I mentioned recently in my blog [yeah... I’ve got a blog same as every other 12 year old emo girl, pretentious movie “critic” and wannabe prophet for our times] that I’m rubbish at having time off work. All the hours I spend AT work, counting down the seconds and minutes until I finally have that glorious day of rest are ultimately for nought because when the day comes I completely ruin it for myself. I have a bit of a lie in, watch some TV, have a long shower and then... nothing.

Honest to God on my last handful of days off I’ve been bored into despair before I’ve even eaten lunch. Once it got so bad that I had a piss... recreationally. Purely for something to do, I drank a ton of water and then, when I needed a slash, I waited. Waited for the urge to become stronger and stronger so that when I finally relented and hit the bathroom it would A] Be more satisfying, but most importantly B] Last longer.

Still, when I invited old LeedsMeUp favourite Emma down to Lon-Don I was a little disappointed that I’d have to spend my unprecedented week off doing things with her. Not in a horrible way, obviously. I love Emma, which is why I invited her down, but I’m the kind of guy who is well up for doing things when they’re in the planning stages, but once faced with the penultimate hour I’d usually prefer to sack them off and do nothing. Which, as I’ve mentioned, is a problem for me in of itself.

Emma arrived on the Tuesday of my week off [the Monday was frittered away in exactly the manner you would now have to expect from me, with the exception of buying the game “Prototype” for the XBOX and, instead of playing the missions, spending about an hour just picking people up off the streets, running up to the top of the highest building, and pitching them off into the air]. She was well up for seeing some London things like last time she came down, when we walked the entire length of the South Bank up and down, and since I now have free tickets to all of the Merlin Entertainment attractions it was gonna be easy to fill up a day.

I picked her up at tube station and we sheened almost immediately to Westminster and the Sea Life aquarium. Like I said, we got in for free which was pretty suave of me, if I’d been on a date. The aquarium is well good! I mean it starts off pretty innocuously, with the guppies and what have you, and there’s a pretty awesome octopus there too, but it’s apparently very shy. We saw it briefly, but it scarpered. Fucker.

Then about half way round we got to the only reason anyone would ever go to the aquarium.

Sharks mother fucker!

They got Nurse sharks and fucking... all kinds of sharks up in there. And they look upset too. Swimming around in their enclosure, swimming right up to the glass so they’re almost playing chicken with you. Daring you with their rows and rows of teeth to look away before they do.

Sharks are cool as shit. They have turtles too! Turtles yeah... are rad! Giant ones milling about in the water, smaller ones just hanging out on rocks and stuff. At one point you could, if you were of the mind to, just reach in and pick a couple up. There was a scouse couple considering doing just that in fact. Bit stereotypical, but there it is. There’s also the Shark Walk, which begs the question... ARE YOU BRAVE ENOUGH?!

We scoffed. HA! We’re in our mid-twenties. We’re of the world, me and Emma. We’ve seen some stuff. We’re brave enough, good God yes. Till we got in there. You see the Shark Walk is just that. You go into a corridor, the floor of which is made of clear plastic so that you’re actually walking “on” the sharks. Doesn’t seem so scary until you take a step and the fucking floor creaks and bends slightly. Christ that didn’t sit well with Emma. She immediately dropped to the ground as close to the wall as she could get. She didn’t even stand up till we heard some other tourists coming our way, having dared to brave the shark walk themselves.

The only real downside to the aquarium is that they’ve got this weird chill-out/gift shop about half way through. You’re walking around, everything is water behind glass. The ambient music is tranquil and atmospheric. Everything is blue, wavy and ultimately relaxing. It’s an underwater paradise. The gift shop is bright fucking orange. A colour so vibrant you can hear it. Chairs and tables in possibly the most garish yellows and greens imaginable. It’s jarring that we rushed right through it as fast as humanly possible.

Once outside we saw that it had gotten dark already, and also rained [obviously] but my mood wasn’t dampened. No sir. Because before we went into the aquarium we passed a little shop, set into the wall of the vast building that occupies that section of the river. What I saw there, nestled in the corner of a chiller cabinet, was something wonderful.

Blue Ice Cream.

I didn’t know what flavour it was, but what I did know was that before the day was out I would eat blue ice cream, and thanks to Emma I did. She bought me a cone [pretty sizeable scoop to say it was a medium] and she had some waffles herself. As it turned out it was Blue Banana, possibly the most arbitrary flavour I’ve ever come across. It was delicious. I fucking love blue ice cream. More over, that place has got three full chiller cabinets of different wild flavours. All the old standards are there. Your vanillas and your mint choc chips, but then you’re looking at Turkish Delight [grim], Mango, strawberry cheesecake, pistachio. It’s insane.

My free ticket 007 activity carried us over to the London Eye, also owned by Merlin [who, in 2008, sued Nottinghamshire City Council for erecting their own big ferris wheel and calling it The Nottingham Eye. Eventually they had to change it to The Wheel of Nottingham, which is shit]. Sadly the man at the gate wouldn’t let me on with my newly purchased and miraculously existent blue ice cream, so I had to proper nyam it down double time, causing myself significant pain when a mighty Gojira style brain freeze set upon me. Of course I was with a girl, so I played it off like it didn’t affect me at all, but in reality I wanted to cry real tears and also drink some hot cocoa.

There’s not a great deal to say about The Eye. If you’ve never been on it, you should give it a go, even if your tickets aren’t free. I’ve only ever seen the sight of London from 100ft up during the night, but it does look pretty spectacular. Emma got freaked out by the movement and the height and refused to move around the pod unless she was holding on to something. Me, primarily, and the site of Eye workers boarding the pod in front of us as it completed its flight [they call them flights, if you can believe that] and checking the underside of the built in bench with mirrors on sticks to make sure no one stuck an IED under there with blu-tac or anything didn’t make her feel more reassured.

We met up with our old buddy TheWorm later on in the night and spent about an hour just arsing around trying to find somewhere to eat. It’s a nightmare, being in Soho as we were, to decide upon a dining establishment. What with their being so friggin’ many of them. Down back alleys, side streets etc... there are a plethora of fooderies in the area. Eventually we settled on a curry place, who were absolutely delighted that we were there. I’m not a massive fan of Indian food, but I do love poppadoms, so I was down.

Next couple of days were really just recuperating from the first one. We did spend fucking HOURS walking in the rain trying to find a bloody Nationwide in the greater Earth area, and quickly popped to Covent Garden only to discover that Cyber Candy was closed for refurbishment and planned to reopen the very next day. Of all the fucking luck. I well wanted Pretzel Flipz and Mountain Dew.