London Landmarks - London Dungeon

Value: 1
Queues: 5
Shop: 7
Family-friendly: 4
Enjoyment: 4

Total: 21/50

It was during my last visit to the London Dungeon that I realised what an awful human being I am. The scene was a spooky chamber where we were being played a video about Jack the Ripper's exploits. There was plenty of gory detail and people's nerves were frayed. Suddenly everything went pitch black. “The ripper is amongst us,” snarled the voice-over. “Get out of the room while you still can.” I fled. Never have I run so fast. Pushing aside tourists, I made it out of the room before anyone else, leaving my family to the mercy of the Ripper's knife. It was at that moment that it dawned on me that I would never be that person who saves their loved ones from a burning building. I'd just look after myself and let them smoulder.

Slightly more grown up but just as selfish I returned to find the London Dungeon almost completely altered. Gone was the reliance on animatronic thrills and spills. Instead real-life actors had been drafted in, showing that in reality, the most scary thing in the world is not a horror film or the global war on terror, but a man with fake blood on his face jumping out at you from the shadows. The acting varies quite a lot. Some of those playing dungeon masters and put-upon wenches do so with an air of barely concealed weariness, their eyes screaming, “I'm better than this! I've done Shakespeare! Didn't you see me as drug dealer three in The Bill?!” Others are excellent, remaining in character throughout. We're not traditionally a nation that likes joining in, but you're swept along in many of the stories, as full of hokum as they are.

The problem is that it's all a little cheesy. While you desperately want to believe that you're locked in a desperate struggle for survival, in reality there's no escaping that this is a tourist attraction. Illuminated signs showing you where the fire exits are located are clearly a necessity but they do somewhat ruin the atmosphere when you're supposedly trapped in the bakery that caused the Great Fire of London. Equally it's hard to be terrified on the boat ride to doom when you're told to keep your arms and legs inside at all times, and those with heart problems are escorted to one side.

The historical events that have been picked are also pretty odd. While the Sweeney Todd experience has me squeezing my friend's hand, and a section on body-snatching is pretty scary, the fire as more of an inconvenience than anything and a room featuring Bloody Mary only raises a shrug. Especially as they don't really explain who she was, leaving the tourists confused as to why we're watching a woman in a bodice screaming about burning protestants.

Far more hair-raising is the room where once again I find myself face to face with the Ripper, this time in a recreation of an East End pub. A chirpy young actor playing an East End landlord with a bit too much of an accent explains that we're in the tavern on the anniversary of the Ripper's first murder. Would he strike again? Of course he would. After ten minutes of building us into a frenzy the lights go out and the Ripper, dressed as the Phantom of the Opera for some unknown reason, jumps out from a cupboard. Even though you know it's coming it still makes you jump. I do that silly little gasp scream thing and feel embarrassed that the tourists next to me are looking bored and dreaming of the gift shop.

I did stay and make sure my companion was OK though. Maybe there's hope for me yet.

Milk Maid

Over the last few weeks our new music recommendations have been pretty electronica-heavy. Blame that pesky James Blake for turning our heads and our hearts towards post-dubstep sonic invention. Anyway, this week we're back in less bewitching territory with Milk Maid, a band who grew up listening to Pavement, not Tricky.

Milk Maid are from Manchester, where a lot of great stuff seems to be happening at the moment. And about time. Finally Manc music-makers are no longer having to rely on the legacy of the Hacienda, tales about how they totally once saw Tony Wilson sign a contract with the blood of Ian Curtis, or Noel bloody Gallagher. No siree. MM are striking out on their own. They're the newish project of Martin Cohen, previously from fuzzy grunge types Nine Black Alps. We always rather liked the Alps but, as ever, the NME built them up, destroyed them, threw their bones to the wolves and danced around a bonfire of their torched remains. Not that Martin has let it get him down. He's picked himself up, dusted himself off and started making music that retains the fuzzy driving rhythms of his old band and takes it into a more swirling surf pop direction.

