Something For The Weekend

absinthe makes the heart grow fonder...

What do you get when you cross eighteen red, white and rose wine samples, a glass of beer, two Bombay Sapphire cocktails and four shots of Absinthe with an empty stomach?  VERY DRUNK, that's what. And I should know. A few weeks ago, purely for research purposes of course, Dan and I ventured down into the depths of London’s underground to discover the magic of Vinopolis – a literal taste of brilliance built on ancient Roman foundations and spread over two and a half acres beneath the arches of a Victorian railway viaduct. As if that’s not cool enough, it’s filled with booze.

We had to wait 45 minutes for a sampling class when we first got there, so we wandered round for a bit, learning all about how wine is made and carefully reading every lovingly designed exhibit.  Sort of.  Oh, alright, yes, we headed straight to the first wine room and filled our glasses with the good stuff. Well it would have been silly to wait around when, in a room filled with vines and expert smiles, we could taste the delights of pretty much any country in the world, fresh from the rim of a shiny new glass.  Delicious.

Eventually a nice little man gave us a talk about how one should taste wine properly, without spilling half on the floor of a dingy old man’s pub near the office, as a bemused, ageing war veteran informs you of the growing red crust around your mouth. The proper procedure amused Dan, who until that point believed that the glass to mouth to jukebox to dancing on table action was as complex as the whole thing got.  Luckily for me, I’m a bit of a connoisseur because not only did I recently take eight wine tasting classes at the LSE, I only got horrendously drunk to the point of forgetting everything I’d learned in six of them.  Proper wine tasting it seems, is a world of metaphors, where nothing just tastes like grapes.  The taste is quite often replaced by a feeling, such as “walking through a field of clover in June, watching ladies picnic on jam sandwiches.” Bizarre.

A couple of hours later, most of which was spent in the Whiskey Room sampling Scotland’s finest, (one of which was so smoked it tasted like the liquefied remains of a garden bonfire) we headed to the Bombay Sapphire Lounge for a gin binge. The soothing room bathed us in blue and was somewhat reminiscent of a posh New York cocktail bar. Well it definitely didn’t feel like we were sipping our drinks in a hole in the ground beneath a London bridge. 

Some time later and by now, suitably sizzled, we wound up in the Absinthe room, where a girl with a greenish tinge was boiling up the stuff on a spoon with sugar, or something very weird.  I thought I was hallucinating before I’d even tasted any and we’ve all heard the stories about this potent brew.  Oh yes, it's banned in the US and Canada, as well as most of Europe, but widely available to the general public using a token system right here at Vinopolis. Bring it on! 

Four shots and two beer tokens in the brewery later, I do remember sharing a bowl of pasta in an Italian restaurant with Dan and I think I may have had a beer, although it could have been water. Hmmm.  The walls were gold and the lights were red, I think, although they were moving around a bit.  I'm told we got the bus home.... who knows. I do remember, however, that a night at Vinopolis opened my eyes as well as my stomach to the joys of wine tasting, and the experts on hand to share their knowledge left us both thirsty for more. After a big pint of water, of course… - By Becky Wicks

Book Vinopolis, now 2 for 1 in May

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the ride of your life...

So you think you’re a pretty hardened theme park-goer – you’ve cultivated a finely developed palate for ice cream flavours and hot dog sausages (mmm… medium acidity in the offal and a smooth bouquet of bone and hoof) and you’ve mastered the ascent of the twisty rope bridge and rung the little bell so many times the attendant thinks he’s got tinnitus.  In fact, you’re now so practiced at turning a bin-bag into a poncho it’s like watching superman in a phone box at the first sign of rain.

But forget all those sundry attractions: forget the teacups, forsake the petting zoo and don’t think you’re impressing anyone on that fibreglass log flume. The time has come for you to surrender your unmentionables to the vice-like grip of the safety harness and join the big boys on the roller coasters. Here are the top five white-knuckle wonders from around the world as voted for by… well, me:

5. Colossus – Thorpe Park, Surrey (UK)
With a stomach-churning ten inversions Colossus holds the record for the world’s twistiest ride. Four loop-the-loops and six corkscrews tackled at a breathtaking 45 mph are more than enough to guarantee that you’ll stagger off the ride like an inebriated drag-queen wearing six-inch heels. Thorpe Park can be proud to have a record holding ride right here in little old Blighty.

