SomersTownLisa

London Life
2022-01-28 10:32:52 (UTC)

The Unity Theatre

Thur 27/01/2022
Yesterday Jack went with his friend to a new vegan place, a Mexican themed stall in Buck Street market. He was told that they was the first customers; the shop ahd been open a day and a half. It’s early days yet, and there aren’t many tourists about, he’s won an award in Scotland, so he shouldn’t give up yet. Jack took me there today, and was told they’d had another ten customers yesterday, so that’s a start. I had escalades. We then went to a posh restaurant under offices for coffee, overlooking the café.

Two people in our team are away, but I managed to get an article finished ahead of deadline. In the afternoon we listened to John Kennedy’s Xposure. He was interviewing Yard Act in the studio, who had interesting opinions about the different reasons why people are in a band – the ones he sees giving up at 26 are the ones who wanted to be rich and famous, rather than wanting to create music. The album may well top the chart this week, though as is often the case, the best songs were the early ones, which had to be strong to get attention, and they’re not on the LP.

I went to the Co-op to take some plastic recycling, then we went on the usual run we do together. The finishing of works in Lewis Cubitt Square, however, means the run is less than 3.5km, instead of 3.7km as before. Then we attended a Camden History Society meeting, still online, but they’re promising to return to live events in March. It was a talk about the Unity Theatre, a socialist theatre which was situated very close to where we love, which existed from 1936 to 1975 when it burned down. The talk consisted primarily of looking through old type-written programmers. The current Camden People’s Theatre is a bi-product of that era; the space was offered by the council in return for building flats on the site of the Unity. I think we’ve only been there twice – most memorably the play when an actress playing a character who went topless, actually kept baring her breasts for the curtain call, with a big smile (even I didn’t quite do that).

There have been suggestions that the drip-drip Downing Street lockdown party revelations have diverted attention from the Ukraine crisis. But the situation hasn’t really changed; Putin has had troops massed on the border for a few months. He still regrets the fall of the USSR and thinks Ukraine belongs to Russia. When the Soviet Union fell apart, Russia were allowed to keep a fleet in the Ukrainian Black Sea area, on the understanding that NATO would protect Ukraine’s independence. But Russia were able to take over Crimea in 2014. Putin denies he wants to invade, but at the same time he is making demands of Nato which would be against its founding principles. The UK and USA have both been in talks with him, but they won't be able to agree anything. It seems the Russian people have no wish to take over Ukraine, and it wouldn’t be easy for the country to beat Ukraine. So how this will finish is hard to judge.

Johnson is now under suspicion for lying not just about parties, but about whether he authorised the rescue of animals from Afghanistan, in preference to British people. It was inevitable that his lies would get him into trouble before he’d been PM for long – he was sacked from both The Times and the cabinet many years ago for lying. He just can’t help it. Meanwhile the Government is under pressure, about £4bn fraud from the Covid business support scheme, and from Tories about the planned NI rise.




Ad: