London on the Cheap

Fear not the brief absence: London on the Cheap now comes to you on Thursdays, so you'll be freshly equipped for the weekend. Let's do this thing.

Friday: The Little Angel Theatre, Islington's home of miniature performance with some strings attached, continues their run of Sleeping Beauty with 50-year-old marionettes and Tchaikovsky on the mini-harpsichord. If you can make it to the 5:00 performance on a Friday, tickets are only £5.Saturday: Do you want the best possible answer to the question, "what gig did you go to on Saturday?" Go see Massive Menstrual Bird in Kentish Town. £5 at the door with a printable flier. If you're not sure what to make of "drama and high japes from a Gentleman Rhymer," see this video.Sunday: Counting on a mild autumnal Sunday, make the acquaintance of Londonist's favourite hidden bit of the Heath, the Pergola and Hill Garden, with a local expert from the Heath & Hampstead Society. The walk starts at 2:30, and the Society requests a £2 donation. Take it from us: you'll never be able to go back to Parliament Hill.Monday: Ah, the travails of the young and attractive woman in London. Hear the horror stories of models, lap dancers, and (gasp!) City girls as the first Barbie Stand Up Show in Bethnal Green sets out to prove that comedy can look damn good. Laugh at them all for free.

Tuesday: Pay-what-you-can Tuesdays at Dalston's Arcola Theatre can be a risky, first come first served affair, but you can hedge your bets this week with two promising plays to choose between. In either case, interpersonal drama is likely to boil over, either among lost souls at a seedy California bar in Tennessee Williams's Small Craft Warning, or besieged neighbours in the new work Welcome to Ramallah.

Wednesday: Make the most transient of graffiti in Trafalgar Square with the ICA's Memory Cloud. This participatory installation facilitates public expression by uniting, at long last, the communication media of text messages and smoke signals. Think very hard about what to write; we're sure the obvious ones (_____ Boris) will be taken.Thursday: The wonderful Grant Museum of Zoology is determined to bring some of the excitement back into palaeontology with their Dino-Devotion season of events. Tonight, let pterodactyl expert (and film actor) Matt Wilkinson remind you that the dinosaurs did not, in fact, go extinct, but were saved by feathers. Plenty of material evidence from the Grant's cabinets of curiosities should be on hand.Or, you could stay in and prepare for hibernation.

Image courtesy of Massimo Usai.

Check out London is Free for more ideas of things to do for nowt. Check the websites for more information.