London On The Cheap

It's definitely time to start scrimping on things so you've plenty of dosh for those Christmas outings and present buying blitzes. London on the Cheap returns after a hiatus (we were temporarily flush, we made the most of it...) to help you get the most of the city on the scrag ends in your pocket.

Monday: Get in the right frame of mind for Christmas shopping. Fortnum and Mason has just emerged from its lengthy refurbishment and reopened this weekend for its 300th birthday. Go browsing and start making lists.

Tuesday: Help turn on the Regent Street festive lights! Arrive at either end by 6pm and follow the entertainers. Watch the clusters of lights turn on as you pass under them. Then head off to Ukelele Cabaret at the Lincoln Lounge, Kings Cross from 8pm. Take your banjo if you have one.

Wednesday: Catch hip hop at the Royal Opera House for a fiver! Yes, really.

Thursday: Duck out of work early and get down to Waterstones Piccadilly to meet living Burlesque legend Dita Von Teese signing copies of her saucy book full of fetish and burlesque photos.

Friday: Join the Bassline Circus free parade at 7.30pm as part of the Arrivals Festival round the back of Kings Cross for a huge, celebratory event E.T.A. featuring samba beats, the London Breakbeat Orchestra, over a hundred local performers, video screens, 3 cranes and a wheel of death. Everyone needs a wheel of death on a Friday night.

Saturday: If you've been thrifty all week then you can surely afford £5 to get into Duckie at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern for "progressive working class entertainment" but no drugs and no spitting.

Sunday: Get down the Wellcome Collection between 11am-1pm for Blood, Guts, Children and Power - a dark and gory guided walk around the locality led by UCL's medical historians. They hop on the tube out west and take in Prasteh Gourang's free photography exhibition at Westbourne Studios.

Or, you could stay in and bleed your radiators.

Photo from Jason Rogers' flickr stream.

Check the websites for more information.