Perhaps that's why the sound is so much fun. Hindsight is 20:20 and, armed with it, Cohen is just able to make music that makes you smile. He's done the whole being in the spotlight thing. He knows that unless you're the Rolling Stones, all that gets you is a couple of backstage blowjobs and a magazine cover to show your grandchildren. So now he makes music that's just him having a jolly good time, sometimes solo, sometimes with his mates. Of course it helps that he has talented musician mates and not ones that work in Nando's. The rest of the band is made up of the dudes from Weird Era, and with their backing he's able to achieve a meatier sound.

Milk Maid - Such Fun by neumagazine

The band have been playing shows alongside Male Bonding, Smith Westerns and Titus Andronicus which probably tells you where you should be slotting their music. Plus there are three songs on their Myspace which hint at a childhood spent listening to, amongst others, Guided By Voices. 'Can't You See' sounds like that guy who initiates a sing song at a beach party, 'Such Fun' sounds like The Vaselines with the female bits taken outs and 'Girl' is Tom Petty's 'American Girl' if it had been done by The Shins. And it's all fun with a capital F.

We're not really sure when this whole dreamy pop thing is going to end, but we hope it's not for a while yet. As much as we love a bit of synth experimentalism, sometimes you just can't bit a nice bit of sun inducing pop. Watch out. When summer comes Milk Maid's wares are going to be in high demand.

London Landmarks - London Eye

Value: 3
Queues: 6
Shop: 2
Family-friendly: 9
Enjoyment: 7

Total: 27/50

My friend is angling her blackberry around. When she points it south (hello Mum!) it tells us that we're in Lambeth. When she points it towards Big Ben it tells us that we're in Westminster. We're suitably impressed and set about tweeting pictures of ourselves suspended in the clouds. Self-promotion never stops. Even at 135 metres in the air.

It's an overcast day but the 'flight' (now sponsored by new partners EDF, as we are reminded fairly frequently) is still impressive. Half an hour passes in the blink of an eye and, aside from a slightly stressful moment during embarkation where I worry that I'll be tipped into the Thames, I rarely notice that we're moving. Everything is still and even though it's drizzly we're amazed at how far we can see. As residents of the fine city both of us come at the experience from a different viewpoint to the tourists we're sharing a pod with. They, understandably, see the whole thing as an exercise in naming and pointing out landmarks, desperately clutching at their guide books. Wasn't that where we were this morning? I wonder if the Queen's at home? I'm much more content just to stand and stare, master of all I survey, or something.

It's interesting to see a side of London that you only ever get to glimpse pulling into City Airport. The whole of the city's history, from St Paul's to the nearly completed Shard jostle for your attention, snaking around a Thames which looks from this height like a muddy vein or artery. The Olympic stadium looks suitably imposing. The glass roof at the back of Charing Cross station (something I've never really paid attention to) fans out majestically and is strangely striking. The Houses of Parliament are monumentally big (perhaps to house all those egos). These are the things that stand out more than anything. Below, the people are literally the size of ants. You feel like a giant. If you press your thumbs against the glass you can make believe that you're squashing them. Pretty cool.

It often feels like Londoners are too insular, too wrapped up in what's going on in their own area. I shocked a University friend the other day who was wondering whether she could go long distance with a guy in Birmingham by admitting that I would struggle to date someone who was right at the end of an opposing tube line. From this height you get a sense of London as a whole and you realise that actually, it's not that big. You also realise that there's a world beyond the city we call home, and that while London's not the centre of the universe, it's still the best place in the world.

Boy George - Ordinary Alien: Review

To say it's been a bad few years for Boy George is something of an understatement. Ever since he was pictured - flaky skinned and bloated - doing community service in New York, the world has watched his downward spiral with the kind of fervour usually reserved for rubbernecking at the twisted wreckages of cars on the motorway.

