London On The Cheap: Icebreaker

We're back for a very much nascent new year, struggling out of the early January gloom when events calendars lie as bare as the frosted trees. Bundle up and go forth; too many evenings in can only make it that much grimmer.

Friday: The National Portrait Gallery's Friday night music programme hosts early music lovers Horses Brawl and Philip Thorby, playing compositions straight from the court of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I.Saturday: If Friday was the opposite of your type of music, try ASBO at Camden's Lock Tavern, a free monthly club night tonight featuring a mystery DJ under the pseudonym Disco 3000.Sunday: This weekend will bring London's first international Ice Sculpting Festival to the grounds of the Natural History Museum. They couldn't have picked a better week for this art form.Monday: What is the smallest number of cameras you need to watch the outside walls of a prison? How about Leicester Square? At least one of these questions will be answered by mathematician John D Barrow in a mind-exercising public lecture at the Royal College of Surgeons: The maths of pylons, art galleries and prisons under the spotlight.

Tuesday: The first film festival of the year, the 6th London Short Film Festival is bringing a bounty of cheap, fast-moving fun this week. On Tuesday, the Roxy Bar and Screen are making a marathon evening of it with Night of the Living Docs, culminating in a Current TV Award for one of the 26 documentaries screened.

Wednesday: Frustrated science graduate Rosie Wilby is bringing her comedy-meets-neuroscience investigation of the human memory, I Am Nesia, back to Camden after a triumph at the Edinburgh Fringe. But first, she's performing it for free at Peckham Library, 6:30 tonight.Thursday: Tonight's a good night to try out the bizarre Russian side of the London International Mime Festival at Shunt Vaults: first Sharmanka, a thirty minute show by Eduard Bersudsky’s scrap-heap automatons, followed by club night Plug'n'Play, Akhe Engineering Theatre's "end-of-civilisation cabaret." Marvel at it all for Shunt Vaults' usual £5 cover.Image courtesy of Lady Vervaine via the Londonist flickrpool. Check out London is Free for more ideas of things to do for nowt. Check the websites for more information.