London Photos: London life in images by Kim Gilmour

Last night we went to Underground, an amazing production at the Old Abattoir in Clerkenwell. This musty, disused space was where a huge international cast gathered for a production based on Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. You could follow characters in different rooms, where they acted with each other and with the audience, gave you wine in recreated aristocratic wine bars, handed you vodka in a drinking den, enticed you to follow them up and down stairs and into a church, or around a swing. A pawnbroker (speaking Japanese) tried to offer you money for your jewellery, moments before being murdered by our main protagonist, and ghosts haunted the characters as they popped up in the damp, cold, dusty corridors.

Photos weren’t really allowed but I snuck a few in – hard to get a good photo with a lack of light and tripod, so a little blurred… but I tried.

The production is on until the end of the month; tickets can be booked via the Barbican and you get a specific time where you can go in, but you can stay as long as you like, as the production repeats itself every 80 minutes. Definitely a unique London experience. Recommended.

This evening, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs launched the newfangled and ever-expanding range of iPod/Apple paraphernalia (he was in ‘California’, those in London watched at the BBC Broadcasting Centre via a live link). I’m glad that people in the UK clap and hoot a lot less at these ‘groundbreaking’ events. The US people were clapping at the new advertisements he kept playing over and over, for goodness sake. There were literally hundreds of people piling into the ‘product showcase’ at the end of it but I had a bit of a headache, so I was happy to go home. Plus I wasn’t able to get any good pictures.

Why is it that Apple says their stuff is ‘designed in California’, rather than in Silicon Valley or the USA? Why do they have to mention the state all the time? Is it because ‘California’ evokes feelings of sunny days, orange juice, tans and youth, whereas ‘Silicon Valley’ sounds like geekdom squared? Maybe…

Please don’t worry, photos like these aren’t going to become the rule on this site

Just when I thought we’d become settled in our nice little flat, the landlords decide they want to sell up and now we have to move again in a month’s time. How depressing; I thought we’d be in this place at least another year. Sigh. Now the process of packing, moving, changing addresses and so on again resumes — three times in the space of two years. Guess that is what happens when you rent a place, but we can’t afford to buy anything in the area we are living now! I am going to miss our view and we are going to have to move our little orange tree from his happy home. Anyway; we hope to not move very far — and look out for our random stuff being sold on eBay!

Hi,
Here’s a quick update on some interesting photo exhibtions in London which you may be interested in checking out!