No. It's the BBC reporting on progress with water mains replacement in Walthamstow. Slow news day, then.

It seems our BBC News team are astonished that local residents aren't blowing a gasket over the much needed and well publicised upgrading of the Victorian water mains and are in fact being pleasant, understanding and cooperative.

The massive programme to upgrade our water supply and reduce leakages has already seen pipes that would stretch from London to Aberdeen replaced and the project accelerated as Thames Water anticipate huge added pressure on the system in future:

By 2016, the equivalent of the population of Leeds (nearly 800 000 people) are expected to move to London

Although streets all over the capital are being dug up, disruption is being kept to a minimum avoiding trenches where possible and only turning off water supplies for up to 4 hours at a time. Given the problems other regions had with their water supplies during the summer flooding it seems unsurprising that Londoners are taking the works in their stride since they will ensure a reliable water supply well into the future.

Meantime, though, may as well indulge in some very English tea and innuendo by the bowsers.

Thames Water: digging up the streets near you soon.

Image of old water mains courtesy of Barbara Rich's Flickrstream.

A punning headline that doesn?t quite work is our stock in trade. Such is the case here, where we want to highlight a band of enthusiasts who seek out tales of London?s mysterious and arcane.

The South East London Folklore Society meets every second Thursday of the month at The Old King?s Head - down one of those pokey little alleys off Borough High Street.

Next Thursday (13 September) Rob Stephenson will talk about the ?Stones & Bones of London?. Rob, we?re told, knows ?LOADS? about London and should make a fascinating speaker.

Coming up in future months:
11 October: Patsy Langley on ghosts of South London
8 November: Antony Clayton on the folklore of London pubs

Talks start at 8pm and entry is £2.50. All welcome.

Remember the London Urban Ironing Collective? These are the guys who, in exchange for a donation to cancer research, will iron clothing anywhere in London.

These rapscallions of repassage have been busy since we last spoke to them - raising over £6500 for the cause, and de-creasing garments in the most outrageous places. They?re aiming for the big 10K, so please give generously and set them an imaginative challenge. In the meantime, here are a few highlights from the past couple of months.

All good stuff, but they still haven?t taken up our challenge to go to Syon Park and iron like a lion is Syon.

So, how?s the dating going?

Well its still in the early stages. I?ve managed to grab a date each week since the launch of the MySpace account and another candidate got taken out a couple of weeks ago to the theatre! We have raised a total of £777 so far. The preparations of the official site are coming along great and I hope to have the official launch in the last week of September. I was also approached by Phil Hall Associates, they are now my publicists, so things are definitely on the up! It?s all so very exciting. I?m overwhelmed with the general response that I'm getting.

What would your ideal London date involve?

Hmm that?s a good question. I?m very easy to please and I?ve not really had that much experience dating but I guess if I could choose I would opt for a day out rather than an evening at the cinema. My ideal date would probably be to be taken out for lunch followed by a trip to the London Dungeons - I love anything scary and I?ve been told it would be right up my street! Although I?ve lived in London all my life I?ve yet to experience any of the London attractions. The nearest I got was when I was running in the Great British 10K London Run and I got to see Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament from a distance! So, I'd also like to do a London bus tour - you get to see everything in one hit and the history would intrigue me.

Have you or any of your fellow rent a daters had any inappropriate approaches so far?

No, thank god! All my fellow candidates have been given guidance on standard security measures and on the official site there will be terms and conditions allowing the candidate/bidder to pull out of the date should they feel that they are in any danger whatsoever. These are fun dates and all in the aid of charity. Anyone abusing these issues will be removed from the site.

How did celebrities Sophie Anderton & Aisleyne from Big Brother get involved?

I grew up with Aisleyne. We hadn?t seen each other for around 10 years as I moved away but she got in touch when she found out about my condition and since then we have been really good friends. Aisleyne?s uncle also suffers with a brain tumour so she was aware of the cause and kindly offered to go up for auction. Sophie is a good friend of a friend and so we often used to hear about each others stories but didn?t actually get a chance to meet up. When she heard about what I was doing she approached me and said that she would be to happy to help out by putting herself up for auction. I couldn't believe it! I was honoured that she wanted to take part.

How much do you think they?ll go for?

I wouldn?t have a clue!?! All I know is that any bid is a worthy bid so even if we made a £1 I'd be happy. It?s not just the money that counts. The main reason for my campaign is to raise awareness. Having Sophie and Aisleyne on the site is doing just that and I couldn?t be happier.

What will their minimum standard of date experience be? Could you take Sophie Anderton down the Mucky Pup for a pint and some crisps?

Unfortunately the auction winner doesn't get the opportunity to organise the date for a celebrity. It will be the agent who determines the location, date and time. All these details will be shown on the celebrity's profile alongside their auction. We are hoping that all the restaurants involved in the celebrity dates will donate a free meal and perhaps a bottle of wine. Fingers crossed they say yes - we all love freebies!

