primeval

We had the BBC Doctor Who spinoff called Torchwood. It was set in Western part of the Britiish Isles (Wales, actually). There was a gang of around five people who investigated phenomena as a consequence of some strange energy lines and breaks in the space time continuum in the area around their base.

The leader used to wear clothing reminiscent of a World War two airman. He and his group walk around in leather jackets in sort of V formations and diagonal straight lines. Occasionally they have to deal with all manner of strange monster, some clearly Men in Bubble-wrap and some computer generated. They have gadgets to help them and they keep them in their quirky headquarters location which is under a shimmering office location. In the first episode they met a new ex police-woman person who joins their gang.

I enjoyed Torchwood.

Fast forward to Saturday on BBC's rival ITV and there's a new series set in the Western part of the British Isles (Forest of Dean, which is quite close to Wales). Theres a strange crystal energy field in the forest and it appears to be a break in the space time continuum.

The leader of this gang wears an ex army looking jacket and his leather jacketed gang also walk around in V formations and the occasional diagonal grouping. They do use Torches to good effect in the Wood, too. And they seem to be dealing with creatures of a mainly computer generated kind. A few gadgets have been revealed, along with a shimmering headquarters location. In the first episode they seem to have met a new zoo-keeper who has just been told her project has been cancelled. I expect she will join their gang.

Lets see how it develops.

tags technorati : rashbre primeval torchwood itv bbc

syria

Walking through a shortcut via Belgrave Square today, I chanced upon a small demonstration. There are a lot of embassies in that part of London, so I didn't really know who they were pointing towards. I also noted there were quite a few police on hand and another police van was discreetly parked around the next side of the large square.

I didn't recognise the flag immediately, it has the typical Arab colours of black, white and red stripes with green stars, and as there were two stars I think that means Syria. Three means Iraq, of course.

It appeared to be a civil rights protest linked with the 25th anniversary of the ruthless destruction, by the Syrian army, of the city of Hamat claiming it harboured opponents of the Syrian regime.

I can't find any reference on the main news feeds to today's demonstration. But it brings home another example of the ongoing complexities and ambiguities of the Middle East region, this time with the country that borders Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey and Jordan.

buy a word

Today, I thought I'd become a theatre impresario. Some of you will have spotted my previous posts about Theatre 503, which is a newly re-launched theatre in London and which has been well described across on Christina's blog. You might have even looked it up on wikipedia. Or read my review of their season-opening production, The Atheist.

Well, they are now trying to raise money linked to some planned pieces of new writing there called "Breakfast Hearts" and "Choirplay", both by Robin French. The two new artistic directors, Paul Robinson and Tim Roseman, invited Jennie Fellows to direct the plays as part of their opening season.

So because Theatre 503 has no public subsidy, there's a need to raise some money towards the production costs and this is to be done by selling the words of the play individually for £1 per word. We've heard about pixels being sold in the past, now lets see what happens with these words. So Jennie has set up a page on her company Tickle's website, and, already there's £100 donated. Jenny has also got some fine publicity from The Guardian, in their blog.

So anyone can select to buy any word from the text of the plays and even buy more than one. Yesterday someone bought "I love you" for their boyfriend. Someone else made a sentence from the words they bought. Another person bought a word that wasn't in the text just because they liked it so much: "perspicacity".

So I've bought a few words like 'it' - which saves some of the more spectacular ones for people to divine as they read through the script.

So, become a patron of the arts for a pound. Paypal works.

skjornesnow

I expect I've spelled today's title incorrectly. I was chatting to a couple of folk from Sweden about the UK snow and one (who was in London) said to the other (who was in Stockholm) that the snow was like skjornesnow. I laughed and said that sounds like scornful snow? and they explained they were referencing the area of Sweden that has the least snow. So kind of like Cornish snow, I suppose.

Anyway, today's 5cm (2 inches) of snow is the largest snowfall of the millenium in some areas. The usually accurate single flake that destroys the transport infrastructure seemed to miss and everything seemed to stay working.

It still took me around 15 minutes to scrape it from the car. But by tonight it has all gone, except the nearby snowman, whose head has fallen off.

Thursday Thirteen (V35)

Doing a Thursday Thirteen always takes longer than my normal ten minute posts. So I've missed a few weeks, but thought I'd give it a go again this week. Its still version 35!
1) : I spent around two hours in a traffic jam this morning; then later I had to go to another location and on the way back was stuck in another one for thirty minutes. I'd driven for over three and a half hours on what would normally be around ninety minutes of travel.

2) : A side effect of the travelling has been the car turning a sort of matt colour with all of the salt and grit placed on the road because it may snow this evening.

3) : I was also in a long traffic jam yesterday in central London, between Earls Court and Marylebone. In the end I had to park the car at a hotel and take a cab for the last part of the journey along the taxi lanes, so that I was not too late for my appointment.

4) : As is the way in central London, I had to pay the £8 / $15 congestion charge for driving my car into the central London area. In a few days, the zone is being extended further to the west, covering Kensington and Chelsea.

5): I've been out in the evening a lot recently, which has stressed my time for writing any blog entries. Last week I was in Amsterdam, the previous week in Vas Vegas and the week before that in Franfurt. This week I'm home, but out for several evenings.

6) : The man came to take a look at the broken fence. Another few days and it should be fixed. I need a couple of panels and new fence posts too.

