague commented at one stage during the afternoon that at times of crisis her comfort food is pizza. For me, I take allsorts...

As the day has come to a close, it has been a tragedy but it also has been a day marked by quiet resolve. Emergency Plans swung into action, emergency services were on the scene of the major incidents within minutes and there was a determination to get on with it. My flatmate was at Liverpool St and helped take people to hospital. Construction workers near where I live offered to give blood at UCL Hospital.While there were no tube trains tonight, people left work throughout the afternoon in an orderly manner, and busses were back up by 4pm.

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