This weekend a recreation of the Fancy Fair (last held in 1852) will be held in the Thames Tunnel, or 'Eighth Wonder of the World' according to Isambard Brunel. Famous for carrying the now defunct East London underground line, the Thames Tunnel has been closed to pedestrians for 145 years.

Take a tour from Rotherhithe to Wapping, admire the grand entrance hall and do Victorian things like watch juggling and buy things in markets.

Book tickets by calling 020 7565 7298

On the last Friday of each month, the V&A is open late for post-work culture "appreciation". Or whatever it is people do at museums. This Friday there's a special programme to celebrate their exhibition Decode: Digital Design Sensations, which has all the tinkering and button-pressing fun of the Science Museum minus the kids.

Find out how hackers work, go on a sound-walk of the V&A and take a peek into the magic mirror "where you can materialize, morph and dematerialize into pure sparkling gold dust". There are also loads of talks, presentations and demonstrations explaining the processes behind some of the exhibits.

Friday 26th February

V&A Museum

Free, but places are limited

It's not often you come across an event where the dress code is " pyjamas or glamourous boudoir attire" but it seems apt for Bedtime Stories at the 40 Winks hotel. Usually used for photoshoots, the boutique hotel (described by German Vogue as the most beautiful small hotel in the world) is the perfect location for enjoying spooky or romantic tales.

The next event is Wilde at Heart, which aims to bring the writing of Oscar Wilde to life whilst you curl up with your blanket and teddy bear.

Friday 26th February

40 Winks

£25 - email reservations@40winks.org or call 020 7790 0259 (ticket price includes drinks and nibbles)

The PeanutButter Soundclash/iPod battle is an event where 8 teams compete for a prize (the clue is in the title). There is no DJ mixing involved, instead all teams are required to bring an iPod or an mp3 player stocked with big beats to play.

Each round of the event involves 2 teams playing 3 songs each - head to head like a boxing match - with the crowd deciding who goes onto the next round.

Yes, TOS will be there this Friday, battling it out for the crown of best ipod player zine in London against LeCool and Run Riot. COme and lend your support.... we'll need it.

Date: FRIDAY 12TH NOVEMBER
Times and price: 9PM till 2AM - £5
Location: DOWNSTAIRS @ LIFE BAR

more here

You know you're old when you love a good board game. But what are you gonna do instead? Talk about the weather and the roadworks on the M25. Bugger that! Resign yourself to the fact you're dying, roll up your sleeves and get so competitive you make your Gran have a funny turn....

Classic’s
Scrabble…It’s like real life but with letters
Uno….Numbers, colours, icons…but what do they all mean?
Monopoly….Imagine playing with Branson, Murdoch, Gates and Hitler
Charades…Film….five words….Yes of course it’s Four Weddings and A Funeral
Trivial Pursuit Kids Edition….because it’s great to win!
Boggle - frenetic word based action.
Cranium - pictionary, charades and playdoh all in one!
Jenga - Boring after one go
Connect Four - you have to connect, four
Kerplunk - best. game. ever
Guess Who - Or may just flip the plastic bits up and down. It's so satisfying

What's your favourite board game and why?

And in the style of we need answers, the best answer will win a board game from one of our houses

Lo-fi rockers Real Estate finished off the British leg of their international tour in style upstairs in the Lexington, one of the finest small music venues in the city at the moment.

Embodying the softer side of indie, some of Real Estate’s songs hark back to the psychedelic rock bands of the 60’s, capturing that sun-drenched feeling from across the Atlantic.
 
Standout tracks, Beach Comber and Fake Blues, are good enough to get the band noticed everywhere they play. The ridiculously catchy guitar riffs that jangle around in your head for the rest of the week will help too. Muffled vocals preside over the songs, but are so dream-like,
they go almost unnoticed at times.

Don’t expect chart-topping hits and newspaper headlines, on this occasion there may be some smoke, but probably no fire... and that's just how we like it.

Here's a special treat for all you TOSers out there.

Later this year we will be producing a festival guide, a bit like last year only much better. Less big festivals and more focused on the boutique affairs. The really awesome festivals that make someone's summer.

What's amazing is that not only are we giving them away, we will deliver them right to your door.

FREE

PLUS, yes there is a PLUS some of those posted mags will have pairs of golden tickets to a lovely festival this summer.

All you gotta do is sign your postal address up HERE. and you are in there. Pass this onto your friends and relatives... old or young but do it quick because this is a very limited oppurtunity.

My condolences to those struggling with the north-eastern half  of the Old Ink Line last Sunday. Beautiful day, and no way to get to the River Regatta. I only know ‘cause I was a waiting for my head to clear before heading home on the Earthen Line when I heard the news and thought of all you folks trying to get outta Highgate. And while I was a waiting, an earth-shattering thought smacked me upside my head as we used to say. A veritable EUREKA! moment.