7) : The recent scaffolding has also come down as a consequence of the completion of some other work on rashbre central.
8) : I had a replacement credit card sent to me a few days ago. It doesn't become active until March. Something I pay for by credit card monthly then sent me a late payment bill saying my card wasn't valid. I called to explain but they said the original card didn't work. I said I'd pay with the new one, then. They said it wasn't yet valid. After my protest, I moved the payment to direct debit. They refused to refund the late payment saying I should have informed them about the credit card change. I explained the original card was still valid. They didn't care. That little £5 charge will have cost them a customer, because when I get time I will move my suscription to somewhere else.

9) : I checked all of the above with my helpful bank. They said there was nothing wrong with my credit card and the above supplier should not have acted in the way they did.

10) : I've been helping get some of the Theatre 503 information onto Wikipedia. It became quite complicated, because I referred to the recent play 'The Atheist', which then also required an entry. So I started to write that entry as well, but then had to 'disambiguate' 'The Atheist', which is also the name of a comic. Then the wikipedia authors said the description of the play wasn't detailed enough. And so it went on. Hopefuly its all okay now.

11) : I discovered some chocolates left from December yesterday. I wonder how long they will survive?

12) : I was asked to vote for a specific artis at the Brits a couple of days ago. I have been receiving emails about other artists ever since.

13) : Tonight's beverage of choice is Tetley's tea.

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Tag: Thursday Thirteen, free link friday

OTA Wordless Wednesday

the bunnies heard about the banana
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Tag: Wordless Wednesday

let them eat cake

The avian bugs from the continent arrived in Holton, in the east of England today creating an exclusion zone and poultry cull.

I've decided that there must still be some classes of food which are relatively safe, like the above torte. Made from chocolate, with its antioxidant properties, kirch, with its mildly medicinal alcoholic content, cream containing calcium, vitamins A, D, B12, and riboflavin and cherries as a source of fruit, this must surely be a better bet than some of the other foodstuffs on offer.

I shall consider whilst I have a slice. This is a twizzler-free zone.

bananas

There are some projects that are just off all of the scales. A great example is the mission to send an inflateable banana into geostationary orbit over texas for one month as an art installation. I am not sure if this counts as messing with texas, but it sure is bananas.

tags technorati : rashbre banana geostationarybananaovertexas texas science art space

talking italian

After the show at Theatre 503. we wandered back into Battersea Park Road and along a few doors to the Italian restaurant. It was already almost full, but in keeping with most good Italian places, they said they would find a way to squeeze us in. Sure enough, they did, resorting to a special folding chair for me to squish against the end of the table.

We then enjoyed some noble Montepulciano whilst we debated the play before turning to other matters. The food was fine and the evening was now slipping into the later part. Penguin had joined us, back from a recent trip to Barbados, and regaled us with stories of the rather snazzy resort he'd enjoyed during the last several days. And no soooner back in the UK, then he's off to Venice. I shall expect to see some photographs on the promised new blog. As if.

A joy of this part of London, and the subsequent return to Chelsea was that even at one thirty in the morning there are still quite a lot of folk meandering around the streets.

Talking Italian - thanks, Holly

spinning jenny

Yesterday evening's show at Theatre 503 was excellent. The evening went to plan. We arrived first in Chelsea to meet for an early shot of expresso before we started the evening. Then to the Latchmere pub in Battersea for a pre-show drink. The pub was kinda busy, what with the rugby as well and the group of us moved to the Theatre lobby where we managed to bag a comfortable sofa before the show started.

And then to hear the trials and tribulations of Augustine Early, played with sharp tongue, Southern drawl, pyrotechnic energy swings and deep engagement by Ben Porter, in Ronan Noone's rapier wit of a tale of an amoral journalist who'll stop at nothing to get that front page headline.

Augustine Early is a despicably conniving, viciously scheming reporter who claws his way up the greasy pole of the Fourth Estate. There are maybe ten seconds of goodness about him in the entire play, but he soon snaps out of that.

Sex, Sleaze, Corruption, Politics and Death all play a part in this analog of the human condition. "I may be responsible, but I'm not culpable", he explains as he describes the morbid interest of his readers in the latest spinning that he has created with the gullible self interest of Jenny, his partial love interest in the piece.

Ben Porter, as an edgily psychotic Augustine, paces the piece with great assurance and timing, revealing the latent energy of a coiled spring, which every so often explodes across the stage. "Why be mediocre?", he implores, as he demonstrates every way to stay away from the middle ground.

Set in America, tightly scripted, adapted for the European audience, and set in a theatre modified to resemble...no I'd better not say...it adds to one of the twists in the piece. Highly watchable and easy to be drawn through fascination into this otherworld of deceit.

Great theatre, acting, script. I'd watch and enjoy again!

tags technorati : rashbre theatre london theatre503 offwestend chelsea battersea latchmere west end metro time out sloane square fringe The Atheist Ben Porter Ronan Noone

(Extensive tagging at request of Mel and Christina)

showtime

Off to see a play in Battersea this evening, supporting the renaissance of Theatre 503. There's more about the venue across at Christina's and I'll know more for myself after tonight's show.

Its quite an endeavour getting a theatre up and running and tonight's play is the first 'under new management'.

So I guess I'll be in the Latchmere first, for a pre show drink.

fenceless

I shall just have to admire this picture of fencing. Since the storms and winds in England a couple of weeks ago, there has been a run on replacement fence panels. So I shall be without borders for a little longer.