Attend the Maslenitsa Russian Festival

If the passing of the Sochi Winter Olympics has left you in the mood for more things Russian, or at least hasn't put you off Russia altogether, then there's a free festival in Trafalgar Square today just for you. The Maslenitsa Russian Festival offers an onslaught of Russian culture which we are told will feature live Russian folk music, dancing and children’s shows, with plenty of scope for audience interaction.


We are told that the festival is a Russian Orthodox religious celebration with an older pagan festival welcoming the arrival of spring, and hopefully some springtime weather will be on offer today to make it pleasant, though at the time of writing the forecast was inconclusive. If it's cold, at least there will be Russian food, such as beef stroganoff, borscht, pelmeni dumplings and bubliki and vatrushki pastries available to warm attendees from stalls on the square. Zdravstvui Maslenitsa! as the mayor would no doubt want us to say...

For more, see http://www.maslenitsa.co.uk/

_{^Picture © Maks Karochkin used under a Creative Commons license^}

Eat in the Global Generation Skip Garden Cafe

Your author paid a visit to the Global Generation Skip Garden Cafe in King's Cross at the end of last week, and enjoyed a reasonably-priced lunch in a yurt in the garden just to the North of the new(ish) Central Saint Martins University of the Arts London buildings. The Skip Garden is an organic vegetable garden in skips and movable containers on an old bus car park in a quiet corner of what is one of the biggest development sites in Europe, and its cafe is open to all Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 10am - 4pm and the first Saturday of each month.


The cafe offers tea, filter coffee and home baked cakes, and lunchtime favourites including vegetable soups and stews, vegetable sides, and specials like macaroni and cheese, and as today is that first Saturday of the month, the 'pop-up cafe' opening will be offering an expanded menu. You can choose to eat and drink at tables outside the cafe, or among the plants used to prepare your food in the Skip Garden, or even - in case of inclement weather - in the cosy on-site yurt which sometimes boasts a roaring fire in its wood burning stove.

For more, see http://globalgeneration.org.uk/news-growing-a-garden/505-the-skip-garden-cafe-is-open

Draw at the National Portrait Gallery

As part of their regular Late Shift openings on Thursday and Friday evening, this evening the National Portrait Gallery offers a Drop-in Drawing event from 6.30pm - 8.30pm, with the opportunity to seek inspiration from the portraits and sketch in the Gallery in a session led by a specially-chosen artist.


We are told that the event will feature a short introduction at 18.30 but we should feel free to drop in whenever we like, and stay for any amount of time, in a session suitable for anyone from beginners to established artists. Materials will be provided.

For more, see http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/late-shift-1/drop-in-drawing-28022014.php

_{^Picture © Chris Beckett used under a Creative Commons license^}

Talk to Strangers at the Boot & Flogger

It's that time of the month again, and this evening, your author will be hosting another of the regular "Talking to Strangers" season, this time from 7pm tonight at the Boot and Flogger 10-20 Redcross Way, London SE1 1TA, and as always in conjunction with the people at top London social events organisers Thinking Bob.

The evenings offer a chance to meet and talk to people you might never have encountered in the course of your normal existence, based on the idea that it is good to create conversations with new people without any other motive than that they are good for us.

For more, visit http://www.meetup.com/talkingtostrangers/

See the Jeremy Bentham auto-icon

It's rather alarming that it has taken your author more than five years to get around to writing about Jeremy Bentham, who sits encased in a wood and glass box in the South Cloisters at UCL in Bloomsbury, but until last Friday the moment just hadn't arisen to pop in and see him. However, sure enough there he sat, just as he has since 1850, in a display known as the auto-icon.



Upon his death in 1832, Bentham left instructions for Thomas Southwood Smith to create the auto-icon, with the skeleton and head preserved and stored in the wooden cabinet, and the skeleton padded out with hay and dressed in Bentham's original clothes. Today, the hair and clothes we see are original, as is his skeleton beneath, but the head we see today is a wax model made by a French artist Jacques Talrich. The original head - which was famously kidnapped by King's College students in October 1975 - was mummified and is now kept in special environmental conditions in the Institute of Archaeology. The auto-icon case is usually open from around 8am and closed at 6pm, Monday – Friday, as long as he's not busy attending his occasional UCL board meetings.

