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No country for old women: Old Ladies - at Finborough Theatre

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The day after seeing The Old Ladies at the Finborough Theatre , I was describing the play to someone in great detail: about three old ladies who lived in a rickety house in southern England in 1935. Based on Hugh Walpole’s novel and adapted by Rodney Ackland, it is the sort of story with enough believability, humour and mild thriller to stick in your mind. Perhaps it is the lure of this dark, forboding tale of a life without money, to be alone and to be old, that makes you feel attracted to this poverty porn. But then again, given the state of the world, the cost of living, an ageing population, or just the fact that it’s a dog-eat-dog world, it might as well be an every little old lady-for-herself, too. It’s a well-acted and staged piece that moves at a brisk pace, so there isn’t much time to think about it too much. And in the intimate (or should that be claustrophobic?) space of the Finborough, there’s nowhere to avert your eyes. Even if you wanted to.  The scene is a grim Cathe...

No photos, only confusion

No photos today. The high street retailer that sold me my phone (oh which has a camera) on Saturday took it back today. It is all a rather long and involved story involving me, a sales assistant who didn't know what he was doing, and my strange desire to keep my old number. Keeping your number if you change mobile providers apparently isn't a popular thing to do in London (or at least you are given this impression by the store I went to), and it probably makes sense as if you have given out your number to so many loonies, every now and then it is probably smart to just disappear.

Of course there are only one or two loonies who have my number and I have set them up in my contacts as "DO NOT ANSWER - Mormon" in my phonebook. To keep my number, I needed to set up a new contract and return the old phone… So some rather smashing photos of London were lost. Actually they probably weren't that great, but I was perplexed by returning a phone and then getting another brand new phone exactly the same as the one I already had, sans photos and contact book just to keep my number. Pointing out the banality of it all the sales assistant said to me, "well that's what happens when you return phones". Yes it does happen. I lost an hour of my life today over it as well… And I was still confused over it…

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