            Struggling as I was with rampant stag head, I’s thrusting bread products and fruit juices through my IN hole in a desperate attempt to soak up residual ale before heading home, when I’s besieged by a flying rodent, nodding and bobbing around any dropped crumbs, hoping he’d bug me outta my place before the street sweeper happened along to eradicate all evidence of my haphazard munching. And that’s when it struck me. These self-professed birds (for they do not really fly do they? Not proper migratory soaring) are really the prehistoric ancestors of rats! These are not merely rats with wings, they are surely the prehistoric antecedents of our eat-all, plague carrying friends, who have survived by guile, stealth and our wasted, nay wasteful, pity. The sum total of their prehistoric intelligence is their ability to make tourists buy bags of corn off the Pikeys!  Unlike the Squirrel who survives by a fierce intelligence allied to rampant greed or the Buzzard whose keen eye is married to a fierce hunger, the City Pidge is merely a ravenous and haggard scavenger without any semblance of taste. You’ve seen ‘em, struggling in vain with a ciggie butt in the hope that it might be a breadcrumb, and even when they gotta know that it isn’t, they continue wrestling the filters long after any nick o’teen traces have disappeared. Maybe I do them a disservice, perhaps they are merely the junky element of the scum subclass, but still you get the point. This ancient stupidity, this unevolved intelligence and rapacious greed is patently scientific evidence of a prehistoric past. It’s so obvious it passes us all by on a daily basis.

Whilst Mankind relentlessly hunts for proof of an evolutionary past in all manner of rural Idyll, mountainous Hell or deep sea Eden the Missing Link has been hiding right here in the midst of our very own Metropoli. For surely there’s no city worthy of the name spared this blight of prehistoric scavenging? You can see it in those gnarled feet that resemble nothing so much as rhinoceros skin, the metronomic bobbing that indicates some link to primeval rhythms that hum through life unheard by all but those who know them from a time before ‘human noise’. At this point I detect a faintly bemused/amused disbelief, maybe a little smile that indicates this might be time well spent in the passage twixt bed and desk but surely not true, hard ‘scientific’ fact. Bear with me please. Any parent worth the name having spent bedtimes beside sleeping infants voraciously devouring tomes on subjects as diverse as Tank Engines/ Tubbies/ Mister Men and Women/ Behatted Cats will have spent hours in the realm of Prehistoria and the unending variety of Dinosnores. It cannot have passed your eager attention that those in the know are, as yet, undecided on the outward appearance of those stalkers of the Ancient Globe. Were they merely thick skinned? Perchance hairier than the Mammoth? Armour-plated like our Rhino pal? No! One theory catches the eye more than most; were they, maybe be-feathered. Like the ubiquitous City Pidge?

 Ladies and Gents, I rest my case. The proof is in the pudding that I dropped outside Embankment tube and now rests in the cast-iron gut of the Pidge that bobs outside the station of your disembarkation. Or maybe in the defecation that just landed on your over-burdened shoulder! Good Luck??? Why should prehistoric shite dropped on your shoulder from on high be a token of good fortune? Think about it! Our cave-ancestors mighta besmeared themselves with the excrement of the grey bird to ward off lesser evils, such as the mighty Pachycephalosaurus; painted their sunburnt faces with it to frighten the keen eyed Styracosaurus; carried it in bags to scare those Dinos of superior olfactory capabilities, perchance the nippy Velociraptor. Our lives are replete with such unquestioned residues of past lives, Ladies and Gents I leave you with another; The City Pidge.

And before I leave you let me just share a minor success against the unending Tide of Pidge. Like children everywhere I am encumbered of that urge to chase down and tear open the callous, sneering over-agile Rat-kin. Not long ago, sitting in the front of a people carrier in the wee small hours before the Lines had awoken, burning through Westbourne Park to catch a Train, we (the Driver and I) spied a weary and thick-headed Rat-kin unable to walk the line, staggering off and on the zebra crossing, reelin’ and a rockin’ long after closing time. Before I could demand acceleration, the Driver had gunned his French motor with glee. The Prehistoric Brain, trapped in some narco/ alco/nick haze, veered desperately for the pavement, struggled for elevation, some late learned Vtol. TOO LATE! His engorged body slammed into the upper-bodywork! THUD! Fluttering in vain for safety he veered backwards and… UP! The cries of victory that emanated from all passengers were left strangulated in our throats as the prehistoric jumping rat achieved flight and, thanks no doubt to some vestigial residue of rhino-armour or half-held instinct, spluttered away to bob, hobble and sneer at yet another point of congregation for the careless, confused or merely passing through.

My advice is Nets. Big nets with tiny holes. With the agility of African fishermen we might yet make inroads into the population of these prehistoric peckers. Save ourselves the horror of the Dive bombing fraternity, the inquisition of that Beady eye and the frustration of not getting to grips with those who never seem to travel but are always one step ahead of our unseeing thick head.