Arrested for assault, imprisoned, forced to wear an electronic tag and even, it is rumoured, turned down for Celebrity Big Brother (what greater shame), it's safe to say that events in his private life have overshadowed his work as a musician. Sadly, Ordinary Alien, his first album for more than a decade, is unlikely to revive his fortunes.

A strange mixture of reggaeton, trance and house, the album sounds like it's been made by someone who doesn't know the party is over. In Boy George's head it's clearly the late '90s or early '00s, a place where Chicane and remixes of Bob Marley still rule and everyone lives in an ecstasy fuelled Club Reps style bubble. The places he draws inspiration from are a strange mix of old and new - electro, drum and bass, hard house, euphoric dance. None gel together in quite the way he thinks they do. It's music for being on ketamine to and, while there's no denying there are places for such soundscapes, it's largely intolerable to listen to as a piece of work from beginning to end.

Opener Turn To Dust, a cod reggae/dance mash-up full of regurgitated and dreary bits of psychological wisdom ("Hatred must turn to dust", "I will stand up tall" &C.) lacks the emotional punch it's aiming for and just seems rambling. So does Amazing Grace ("It was just another ordinary day/ How did you know your life was going to change?"). They make Ordinary Alien feel like a 12-step self-help programme being put to music. It's rather like having someone who has found God bending your ear for hours about their newly awakened spirituality. You want to grab Boy George and tell him to save it for his diary. The relentless Mr Motivator act is perhaps at its most cloying on Yes We Can, a squelchy electro pop pile of nonsense that samples Barack Obama in an attempt to give itself magnitude and then drags in a choir to ram home the message of hope, peace and love maaan. It is truly dire.

Worse is to come. Perhaps the most distressing moment on the album is a reworking (for want of a better word) of Fleetwood Mac's classic Go Your Own Way - done as a hands aloft rave anthem. It's so bonkers that it should work, but sadly it just comes off as cynical and depressing.

The truth is that fans of Boy George will stick by him no matter what. For them, Ordinary Alien will be received as a work of genius, and that's fair enough. The man has made such an effort to sort himself out that it feels wrong to kick him when he's trying to get back up. Except we know that he's better than this. Fans and casual listeners alike deserve more than this bargain bin offering. Maybe it's time for the flamboyant frontman to admit that his best days of music making are behind him.

London Landmarks - London Aquarium

Value: 3
Queues: 9
Shop: 5
Family-friendly: 9
Enjoyment: 6

Total: 32/50

The overall ambience of the London Aquarium is one of stillness and gloom. This is mainly because of the piped music which sounds like an Ibiza chill-out CD being funnelled through the blow hole of a whale. It's also because of the strange murky light that hangs over everything like a fog. It feels like you yourself are underwater and it makes everything strangely calming. Escaping the madness of the tube, the South Bank, the gawping tourists and their umbrellas, you genuinely do start to feel like you're floating along without a care.

In terms of the company it's a mixed bag. Fish have a largely mournful look as if they know something you don't, and this can be unnerving. They lurch towards you gasping for air, their eyes glazed with regrets like something out of a Wilfred Owen poem (“He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning”). Alternatively they float there slack-jawed and worried like they're suffering from shell shock. Dark things happen at the bottom of the ocean. Things you can't even imagine, and these guys have seen it all.

A lot of them though, are beautiful. Hues that you just don't get on the ground, bright sparkly bellies. There's one fish that's covered in glitter. Another is the kind of electric blue that you could never hope to replicate. The snake pipe fish, a pipe cleaner brought to life, is one of the oddest things you've ever seen and the mantis shrimp – half-shrimp, half-mantis – has got to be the biggest bad ass in the ocean. You also get to press your nose up against the glass and shriek as a shark glides past baring its gums. That never gets old. The day is pretty much made when I get the chance to stroke a starfish, which feels like a spongy emery board. It's not tempered by the fact I have to push a child aside in order to do this.

