A lot of weird stuff has happened in London, and we're not just talking about that time Liz Truss was prime minister.
One of our readers — and an incredibly talented artist to boot — Clair Rossiter decided to put some of the strangest happenings to unfold over the years, onto this beautifully-illustrated map.
Animals feature heavily in the feast of fantastical episodes, including 'Willy' the Whale, who swam up the Thames in 2006, and later inspired a Damon Albarn song; and the Philpot Lane mice, the smallest statue in London, which marks a sandwich-related tragedy (or so the story goes).
Taking the biscuit banana, though, had to be the escaped monkey jazz band; this bizarre happening unfolded in Notting Hill in 1926, when 13 members of the simian group went AWOL. One of the escapees got as far as Rugby; apparently it had taken the train.
Playing out elsewhere on Clair's map is the Great Beer Flood of 1814 (in which 2.5 million pints of London porter gushed out of a central London brewery with fatal consequences), the altogether more pleasant London Bridge Banquet of 1831, Edward Jones pinching Queen Victoria's under-crackers from Buckingham Palace, and the Mole Man of Hackney having a well-deserved lean on his shovel, after digging a network of tunnels beneath his home. Seeing all of this mad stuff together in one illustration does make you think: what if it had all unfolded on the same day?
Limited edition prints of the map are available to buy here. A guaranteed conversation starter, wherever you decide to hang it.
All images © Clair Rossiter