London

It began with the silhouette of a goat perched atop a narrow wall near Kew Bridge in London, with tumbling rocks signifying the animal’s perilous position.

Over the course of the week, more silhouettes began popping up around the capital: two elephants with their trunks reaching towards each other from blocked-out windows on the side of a house in Chelsea; three monkeys swinging across a bridge on Brick Lane; and a wolf howling towards the sky, painted on to the face of a satellite dish on Rye Lane in Peckham.

On Friday, a fifth silhouette, of two pelicans eating fish, appeared on the wall of a Walthamstow fish and chip shop.

The cryptic murals are the work of Banksy. The Bristol-based street artist, whose identity is unknown, confirmed the pieces as genuine on his Instagram but he did not caption any of them – fuelling fierce speculation over their meaning.

Gough, an artist himself who was the subject of Tik Tok rumours that he was Banksy, posited that he could be aiming to release an image a day with a grand reveal sometime around the weekend.

...

Gough, an artist himself who was the subject of Tik Tok rumours that he was Banksy, posited that he could be aiming to release an image a day with a grand reveal sometime around the weekend.

More than a dozen people have been detained after flares were thrown towards the gates of Downing Street at a protest in London following the Southport stabbings.

A few hundred protesters chanting "Rule Britannia", "save our kids" and "stop the boats" attempted to leave the pavement opposite Downing Street in defiance of strict Metropolitan Police conditions on the protest in Whitehall.

Protesters, many of whom were drinking alcohol, began marching towards Parliament Square after 7pm, where some threw flares onto a statue of Winston Churchill.

Protesters were reportedly attempting to break a police line on Whitehall to access Parliament Square, while bottles and cans were thrown at police in riot gear.

Some ran past police towards Trafalgar Square. Officers formed a new line outside the Cabinet Office.

Earlier officers put on riot gear as demonstrators chanting Tommy Robinson’s name surrounded The Cenotaph.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17936539

Genuinely excellent news.

“We are now set to get London’s air to within legal limits by 2025, 184 years earlier than previously projected.”

A hundred and eighty four years.

South by Southwest (SXSW) has become a major occassion on the global creative calendar. For almost 40 years, the festival in Austin, Texas has hosted huge figures from the worlds of tech, science and culture, including Michelle Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, Billie Eilish and Steven Spielberg, and has hosted premieres of some of Hollywood’s biggest films, like Bridesmaids and 21 Jump Street.

Safe to say, SXSW is at the forefront of culture. And now it’s finally making it’s way over to the UK. The organisers recently announced the exciting launch of a London festival and now we can reveal exactly when it will take place. SXSW London will officially be taking place in Shoreditch from June 2 to June 7 2025.

bikerave.london on instagram

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/14360057

In an extract from her new book, A Mudlarking Year: Finding Treasure in Every Season, Lara Maiklem describes the thrill of discovering a 16th century sword on a Bankside beach.

Thursday 2 February 2022

I hear from the Museum of London today about the 'sixteenth-century bladed object' I found last year. My Excalibur moment happened at the beginning of December on a murky Saturday afternoon. I don't usually mudlark on the weekend — the foreshore is often busier and I try to keep weekends for family time — but I was in London meeting friends for lunch that day, and as I made my way back to the station, I saw the tide was low. Actually, I knew the tide was low, which is why I took the longer route along the river to the station. How could I not? I only briefly considered my new brogues, which were entirely unsuitable, before unlatching the metal gate and taking the concrete stairs down onto the foreshore at Bankside. The light was fading, and I knew I didn't have long before I lost it altogether, so I headed straight for my favourite patch. People were already there, and I could see from the footprints that it had been well searched, so I walked a little further along and that's when I saw it.

...

The handle and hilt loomed out at me from a small area of gritty sand that thinly covered the mud into which the blade disappeared. What caught my eye was its regular shape and the two lines of twisted gold wire embedded in the dark brown material of the handle. The blade was only just beneath the surface, and I gently cleared away the sand until I felt the end of it with my fingers. Easing my hand carefully underneath, I lifted it free quite easily, leaving a perfect impression of where it had lain for the best part of 500 years in the dark grey mud. I held the sword aloft. Excalibur of the Thames! And looked around, but everyone had gone and there was nobody to share the moment with. The handle looked to be made of wood with a square pommel carved into the end, finished off by a four-petalled flower or quatrefoil in what I assumed was copper alloy. The blade was broken at about eight inches long and was encrusted in a thick layer of mud, pebbles and rust. When iron rusts, it often engulfs whatever is lying next to it in the mud and ends up looking like a giant caddisfly larva case. If it had been a Victorian padlock or an old horseshoe, I would have been tempted to knock the concretion off with a stone, but this was too precious.

I know an internet search can show the options, but not all charities are created equal. I really just want to know what charities are known for using the donations sensibly, and if there are any that are in dire need of extra funds more than others.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/13588946

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/17147217

England's NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) has issued an urgent call to O Positive and O Negative blood donors to book appointments and donate after last week's cyberattack on pathology provider Synnovis impacted multiple hospitals in London.

Archived version: https://archive.ph/XSjcH

Source