What to do this weekend, from a lunchtime organ recital to snowdrop walks

A few minutes

Poor nails? Bad breath? Low testosterone? Don’t know how much protein to eat? You may be suffering from acute hypochondria. Brace up with What’s Up Docs? Daily Doses (BBC Sounds): snappy four-minute episodes from Drs Chris and Xand, spin offs from the Van Tulleken twins’ longer podcasts. Beware side-effects. Their maddening good cheer, charming ribbing and common sense are mildly addictive.

An hour

It’s Ramadan. It’s Lent. Even if you observe neither, the carnival is over. It’s the season of self-denial. Why not give up chocolate and, fair swap, take up free organ recitals. Find one at a cathedral, church or town hall near you, usually lunchtime or mid-afternoon.

For upbeat jollity with a cup of tea: Friday and Saturday 1pm, Sunday 3pm, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow. For more reflective and spiritual: Westminster Abbey, London, Sunday 5pm

90 minutes 

Catch artist Cathie Pilkington RA’s show Housekeeper at the Freud Museum in which this brilliantly original sculptor-assembler ponders the relationship between the Freuds and Paula Fichtl, the family’s relatively unknown live-in housekeeper, who came with them from Vienna to London and stayed. Magical, intriguing, arresting.

Tickets £16.50, open all weekend 10.30am to 5pm; exhibition ends 1 March)

An afternoon

So you know a snowdrop when you see one but can you identify all 20 UK varieties (or 2,500 according to one AI check, which may have got its noughts tangled)? February is peak month. Many National Trust properties advertise snowdrop walks: thick carpets of little green and white bell flowers in the still-bare woodland.

Try Goldsborough Hall, North Yorks (£7.50, dogs welcome), Chelsea Physic Garden (£11; closed Saturday, open Sunday 11am-4pm), Colesbourne Park, Cheltenham (£13.50) or Myddelton House Gardens, Enfield, Greater London (free). Or just Google snowdrops near me.

An evening (in)

No dressing up. No leaving the house. For £9.99 per month you can have access to the huge library of full-length performances captured on Royal Ballet & Opera Stream (on the usual platforms). New operas or ballets – La Traviata, Tosca, Woolf Works among them – and behind-the-scenes content, added each month. Watchable, round the clock, on any device or any sofa, the bigger the better.

Illustration by Charlotte Durance