Sunday, March 19, 2006
Sorry, after 10 days of consecutive posts about London I was planning to talk about something, anything else today. But no. Sorry...
Why is it so difficult to find out what's going on in London? There's so much going on in fact, so much background noise, that often the big events can slip past unnoticed. I was lucky yesterday - I noticed one twenty minutes before it began and was able to head along without missing much. But all too often the first I find out about a fascinating event is reading a review afterwards, too late. Damn you London.
Yesterday's jewel of an event was the London Maze, an annual free 'local history' fair devoted to London and its past, which somehow I'd never heard of before. The fair takes place at the Guildhall in the City, and attracts stallholders from small museums, libraries and local history societies. I missed Peter Ackroyd's opening ceremony, but arrived in time to collect my free carrier bag and fill it with leaflets. Where else could you find the Association of London Pumping Heritage Attractions, the Lambeth Local History Forum, Barking & Dagenham Heritage Services, The London Topographical Society and the Old Operating Theatre Museum, all under one roof? And what a roof, by the way. There was also free admission to the Guildhall Art Gallery (whose latest exhibition London Now - City of Heaven, City of Hell was small but unexpectedly brilliant). Best of all, though, was the chance to pop down to the basement and view the remains of London's Roman Amphitheatre. Somewhere along the gladiators' entrance passage I took this rather dark photograph of a genuine AD120 wall. Coincidentally the London Flickr Meetup group were there too, flashing their giant lenses, and cowfish got a much better shot here. You can normally get in to see the ruins for £2.50, but I'd have been gutted to miss this opportunity to step back two millennia for free.
So, where do you go to find out about this kind of event in advance? Time Out's useful, but expensive, and you only get a few days advance notice. Visit London, the capital's official tourist site, is comprehensive but it's hard to find the special events in amongst the Lion Kings and Mary Poppins. No, what I need is a list of upcoming "big free events", far enough in advance that I can plan to attend them (or not). And I can't find one. So I'm having a go at making my own...
Here's the diamond geezer clickable list of the next ten upcoming "big free events"* in London. Except it's not yet especially comprehensive, or upcoming. Can you help me to improve on the current ten? Please help.
• Sat 7 July 2007: Tour De France
• Fri 26 July 2012: Olympic Opening Ceremony
* that's "big", as in not your local church hall jumble sale
* that's "free", as in not something you pay to enter
* that's "event", as in not some three month art exhibition
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