• Bad new year: a man has died after a double shooting in Thornton Heath.
• Honourable new year: arise Sir Patrick Stewart. And there are mentions for the RIver Cafe founders too...
• Strange new year: fancy adopting a homeless snake or spider?

London's looking for somewhere to put a new railway station...

In a rare example of corporate confession, the director of phone company O2 has admitted that the service provided to London has been shoddy in recent months.

     

As you read this the recession might well be over, Londonist takes stock of the damage the 2008-09 recession has done to our city.

              

The Yuletide and New Year period is a traditional time for newspaper folk to kick back and regurgitate some of the most interesting, controversial, or just plain memorable content from the past twelve months into a year-end best-of feature. In that solipsistic spirit, may we present a selection of our most popular posts from 2009:

London has the largest litter of lions in the world. A magnificent pride their history goes back 120,000 years. There are colossal, legendary and living lions. Lions from one of the seven wonders of the world, from the cradle of liberty and there's a lion on the very first coin. Appearing on the greatest historical treasures, living in masterpieces of art lions are roaring on the capital's biggest tourist attractions. London is leonine.

Here's what we've learned whilst you've been up the sales:

London Freecycle, the online forum for Londoners to pass on unwanted or unneeded items to others who can use them, will be no more come the new year. The gargantuan, London-wide, eco-friendly beast is being killed off to be replaced by the many-headed hydra of borough-specific freecycle and freegle groups.

Considering some learning for self improvement amongst those new year's resolutions? If the Medicine Man galleries at Wellcome Collection enthral you this could be right up your street: an 11 week course on the history of the human body in Europe using artefacts from the Collection along the way.

Perfectly in tune with the austerity and chill of January after the lush indigestion of an all consuming Christmas, a site specific theatre company are presenting a new stage adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's classic novel, "Crime and Punishment" at the Oubliette Collective Mayfair Squat - the former offices of the Readers' Digest - between 2-5 January.