Of course, just being in London was entertainment enough, but as a bonus there were all kinds of other entertaining activities I was able to observe and participate in while I was there. More photos concerning sporting events, shopping, arts, music, and more, can be found in this Flickr set.

The free newspapers on the tube, plus of course the regular London papers such as the Times and the Telegraph, were also forms of entertainment that I took advantage of. Although I rather regret not buying the "real" papers more often—when I did I really enjoyed them. But the freebies were probably all I had time to read, and any really important headlines you could see in signs like these, so I wasn't tempted too often to support Fleet Street directly.

One of our first weekends in the city coincided with the Mayor's Thames Festival (and also with beautiful weather), which was a weekend-long show along the banks of the river. You can read my blog posts about the event here: Day One • Day Two. And here are a few pictures of what we saw during the day. The performance at the Scoop at More London was a 1000-voice choir from South Africa—they were fantastic. On the right, you can see my colleague and his wife perusing books at a sale underneath Southwark Bridge. I bought a collection of minor Tolkien writings there, which I thought was a perfect London souvenir and I don't think I found anything better (except perhaps my coat) to bring home. The little girls in pink are part of the parade which ended the Festival. We watched it from Blackfriar's Bridge.

More festivals and other happenings, of course, were going on almost constantly in the city. On the left below is some sort of Polish event (note the flags) that was happening in Trafalgar Square when we were passing on our way to the river one evening in November. And the next month I was able to hear some caroling in the same square, complete with a lovely Christmas tree.

I got to experience more formal entertainment early and late in my stay, too. FIE, our host organization, treated us to We Will Rock You our first weekend. What a hoot! It was delightful. Here's my blog post about it. Much later in my stay, I saw my only other London play (sad to say) which was an old favorite (in that the material was from a movie I've seen a few times): Spamalot. And here's the blog post about seeing it in real life.

The small screen actually provided me with many more hours of entertainment, especially as the days grew shorter. I loved getting to watch the real BBC (although I enjoy BBC America more now than I did before my trip), especially BBC-4 and its wonderful documentaries. (Unfortunately, from a U.S. computer you can't even see their schedule on the website.) They had a particularly wide array of great pieces about World War I in the run-up to Remembrance Day, which in 2008 was the 90th anniversary of the end of this conflict. I also enjoyed tuning in to BBC Parliament occasionally, where I just happened upon a re-broadcast of the Queen giving her annual address to the Houses. I can tell you where the random hearing below was taking place: the House of Commons (note the green upholstery!). And sports was also an occasional diversion on the tube, although not the soccer and cricket I had been hoping to see, but quirky stuff like the snooker you see here, and darts.

One of my favorite type of programs, though, was quiz shows. They are so entertaining! And, especially the one shown here, Only Connect, devilishly difficult. (I also enjoyed Stephen Fry's QI, but neglected to take any photos of that cross between standup comedy and clever quizzes.) On the top left, you can see a team working on the first game that's played on every show, where you have to guess the next item in a series. Can you connect the items shown here? On the right is the final game of each show, a fiendishly difficult exercise where they try to guess what word/s (without their vowels, and with the spacing mixed up) are at the bottom of the screen. Amazingly hard to do!

The lower two pictures are of solved and unsolved 4x4 grids, which make up the middle section of the show. I was never able to get any of these! Even seeing the solution, I can only "connect" one of the rows (witch-doctor, witch-hazel, witch-hunt, witch-craft). Can you do better? I really wish BBC America would broadcast this show, even just occasionally.

The little screen entertained me a lot, but the big screen not at all. I wasn't even tempted by the movie advertised on the left here. I rather decided before even leaving for London that I wouldn't use up time (and not inconsiderable funds) to watch a movie that I could easily see at home. However, I did take advantage of some (but not enough) of the live music events on offer constantly around the city. In addition to some free lunch concerts and evensongs at various churches that were just wonderful, we paid to see a Mozart program at St. Martin-in-the-Fields in October. What a perfect London entertainment! And the music was amazing. Henry snapped this (illegal) photo at the end, but I wish it had a soundtrack!

Lots of people consider shopping entertainment, and though I don't, usually, in London it probably qualifies. Especially at entertaining places such as the Camden Lock Market, shown on the left here. Or at Harrod's, a truly astounding establishment, where this teddy-bear-covered sofa wasn't even the most outlandish of the things for sale. Overall, a major impression I had of London was that you could find more things for sale there than you knew even existed. It was somewhat reassuring to realize that capitalism run amok isn't just a charcteristic of the U.S.

Sports would have been a big part of my London experience, even if I hadn't been teaching a course on the subject. I was so excited about getting to see real soccer games but the closest I got to seeing Chelsea in action was on tv in bars a few times, a Christmas-shopping visit to their gift shop, and, of course, a few walks by the stadium. Plus I was able to hear cheering from it when I was at home during games being played there. They had a new coach that Cafe Brazil was excited about (although he was gone soon after I was) and Joan and I enjoyed getting to see the stadium.

The poster on the right is one on display in the London Transport Museum—football has always been big business in London and affects all aspects of life there.

I only got to see two games live. First, the kids and I took in a Championship (the odd name for the division just below the top-flight Premier League) game in September between visiting Blackpool and Queens Park Rangers, whose ground was only a couple of tube stops away— you can read more about it, and see photos of the stadium, in these blog posts. It was very exciting. Then I went with a bunch of students to a Premier League game on Halloween night. We saw Fulham, whose home ground isn't far from my flat, beat Wigan 2-0. Read more about it here. (I also saw a Rugby Union match, between London and Bath, but unfortunately didn't take any pictures there. Here is the blog post that describes the experience, though.)

Wish we could have seen more live soccer, and I'm particularly sorry Henry didn't get to a game. We were planning to make another QPR game, but just ran out of time.

I also wish we could have seen a cricket match (or part of one!) but as it's a summer sport like its baseball cousin, the season was over by the time we got settled in. However, the students and I had a wonderful tour of Lord's Cricket Ground, the spiritual home of the sport, and enjoyed that tremendously. We had a private guide who was very understanding of our ignorance of the game and ended up making fans of most of us. As a special treat for several of the kids who are communications majors, and perhaps aspire to careers in broadcasting, we got to go into the futuristic-looking press box; photos of it and from it are below. Read more in my blog post about the visit.

Some entertainment options that we didn't sample were these fun rides. We kept debating about whether to fork over the nearly $40 for a ride on the Eye and ended up deciding that our views from the top of St. Paul's were just as good as what we'd get from there. If we could have bought tickets for a time and then been guaranteed good weather (like in the picture below) maybe we'd have done it. The other ferris wheel you see here looks almost as nifty but isn't quite as big. It's at Greenwich Pier, and we didn't ride that one, either. But we enjoyed looking at them both!

Regarding the London Eye, and its new place as a London symbol, Anna Quindlen remarks in Imagined London:

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