Take the Jermyn Street Experience

Some time ago now, your author joined Dr Cindy Lawford - Education and Development Officer at the Jermyn Street Theatre and part-time tour guide - for one of her regular Jermyn Street Experience personal tours. Today at 4pm - as every Friday - her latest tour leaves from the front of the Jermyn Street Theatre and explores a street with a fascinating history as the heart of London's shirt-making, perfume-brewing, cheese-selling and art-hawking.


Cindy is an exceptional guide, and can get you into shops most people without a considerable amount of money might feel too timid to enter. Her charm and keen grasp of the area's history makes the tour well worth the £20 per person price.

For more, see http://www.cindylawford.co.uk/jermyn-street-experience/

See Carsten Höller's Decision

Your author faced various quandaries at Belgian installationist Carsten Höller's latest exhibition, Decision at the Hayward Gallery, and at least three of them were about whether it was worth doing all that queueing for whatever art was at the end. Such is Sunday afternoon on the South Bank, but for those with the time and inclination to go on a weekday lunchtime, this is certain to be less of an issue.


There were also some learning experiences on offer. Visitors may find themselves surprisingly easy goaded into taking and swallowing a pill from a big pile, positively indifferent about a big aphid on a wall and thoroughly interested in the music scene in the Congolese capital Kinshasa, such is the diversity of works on offer. Most of all, however, visitors will discover that all exhibitions are best exited by slide, though even when they are the gifty is still mandatory.

For more, see http://carstenholler.southbankcentre.co.uk/

Learn about Shopgirls at the Fashion and Textile Museum

A special event at the Fashion and Textile Museum in Bermondsey tonight sees Historian Dr Pamela Cox and television producer and writer Annabel Hobley expand upon their 2014 three part television series and follow-up book Shopgirls: The True Story of Life Behind the Counter, a history of women in retail.


We are told that the evening will encompass a glass of wine and chance to view the Riviera Style exhibition, a talk and questions at the end and a book signing.

For more, see http://ftmlondon.org/talk-event/shopgirls-life-behind-the-counter/

Learn about human rights at the LSE

One of the regular free open events which take place at the London School of Economics this evening sees Liberty's Shami Chakrabarti and research fellow of the LSE Human Rights Centre Professor Francesca Klug in conversation with human rights barrister Jane Gordon. The event  promises to explore human rights through the prism of Magna Carta - which sees its 800th birthday on Monday.


The lecture will see Klug draw on her book A Magna Carta for all Humanity Homing in on Human Rights, and Chakrabarti using her considerable expertise to examine issues which are as close to our minds than ever at the moment.

For more, see http://www.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2015/06/20150610t1830vSZT.aspx

_{^Picture © Umezo KAMATA used under a Creative Commons license^}

See Allan Sly's The Window Cleaner

A jaunty bronze which stands on the forecourt of Capital House on Chapel Street, across from Edgware Road Station, Allan Sly's The Window Cleaner is a commission contemporary with the House, and dates from 1990.


A veteran of both London Art School and the Royal Academy,Sly is now a Senior Lecturer at the Wimbledon College of Arts, and a professional sculptor and modeller with nearly 40 years of experience.

For more, see http://www.secret-london.co.uk/Workers.html

_{^Picture by Rept0n1x from Wikimedia Commons^}

Pass through the Hole in the Wall

When your author stumbled across a quaint plaque beside a doorway in a Knightsbridge wall on Saturday, it felt as though he was one of the first to ever notice it. However, such is the case in modern London that many have written about it before - and indeed, Ian discovered it more than eight years ago - but it nevertheless felt worthy of a short mention on a quiet Monday.


Standing on what was the original boundary wall of the Rutland Estate - named as it was the former site of Rutland House, home of the Dukes of Rutland - the hole in the wall was destroyed along with the wall by a bomb in autumn 1940. When the wall was rebuilt around 1948, local residents insisted the doorway was reinstated, and it continues to offer a convenient short cut between Ennismore Street and Rutland Street


For more, see http://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2007/02/18/the-hole-in-the-wall/

Attend the London Map Fair

Yesterday afternoon, your author made a last minute decision to attend the London Map Fair at the Royal Geographical Society in South Kensington, a collection of 40 of the World's leading  antiquarian map dealers who gather together at the Society's headquarters once a year to offer their wares for sale to other collectors, cash-rich millionaires and ordinary punters.

The fair claims to have a range of maps which extends from the 15th century to the 20th century, and prices from £10 to £100,000, and whilst these are very interesting indeed, the real pleasure was the chance to get inside Lowther Lodge, the grand house in South Kensington which has been the home of the Royal Geographic Society since 1912. The fair continues today until 6pm.

For more, see http://www.londonmapfairs.com/

Have a break

Tired of London, Tired of Life is away.

