A few parish notices in this newsletter: a thanks, some quirky date ideas, a week of storming events happening to celebrate The Book Club’s 2nd birthday and competition to reward those who get to the bottom. We’re back to normalish after harrassing you for the recent Smarta 100 Awards. We just wanted to thank you so so much for the support, we had 3461 incredibly kind and awesome voters, and finished a narrow third behind some really big boys. We did have a little win in the ‘Resources’ category though – which was very nice indeed. But huge thanks again to all who voted and congrats to those who won the fantastic prizes offered up by some of our favourite GLPs.

Onto the quirky dates. Some mates of ours not so long ago started DoingSomething.co.uk – a dating site for people who don’t do dating sites. They guest wrote a post, and they did it so well we’ve got them back to do another one. We’ll pass over to them shortly, but the good news is they have a special freebie for GLPers up their sleeves, so read on. And if you’re not down with dating, we’ve made sure they’re great little places for anyone to go to. Over to them:

What do you mean you haven’t heard of DoingSomething? Have you been hiding under a rock? DoingSomething is London’s latest way to date – it’s taking the capital by storm. The idea is simple, dating’s more fun when you’re DoingSomething. So whatever you fancy doing – playing ping pong, going for a walk, looking at art, just meet up and do that. Even if you don’t fall head over heels in love, who cares! You get to do something you want with someone new.

And all Great Little Place readers get One Free Month (worth £19) on the site. But not forever! Sign up on the site BEFORE midnight Friday 14th October and we’ll give you a free month when you subscribe. Use the code ‘glp’ and a free month will be added to your subscription plan.Click here to get going.

Here’s the Top Five DoingSomething London dates. Should give you both something to talk about:

1. Get high*

No, no, no, not in a Cheech and Chong way, we couldn’t possibly advocate that. DoingSomething high up in London gives you tons to chat about. Our favourites include Altitude Bar, tallest riverside building on the Thames, just next to the Tate Britain. Combine a bit of high culture, with a bit of high, errr….drinking. Oxo Tower is always good too. Especially for the Lord Mayor’s fireworks come early November, but it gets busy so keep it under your hat. Tate Modern members’ bar too. But need to bag yourself a member.

And our quirky favourite has to be Frank’s Campari Bar. Sip a cocktail at the top of a multi story car park in Peckham. Last chance to drink at this Pop up Peckham bar, Thursday and Friday this week. You have been warned.

*Check with your date to see if they have vertigo.

2. Something clever on a Sunday.

The School of Life’s Sunday Sermon at the Conway Hall is always worth looking out for. Great guest speakers, imaginative event themed food and at the last one we went to, a 200 strong, 11am, Eye of the Tiger singalong.

Another worthy mention goes to Speaker’s Corner at the top of Park Lane. Every Sunday, a range of different speakers get up on their soap boxes (literally) and issue forth their points of view. Entertaining and peculiarly English.

After feeding your mind, head north up Edgware road and feed your belly. Lebanon via London is here, indulge your love of Hummus, Kebab and Baklava. Maroush great for all of the above.

3. Be a tourist in your own city

It’s too easy to get caught in London’s commute to work trap. Stops you looking at this wonderful city with fresh eyes. Being a tourist in your own city re-opens them to majesty of London. Our favourites:

Open top bus tour. Highly recommended, always amazes us how many Londoners haven’t done one. The Original Tour is excellent. But for the authentic tourist experience you can’t beat a red top. Book through London Tool Kit. The quirkiest tourist tour in your own city undoubtedly goes to London Duck Tours. Cruise around London’s roads in a bright yellow adapted WW11 landing craft. Then down a causeway and into Thames. Fantastically odd. Boris Bikes are also a great addition to any date in town. Cheap, cheerful and you see so much of the city by bike. Built for comfort, not speed – we love ‘em.

4. Cockroach Tour of the Science Museum.

Forgive us for talking about this again, but it really is one of the best DoingSomething dates out there. Saturdays and Sunday mornings, beetle around the Science Museum for 45 minutes dressed as a roach. Shell as a rucksack, foam cockroach head complete with antennae. We could try and explain it more, but whenever we do it creates more questions than answers. Unbelievably, it’s free! Finishes December this year.