For more, see http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/jeremy-bentham/

_{^Picture © Marit & Toomas Hinnosaar used under a Creative Commons license^}

Drink tea at Regent Hall

The hustle and bustle of Oxford Street is perhaps the last place you'd expect to find a friendly and reasonably priced church cafe, but there is such a haven of tranquillity in the form of the Salvation Army's Regent Hall, at 275 Oxford Street. The Hall itself was once a skating rink, and when it became vacant in the early 1880s, Salvation Army Founder General William Booth bought the lease, opening the Regent Hall Corps on 18 March 1882.


The café might just be a fairly ordinary canteen with tea, cake and savoury snacks on offer, but it is certainly a bit of a haven if you've just spent half an hour being pushed off the pavement by the hordes of bag wielding shopaholics. The food and drinks are simple, as are the surroundings, but when your author dropped in last week it was very welcome.

For more, see http://www.salvationarmy.org.uk/lcn/Regent_Hall_Cafe_Renew

Find a standing stone in Gordon Square

Erected in Gordon Square last summer to celebrate 75 years of the UCL Institute of Archaeology is a Wiltshire sarsen stone, donated by a farmer from near Avebury, a place famous for its stone circle. The Institute itself was founded in 1937 by Mortimer Wheeler and is has its permanent home in buildings at 31-34 Gordon Square.


Most of us will be aware of sarsen stones even if we have not heard of them, as they were use extensively by prehistoric man at sites such as Stonehenge and Avebury. This one is a beautiful addition to this quiet corner of London.

For more, see http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0613/05062013-IoA-unveil-monolith-in-Gordon-Square

Help conserve Fryent Country Park

It seems unlikely that any readers will make this morning's 10am start time, but every Sunday the Barn Hill Conservation Group, which helps care for Fryent Country Park and Barn Hill in Brent, invites us to come along and join conservation projects in the Country Park.


Today's volunteers will be helping acid grassland by clearing scrub to connect glades and paths, and if you've already missed that then next Sunday, 2nd Marchm you are invited to come along and cutting overhanging vegetation along several paths in Cowlays Woodland to the south-east of the Country Park.

For more, see http://www.bhcg.btck.co.uk/, or for a full programme of events see http://btckstorage.blob.core.windows.net/site1601/News/BHCGPROGNewYear2014.pdf

Drink Yorkshire Beer at the Bricklayer's Arms

They proudly boast that every day is a beer festival at the Bricklayer's Arms in Putney, but this weekend is even more of one than usual, as since Wednesday they have been celebrating their 'legendary' Yorkshire Beer Festival. Today, a Festival highlight sees the Hammersmith Morris Men join the party for a dance from 1pm.


The festival finishes tomorrow, which also sees the monthly last-Sunday-in-th-month Brick Folk folk music singaround which welcomes singers who know the words and listeners who don't. Beers on offer include York Brewery's Great Walls of Fire (5.1%), Rudgate's Odin’s Horn (4.1%) and Bad Seed's Espresso Stout (7%).

For more, see http://www.bricklayers-arms.co.uk/

_{^Picture © Matthew Black used under a Creative Commons license^}

Attend the RHS London Plant & Design Show

Spring is on its way, and for those who can afford a garden or balcony the time has come to think about what will happen there in the new season. The Royal Horticultural Society seem firmly aware of this, and in order to help their members and friends kick-start the gardening season today and tomorrow they are holding their annual London Plant and Design Show.


The shows are being held at Lawrence and Lindley Halls in Westminster and offer the chance to see the best winter colour and early-flowering plants exhibited by nurserymen and growers, buy bulbs and plants, talk to garden design experts from the Society of Garden Designers and hear talks by experts.

