If you fancy a bit of razzmatazz for your New Year, this will be the 23rd London Parade – and what a way to go!

Okay, maybe cheerleaders are not your thing. And they’re not mine, though faced with the enthusiasm shown by the girl in the photo, I might have to change my mind a bit!

But the great thing is that this is a very British parade. And that means it will be stuffed full of all kinds of eccentric and offbeat entries, as well as cheerleaders from the UK and US.

Each London Borough is entering, with diverse themes – one promises an undersea adventure with an ecological theme, whatever that might be. There will be the Arapahoe High School Warrior Marching Band.

But the Donkey Breed Society will also be strutting its stuff, presumably with the assistance of four legged friends.

The London Pearly Kings and Queens will be adding a traditional Cockney note to the proceedings. And if you haven’t seen Pearlies before, you’ll be amazed by their outlandish, glittering costumes.

A more rural vision of England is what you prefer? Well you’ll get the Merrydowners Morris, dancing their way from one end of the parade to the other.

Still another facet of traditional British life is shown by the Goldwing Owners Club of Great Britain, with their lovingly tended bikes.

And the parade also, apparently, features Yaksha – the King! A fearsome chappie who comes from the Karnataka tradition of Indian dance. (His web site is a bit out of date though.)

The parade will start at noon from Westminster, and the tail end of the procession will arrive in Green Park at quarter to three in the afternoon. You can watch from anywhere along the route – up Parliament Street, then up Cockspur Street and Pall Mall, turning up Regent Street to Piccadilly, and along Piccadilly to Green Park.

There will be professional commentators at a number of different spots – or you can pick up the free newspaper printed by the organisers so you know who you’re watching.

Photo credit: Damien Everett on Flickr

Post from: The London Traveler

I wonder if the London Sales have lost their cachet.

Everywhere in England, from the High Street to the great out of town hypermarkets, bright red stickers proclaim up to 90 percent off. In this recession, many retailers are slashing their stock, trying to get enough cash through the tills in the next few days to pay the rent bill.

Go down Oxford Street and you’ll see many of the same stores you can visit anywhere else. There’s nothing so special about that.

But that’s only one side of the story. In fact, London’s big department stores still provide the best shopping you can get – if you’re into designer fashion, this is the place. Stop thinking cheap knickers from Primark, start thinking knockdown Dries van der Noten, and you’re in luck. And with sterling collapsing as financial markets hit meltdown, the London sales might be quite a tempting target for North American shoppers. (Anecdotal evidence suggests the French are over here big time, too, taking advantage of the strong euro.)

Besides, consumers know the retailers are strapped for cash. So there are an awful lot of people heading for the sales – those that have already opened in London, like Selfridges, have seen huge crowds and actually broken sales records. It’s going to be a wonderful experience – the crowds, a sense of urgency, the Christmas lights still up, massive discounts, the chance to get an amazing bargain. Or to get something that looked good at the time and you’ll never wear again. (Hear the voice of experience?)

So where are the best sales?

• Harrods - maybe not the best (I’m a Harvey Nicks person myself) but certainly the one that gets the headlines.
• Harvey Nichols – the sale for the fashionista, I think. If you want to do just the big stores, combine this with Harrods. Or wander down Sloane Street for more fashion brands. 50% off everything is promised.
• Liberty - discounts up to 75% in this marvellous store. Lots of fashion, and a chance to buy the lovely Liberty prints. My personal favourite – pretty sequinned silk slippers for £10. Hope I can find them in the real shop as well as on the website! Liberty will also be selling mystery boxes at various prices – the contents are guaranteed to far exceed in value the price you pay for the box, so it’s a risk worth taking. I like a gamble so this will be my sale for the year!
• Selfridges - the doyen of Oxford Street. Something for everyone here. Take a rest from shopping if the salt beef bar is open – a superb place to grab a bite to eat.
• Hamleys - I’d recommend not taking kids to the sales; the crowds can get scary and it’s difficult to make sure you’re not going to get separated in the scrum. But if you do want to shop with kids, this big toy store is the place.
• Fortnum & Mason is best known for its food hall – and luxurious Christmas hampers – but there will be reductions of up to 50%  on clothing, furniture and cookware too.
• Fenwick in Bond Street is another fashion sale that’s worth visiting. 50% off here with some really nice labels, and it’s a little off the beaten track.