Then post tour, amble down to Casa Brindisa (sister restaurant of Borough’s famous Brindisa) for a hot chocolate and a much needed de brief on what just happened.

5. Active Drinking

DoingSomething’s all about getting rid of awkwardness when meeting someone new. Active drinking is perfect for this. Choose an activity, add booze. Here are our favourites:

Competitive? Good with their hands? Gracious loser? Café Kick. Exmouth Market. French babyfoot tables are cheek by jowl in this busy Continental Bar/Café. Famous cocktails, baby foot and tapas. A great little place for a date.

Ping Pong at The Book Club in Shoreditch. You can’t fail with ping pong in a bar. Aesthetically, Ping Pong is one of the best games in the world. Nearly everyone can play it, and even if you’re a bit shit, it’s still fun. Also, you can just tell a lot about someone by the way they play a game.

That’s all from DoingSomething, but remember to snap up your freebie with the code ‘glp’, and if nothing here tickles your fancy, you could always let DoingSomething’s patented ‘Wheel of Date’ decide your fate.

Now, before we go, and whilst we’re on the subject of The Book Club, it’s heading towards its second birthday, and they want GLPers to help celebrate. They’ve got some corking events going on, so we thought we’d share them with you. And they’ve got a brilliant competition for you all. See down the bottom of this post for details.

THE BOOK CLUB BIRTHWEEK CELEBRATIONS:

There’s an amazing programme of events on at The Book Club to celebrate their 2nd birthday. Entry’s £2 all week (see what they did there). We like ‘em all, so we’re telling you about all of them. Guaranteed £2 entry for those who sign up to mailing list on the door. Otherwise £5 will be required.

SUPER/COLLIDER SCIENCE FAIR™: VOLCANOES!

Monday 17th October, Time: 7pm – 11pm, Door: £2

Guests: Dr. Carina Fearnley, Nelly Ben Hayoun, Bright Star Catalogue

Join us for an extra messy Science Fair™ dedicated to geology’s most explosive formations; volcanoes! We’ll be joined by volcanologist Dr. Carina Fearnley to hear about her work keeping people safe from eruptions. Then we’ll be creating our own volcanoes on the night with help from designer Nelly Ben Hayoun. Live lava-inspired sounds will come courtesy of Bright Star Catalogue and there’ll be prizes for the best volcanic eruption!

SCRATCH + SNIFF: A SCENTED JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD

Tuesday 18th October (Basement), Time: 7.30pm – 10pm (2 sessions: 7.30pm – 8.30pm & 9pm – 10pm), Door: £2 per session

For this Scratch+Sniff special for The Book Club’s birthday, join Odette Toilette for a very fragrant experience. With guest ‘nose’, Columbia Road’s own Angela Flanders, we’ll be discovering East London’s hidden perfumery heritage before jetting off to exotic locations from the comfort of our seats, sampling Angela’s perfumes to take us there. Prepare to have your nostrils tickled, and to leave smelling delicious.

KING PONG SLAM JAM HOSTED BY WORLD SERIES OF PONG

Tuesday 18th October (Ground Floor), Time: 7pm, Door: £2 – please register via email info@wsop.com

Fancy yourself a dab hand with a bat and ball? Then get yourselves down to The Book Club’s birthday special King Pong battle of the bats! Grab a partner and get registered in this doubles-only-comp to win a whole heap of prizes from Puma sportswear, to a big juicy bar tab and of course the honour of being crowned King Pong champion 2011! This is a tournament for those who don’t take their sports to seriously, drinking is very much encouraged and random urine tests will not apply.

LIFE DRAWING EXTRAVAGANZA – THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS

Wednesday 19th October, Time: 6.30pm – 11pm, Door: £2

The Book Club’s week-long birthday celebrations will see the return of the Life Drawing Extravaganza. This year our host Morris invites you to challenge your objectionable vices- enter The Book Club’s basement and confront humanity’s inclination to sin. Take a ‘Dante’ style journey through the ‘Inferno’ and witness depictions of the human body which represent all of the capital sins. Morris’s concept of Hell will present wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy and gluttony. Witness, draw, drink and discuss. Be inspired.