Be under no illusions though, dear reader, this was not purely a jolly. Admittedly I didn't arrive until lunchtime and I did get the day off work. But I took the whole affair very seriously. So seriously that I jotted down several fish-related facts. When global warming strikes properly, the whole of London is engulfed in 'The Day After Tomorrow' sized tidal waves and your new next door neighbour is a stingray, you're going to thank me.

1. Terrapins flirt with each other by waving their finger nails in each other's faces. The boy terrapin has longer fingernails 'cause he's all manly. They are fans of grapes.


2. Jellyfish are a bit like a one man Wizard of Oz production. They don't have a heart, blood, brain or gills. But they do have four horseshoe shaped gonads so every cloud...


3. The starfish is partial to shellfish and eats them by squeezing them until he crushes them. Then he lobs his stomach out of its body and begins digesting his prey. This can take several hours.


4. Blind cave fish have no eyes because where they live is so dark they've got no need for them. They navigate by using vibrations in the water.


5. A drop of water falling into the Thames will be drunk by 8 people before it reaches the sea.


6. The snowflake moray eel is the creepiest thing I've ever seen.




So, there we go. I learnt a lot, you learnt a lot, I got to handle a starfish and I generally felt pretty relaxed. You can't really ask for much more.

Thanks to Sophie Marchant for the photos!

The Vaselines @ XOYO

About five minutes into their set it becomes abundantly clear that Kurt Cobain's favourite band don't just use Vaseline for chapped lips. Despite the fact they're dressed like your parent's friends (Francis – all mumsy in floaty material, Eugene – jeans, waistcoat and smart shoes) middle age has not blunted their sex drives.

Throughout the night, the audience (a mixture of the usual hipsters and some paunchy older blokes who probably used 'Slushy' to win the hearts of their first wives) are treated to the kind of salty tales that you'd usually hear from a grizzled old sailor. Threesomes, STDs, how little Eugene has grown in size thanks to “five minutes of tugging a day”. It's like one of those Glamour sex quizzes brought to life. By the time Francis tells us she wanted their latest video to feature kinky nurses giving each other mouth to mouth, we're all pretty hot under the collar. Especially as the venue is rammed and we're all jammed up and sweaty. Sacré bleu.

Flanked by members of Belle and Sebastian, the Vaselines' live sound is meatier and less lo-fi than you'd expect. At one point during 'The Devil Inside Me' feedback is deployed deliberately to make what almost sounds like stoner rock. There are even some axe-grinding guitar solos – not exactly what you'd expect from a band more known for wearing grandma jumpers than starting moshpits.

Largely though the songs are cutesy and feelgood. Every single audience member is smiling contagiously and classics like 'Molly's Lips', 'Son of A Gun' and 'Jesus Doesn't Want Me For A Sunbeam' spread joy like a forest fire. The most twee moment of the night comes when the band admit that they've run out of CDs and an audience member calls out to ask if there are any vinyl left. Vaselines fans kick it old school.

New songs from the wryly named 'Sex With An X' are less well received than the old favourites but are still earworms. A lot of them are so simple and childlike that they almost sound like nursery rhymes and even those unacquainted begin singing. 'My God's Bigger Than Your God' and 'I Hate The '80s' stay just the right side of pastiche and show the band's sense of humour has only grown stronger after years in the indie wilderness. The mood is almost relentlessly fun. It's probably the most fun I've ever had at a gig. And, having watched Rod Stewart perform 'Hot Legs' in front of a twenty-foot inflatable pair of fish netted pins, that's no mean feat.

With just enough songs for an encore, the group bound back on stage after just a minute's break to tear through the blush-worthy 'You Think You're A Man' and bounce-inducing 'Dum Dum'. Everyone's garages have been well and truly rocked, but there's still time for the band to leave us with a lasting image to take home. A souvenir if you will. “That moment backstage was just enough time for me and Eugene to have sex,” grins Francis. “Twice,” says Eugene. See, kids? Premature ejaculation can be fun.

This man wants to buy you a burrito...