Good luck! Even if you buy very little – or nothing – I hope you’ll have fun looking.

Photo credit – Fin Fahey on flickr

Post from: The London Traveler

One of the big attractions of Christmas for many of us is the Midnight Mass. It’s special because it’s Christmas; it’s special because it’s at a time most of us are usually getting ready for bed (unless we’re out clubbing); it’s special because of the carols and the choirs and the candlelight.

So, where to go for the best Midnight Mass in London? Let’s start with Westminster Cathedral, a huge Catholic basilica with a finely trained choir and a magnificent organ. Here, the mass setting is Charpentier’s Messe de Minuit, lovely French baroque music – an unusual choice in England. Mass starts at 1130; if you want to hear the choir in Renaissance music, though, turn up at 1030 on Christmas Day for the Palestrina Missa Hodie Christus natus est (‘Christ is born today’).

The other ‘big church’ choice is Westminster Abbey, again both starting at 1130. Purely for the music, I’d probably choose the Abbey – Mozart’s Coronation Mass is perhaps my favourite  setting, a magnificent piece of music full of drums and trumpets and pomp and circumstance, but also incredibly moving and deep. The sublime Gothic architecture and the real feeling of an ancient English cathedral make this a great experience – if you’ve not visited England before, this is the real thing!

Yet another Mozart mass, the Colloredo Mass, at Brompton Oratory (nearest tube: South Kensington), together with Bach’s In dulci jubilo on the organ. This service doesn’t start till twelve, though there will be carols from 1130. This is a posh Catholic church – Knightsbridge is a very chi-chi area and unless I’m much mistaken, this is Tony and Cherie Blair’s local church.

My favourite though has always been St Albans, Brooke Street. It’s a glorious Victorian church, full of incense for the occasion, and which really knows how to do ritual. Besides which, there will be carol singing before the service, from 1110, while the Mass starts at 1130.

The music this year will be Mozart’s Missa Brevis, with an anthem by Palestrina, but what I’m really looking forward to is Vierne’s Carillon de Westminster on the organ. That might not sound very familiar, but in fact Londoners will readily recognise the tune – it’s the chimes of Big Ben, arranged in splendid, noisy French style.

And if you’re anywhere nearby, I recommend you walk back home. Just for once, the streets of London will be quiet and hushed – and if the sky is clear, you can see the stars shining down, and watch your breath making clouds of vapour in the air, and feel happy.

I used to walk back to Stoke Newington – it’s a good walk, about an hour – and put myself  to bed with a glass of whisky. That’s the right way to start Christmas!

Where: St Albans Brooke Street(Chancery Lane tube)

When: December 24th, 1130

Photo credit: Kathleen Conklin on Flickr

Post from: The London Traveler

It’s nearly Christmas, and what could be nicer than to celebrate with a pint of Brodies’ Hoppy Ho Ho Ho?

That’s just one of over a hundred beers available at the Pig’s Ear Beer Festival, which opens tomorrow at Ocean in Hackney.

It’s the twenty-fifth Pig’s Ear – organised by the East London and City branch of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), and devoted to showcasing the best of real ale.

Winter ales always make a strong showing here with a good selection of porters, stouts, and old ales – a rare but lovely English beer style. There’ll be a few spiced beers too; Hoppy Ho Ho Ho is flavoured with cinnamon and ginger, a real Christmas pudding in a glass.

By the way, if you like your Cockney Rhyming Slang, you might be interested to know that the apparently strange ‘Pig’s Ear’ name of the festival has a very simple explanation.

