Godless trip

The weekend before Christmas we always try to get down to London to see the Godless shows, as they are affectionately called. More on that later.

Sunday - early train to London, first class, booked in advance so dead cheap. Walk to hotel, stopping for a sandwich lunch on way. Check in, get lovely warm chocolate cookie from reception (a feature of all Doubletree hotels) and set off for a walk. Towards Covent Garden we saw a group of Pearly kings and Queens - first I've ever seen "in the wild".

Covent Garden looked lovely - all decorated for Christmas, and was obviously very busy.

Managed to do a bit of Christmas shopping and buy some presents, and saw the Jack Daniel's Barrel Tree

There was also a giant lego advent calendar, and loads of street theatre and buskers. My favourite  was not actually a busker, but a homeless person I think who was playing Christmas carols through a traffic cone - and doing it very well and collecting loads of money!

From there we walked to Leicester Square and Picadilly Circus through to Trafalgar Square. Saw the Christmas tree and Menorah in the square, and had a quick look in the National Gallery. We both love the National Gallery - so many beautiful paintings in there.  Then a walk back to the hotel to get ready for the show. We ate at a little Italian place  and then walked to the Bloomsbury Theatre, which is owned by UCL.

Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People is put on by Robin Ince, and originated from an arguement he (as an atheist) had with someone from Christian Voice, who said that atheists couldn't have fun at Christmas. So, determined to prove him wrong, Robin puts on this celebration of science and comedy every year, which always sells out.

We love it. Always slightly anarchic, different people appearing every night depending on when they are free, or whether they just happen to turn up. This year we had Robin, obviously, and a variety of other scienctists and comedians.
 It started with the band, and a laser harp! Very impressive. Laser beams played with white gloved hands.

 Alexei Sayle, turned up unexpectedly, he said he was just passing, and read some of his autobiography:

Richard Herring, in a very ironic Christmas jumper,  talked about his book, Talking Cock. Don't need to explain what it was about, needless to say it was hilarious. So funny that I bought a copy from him at the interval for Stuart for Christmas.

Ben Goldacre, (of Bad Science fame) had a good 20 minute rant about pharmaceutical companies refusing to release all of their clinical trails data. Very interesting, especially when you look at how much money the government spent on Tamiflu during the last flu scare, and yet there is no real published evidence that it works.

There was music from Helen Arney, Grace Petrie and others (can't remember them all), and the mathematician Matt Parker showed us his binary scarf:

as well as solving a rubric cube puzzle in under 3 minutes whilst delivering a stand up routine.

Perhaps the most bizarre act was Baconface, who turned out to be Stuart Lee in a wrestling mask with bacon draped over it.

My favourite bit was from Andrea Sella, Professor of Chemistry at UCL who produced ever increasing sizes of explosions on stage:

You can't beat an explosion for pleasing a roomful of nerds and scientists!

Nine Lessons and Snow

We usually go to Oxford on the Friday before Christmas to see the UCSIA office and officers for a Christmas bash, and this year we decided to combine it with a trip to London. Of course, we had snow to contend with. Good trip to Oxford, bit of Christmas shopping when we got there, including a trip to the market, and a nice meal at the boat house. Up early next morning to find more snow, delayed trains, and a bit of a diversion via Reading to get to London. Got there mid morning, found our hotel near Tottenham Court Road, and laughed at Freddie's Christmas hat. Set off to get to St Paul's an noticed a small flurry o snow as we descended into the tube station. By the time we got out, it was coming down in buckets. St Paul's was pretty, but barely visible

and it just got worse as we crossed Millenium Bridge. And Stuart had no hat on, and the zip had broken on his jacket. 

 Crossing the bridge was cold! It was blowing a gale, horizontally, and there was thunder! Neither end of the bridge was visible from the middle.

Eventually we made it to Tate Modern, and spent several hours in there. The Turbine Hall had the Sunflower Seeds by Ai WeiWei - each one made of ceramic and hand painted.

While we were in there the snow stopped, and we could see from the windows that St Pauls had started to appear again.

We'd actually gone down to see Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People, and I was really worried that it would be cancelled, and had been following the twitter stream about it all afternoon - even tweeting the host and organiser to ask that it not been canceled given how far we'd come. Was relived to get a tweet to say it was going ahead, and we started to make our way back to the hotel, being surprised by 3 Elvises  (Elvi?)coming out of a bar - they didn't look too warm but didn't look as if they cared...

Made it back to the hotel in time for a warm, a champagne cocktail and dinner, and then walked through an eerily quiet, snow covered London to the Bloomsbury Theatre. I've been looking forward to this event all year - Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People was conceived by Robin Ince, first performed  in 2008 and organised by the Rationalist Association and New Humanist Magazine. It's a sort of science themed variety show! More info and videos etc here.

It was a great evening - we saw some great comedians including Richard Herring and Mark Thomas

Musicians including Baba Brinkman, Isy Suttie, Robin Hitchcock

and the amazing Frisky and Mannish who I just have to see again.

Scientists included Simon Singh, Richard Wiseman and Ben Goldacre (of Bad Science fame and who's hair I think had got the better of him).

The only disappointment is that when I bought the tickets, Brian Cox was due to appear, but had to pull out as his BBC filming had overrun. Shame.

It was a great night, and hopefully Robin will do it all again next year.