Free museums, good parks and a firm rule about not sitting down anywhere that has a menu
A Weekend in London on Almost Nothing, Tested by Someone With Almost Nothing
It was the last weekend of the month, the one that payday forgets. I had a small amount of money, a travelcard that would not reset until Monday and a strong wish not to spend two days looking at my own ceiling. So I set myself a challenge on behalf of every reader who has ever opened a banking app with one eye shut. Could I have a properly good weekend in the most expensive city in the country for less than the price of a round of drinks?
I am pleased to report that I could, mostly. I am also obliged to report where it went wrong, because honest journalism requires it and because the incident with the artisan doughnut was entirely my own fault.
Saturday Morning: The Museums Are Yours
The greatest bargain in London is one we take so much for granted that we forget to use it. The big national museums and galleries charge nothing to walk through the door. You can stand in front of some of the most famous paintings and objects in the world, in a heated building with clean toilets, for no money at all. Visitors from abroad find this astonishing. They are right.
I chose the British Museum, partly because it is vast and partly because I could walk there. The trick, which I learned from a retired teacher I met on the steps, is not to attempt the whole thing. She visits one room a week. She has been doing it for two years and says she is about a third of the way round. I spent ninety minutes with the clocks and came out feeling improved and slightly smug.
The Rule About Menus
Here I must introduce the principle that governs the whole enterprise. London does not take your money in one large sum. It takes it four pounds at a time, in coffees, snacks and things you did not know you wanted until you were standing beside them. The only defence is a flask, a sandwich made at home and an iron refusal to sit down anywhere that has a menu. I carried both in a tote bag and felt like my own grandmother. She was a woman who never paid for a cup of tea outside her house in her life, and she died owning the house.
Saturday Afternoon: The Parks
From Bloomsbury I walked north to Regent’s Park and then up Primrose Hill, where the whole city is laid out in front of you for free. London is one of the greenest big cities in the world, and its parks and commons are open to anyone with legs and a coat. On the hill there was a man flying a kite, a wedding party taking photographs and a group of teenagers sharing one portable speaker and a great deal of confidence. Nobody was buying anything. It was lovely.
Further north, Hampstead Heath offers woods, ponds and a view from Parliament Hill that I would put against any in Europe. I ate my sandwich on a bench dedicated to a woman who, according to the plaque, loved this spot. I could see her point.
Getting About Without Weeping
Transport is where a cheap weekend can come apart. The honest advice is to walk more than you think you can, since central London is smaller on foot than it looks on the Tube map. After that, the bus is the bargain. A single fare is capped at a low flat price and the hopper allows a second bus within the hour at no extra charge. The details and the daily caps are on the Transport for London site. The top deck front seat of a bus crossing Waterloo Bridge is a sightseeing tour that happens to be going somewhere.
Saturday Evening: Culture on the Cheap
London’s evenings are not all ticketed. There are free foyer concerts on the South Bank, early evening recitals in churches, late openings at galleries and comedy nights in rooms above pubs that ask only for a donation in a bucket. I found a new material night in Camden where six comedians tried out jokes that were, in the proper sense, unfinished. Two were excellent. One was a man reading from his phone. I put a couple of pounds in the bucket and felt like a patron of the arts.
Sunday: Markets Without Buying
Sunday I gave to the markets, which are free to enter and dangerous to linger in. Columbia Road in the morning is a wall of flowers and a wall of people, with traders shouting prices in a style that has not changed in a century. Listen long enough and you will hear the old slang still in use, and the guide to Cockney rhyming slang will tell you what you have just been called. At the end of trading the stallholders sell off bunches for very little. I bought tulips for a couple of pounds and carried them home on the bus like a trophy.
It was near Brick Lane that discipline failed. There was a doughnut. It had a filling I can still describe in detail. It cost roughly what I had saved by walking all weekend. I regret nothing and I include it in the accounts.
The Reckoning
Doughnut included, the two days cost me less than a modest takeaway. I saw world-class art, walked several miles of parkland, heard live comedy and came home with flowers. What the weekend took was planning and a willingness to carry a flask in public.
The serious point is that plenty of Londoners are doing this out of necessity, not as an experiment. Household budgets are tight, as the Office for National Statistics keeps confirming, and the free city, the museums, parks and libraries, is doing a great deal of quiet work in keeping people sane. Those things are paid for by all of us and are worth defending when budgets are being cut. City Hall’s own listings of free events are on the london.gov.uk site.
For further entertainment at no cost, I can recommend my colleagues’ English satirical news and British satirical news, as well as NewsThump, all of which are free and none of which sell doughnuts. Anyone curious about how such a thing is produced on a shoestring should read how to run a satirical website. My own reports from the thrifty front line are on my author page at The London Prat.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/