For a Cockney, Pig’s Ear = Beer.

When: 2-6 December: Tues–Thur: 1200–2230. Fri:–Sat: 1200 – 2300

Where: OCEAN, 270 Mare Street, Hackney (Hackney Downs or Hackney Central rail)

Picture credit: Gordon Joly on flickr

Post from: The London Traveler

This intriguing art sale features postcards which have been painted or decorated by numerous artists, some well known (Grayson Perry, Tracy Emin,  Paula Rego and Anish Kapoor feature this year) and some less so. Musicians and fashion designers have also created some of the cards. There are 2,700 works available this year.Britart, photography, printing, there’s a huge selection of different styles and media.

You pay £40 and you take your choice. But you don’t actually know who painted which card, so it’s a bit of a lucky dip (though with some element of skill involved).  So you might end up with a masterpiece worth several thousand, or you might end up with a postcard sized picture that you really like… hey, that’s not a bad result!

Proceeds go to the RCA’s bursary fund to help support impecunious students.

But you must register as a buyer on the RCA site by 19th November, so hurry up if you want to bid!

Where: Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore (South Kensington tube)

When: exhibition, 14 – 21 November, 11-6 (till 8 on the 20th): sale, Saturday 22 November, from 8 am

Post from: The London Traveler

Greenwich Market will have a special Christmas  Market running from  December 10th. There will be mulled wine for adults and for the kids, Santa will be in his grotto (at a small charge of £3 per child) from 20th to 23rd December.

There will be a huge Christmas Market in Hyde Park, too. It’s open from 22nd November all the way to 4th Jauary 2009, 10 am till 10 pm each  day, and it’s modelled on the traditional German markets.  Refreshments will include bratwurst and a hog roast as well as gingerbread and mulled wine, and there will be choirs singing Christmas carols.

The Southbank Centre will have the Cologne Market,  with authentic wooden and tin toys, Christmas decorations, and Santa’s Secret Village. It’s open from 21st November to 23rd December, 10am till 10 pm.

Carry on along the South Bank to find the Bankside Winter Festival  -based on the famous Frost Fair which used to take place when the Thames froze over every winter.  Saturday 13th December will feature a procession of boats carrying the Frost Fair flags down the River Thames – after which the liverymen will be parading through the market in their traditional uniforms. That should be fun. The fair will be open from 12th to 21st December.

Being a foodie though I’ll probably head further along the south bank for the Christmas market at Borough Market,  with special expanded opening hours! Christmas carols are also promised.

Post from: The London Traveler

The Islington branch is in that little bit of Essex Road that hasn’t been complete ly gentrified yet. You find lovely antiques, but you can also find a solid wood Victorian kitchen table like the one in my grandad’s kitchen for ten or fifteen quid  – if you’re lucky.

Auctions are on Mondays. That gives you Friday and the weekend to look at the lots. A viewing here is always fun – it’s like a fantastic junk shop, cluttered and higgledy-piggledy, with clocks, jewellery, trinkets on the top of the tables, dressers and sideboards, tables piled on tables and wardrobes forming narrow alleys of wood. You’ll find something – if you look hard enough –   indeed, it’s hard not to believe that if you look around long enough , you’ll find the manuscript copy of Hamlet, or perhaps the way into Narnia.

And the auctions seem to be crammed in among all the furniture. It’s a much more informal atmosphere than Sotheby’s – sometimes it seems slightly mad, if there’s a stuffed tiger glaring at the auctioneer or one of the assistants pulls the wrong lot out  by mistake.

Definitely the  place for a bit of weekend fun. And when you’re finished, there are plenty of good places nearby to get a cup of coffee or a spot of lunch.

Besides, you could  always combine your viewing with a little shopping in the Angel antiques market, if you’re down here on Saturday morning.

