Things To Do In London Today: Tuesday 2 April 2013

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GIVE BLOOD: Today’s opportunities to donate blood are at the Church of Jesus Christ LDS in Walworth and the YMCA Hall in Barbican. Free, just turn up, see site for times and conditions

NIP WITH CLIP: Hold onto your knickers, the new Thames Clipper service between Blackfriars and Putney begins today. Commuters now have a slightly easier journey home, whilst Clipper enthusiasts have 39 minutes of new, unadulterated Clipper-joy to experience.

INDIA: Today's your last chance to catch the British Library's Mughal India exhibition. £9, just turn up.

SPACE WEATHER: If you have ever wondered what it would be like to live in Antarctica and study space weather, or even wondered why others do it, then pop down to one of the Science Museum's Space Weather demonstrations. Free, just turn up, 11am and 1pm daily, until 4 April

FOLK STORIES: Beau Belle travels the country in an Ice Cream Van collecting English folk traditions and oral histories. She will be at the V&A Museum of Childhood this week so pop by to enjoy her stories and share your own memories. (NOTE: she does not actually sell ice cream! You can buy that from the Museum cafe.) Free, just turn up, until 7 April

LIBRARIAN DJ SLAMDOWN: No, we didn't just pick random words out of a hat for that title. Cityread London 2013 kicks off with a party and librarian DJ slamdown at the Free Word Centre. Free, prebook, 5.30pm

A LATE QUARTET: Enjoy a screening of A Late Quartet, an American drama film starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken, preceded by a string quarter playing music from and inspired by the film. £17.50, prebook, 6.20pm

SCIENCE SHOWOFF: This month's geeky science comedy show comes from the Wilmington Arms, with talks that include early experiments with electricity, a heads-up about a new pub-based science festival, and "morbid poetry inspired by the dark, twisting pathways of the human mind". £5 suggested donation, just turn up, 7pm

POETS AFTER DARK: Ten poets – including Kate Tempest, Sabrina Mahfouz, Chris McCabe and Sam Riviere – present specially commissioned works around the Hayward Gallery’s blockbuster (for good reason) Light Show exhibition. £15 (including entrance to exhibition, prebook, 7.30pm and 8pm

COMEDY: Isy Suttie, Hattie Hayridge, Jen Brister and Ian Shaw join Chris Neill for What Happened Here at the King's Head in Crouch End, telling some adult tales. £6, prebook or turn up, 8pm

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Random London Fact of the Day
The tower popularly nicknamed Big Ben has a lean of up to 46cm from vertical. In a recent Guardian article, architect John Burland wryly comments: ""If you stand in Parliament Square and look towards it, you can just see that it moves very slightly to the left – but I wouldn't put any political slant on that."

Good Cause of the Day
The Children Helping Children Concert is a unique classical music event for all the family, where talented young musicians (some as young as seven) perform at Cadogan Hall, in order to raise money for HemiHelp, the national charity for children and young people with hemiplegia. The 10th anniversary concert, on 27 April (6pm), will feature many young musicians and is hosted by BBC Radio 3's Sean Rafferty. Tickets are £20-£40, with all proceeds going to the charity, and can be purchased here.

London Weather
Yesterday, we glimpsed that irrefutable early sign of winter's end: a press release exulting that: "Spring has sprung!". This cheery observation is an annual and much-cherished tradition among marketing copywriters, who use it to set a tone of mateyness before going on to impress you with news of a new product or event. As well as joyfully heralding the vernal arrival, the wording also serves as a quick shorthand for busy editors that the email need not be read any further. However, this year, we'll be keeping a tally of how many "Spring has sprung!" emails we receive throughout April, so we can gauge just how springily this spring has sprung and report back accordingly. Preamble out of the way, here's today's forecast: spring has not sprung; it's still bloody freezing.