Share your most romantic London moment with us. Go on.

Romance? What?s that? Honestly I think I must have been going for the wrong guys. I?m still waiting that romantic date!

What you?ve achieved since your diagnosis is remarkable. This is your chance to gee up Londoners to help you achieve your £1m target. You have 100 words. GO!

I am making it my personal goal to raise over £1 Million Pounds for Brain Tumour UK. This money will go into the development of research, education and support for brain tumour sufferers like myself and raise awareness of both the cause and the symptoms experienced by brain tumour sufferers throughout the UK and worldwide. Help me to help others. Spread the word and help me make this happen.

And finally, have you ever been sick on the tube?

Not that I can remember. I?ve come very close though!

Bid here to rent a date for charity or donate to Brain Tumour UK online.

Image courtesy of Lisa Connell.

Brian Wilson starts a six night run at the Royal Festival Hall on Monday night going through to Sunday, with Thursday night off. Tickets are available for some nights at between £35 - £55 a seat. Apparently ?he will be presenting a four-movement piece called, That Lucky Old Sun (a Narrative). The piece will consist of four 'rounds', with interspersed narrative. In addition Brian will be performing several Beach Boys songs that have never been performed live as well as some other surprises? (according to the Southbank website)

American pop punk stars Less than Jake start the first of a 6 night stint at the Astoria 2 (formerly the Mean Fiddler) on Tuesday through Sunday, with tickets available for most nights at £14 each. The Go! Team play an instore at HMV Oxford Street as well.

Teen show The OC may have finished, but one of the bands it helped catapult to the big time, Rooney, are still going, playing a sold out show at the Borderline on Wednesday night. Orlando?s Anberlin play Underworld as well for a distinctly average evening of rock. Tickets look to be sold out. The Go! Team also play a sold out show at the Electric Ballroom.

Adam Pierce brings his experimental electronica/post-rock of New York's Mice Parade to Cargo on Thursday evening, with tickets £10.50 each. House of Love performs their classic self-titled debut at Koko. We would go into detail, except when they were big this Londonista was barely old enough to talk, let alone listen to yet another guitar band. Tickets are £17.50 each for this re-union show. American alternative-country singer-songwriter Josh Ritter plays the first of two sold out nights at Monto Water Rats.

Beth Ditto and her sweatiness (otherwise known as The Gossip) play the second of a two night stand at the Forum on Friday night, though both nights are sold out. Feeling like some emo-rock? Don?t worry, your need can be quenched by 30 Seconds To Mars who play Brixton Academy. Mercury Prize Nominees a couple of years back, Polar Bear play the Museum of Garden History as part of the Capital Jazz Festival at the Garden Museum. Tickets are £10 - £18 each. Van Morrison plays a sold out Royal Albert Hall for the first night of a quick UK tour.

Photo is taken from Wannabe's flickr stream under the creative commons license.

Having appeared as the Velvet Underground in I Shot Andy Warhol as well as frequently contributing to indie film soundtracks, Yo La Tengo is no stranger to the dark of the cinema aisles. The contrast between spacious noise drone and gentle melodies that dominates their songs sometimes evokes a mood reminiscent of days spent indoors watching old movies flicker across even older screens. The feeling that the next frame might just be the one that starts something new in motion gives way to an optimism that we're happy to have stick around, if only for an hour or so.

In 2001, the band composed a collection of new soundtracks for the films of French scientific surrealist Jean Painlevé. Capturing the natural world's mysterious and often alien qualities, Painlevé skillfully blurred the lines between science and art, befriending himself to such avant-garde contemporaries as Luis Buñuel, Sergei Eisenstein and Antonin Artaud. Painlevé's three-word mission statement, "science is fiction", not only summarised the magic he revealed all around us, but also the human qualities he portrayed in his animal subjects. Although he spun a mildly fictional narrative of the animal kingdom, in doing so he closed the gap between our worlds, framing their story in a context we could understand.

Released on CD in 2002 as The Sounds of the Sounds of Science, Yo La Tengo has performed these pieces live only a handful of times. Tonight at 7:30 p.m. in Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall you will find them revisiting this work in celebration of the BFI's recent DVD collection of Painlevé's films, Science Is Fiction. Featuring one disc that faithfully preserves the original films, the set also provides a second DVD with Yo La Tengo's dreamy re-scoring. Watching these at home may be your only option, however, if you don't act fast: at the time of writing only a few seats remained available for purchase from Southbank Centre's website!

Yo La Tengo: The Sounds of Science at Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday 9 September 2007. Cost: £16 or £14. Tickets available here.

Apparently London?s motorists are in a state of ?panic? as they are having trouble finding petrol stations near them?.