4. Steel Dragon 2000 – Nagashima Spaland, Nagashima (Japan)
If you’re tired of queuing 45 minutes for a 30 second thrill you should probably find a new squeeze. In the meantime, though, you won’t be disappointed by Steel Dragon 2000 – it’s a record-breaking 8113ft long and lasts a deeply satisfying three and a half minutes. As the name suggests, the ride looks like a giant (318 feet high) dragon with three undulating drops along its back, which descend into a snake-like series of coils.  The sheer size of this monster is awesome.

3. Stealth – Thorpe Park, Surrey (UK)
Brand new in 2006 this is a ride to really show your kahunas. The giant vertical hoop rises to a 205ft and falls at such speed that it impacts 4.5Gs on the riders, which is more than the pressure on an astronaut during take-off. If nothing else, the post-flight photos should be good - think bared teeth, rippling cheeks and alluringly peeled back eyelids.

2. Kingda Ka - Six Flags, New Jersey (USA)
They say that size isn’t everything but the guys at Six Flags Great Adventure Park obviously don’t subscribe to that point of view. Kingda Ka is the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world - 456ft at its highest point and a lung-compressing 128mph maximum speed. In New Jersey, it seems, they don’t do anything by halves – God bless the American Dream.

1. Thunderbolt – Kennywood, Pennysylvania (USA)
Ok, I know what you’re thinking: if Kingda Ka is the tallest and the fastest, Steel Dragon is the longest and Colossus is the twistiest what is left to measure? Well Thunderbolt reaches the lofty and much sought after position as number one theme park ride (as chosen by me) with the simple accolade of being officially the scariest rollercoaster in the world.   This 39-year-old ride takes you swooping 95 feet into a natural ravine at 55 mph, which is pretty scary in itself. Add to that the fact  that in-keeping with its vintage this ride has no seat dividers, no head restraints, none of your wussy over-the-shoulder safety harnesses - in fact there is just a traditional lap-bar and some serious willpower between you and the bottom of the ravine.

The Thunderbolt is seriously old-school, spurning these new-fangled speed control and automatic braking systems in favour of good old-fashioned hand-operated brakes meaning that if the guy in the control room chokes on his candyfloss you could be in serious trouble.

Now that’s what I call a white-knuckle ride. - By Sara Sha'ath

Book your theme park tickets here

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TAKE THAT: relighting the fire

My bedroom was covered in them. Even before I’d bought my first bra, the baby pink painted walls were peeling under the weight of a hundred double page spreads, ripped from the centre of Smash Hits. They all bore that cocky Robbie smile, or the baby-faced charm of little Mark. Occasionally, I’d see fit to bless Barlow with a knob of blue-tack behind his podgy face, although Jason and Howard would struggle to get a look-in through the Ronan Keating collection, naturally.

The boy-bands of the nineties are the ones us girls still cherish, long after the singles we skipped to on our walkmans made the jump from worn out cassette tape to iPod.  For many, their music and pin-up poses inspired acts of love and obsession long before any real boys came onto the scene (and into our bedrooms).

We love them for the memories.  The essence of every schoolgirl fantasy was that floppy-haired, leather-clad crooner who sang our every hormone-induced emotion in the key of complete understanding.  And although it’s a well kept secret amongst the twenty-something female population, there’s still nothing quite like a five-piece line up of testosterone, belting a ballad in beautiful harmony to get us all hot and bothered.  Oh, only if they leave the matching white vests at home this time, clearly.

Just as Take That stole our hearts as the unlikely lads from Manchester, who became Britain’s answer to New Kids on the Block, they broke them too. When they split in 1996 the Samaritans had to set up a hotline for distraught fans to vent their anguish, and some of us were so upset we had to take a day off school, (ahem).  Not a very considerate time to cause such inner turmoil, really - most of their teenage fan club were half way through our GCSE’s at the time. From then on, instead of even trying to solve Pythagoras’ theories, we expressed our wounded souls by covering our maths books with the infamous TT emblem, surrounded by smudged and broken biro hearts.