When Richard Fitzgerald won a year's supply of free burritos he decided to be generous (and a little bit amorous to boot) and use his Mexican stash to entice the laydeez. For 52 weeks he would take a different girl on a burrito date and then blog about his experience in the hope of finding true love (or maybe just someone hungry) I was date number 41. So how did our evening go? Here's my side....

18:55 Richard was standing outside and we shared a slightly uncomfortable hug and kiss on the cheek. Greeting people on a date is always a social minefield and we ended up being its first landmine victims. He was shorter than I'd pictured but he was cute and had a lovely smile. His Irish accent was also pretty dreamy.

18:57 He led me inside with a confidence that suggested Chilango had become a second home to him, and we ordered. He went for a pork burrito with all the trimmings except guacamole because he wanted to see what it would taste like. He later declared it to be lacking something. I went for a chicken burrito with guac, black beans, peppers, cheese, mild salsa and sour cream, washed down with an ice cold margarita. Richard had a beer. There were no seats inside and so we retired to the pavement which felt a bit conspicuous. And bloody cold.



19:02 One of his friends walked past and came over to say hello which was pretty awkward. I prayed that no one from work would stroll past. My face went a little red as I thought about it.

19:06 The usual questions followed one after another. University, life, jobs, families, where we were living. I've never been very good at this kind of stuff and while it wasn't uncomfortable, things didn't flow too well. I found myself babbling a bit about Spoonfed and how “it's so hard for bands to get their big break”. Halfway through I realised I sounded like a douche but I couldn't shut myself up.

19:09 Richard seemed distracted and admitted that he was under pressure at work. With me feeling anxious and him feeling knackered we weren't really clicking. The good news was that I didn't spill sour cream all over myself. In fact I managed to eat the burrito extremely neatly which was quite a feat. He seemed impressed and I was glad. Trying to be erudite with a face full of salsa is pretty hard.

19:25 Richard is originally from Ireland and works in a marketing company doing various social media things. He did German and economics at Uni and was really into art. He'd recently had an oil painting commissioned and he was trying to learn more about art history by wandering around galleries and listening to podcasts. He's a sporty guy who enjoys squash and has run marathons in the past. This made me feel a little uneasy. Eating the burrito had been workout enough for me. He claimed that he was not sick of burritos and that he could remember every date. He reeled off some and it was my turn to be impressed. He presented me with this neat t-shirt which lightened the mood.



19:35 Things picked up even more when we headed to the Camden Head for a drink. Formalities out of the way we were able to talk about more interesting things. We discussed dancing and films we'd seen. We both agreed that we wished we had more time to do things – learn languages, read the piles of books we'd accumulated, take up tango. He told me about his obsession with new media and showed me how to 'check in' on foursquare. We both made each other laugh and I, for one, felt more relaxed. He's clearly a guy who lives a lot of his life online and he bemoaned the fact that someone has 'checked in' to Chilangos more than him.

20:06 It started to drizzle. Once again we were outside, pushed from the pub by the assembled hoardes. I considered the possibility that we may well suffer frostbite and drunk quickly so that I could warm myself with alcohol.

20:25 Richard seemed tired and though the conversation had picked up, we hadn't planned anything else to do and, feeling cold, it felt natural that the date was beginning to wind down. I felt we had been a little rushed and it would have been nice to have a little more focus. Perhaps if we'd taken in a show or something there would have been more of a focal point to the night.

20:34 Another slightly awkward peck on the cheek and we went our separate ways – him on his bike to Shoreditch, me on the tube to London Bridge and eventually home.

20:39 On the tube I mused that it had been a very pleasant evening but had lacked spice. A bit like Richard's guacamole-bereft burrito, there was something missing and that something was the spark. Despite this Richard was a sweet and interesting guy and I would definitely meet him again without the pressure of a date. While I don't feel we're going to be eating a wedding buffet of burritos any time soon, it was nice to meet someone new. This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Read Richard's thoughts on our date (and request your own) at: www.52burritodates.com