Where: 53 Essex Road, Islington (Angel tube)

Post from: The London Traveler

We’ve all seen the comic cuts where someone sneezes or scratches his nose and ends up buying a Van Gogh he can’t pay for as the auctioneer bangs his gavel…

Don’t worry.  It’s not going to happen to you. Not at Sotheby’s, anyway – you have to  register, and use a numbered paddle to bid. So you can watch the action in the auction room without wondering if you’re going to end up with a few million quid’s worth of Post-Impressionist and no money to pay for it.

So you can settle down, and watch what’s going on. You’ll see bidders raising their paddles – you’ll also see the auctioneer taking telephone bids, and sometimes written bids have also been registered. And just occasionally you’ll see the auctioneer take a  bid ‘off the wall’.  This is real brinkmanship – the work being sold hasn’t reached its reserve price and the auctioneer is just trying to nudge it up past the reserve.

It’s free theatre. At least, it is if all the buyers aren’t written bids. Then it can get a bit unreal.  None the less, if there’s a really expensive piece up for sale, you can feel the tension in the room – suddenly, it goes silent, and you could cut the air with a knife.

While Sotheby’s is best known for its sales of art, it handles all kinds of auctions – wine, classic cars, furniture, even jewellery and watches. And at some of these auctions, the average price is way below the multimillion pound Van Goghs and Monets – just a few thousand pounds could secure many of the items.

Look up auctions on the Sotheby’s website (above). Art fans may also be interested in going to see one of the viewings – it’s basically a free art gallery! But of course, you’ll need to be quick off the mark, because the viewings only take a few days – once the auction’s over, the brown paper and string will be coming out and off all the paintings go…

Photo credit: Bryan Gosline on flickr

behind the scenes

Where: 34 New Bond Street  (Green Park or Bond Street tube stations)

Post from: The London Traveler

Run by the Campaign for Real Ale, it’s volunteer staffed – I’ll be doing a stint on the bar this year – and is the nation’s premier festival for real ale and fine foreign beers.

There will be at least 450 beers available throughout the festival. And the Champion Beer of Britain will also be chosen out of what’s become an increasingly strong field of contenders. While national brewers do sometimes win – Greene King IPA got the silver award a few years back – microbrewers have a more than equal chance, with popular recent winners including Crouch Vale Brewer’s Gold, a citrusy golden ale from Essex, and Harviestoun’s Bitter and Twisted from Clackmannanshire.

CAMRA has now started giving out third of a pint glasses, so you can try even more beers! While, annoyingly, they’ve promoted them as ‘for the ladies’, I don’t see why the laddies shouldn’t use them too – if you want to try 10 beers, that’s just 3 1/3 pints instead of 5 pints, unless my maths is worse than I think it is. You still won’t be safe to drive but while a third of a pint gives you enough to taste the beer properly (a bare mouthful doesn’t), the lower volume might be the difference between a glorious next morning and a bad headache.

And yes, most people attending GBBF actually drink rather more than that! You’ll spot ‘beer tickers’, too, always on the move and restlessly searching for a rare beer they haven’t tasted.

Over 66,000 people attended in 2006 – I don’t have last year’s number – so this really is the big one – the next biggest, Cambridge, is half the size.

Where: Earl’s Court

When:  5-9 August 2008: Tue 1700 to 2230; Wed, Thu, Fri 1200 to 2230; Sat 1100 to 1900

Photo credit – Matthew Black on Flickr

Post from: The London Traveler

Shoot London is running a photo treasure hunt in Hackney next weekend.

Ten clues will take you to different corners of Hackney, which you have to capture with your camera. To participate, you need a team of two to four people, and you need to reserve your tickets online.
Shoot London’s photo-hunts are usually paid for events,  but Hackney Council has subsidised this one so it’s free. It’s a great opportunity to hone your photographic skills and compare your photos to what other people are taking – and an all round, enjoyable day out.

Where: Hothouse, 274 Richmond Road, London Fields E8

When: Saturday 2 August 1115 am – 730 pm

How much: free

Photo credit – John Kratz on flickr

Post from: The London Traveler