Your author is off climbing mountains, paddling in cold streams and falling asleep to the sounds of chattering oyster-catchers in Wales, but inspiration for interesting Whitsundays out in London and England is available in these books, out now:

• 'London, The Weekends Start Here: Fifty-two Weekends of Things to See and Do', the third book by Tired of London's Tom Jones, published by Virgin Books on 12th March 2015...

• 'Tired of London, Tired of Life: One Thing A Day To Do in London', a 224 page illustrated colour book based on this website, published by Virgin Books on 5th January 2012.

and

• 'Mad Dogs and Englishmen: A year of things to see and do in England', a 214 page illustrated colour book, published by Virgin Books in July 2013.

Drink at the Victoria, Pages Walk

A refreshingly friendly pub - found on a backstreet between the Bricklayers' Arms roundabout and Bermondsey - the Victoria was built in the 1880s for railwaymen working in the area, and is today run by brothers Pat and Mike McKenna, as it has been since 1984. Today it's an attractive backstreet haven where all are welcome.


The pub benefits from its quiet side street setting, where only those who are passing are likely to stumble across it, and its immediately recognisable original Truman's Brewery tiling, although now it is an excellent freehouse. Any pub that was Evening Standard pub of the year in 1972 is worth a visit in your author's book.

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

Take a Dickensian walk

Sure, the idea of a costumed tour is the sort of thing you may expect to find in North America, or the smaller market towns of northern England, but it's good when people get into character and today a special regular tour of Dickensian London leaves the Dickens Museum at 11:30am and 5pm.

The hour and a half tours cover the area between the Charles Dickens Museum and Holborn Circus, led by Richard Jones, the author of Walking Dickensian London, who has been giving walking tours of Dickens' London for longer than your author has been able to walk. For more, see http://www.dickensmuseum.com/events/costumed-dickensian-walks/ _{^Picture © Peter Curbishley used under a Creative Commons license^}

Attend a lunchtime concert at St Martin in the Fields

Prize-winning Croatian pianist Diana Brekalo comes to St Martin in the Fields this lunchtime for a free concert as part of the St Martin's monthly Embassy Series, which brings international acts to the famous church in an attempt to bolster its reputation as an international church and world-famous concert venue.


The Embassy Series runs monthly, taking place every third Tuesday, and invites performers based on the recommendation of their embassy in the United Kingdom.

For more, see http://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/event/free-lunchtime-concert-st-martins-embassy-series-diana-brekalo/

See Hans Haacke's Gift Horse

There's a bronze skeleton of a horse with a bow on it on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square at the moment, and the bow shows some numbers from the London Stock Exchange. It's not the cleverest or most innovative thing to stand on the plinth, but the skeleton at least is a nice contrast with London's other equestrian statues, and some people seem to like the bow.


It's great that they're still doing this, but why on earth they never commissioned the pipe-organ cashpoint, your author will never know.

For more, see https://www.london.gov.uk/priorities/arts-culture/fourth-plinth/2014-2015-commissions/hans-haacke

_{^Picture © stu smith under a Creative Commons license^}

Visit 13 Princelet Street

Over the last 20 years or so, your author has had some of his best holidays in cottages, castles, follies and forts owned by the Landmark Trust, a national charity which takes on buildings with interesting stories and makes them available for holiday lets. To celebrate their 50th anniversary, the Trust are this weekend opening 25 of their buildings around the country to the public for a pair of open days. In London, 13 Princelet Street - an 18th century Huguenot silk weaver's house in Spitalfields - has been chosen to open.


Admission is free, and leaflets are available on the building's history. It's a great chance to get inside this hidden east London gem, as normally you would almost certainly have to part with a thousand pounds or more to do so.

For more, see http://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/news-and-events/upcoming-events/princelet-open-day113/

Attend the Rickmansworth Festival

The 22nd Rickmansworth Festival takes place today and tomorrow along the Grand Union Canal between Batchworth and Stockers Locks in Rickmansworth - just inside the M25 near Watford - and also in the neighbouring Aquadrome.


Visitors can expect live music, a dog show, a Spitfire flypast, medieval living history displays, canal boat trips, a funfair and a bar, as well as all the usual food, craft and charity stalls common at these sorts of festivals.

For more, see http://www.rwt.org.uk/festival/

_{^Picture © Peter Reed used under a Creative Commons license^}

Spend an evening at the Bank of England

An interesting museum exists within the Bank of England, but sadly many of those who work a usual Monday - Friday, 9am - 5pm week, there's usually no chance of getting inside without skipping work. Well relief is at hand with a special late opening this evening as part of the excellent Museums at Night weekend. Tonight, doors will open from 5:30pm - 9:00pm, with the chance to meet banknote experts and question the Bank's mysterious Bullion team.


These extra events, plus the permanent displays we don't normally get to see when we're sitting at a desk sending emails, including the chance to lift a genuine bar of gold, and view the temporary exhibition flora and fauna, which examines the animals and plants depicted on banknotes and on the Bank of England building.

For more, see http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/Pages/museum/exhibitions/night.aspx

_{^Picture © Sean O'Neill used under a Creative Commons license^}