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Uh oh. We’ve heard that a fairytale book from Croydon Library has spilled its contents and a cast of creatures have descended upon the area in giant inflatable form. Humongous purple claws over the top of buildings, gargantuan tentacles and a floating pencil are all part of the ‘Unexpected Croydon’ installation taking place across the town centre this summer.  The inflatables first invaded Croydon in October, and have re-emerged this time around in even more monstrous form. Created by Croydon BID and Designs in Air, the impressive creatures can be found in eight locations across the area. Luke Egan, an artist from Designs in Air said: ‘We hope to get people to look up from their feet and phones and raise a chuckle or at least an eyebrow. The great thing is everyone gets to see our work for free.’ This is where you can spot the creatures around Croydon, until this Thursday, August 18: Paintbrush – Fairfield Halls, Park Lane, CR9 1DG Love Rocket – AMP House, Dingwall Rd, East Croydon, CR0 2LX Lizard – Ruskin Square Car Park, Dingwall Rd, East Croydon, CR0 2NB Grim Fingers – LSBU Campus, 3 Wellesley Rd, Croydon, CR0 2NW Eyeballs – Barclays Bank, High Street, North End, CR9 1SX Pencil – High Street, North End (between Centrale and Whitgift shopping centres) Beanstalk – Croydon Town Hall, Katharine St, CR0 1NX Tentacles – Optivo, Grosvenor House, 125 High St, Croydon, CR0 9XP Here is a sneak peek at the escapees: Photograph: Glenn Foster Photograph: Glenn Foster Photograph:

You can’t miss Deptford High Street. At the top end sits its famous anchor, reinstalled by the council in 2018 after it was mysteriously removed five years earlier, supposedly because it attracted street drinkers. Over its quarter of a mile, it runs down to Creek Road, across which lies the Thames. It packs in a street market, a golden-clad library, one of London’s finest baroque churches, lots of Vietnamese restaurants and more history than you can shake a stick at. Stuff changes fast here. Recent years have seen tons of new openings (and a few closings) around the redeveloped Market Yard. Locals fear that SE8’s character will be lost for ever but it sails on. Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe, who was murdered in Deptford after quibbling about his bar tab, described ‘infinite riches in a little room’ in ‘The Jew of Malta’, and that just about sums up the High Street. From the market traders to the post-church Sunday crush it’s some of London’s best street theatre. Stroll past the wet-fish shops and the buckets of giant African snails. Fuss the cats in Terry’s Discount store. All human life is here. Plus a lot of other stuff. Drink this   A photo posted by BUSTER MANTIS (@bustermantis) on Jun 22, 2016 at 7:44am PDT   Pub chain Antic caused a right hoo-ha when they opened The Job Centre, following their policy of naming pubs after their former uses. ‘Shameful’ and ‘insensitive’ was the social media verdict on the name. They redid the frontage recently and reve

You probably know by now that Richmond and Hampstead Heath are the acknowledged greenest bits of the capital. But there’s one west London borough, which includes the districts of Hayes and Harlington, Uxbridge and West Drayton, that has won 66 Green Flag Awards, making it the greenest borough in the whole of the UK. The London Borough of Hillingdon, 12 miles west of Richmond, has been awarded more Green Flags for its parks and outdoor spaces than any other local in the country authority for the tenth year in a row. The annual scheme is judged by a board of environmental charities, such as Keep Britain Tidy, to recognise accessible green spaces across the country, including public parks and farms. Hillingdon councillor Eddie Lavery said: ‘We’re committed to making Hillingdon a greener, cleaner and healthier borough for everyone and we’re delighted that our investment in our parks and green spaces has been recognised by the prestigious Green Flag Awards.’ More recently, four of the borough’s green spaces have received Green Flag approval, including Rosedale Park (situated just off the Uxbridge Road), Rockingham Recreation Ground, Hillingdon House Farm and Moorhall Recreation Ground.  But we can’t forget about the other impressive green spaces across the capital. Clapham Common, Battersea Park and Wandsworth Common were also winners in south-west London, while Peckham Rye Park and Blackheath Park both took home the prize in the south-east. Richmond must be green with envy. A lon

