Are you feeling the cold yet? You’d have to be harder than a 9H pencil made from Ernest Shackleton’s ashes not to have noticed Jack Frost nipping round your small London enclave lately.

One place he’s been frequently a-knocking recently is the dumpster lid of Free London’s humbliest abode-cum-chiller-cabinet. Not cool at all. Just plain cold, actually! And Freeezzzz London has had just about enough. Like a moth to a light bulb or a child to an Xmas shop window display, Free London is magnetically drawn to bright (and warmer) lights.

With this in mind he’s decided he has shown you folk the ‘free’ way for long enough and reckons it’s high time you went it alone. Cleverly disguising his desire to bask in the warm glow of the sun (remember it?) with a thin veneer of parental-like pride Free London is to take an extended sabatical from this point forward. Leaving you, the able youngsters, to fend for yourself.

The colder months should make it interesting to find rewarding activities that pry you from your Baileys-soaked couch. But then the challenge has always been half the fun. This final festive bumper edition balances a perfect composition of music, light and Christmas puddings.

During a time when sunshine has gone underground, sight and sound are leading us through our snowblindness. They are the bestest of best buddies and willingly offer these 5 galvanic experiences to see, and hear, you through the winter:

1) Winter North Atlantic and Animat, the lo-fi electronica and downtempo suppliers of melodic ambience, classic pop and sliced-up hip-hop, will be usurping the original soundtrack to the movie Belleville Rendez-Vous at Borough’s fabulous Roxy Bar & Screen on Sunday (3rd) from 7.30pm, thus giving this fantastic French animation comedy extra helpings of weirdness.
2) Across the nation C-list celebrities will be putting down their panto scripts and picking up the ‘On’ switch of their local city’s Christmas (is for spending beyond your means and nothing to do with Jesus) lights. From Friday (1st) artist David Batchelor delivers a timely reminder to us all with his Christmas Lights outside the Royal Festival Hall. Low-energy bulbs bringing new light to recycled bottles, disused bins and construction materials.
3) Just a short skate, cycle, jog or saunter along the South Bank at the Tate Modern is this month’s Tate Track – a musical interpretation of Donald Judd’s ‘Stacks’ installation by the self-proclaimed leaders of new-rave (and headliners for next year’s sold-out-within-minutes-dammit!! NME Shockwaves tour), Klaxons. In previous month’s artists have included the Chemical Brothers and Roll Deep and once the tracks finish their month-long tour of duty, they are then available to hear on the wesbite (music geeks see link below)
4) For more music in art visit the V&A’s John Madejski Garden where you can literally see Volume. This PlayStation-sponsored luminous interactive sculpture reacts to human movement and was invented by United Visual Artists (UVA) and 3D from Massive Attack.
5) And until Sunday 17th you can catch Gayle Chong Kwan’s Cockaigne and Green Flash at the Great Eastern Hotel in Liverpool Street. Twelve large photos involving gluttony and the oversaturation of food will be accompanied, throughout the hotel, with sound installations. Most likely in the form of a flushing toilet.

For those of you that live in caves and are scared of the moon’s brightness there is an event you might enjoy that does not involve the direct use of light and sound. Indirectly, it does, however. Unless you don’t want to see or hear it. In which case why would you want to go….

Anyway….remember the last food fight you witnessed. Remember how that jacket potato exploded in satisfying slow-motion over the innocent head of your target? Making a mess is ketchup bottles-full of fun. It’s human nature to want to throw perfectly good goods at one another with no regard for cleaning bills or personal injury. It is therefore adviseable to take up a comfortable vantage point in Covent Garden’s Piazza on Saturday (9th) at roughly 9.57am. Early, it may be, but this is your opportunity to witness 150 contestants dressed in, what is hoped to be, fancy dress hurtling around a relay course attempting to dodge flour balloons and foam jets all in the name of charity. What makes this, the 26th Great Christmas Pudding Race, especially enjoyable is that every one of said contestants is one of the two life forms that humans would most enjoy throwing a potato at – namely, corporate folk and students.

Now he’s shown you the light, and sound, best to leave him be.