Sorry Buddy Holly, but when Jason, Howard, Gary, Mark and Robbie announced a parting of ways, that was the day the music died.

So how does it feel, ten years later, to relive the whole ordeal? A few months ago, the teens we used to be, pulled away from the pushchairs, let go of the lawsuits and skipped from the supermarkets in glee as we felt our hardened hearts soften slightly.  We stopped still in our twenty-something tracks and felt that familiar yet repressed rush run right through us.  Was it true?  Could it be? Take That are back?  Back for good, perhaps.

Well no, not quite. And admittedly they’ve lost a Robbie along the road, but back they are, and long enough to get us all waving lighters, digging out the t-shirts and dusting off the albums we surrendered to storage the day our lives were shattered.  It’s been ten years, but all is forgiven.  As they re-form for a long-awaited tour, the fabulous four can still relight our fire and burn a hole in our wallets.  But just how much has changed since that fateful day? And ten years down the line, as the band members set up a crèche for their own kids at their impending gigs, how do their fans remember the Take That of old?  We asked them ourselves…

Gemma R has some brilliant memories of her favourite band: “I am in the 'I Found Heaven' video, dancing about in a black and white checked bikini. It was filmed on the Isle of Wight when I was 16 (although it's supposed to look like Spain). My friend Jacey's mum (Jacey’s also in it) was visiting the gym at the hotel they were staying and overheard the manager saying they needed two girls, so she suggested us.  We went the next day to see if they wanted to use us, and they did…

“We spent two days on the beach with them filming the video and I have a letter from Mark, sent after they left, saying he missed us. And a pic of me and Gary hugging on the trampolines!”

Alistair, a man clearly troubled by the bands’ success, remembers our favourite five for a different reason: “I thought their music was really bad and none of them could sing.”

Oh dear - perhaps he was made to sit through one concert broadcast too many when the football was on elsewhere? He goes on:  “Apparently, in rehearsals, one of them had to stop [dancing] because it was too much for him and he needed a week off…  Rather than Take That, maybe it should be Take Them Away and let their mothers look after them.”

Hmmm, could it be that men in general disapprove of our boy-band devotions? One guy who prefers to remain anonymous said: “I am going to the concert next month, but I’m not sure I want to advertise it”, and Adam D from Norfolk said: “The day they split up is right up there with England winning the World Cup and me winning the under 9s running race! That said, my girlfriend is a fan and is now going to Milton Keynes to see them.”  Poor Adam, eh. He can run but he can’t hide.  If she’s anything like the rest of us, he’ll be hearing all about it for months.

Siobhan from Cheshire had a close encounter of the Owen kind on the streets of London not so long ago:  “I had just run across the road to get my friends and I a taxi when he stopped me. I didn't realise who he was. He was very short and had a hat on. Anyway, he asked me for directions to The Havana Bar, so I explained that it was alright but the better place to go at that time of night was Crazy Larry's as it was really cheesy and, quote, “You get to dance to cheesy tunes such as Abba, Take That and Robbie Williams", at which point Mark Owen took his cap off and I realised who it was and what I had said...

“Trying not to be star struck I apologised for my last comment and said “Oh, can I just say hi and I loved Take That more than Robbie!”, at which point he said he’d better go to Havana Bar anyway. I remained cool for all of 10 seconds and then ran across the road, screaming.”

Siobhan’s now removed her foot from her mouth and is off to Milton Keynes on June 24 with four good North West of England girls to catch the concert. Although her friend Beck is unimpressed at the change in venue: “We’ll have to bring a large catapult to launch giant pants at the Barlow…”

Sarah M from London definitely won’t be in pant-launching range from any of the lads this summer.  She preferred to root for ‘the other side’: “I don't quite know why, but Take That fans became East 17 enemies and vice versa. Sad as it is - we used to congregate outside the homes of Tony Mortimer, Brian Harvey and Terry Coldwell on a weekly basis down in sunny Walthamstow and basically slag off all the Take That fans.”