Ah, there’s nothing quite like a communal musical instrument in a London train station. At St Pancras International, you can usually find a lone commuter dusting off their old ‘Chopsticks’ chords on the station’s battered piano, or a couple spontaneously playing a duet of ‘Heart and Soul’ in a horrible Richard Curtis-style meet-cute moment.  Well, St Pancras’s notorious joanna has got a new contender for London’s commuter-carolling crown. A 250-pipe organ has been installed at London Bridge station to serenade travellers with its majestically sonorous notes as they speedwalk to the Jubilee line. The organ will officially open to the public this Saturday, July 30. It was installed on July 17, and unveiled by the UK’s most celebrated young organist, Anna Lapwood, 27, who played for five minutes and wooed the crowd.  Martin Renshaw, organ restorer and founder of the charity Pipe Up for Pipe Organs, said: ‘She rocked up and I thought: Oh, not another one. I hadn’t recognised her but it soon became apparent who she was. She played absolutely brilliantly, it was lovely.’ Lapwood, director of music at Pembroke College, Cambridge said: ‘I had been told about it and just went to see if I could find it and saw it behind a barrier and they let me have a play.’ As parish churches close across the country, many historic organs are left abandoned and in need of a new home. Pipe Up for Pipe Organs works to rescue threatened pipe organs by restoring them in situ or rehoming them. This lucky 

There’s nothing quite as stressful as buying your first home (apart from divorce, potentially). Later purchases don’t actually get less stressful, which is why Londoners rely on experts to name the best, most economically secure places to live. After analysing millions of points of data, Proportunity, a company attempting to make homeownership more accessible, has named Kingston-upon-Thames the top location for recession-busting houses across England and Wales. With a recent survey by Deloitte finding that 63 percent of finance heads believe that there will be a recession next year and 68 percent of business consultants expect that inflation will continue and exceed economists’ expectations, many homeowners are worried about their properties becoming less valuable than the mortgages they have taken out to buy them. In the event of an economic decline, mortgages will become much more costly and difficult to secure.  Proportunity’s list is based on characteristics shared by neighbourhoods which have fared well in past recessions, such as low housing supply in affluent areas, high numbers of older properties, greater proportion of millennials, homes that are larger than average size, and frequently used train stations. The top three locations are Kingston upon Thames, Haringey and Harrow: all in London. The three areas share qualities like good schools for both primary- and secondary-school-age children, convenient commute times into London, and green spaces. Crime rates and aff

It another blow to London’s beleaguered public transport system and its users. TfL announced at lunchtime today that the Central line would not run this evening because of the number of staff off sick, then reversed the decision, announcing that it would. The news follows strikes by London Underground workers as well as the disruption caused by this week’s searing 40C+ temperatures. The news was delivered via email at 1.15pm to those Londoners who have intelligently signed up for news updates of TfL travel disruption. The email read: ‘The Central line will close early today due to staffing issues in the control room caused by sickness. Complete journeys from central London by 17:30. After that no trains will run on most of the line, except a shuttle service between Leytonstone and Epping/Hainault until the end of the day.’ But just over an hour later, it seemed that this issue had been sorted out, after the Independent said that a TfL spokesperson had confirmed that Central line trains WOULD run tonight as usual. TfL’s replied to people @ing them on Twitter with:  ‘Hi, sorry for the confusion. We can now confirm the Central line is on normal schedule and operating.’ So, good luck getting home, and maybe just think of it as a good excuse to stay in town and have a drink or something civilised. Get up-to-date information at TfL. Just how safe is it to swim in London’s canals? We ask an expert.  Luton airport’s runway melted in the heatwave.

London’s major galleries and museums are all open as usual, but check on the galleries’ websites before visiting, you may need to book a slot in advance. This city is absolutely rammed full of amazing art galleries and museums. Want to see a priceless Monet? A Rothko masterpiece? An installation of little crumpled bits of paper? A video piece about the evils of capitalism? You can find it all right here. London’s museums are all open as normal, and the city’s independents have been back in business for ages. So here, we've got your next art outing sorted with the ten best shows you absolutely can't miss. 