A new report out today by petrol industry boffins Catalist reveals that a third of London?s forecourts have shut down since 2002, and that England as a whole has 617 cars per petrol station, which sounds quite a lot really.

But hang on a minute. This is London. If there is no longer a garage in your street, then you can bet your bottom car wash token that there is one in the next street, or within an easy five minute drive. And every bloomin? supermarket seems to be flogging the stuff as well these days.

Londonist concedes that filling station closure is probably awfully inconvenient if you live up a mountain in Scotland, or even in a little village in the shires ? if there are 20-30 miles between fill-ups and they shut one down, then you are up the creek without a paddle (or up the mountain without a car). But in London they are surely doing us a favour. In one of the most acceptable uses of the much abused ?S? word that Londonist has heard for a wee while now, Catalist states that the ?petrol station network is now becoming sustainable?. We agree. Garages with a few hundred yards between them or in adjacent streets is a ridiculous state of affairs. They cause concerted blobs of pollution and are more often than not an eyesore.

What really tickles Londonist is the creative use to which many former petrol stations are put ? we have seen hardware stores, drive through eateries, wine warehouses, general cash and carries and the slightly less innovative car wash. We can envisage drive through theatre (five minutes of culture to cradle you through your journey), a petrol themed restaurant perhaps, even a club or pub ? where are you, entrepreneurial Londoners?

So sorry, panicking motorists. This is one sort of closure we can?t get on our bandwagon about. Get on your bikes.

Images courtesy of masochismtango?s flickr stream

The four Tory hopefuls (or 'Top Tories' in tabloid sub-editor's argot) for next May's London mayoral elections will be put through their paces at a hustings for Conservatives in the capital this evening, where this Londonista has managed to bag a seat (despite neither being a Tory nor originally from London) to report whatever clangers Boris Johnson intentionally drops into the mix. The winner (ie. Boris) will then be declared to an audience of dozing pensioners in Blackpool on September 30 at the opening of their annual conference.

These four hopefuls are joined by a further three from the Liberal Democrats, who announced their three-strong shortlist for selecting a mayoral candidate this morning. This is the party who thought Susan Kramer (remember her? us neither) and the oleaginous Simon Hughes had something to offer the capital. Brian Paddick, you will of course recognise, but barrister Chamali Fernando and local CAB boss Fiyaz Mughal, probably not. Making up the numbers, eh guys?

So, short of a major scandal or untimely death, expect Ken, Boris and Brian next May. Possibly the first real mayoral contest we've had since Blair introduced the office of Mayor almost a decade ago now.

By 'Race4CityHall'.

Do you want to go and see some Peregrine Falcons?

We were enjoying ourselves today on a leisurely stroll along the South Bank (home of London's finest avian encounters) when we stumbled upon the RSPB outside the Tate Modern. They had four telescopes pointed up at the central tower. To the naked eye nothing could be seen but with the help of the lens the beautiful creatures were a delight to watch. The birds live up there for most of the year, temporarily moving to a romantic holiday home across the river with a slightly larger ledge to breed.

Falcons have been coming to London ever since the industrial revolution provided them with tall buildings and chimneys on which they could live and a plentiful supply of pigeons to eat. Despite a few hiccups during the world wars, (when the RAF were ordered to gun down as many Peregrines as possible in order to stop them eating carrier pigeons that were being to get messages to our allies - after WW2 Britain was down to ten breeding pairs) and the occasional dickhead shooting them or stealing their eggs, in London they are doing rather well. There are only around 1500 pairs of Peregrines in the UK today but numbers are steadily rising.

We found that watching them was relaxing and fascinating. If you're not after relaxing then there is always the possibility that one of them might tear a pigeon or Bill Oddie to pieces. The RSPB will be outside the Tate Modern every day until Sunday between midday and 7pm.

Being referred to as the father of TV celebrity Sharon Osbourne would no doubt cause Don Arden to throw one of his legendary tantrums from beyond the grave and hang the hapless BBC hack who penned these words from his office window. This after all is the woman who used to send the contents of her children's nappies hidden in Macy's boxes to music executives who'd pissed her off. Arden, whose behaviour earned him the nickname: The Al Capone of pop, has just been honoured with a nice shiny green central London plaque alongside the Small Faces on his old office on Carnaby Street where he signed them after only half an hour's meeting.

The plaque (paid for by fans of the band) was unveiled by Small Faces drummer Kenny Jones on Saturday, no doubt thankful for the way Arden paid off chart fixers to make their debut single a hit way back in 1965 but perhaps not for the long fight to get their royalties; they had to wait till '77. During his 60 year career Arden also managed, and fell out with / possibly threatened to kill Gene Vincent, the Animals, Black Sabbath and ELO - the latter both becoming impossibly loud and hugely successful. The Small Faces went on to create Blur and Britpop.