She continues, “I think East 17 appealed more to the 'street type southern' base, whereas Take That seemed to have more of a 'pure and wholesome Northern base'…. I clearly remember a very cold weekday morning, standing outside the Top Of the Pops studio with both East 17 and Take That fans (both were on that day) and having a shouting match with the 'enemies' to see who could chant their bands’ name the loudest!”

Daniela, a photographer soon to be snapping the band at Wembley, remembers her best friend Carla’s obsession throughout their school days:  “She made it into the Spalding Gazette for being the town’s number one Take That fan. There was a picture of her (along with a pointless article) sat on her bed, surrounded by what could have been Take That wallpaper.”

So how does she feel about being at the front of this year’s hottest concert with a camera? “I’m more intrigued to see what all the fuss is about, they were so famous for such a long time and I never ever had a slightest interest in supporting them as a fan. I left that up to my friends… They look like four old men to me now, but even if they were 80 I bet their tickets would still sell out.”

It seems that whether we loved or loathed them, or whether they touched us only through the actions of our friends, Take That and their fellow boy-band charmers played a part in most of our teenage years. And as the stadiums heave with the fans of yesteryear, who never quite forgot the way their hearts throbbed in anticipation of the same close contact all those years ago, we’ll search out our favourite face and disregard the wrinkles. And of course, it’ll only take a minute (girl) to fall in love all over again. - By Becky Wicks

To book Take That tickets for Milton Keynes hit here 

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man versus musical...

Obviously tequila was involved. It was a question of survival. One of the few times I’ve had the  stomach for musical theatre was on a belly full of cheap Mexican intoxicants, whilst trapped in a brainless war of attrition with Saturday Night Fever: The Musical.  This wasn’t so much blood on the dancefloor as an all out massacre on anything with cultural value, a plot and a decent wig.

To say that all men hate musicals is, of course, a sweeping statement. It’s patently untrue for a start. There are many lovers of musical with an Adam’s apple and who apparently possess good taste in other parts of their lives. Some (not all) gay men, my best mate Rich and some odd guy I met at a party who told me that We Will Rock You was better than seeing Queen live. But most vaguely sane males that I know would rather talk about a woman’s menstrual cycle than sit through Mama Mia! for the sixth time.

All of which led me to an interesting conundrum when my oldest friend got a job on Mary Poppins The Musical. He wasn’t singing thank God. Remembering our days in the school choir would have been enough to send me screaming to the nearest asylum if that had been the case, but he was safely incarcerated backstage working on lighting and making sure precocious little actor kids didn’t fall over their own pre-pubescent egos. I had already feigned my acceptance of him saying things like “Oh it’s so good, you’ll love it”, when the dreaded invite landed on my doormat. “Come and see my opening night in Bristol”. This was a test of friendship to match Oates and Captain Scott.

Plan A - get steamingly drunk and quietly slip into some hallucinatory state – was already out of the window due to the fact that I was going with a friend’s elderly mother, although it’s entirely possible that she also needed some gin to see her through the night. Thus I’d happened upon:

Plan B - I’d have to try and enjoy a musical. Sentimental, nonsensical, trivial, vacuous ‘escapism’? Give it to me now, Mary.

And as I sat there in the dark trying to focus on the dizzying array of special effects and fleet-footed brat dancers, not to mention the aesthetically-pleasing Nanny herself (Why did I never have a babysitter who looked like Laura Michelle Kelly?), I realised that my foot was starting to tap. To something that wasn’t a low-fi American indie band. This was a distinctly strange experience and one that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. Even worse was to follow. As the cast trounced out another version of “Chim chiminey chim chiminey chim chim cheroo” – who says musicals aren’t intellectual? – I found myself actually smiling and being filled with an enormous sense of joy and goodwill to small children and chimney sweeps.

