London: a swallowed sneeze of the week 19-26th March

The weather checks its predictions, and decides to conform. No one notices, but the predictors. Equally as predictable, the lazy sun performs his morning routine, first shedding his dark pyjamas, chucking them mournfully at Australians, then cries before clearing up. He’s a little early, compared to yesterday anyway, shrugs in a way that only a celestial object cannot, and rises. Some people notice, chuckle, then abruptly stop when they realise that lady on the bus is looking at them again. The one with the bag that says ‘DOGS!’ on it. The sun, and one of the passengers, alights. Last week screams petulantly, demanding attention again, but no one takes heed.

Oh boy! It’s Bromley-by-Bow! The Flatline Music Festival will be rearing its deformed head and assorted disassociated limbs in St. Crest’s Graveyard and Lido in Bromley-by-Bow (BbB) for the first year running! Death-pop un-rockers The Collective Burst will be trialing songs from their next-but-one album ‘HUGE TIME’. The gang of four will also be supported by down-jazz quintet Hope This One’s Dead, who’ll be playing “anything but instruments” according to their press release, and the alt-alternate trip-heap The Great Hate. The Flatline Festival will be the first time the three groups have ever performed in London together, apart from that other time in that soup shop. Live comedy will not be provided, courtesy of BbB council. Street Food from the likes of Lick Biscuit, 20 Steps From Friday, and John’s Squid Fish will be available to win for money. St. Crest’s Graveyard and Lido will be open from 6am on Thursday, then close at 7am, before re-opening at 6am on Friday, and so on.

Put those trousers back on, wipe yourself off and head central, for London’s Great Annual Pentadecathlon will be taking place in leading department store Gart’s. A tradition started by Mr Art Gart for the store’s tenth anniversary in 1934, or a variant thereof, the Pentadecathlon features upwards of a number of people who’ll be variously hurling, topping, lifting, breaking, humbling, feeding, yearning, birthing, swimming, flexing, pointing, rootin’, tootin’, and two practices known only as ‘chimping’ and ‘flitterating’. Year on year, this quease-inspiring greasy festival of humanity is almost shut down by local authorities and well-meaning children, but every year it is saved by a mysterious benefactor locals know as Mungo. Several people are hospitalised by the tradition, and several hospitals are peopled by the transition too. Only three people have signed up for this year’s ‘Festival of Hurt’, so get yourself to Gart’s between now and not now to put pen to paper and wave goodbye to your loved ones.

Holy blood in water, Richmond isn't where it's at! The park that puts the ‘Park’ into ‘Richmond Park’, Richmond Park is being moved. Richmond’s MP, the Honorable Melwin Chutrank, Conservative, has masterminded a campaign to uproot the borough’s beloved Park’s Park, and relocate it to Walthamstow. This week, the council passed the motion accidentally because the sun got in someone's eyes, and the Park is due to be dug up and driven, piece by piece, to Walthamstow. Fans of the Park of Parks are being invited to come and kiss it between now and Sunday, before a Farewell Richmond Park Party is being thrown at nearby ‘ale-stablishment’ The Bick, where grass will be auctioned and one lucky local may win a deer. Please note: it is undecided what will replace the park, but it is thought that local streetfood vendor Just Donuts and That’s Fucking It OK? has put in a bid to own it all.

Briefs:

• Three copies of brand-new graduate-level geometry ‘zine Angles On Show have been hidden somewhere near Epping. The finder will be “rewarded” with 150 more copies of Angles On Show, and a free sack.

• Cricketers rejoice! Edgware finally has renounced its century-long ban on bats in the area (cricket, not fruit) and a month-long-non-stop match has been announced down the High Road involving, in the council’s words, ‘absolutely everyone’.

• Sadly, Erith’s famous tissue factory will be re-opening this week.

The sun trips on one of its laces, which has been stuck to the sole with some old batter all day, and falls flat onto China. It sits for a bit, tells everyone “it’s fine, honestly, I’m fine”, and then says it wants to go home. The clouds follow it for a bit, then get more interested in the moon, because it’s so fit. The week folds up into the wall, and a bookcase is put in front of it.

#London #BromleybyBow #centralLondon #RichmondPark #Edgware #Erith