For more, see http://www.rhs.org.uk/Shows-Events/RHS-London-Flower-Shows/London-Plant-and-Design-Show

See the Lion of Knidos at the British Museum

Now found greeting visitors in the Great Court at the British Museum, the six ton Lion of Knidos was once part of a clifftop tomb overlooking Knidos harbour in modern-day Turkey. The Lion was discovered in 1858 near the ancient port by the British archaeologist Richard Popplewell Pullan, three miles from where he was helping to excavate the ancient city.


The Lion dates from 350-200 BC, and is carved from a single piece of marble. It once sat on the very top of a monument on a sheer cliff that falls 200 feet to the sea, and it has been suggested that its hollow eyes were originally inset with coloured glass, the reflection of which might have aided sailors navigating along the coast.

For more, see http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/gr/c/colossal_marble_lion.aspx

Find the Plumber's Apprentice at Cannon Street

A somewhat out-of-place addition to Cannon Street Station, the seven foot tall, bronze 'Plumber's Apprentice' was unveiled by the Duke of Gloucester in October 2011, on what was the site of the Worshipful Company of Plumbers' livery hall until 1863, a compulsorily purchase order meant it was demolished to allow for expansion of the station.


The Company hadn't been very lucky with its livery halls, as the previous hall was destroyed in the Great Fire of London and subsequently rebuilt on the site where the station now stands in 1690. The erection of the statue was designed to symbolically mark 400 years since the granting of the Plumbers' royal charter by James I.

For more, see http://www.heatingandventilating.net/news/news.asp?id=9070

Say goodbye to the Trocadero

Thanks to the always-on-the-ball IanVisits, who alerts us to the fact that the Trocadero Centre will be closing its doors for good a week today, 25th February 2014. Though the Trocadero has only existed in its current form since 1984, for many readers this will constitute a significant proportion of their lives, and a school trip featuring an unscheduled trip to the Trocadero is among your author's earliest memories of London.


Ian tells us that the Trocadero is due to become a Japanese style pod hotel, which will have 527 bedrooms and 56 "aparthotel rooms", which is good or bad news depending on how you look at it. Gone will be the out of date arcade games, the escalators that once led to Sega World, and the place where there was once a Guinness Book of World Records Exhibition. From the outside, it will still look much the same, and seemingly no one went inside any more anyway.

For more, see http://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2014/02/16/your-last-chance-to-visit-the-trocadero/

_{^Picture © London Attractions Guide used under a Creative Commons license^}

Seek out Old St Andrew's Church, Kingsbury

On a largely direction-less walk in north London yesterday, your author took a wrong turn and found himself transported to the beautifully wild graveyard of Old St Andrew's Church in Kingsbury, almost exactly between the Welsh Harp Reservoir and Wembley. The Churches Conservation Trust cares for Grade I listed St Andrew's, and it is thought to be the oldest building in Brent. Indeed, we are told that the exterior of rendered flint rubble contains some Roman bricks and tiles, and whatever its age it is certainly very pretty, like a little country church in a quiet corner our city.


The church dates from the 12th to 13th centuries and though it was subject to restorations in the 19th century, it is known to contain many earlier features including brasses and memorials from the 16th to 19th centuries and a 13th century font. Though it is sadly usually locked, it may be possible to arrange access by appointment for particularly keen visitors, and the graveyard is certainly worth a visit in its own right.

For more, see http://www.visitchurches.org.uk/Ourchurches/Completelistofchurches/St-Andrews-Church-Kingsbury-London/

Walk in Tower Hamlets Cemetery

Often overlooked, Tower Hamlets Cemetery is a 33 acre cemetery opened in 1841 and still in use for burials up until 1966. Nowadays, it is largely maintained as an urban woodland and nature reserve, and a variety of wildlife is found there, including trees, plants, birds, insects, bats, beetles and butterflies.


The walk is organised by The Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, who manage the park with two dedicated members of staff, a board of trustees, and the support of over 3,000 volunteers. Today the Friends are organising an organised guided walk in the Cemetery Park, which takes place from 2pm-4pm, examining the Park’s natural history, and celebrating its spring bulbs.

For more, see http://www.fothcp.org/

_{^Picture © Barney Moss used under a Creative Commons license^}