Why this sudden swell of emotional connection? Had a musical actually affected me in a manner that didn’t involve chewing my seat in frustration and confusion? To this day I couldn’t tell you exactly what happened to me, other than to say that Mary Poppins is actually a very well produced piece of theatre and I’d been forced to open my mind to accept something that hadn’t been culturally approved by a bunch of jaded, cynical alcoholic hacks. I’d learned a lesson from a musical, which is only slightly less surprising than John Prescott being a cheating love rat. Fear not though reader. I still wouldn’t sit through We Will Rock You if you paid me a trenfillion dollars. - By Dan Pilkington

Book theatre tickets for a massive 50% off here

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make a meal out of a mango...

Most curry restaurants frequented by myself seem to host more cockroaches than customers, but Mango Tree is a world away from the usual maggot masala special. This is posh nosh and best of all, it’s half off…

We headed down to the Mango Tree at Grosvenor Place (near Buckingham Palace) for some right Royal feeding at a whopping 50% off. Stick that in your tikka!  Oh and if you’re thinking the massive discount is just because the food is less than worthy then think again. Everything cooked up in this place is the stuff of stomach-rumbling fantasies - even the warm napkins, served to you with pincers after you’ve sauced your own lap during your scoff sesh smell divine.

It's not just all about the curry... in fact it's mostly Thai. I had Tod Mun Goong for starters, which is breaded shrimp cakes with plum sauce to the rest of us. Don’t know about you but I’m a plum sauce freak - rub the stuff on a scuffed up shoe and I’d probably eat it, but on these shrimp cakes it was even better. And you get four, so make sure you arrive with an empty stomach else you’ll struggle to make it past the starter!

For the main course I ordered Gaeng Kaiw Wang Gai (Green curry with corn fed chicken) and if I’m honest it was a leeeeedle bit too spicy for me. But then, I’m that wimp who usually opts for the chicken korma “because it’s safe”. I took a risk in a posh place and I’m glad. I scoffed the lot and actually got used to the heat.

Another fave was Gaeng Ped Ped Yang - some sort of BBQ duck concoction that came served in a pineapple. A whole pineapple! So you could scrape the fruit away to eat with the duck and stuff, mmmm. Amazing.  We also liked the huge mounds of stir-fry such as Talay Pad Tow See – mixed seafood with cashew nuts and black bean sauce.  Is your mouth watering now too?

Now, let me work this out… before the 50% discount my starter and main (and impeccable service by people dressed like monks, I might add) would have cost around £17, but with half off it was just £8.50. Bargain. And seriously, lunch in the Mango Tree was almost worth being put off the local ‘Tim’s taste of India’ for all eternity.

Treat your mouth for half the price at the Mango Tree

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happy shopper?

No, not the shop you used to nick the penny sweets from as soon as the assistant turned to restocking the baked beans. Trust us, this kind of happy shopping will bring you far more joy than a pillaged cola bottle.

We're talking HAPPY DAYS, a week-long shopping extravaganza, coming to East London from the 4th to the 10th of May. It'll feature stalls from some of the country's leading high street shops and designers, plus exclusive brands - there'll even be DJ's and entertainment along the way. All enclosed in the tincy wincy 50,000 acre space of the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane. So shove a bagel down your neck and get shopping.

Handbags at dawn ladies, literally. MORE INFO HERE

 

BECKY ON: elephant-tastic

Where the hell did the weekend go? I know it was three days long and I spent it in the luxurious peace and quiet of my home-town, being fed to the brim by my mother as though I was a newborn child, but it still ended sooner than Chico's career after his last single.  Still, not to worry, we may have been away putting ou r feet up but some consciencious so-and-so's have been beavering away, filling inboxes with cheery life-enhancers for the weeks ahead. THANK GOD.

One thing that seems to be on everyone's lips is the Sultan's Elephant. Not literally of course, as that would be quite painful, but starting this weekend (4th - 7th of May) is the biggest piece of outdoor theatre ever to descend on London. And it sounds twisted. Apparently, this took three years to plan and over four days it will tell the story of a sultan from far, far away and his mystical, time-travelling, 40 foot high, 42 tonne elephant. WEIRD. You can dip into the story as and when you like... you can even follow the performers into a restaurant for lunch, watch them attend a party, and follow them round as they go sightseeing.

Click here for more info, and try not to miss at least SOME of this spectacle. Sounds too weird for words!