What comes to mind when you think of watching the latest athletic events with others? Probably a noisy, sweaty sports bar packed full of drunk people. Not ideal in the current climate. Well, Hackney Bridge wants to challenge your assumptions. Its new outdoor cinema provides plenty of space for fans to spread out and relax in the fresh air while watching all the major sporting events of the summer, plus some family-friendly movies. The two-by-four-metre screen overlooks Hackney Bridge Gardens, allowing patrons to chill out on the grassy area in front while the cinema shows the Women’s Euros, the Commonwealth Games and a diverse selection of films for all ages. Food and drink vendors offer beverages from local Hackney suppliers at both the screen’s own shipping container bar and the Hangar Bar inside the venue, and there’s food from various global cuisines, such as Italian at Made in Puglia, and Japanese at Rainbo.  Hackney Bridge is a new canalside community in east London near Hackney Wick. It boasts studios, workspaces, restaurants, bars, community gardens, shops and even a – you guessed it – street-food market. The area hopes to use its diverse range of amenities to promote local creativity and talent while bringing the community closer together, and this outdoor screen is its latest effort to do this.  So grab some friends and family and head down to the Hackney Bridge cinema for a football match, some track and field, or a movie night. You can still tip beer over yourself

1. Drinking tins in the park We’ve got over 3,000 public green spaces in London, and if there’s one thing they’re good for, it’s cracking open a few cans and gorging on ‘picky bits’ with your mates. During lockdown in 2020, Londoners were so desperate for a knees-up that park boozing got alcohol temporarily banned from London Fields. A proud boast, indeed.  Photograph: Luke Dyson   2. One-day festivals  The voyage to a day festival in London is an epic pilgrimage. Hundreds of bucket-hat-clad revellers squeeze into the same humid tube carriages. The excitement is tangible when everyone knows they’re heading to stand packed like sardines swaying in the same field. From May to September, there’s a banging festival on almost every weekend. And there’s something for everyone: we can snot-cry to Adele at BST, two-step to Shanti Celeste at Waterworks, or catch Bimini death-dropping at Mighty Hoopla. Photograph: Kiev Victor / Shutterstock.com 3. Making incredible culture available for free Yes, London can be wallet-drainingly expensive. But it’s also packed full of free museums and galleries that’ll welcome you through their hallowed doors for zero pounds and zero pence. Ogle the well-sculpted marble bums in the V&A’s Sculpture Court, roar back at the Natural History Museum’s animatronic dinosaurs, or giggle at the squinty-eyed cherubs in Tate Britain, safe in the knowledge that you’re enjoying high culture at the lowest possible price. 4. Softbois  London is overrun with hot guy

The capital is famously full of great museums – we have hundreds of them. There are massive international ones like The British Museum, the V&A and the Natural History Museum. There are tiny weird ones dedicated to subjects like fans (the Greenwich Fan Museum) or grotesque anatomical specimens (the Hunterian Museum). Somewhere between those two poles, there is the Horniman Museum and Gardens in Forest Hill, south London. And the Horniman has just won the Art Fund Museum of the Year 2022. The Horniman was founded in 1890 by Frederick Horniman, a tea importer and collector of artefacts and artworks from across the globe. He was essentially an amateur anthropologist who had the money and the means to have whatever took his fancy shipped home to London. His collection eventually outgrew his home (and Mrs Horniman’s patience) and in 1901 he had a superb museum built to house it in the up-and-coming suburb of Forest Hill, just a mile or so from the site of the world-famous Crystal Palace. Since then, the Horniman has become a real London cultural landmark, and one whose approach has evolved over time to reflect changing attitudes to the role of the museum in education and community, with an emphasis on learning and engagement rather than simply showing random old stuff to people. Plus, it has the world’s most famous walrus and amazing views across London. Jenny Waldman, chair of judges, said: ‘In many ways the Horniman is the perfect museum, and I would encourage everyone to go and