COME GET FELT UP

Thursday 20th October, Time: 8pm – 2am, Door: £2

Acts: DJ Tom Whalley, Tiger&Bear DJs and live music from a mighty band
Get crafty as Come Get Felt Up celebrates The Book Club’s birthday by whisking you to the magical world of children’s books. We’ll be having a pint with Aslan as we ask people to create their ultimate children’s book character. Expect Mad Hatters to be duelling with the Famous Five and Rupert the Bear in our competition to win beautifully naff prizes such as a Now 24 album or a Llamas of Peru jigsaw. Described by one dubiously unnamed source as “Blue Peter meets Art Attack while Anne Robinson watches on”. All materials supplied but feel free to bring a bag of loo rolls, cartons or any recyclable goods and get a free badge!

WE CAN TALK PART 1

Friday 21st October, Time: 8pm – 2am, Door: £2

DJs: Capita!, KevKev, Jay Karim (Caze Nove), Hamish Pritchard (nauti.cool by nature)
Celebrate The Book Club way with a stellar line up of resident DJs who will keep you dancing all night long. The venue will be decked out birthday party stylee with all the decorations, bunting, balloons and birthday cake you could ever want!

WE CAN TALK PART 2

Saturday 22nd October, Time: 8pm – 2am, Door: £2

DJs: Psychemagik, Tim (Filthy Dukes). Pop those party poppers, throw those streamers because tonight’s the big one for this week of birthday fun at The Book Club! Psychemagik, purveyors of all things tripped out and electronic will be treating us to a special birthday set and resident Filthy Duke will be keeping the basement jumping into the early hours. Don’t miss this ultimate birthday party!

 

THE BOOK CLUB BLUES BIRTHDAY SPECIAL

Sunday 23rd October, Time: 6:45pm – 11:00pm  (lesson from 7pm – 8pm), Door: £2

Acts: Dave ‘Mad Dog’ Barnes plus a great line up of blues DJs.

It’s all about blues music for the finale of The Book Club’s special birthday week. Let us take you on a journey of blues dancing, one of London’s great passions. Plus for the first time at The Book Club, we welcome a blues-tastic live set from Dave ‘Mad Dog’ Barnes. Take a blues dance lesson or just enjoy a drink and the great music in the basement.

Competition:

It’s a cracker: A week’s guest list +1, a £100 bar tab and meal for 4 all to be taken during the birthday week.

To win, let us know what book you’d want to do a book club about, and where you’d want to do it. Best answer (funniest) wins. Simples. E-mail team@greatlittleplace.com with your answer by midnight on Sunday 2nd October. Bon chance!

You must be over 18 years old to enter this competition. The bar tab must be used during The Book Club’s Birthweek Celebrations, between 17^th-23rd October. The Book Club reserve the right to refuse entry if winner and / or guests are not fit to enter the venue through drunkenness, rudeness, aggressiveness or any other antisocial behaviour.

Right, on with the newsletter. A friend of GLP’s has recently started something very up our strasse. It’s called ‘DoingSomething‘ – a dating site with a difference. The difference is that interesting people do interesting things, and this site is full of them (interesting people) – and things to do. We wanted to help give them a little leg up, and also get some more great ideas for things to do for you lot. So we present to you our latest newsletter, authored by our friends over at DoingSomething. And just to make sure they’re not peddling any old rubbish, we’ve made sure that everything is up to scratch on the GLPishness front – there are some corkers in here. Off we go.

————

Weʼve been invited by our good friends to guest write the GLP newsletter. ʻTis an honour.

The whole idea of DoingSomething was to take dating away from the world of meeting someone in a chain pub with sticky floors and drinking lukewarm Pinot Grigio. And shift it towards doing stuff. Going to a great little place. Having fun. It doesnʼt matter whether you fall in love, make babies, and go and live on a houseboat. Or you donʼt.

You always get to do something.

