Are you looking for something interesting and exciting to do this May bank holiday weekend? Are you worried that covert swine-flu-spreaders are showering the capital with virulent plague? If the answer to both of those questions is yes, then you're in the right place. I've put together a special (clickable) list of anti-social isolated weekend entertainment options. And I've called it...
The Top 10 Uncontagious Things To Do In London this Bank Holiday Weekend
1)Attend Canalway Cavalcade: Narrowboats galore will be heading to Little Venice this weekend as part of British Waterways' annual floating London rally. There'll be boaty stalls and waterside entertainment, making it a jolly pleasant trip out for all the family. For added safety avoid the packed towpaths and hide yourself away in self-enforced mid-basin quarantine aboard one of the narrowboats. 2)Picnic in the middle of a Royal Park: Should anybody else be sitting in the middle of your chosen park, move fifty yards upwind (which should be place you out of reach of any lung-strangling droplets they might expel while you're eating). Don't forget to pack a corkscrew, a box of tissues and some bleach. 3)Walk the Jubilee Greenway: The Duke of Gloucester launched it yesterday - 60 miles of round-London footpath to celebrate the Olympics and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012. What with all the publicity it's had of late, the route might be quite busy, especially the Buck House, Camden and South Bank sections. But try the strip through Beckton and I'd be surprised if you meet another living soul. (my JG review from 2007) 4)Wake up early for International Dawn Chorus Day: The Wildlife Trust want you to get up before crack of dawn this weekend to go stand in a field (or somewhere) and listen to some natural twittering. It's perfectly safe, honest, because there's absolutely no risk of avian flu at the moment. 5)Visit Vestry House Museum in Walthamstow: If my Waltham Forest posts have stirred you to visit E17, make sure you start at the Vestry House Museum in Walthamstow Village. I can guarantee that the exhibition of memorabilia from the Hawker Siddeley Power Transformers Factory won't be packed out. 6)Go to the cinema: Not any old cinema, obviously. You don't want to go somewhere popular and watch a blockbuster in case you're surrounded by sneezing heavy breathers. Try the 10am screening of Beverley Hills Chihuahua at the Wandsworth Cineworld instead - I bet that'll be quiet. Or catch up on the Romanian Film Festival at the Curzon Mayfair - I bet that'll be quieter. 7)Explore the City of London on foot: Because it's shut until Tuesday. A three day ghost town, no airborne danger whatsoever. 8)Stay at home and re-grout the bathroom: Because that's what bank holidays are for, aren't they? Or gardening. I just hope you've already been to Homebase, because now's not the time to stand in a long queue of coughing DIY-ers buying tiles and bedding plants. 9)Stock up on tinned food: Because everyone should have a month's worth of bottled water and tinned food stashed away in the back of a kitchen cupboard, just in case Armageddon approaches and panic buying strips supermarket shelves of essential comestibles. What do you mean, you haven't? How starving are you going to be when global pandemic strikes and civilisation collapses? 10)Go to Trafalgar Square and breathe deeply: Because it won't kill you. Not yet anyway.
