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The Green, Green Grass of Home: Mr Jones An Aberfan Story - Finborough Theatre

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A life of hope and promise, interrupted, lies at the heart of Mr Jones: an Aberfan Story. The play follows two young people in Aberfan before and after the disaster that killed 144 people, including 116 children. It’s an emotional coming-of-age tale of intersecting lives, family, love, and the shock of tragedy. With two vivid performances and strong characterisations, you feel immersed in 1960s Welsh small-town life. It’s now running at the Finborough Theatre , after performances at the Edinburgh Festival and across Wales.  The Aberfan disaster is well known in the UK but perhaps less so elsewhere. The facts of the tragedy are confined to the programme notes rather than in the piece. On 21 October 1966, the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip on a mountain above Aberfan engulfed a local school, killing many. The play avoids the causes and negligence, instead focusing on those working and building lives in the town.  Writer-performer Liam Holmes plays Stephen Jones, a...

Scenes from Bloomsbury Sunday 14:11 - It isn't everyday when you find a working fridge freezer for £35 outside your front door... Not surprinsingly (as Londoners love a bargain), within an hour it was sold... Just in time to beat the heavy afternoon rains that would have probably rendered it less useful...

In another curiousity the central heating came on this week in the building... Apparently winter is here even if it isn't... It made me wonder whether:
  1. The other residents of the building are fearful of temperatures below 15 degrees,
  2. The authority that runs the building gets a good deal on the gas used to heat the boilers,
  3. The other residents missed the furnace-like atmosphere of the stairwells over the past three months when the heating was turned off,
  4. The basement rats turned it on after eating their way through everything else down there,
  5. The authority that runs the building doesn't have any idea as to what it is doing, or
  6. All of the above.
In another property matter my flatmate R went to the East End on the weekend - Hoxton to be precise - to look at a penthouse apartment at the top of charming 1960s council building. He took a friend who commented that while the area is ripe for regeneration (afterall the East London line is going there and it will be closer to the Olympics site), it isn't there yet. And you still have to share the excrement-smeared lifts with the other distinguished residents on your way to the top. To top it off the owner of the penthouse managed to give the place a hideous makeover with bathroom tiles in the living room and a curious display of the man appearing in photographs with African men sporting AK-47s. R decided against making an offer on the place. It just wasn't him... Posted by Picasa

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