Quite a few folk from greatlittleplace have already signed up. And weʼre always happy to have more. Friends of GLP get 3 months free. Use the code: great

Now then, enough of that – on with the show. We’ve grouped by theme as our compass was broken, but that’ll make it all the more of an adventure for you. First off:

Tea and Cake

The received wisdom is that boozing takes the pressure off meeting someone new. Thereʼs some truth in that. Itʼs also true that boozing can turn you into a complete spanner and so is best done with the people who already love you for the spanner that you are.

Tea holds no such pitfalls. And the simple act of sharing a pot with someone – taking it in turns to pour, emotionally charged discussion about milk before or after – is a mighty fine way to get to know someone. Hereʼs our top three tea and cakers.

1. The Rose Bakery, Dover Street Market, 17-18 Dover St, W1S 4LT

The British café that’s a huge success in Paris has come home to London. Negotiate your way to the top floor of the high end fashion emporium that is Dover Street Market whilst chuckling at the real life Derek Zoolanders trying on £500 tank tops. Resist the temptation to shout ‘Derelicte’. OK, don’t. The Rose Bakery carrot cake is justifiably famous – don’t miss.

2. Soho’s Secret Tea Room. Upstairs at the Coach and Horses, 29 Greek St, London W1D 5DH, Mon-Sun 3-6pm.

A gramophone playing original 78s records crackles away in the background. Vintage clad waiting staff serving a choice of over 16 expertly selected leaf teas. Delicious home made, cakes, scones and jams. What’s not to like? Remember, it’s a secret. Don’t tell anyone..

3. Hidden Tea Room. Address given on booking.

Yet more tea based subterfuge, this time courtesy of the Hidden Tea Room, no less. And a previous recommendation from greatlittleplace, no less. “Life is for Living, Cakes are for Eating” pronounces the HTR, and frankly, who are we to argue? Hosted by the marvellous Lady Gray, London’s first private restaurant to offer Afternoon Tea is truly scrumptious. At time of going press they weren’t taking bookings but they’ll pop up again. And when they do we advise you to book fast, as places sell very quickly. You could do a lot worse than get on their mailing list.

Animals

You can’t beat a bit of animal action on a date. That sounded wrong.

What we mean to say is that hanging out with animals is a fun way to spend time with someone you don’t know so well. You can marvel at all the thing they do which are just like humans. Until they start having sex with each other, which can be a tad awkward on a first date. Of course, by a third date it might give you some new ideas. We joke, rather inappropriately, of course.

1. London Zoo Lates, Regent’s Park, Camden.

ZSL, that’s London Zoo to you and I, run the very hip sounding Zoo Lates on Friday nights in June. Grab a drink from the so-called Penguin Beach Bar. Head to the Silent Disco. And look at zoo animals whilst a tiny bit squiffy. What could be finer? We know June seems like a long way away now, but book ahead people. This one sells out fast.

2. Dress up as a Cockroach. Science Museum Cockroach Tour. Every Sat and Sun ’til December 2011. Exhibition Road, South Kensington, SW7 2DD

The tour where you’re part of the attraction. You dress up as a Cockroach – they provide the outfits – and wander around the Science Museum for 45 minutes checking stuff out and exploring/harassing people with your foam antennae. If there’s a wackier date idea, DoingSomething’s yet to hear of it. Costumes are great. And it’s free! The most fun you can have in London dressing up as an insect.

Fact.

The River

Judging by the amount of GLP aficionados who cited ‘something by the river’ as date suggestion, Old Father Thames is an ever popular choice. In a world of Twitter, Oyster Cards and Self Service checkouts, the river acts to keeps the city in check. A gentle reminder that we live in a natural world. “Oh, that’s such a beautiful sunset, quick get a picture with my iphone and I’ll get it up on Facebook”. Down by the river it’s always worth taking a stroll. And once you’re done, there’s a myriad of somethings to do; here are our favourites:

1. The Market Porter. Borough. 9 Stoney Street, SE1 9AA.

The Market Porter really is a lovely little boozer near the river. Plucked straight out of Dickensian London and not updated much since. Great selection of real ales, and a pub that actual contains local people. A rarity in London. Always busy, so don’t be expecting as pew, busiest on a Friday though – market day. It is of course smack bang next to the market – the clue’s in the name, so you’ve got the delights of Borough to peruse should you wish. One of our favourite juicers in Londinium.

