Things To Do In London Today: 31 January 2013


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TICKET ALERT: Wanna go to the I'll Be Your Mirror festival at Ally Pally on 4-5 May? (Headliners Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Grizzly Bear.) Tickets on sale this morning. See here for more details. £59 (day tickets), £110 (2 day pass), 9am

GIVE BLOOD: City Temple on Holborn Viaduct is today's place to donate blood. Free, just turn up, 9.30-11am and 12.15-4.15pm

ART FAIR: The Watercolours and Works On Paper Fair runs at the Science Museum until 3 February. £15 (day entry), just turn up or prebook, 11am-9pm

EXECUTION: Voices From Death Row is a pop-up exhibition at Vibe Bar, Brick Lane, featuring work from six British artists and prisoners awaiting execution. Runs till 6 February. A launch party this evening (£10) and associated talks and screenings should also be checked out. Free, just turn up, 11am-6pm

TECHNOLOGY: UCL’s lunchtime lecture looks at how digital works of art are being displayed in museums and galleries. Free, just turn up, 1.15pm

ART: Gallery hop round Fitzrovia Lates. Free, just turn up, 6-9pm.

INNER SPACE: Neil Shubin speaks at the Royal Institution about how the origins of our universe and solar system are reflected within our bodies. Interesting stuff. £10, prebook, 7pm

FREE GIG: Darkstar play Rough Trade East in Brick Lane. No writstband needed for this one. Free, just turn up, 7pm

TECHNOFUN: Bit of a treat at the Regent Street Apple Store where electronic duo Addictive TV play some of their 'music you can see', splicing videos and samples together to put a smile on your face. Exuberant is the word. Free, just turn up, 7pm

POSITIVE: Want to make the world a bit better? The audience can choose a project to win £2,000 to do just that! Come to UCL’s Focus on the Positive event. £5, prebook or just turn up, 7.30pm

DANCE: Set in an enormous wooden tree sculpture, Tatyana, by Companhia de Danca Deborah Colker is inspired by Pushkin’s classic Russian novel Eugine Onegin. Starts today and runs till 9 February at Barbican Centre. £16- £30, prebook, 7.45pm.

BOOKS: Joe Dunthorne, Ross Sutherland, Emma Jane Unsworth and Bin Adewunmi are standing up for books at The George, Strand. £6, just turn up, 8pm

MONSTERS: London Fortean Society ask why people are afraid of monsters at their monthly meeting in the Bell pub, E1.  All welcome, £3 admission, starts 8pm.

Random London Fact Of The Day
In 2011, the most popular names for newly born girls and boys in London were:

  • GIRLS: Isabella, Olivia, Amelia, Sophia, Lily, Emily, Mia, Sophie, Jessica, Chloe
  • BOYS: Daniel, Oliver, Muhammad, James, Thomas, Harry, Joshua, Mohammed, Alexander, Samuel

Source: Office of National Statistics

Good Cause Of The Day
Please send tips to matt@londonist.com

Next time you're over in Tottenham, go pay a visit to the Filling the Gap Community Cafe, a volunteer-ran community enterprise. Twice a week (Thursdays and Fridays), they produce menus of healthy, hearty and affordable meals using local and seasonal ingredients from FareShare. A voucher scheme lets people on low incomes or in social housing get a healthy meal on the cheap. They also run a scheme from the cafe giving local kids healthy lunches at fast-food prices. They're currently looking for new volunteers, new partners for their voucher scheme and new ideas. They would also welcome a few new customers too, of course. Like 'em on Facebook here, or Twitter at @FillingTheGap1

London Weather
Plenty of wind around today, which could easily furnish us with a predictable, cackbastard joke about farting. But, no. We're much too classy for that. Don't get us wrong. We love a good pun as much as the next London-based website. But anyone who regularly quips around phrases like 'a bit fishy', 'got the hump', 'uranus' and, indeed, 'windy'...any wretch, in short, who still giggles at the "What's brown and sticky?" gag...deserves a flatulent hunchback mackerel up their brown and sticky anus. Yes, they do.

Now, the weather. Windy, with plenty of sunshine around noon, and lots of darkness after sunset. BBC Weather, as ever, puts it more succinctly (though watch out for that Alex Deakin fellow...he's nothing but nob jokes).