2. Tate to Tate boat.

We’re all about the Tate to Tate boat over at DoingSomething towers. They say the journey is the destination, so if you’re at all artistically inclined, this Damien Hirst designed catamaran has got to be worth a look in. Leaves every 40 minutes from the Tate Modern or Tate Britain and stops besides the London Eye en route. Tickets can be got at either Tate gallery, online, or on the boat. Check the timetable first. Both Tates have excellent bars too, as well as art. We’re very partial to the seldom found Little Creatures Pale Ale which graces the Tate Britain bar though. And their by the glass wine list is fantastiche.

3. London Duck Tours.

If you’ve been anywhere near Parliament during your stay in this fine city, you may well have seen a fantastically odd London Duck Tour cruising by. That is unless you are completely colour blind, or extraordinarily imperceptive. The bright yellow tour ‘bus’ is actually an adapted amphibious vehicle that was used during D-Day. On road, you get the feeling of being on a normal sightseeing tour. Apart from being in a giant yellow boat on wheels. Getting stared at by Japanese tourists. And laughed at by children. You learn all manner of interesting London tidbits and trivia en route as you take in London’s landmarks including Parliament, Buck House and Trafalgar Square. The action though is when you cross Vauxhall Bridge, edge down a causeway and slide into the Thames. And your bus becomes a boat. Quality.

Ice Cream

As far as we’re concerned summer is here. The clocks have gone forward, spring’s actually happening, and given the winter we just had, you owe it to yourself to consume as much ice cream as humanly possible until hibernation rolls around again. Ice creams are also a fine date idea. Very few people don’t like ice cream. Fact. And, it’s a simple, dare we say, sensual pleasure. Someone’s ice cream choice is very revealing. As is the way you eat it. Here’s our three favourites:

1. Dri Dri Gelato. 189 Portobello Rd, W11 2ED

Ice cream? Ice cream? What are you talking about ice cream? It’s all Gelato these days, don’t you know. Yes, we know Italians are better than us at lots of things. Cars, style, talking about how much better they are than us at things. But you know what, they really are very good at making ice cream. Sorry, Gelato. No seats in this chic ice cream parlour, and the gelato is hidden from view, presumably to minimise drooling. Twenty, expertly chosen flavours of gelato and sorbets available for your delectation in cups or cones. Don’t miss the Pistachio. Or the Crema ‘dri dri’, a very smooth cream with sesame swirled into it. Or, or, or……

2. Chin Chin Laboratorists. 49-50 Camden Lock Place, NW1 8AF

“London’s first nitro ice-cream parlour”. If it’s novelty you’re looking for on a date, let’s face it, this is going to be hard to beat. Mad Cap ice cream ‘laboratorists’ husband-and-wife duo Ahrash Akbari-Kalhur and Nyisha Weber use liquid nitrogen to make ice creams on demand. If the idea of someone donning cryo gloves and safety goggles to fetch you a basil and green tea ice cream then you’re in the right place.

3. Marine Ices. 8 Haverstock Hill, Chalk Farm, NW3 2BL

Gelato this, gelato that. Nitrogen what-not. Look, we’re all for the ice cream revolution that’s been taking place in London. Clearly, just look at our first two choices. But let’s never forget the shock of the old. Marine Ices has been a Camden staple since 1928. Retro, oddly aquatic themed ice-cream parlour, with old school Italian service. And no Heston Blumenthal gadgets or gimmicks anywhere in site.

These are just some suggestions of great little places for dates from the folk over at DoingSomething. If nothing here tickles your fancy, you could always let DoingSomething’s patented ‘Wheel of Date’ decide your fate.

Be warned though, you must abide by the wheel’s decision. We will be checking.

Follow us for more London unrealness at http://twitter.com/glpLondon, and while you’re at it give DoingSomething a follow at http://twitter.com/doingsome_thing.