Chasing zombies on Hampstead Heath, a checkpoint dash around Hackney, escaping a lasertrap in Covent Garden. Joining Fire Hazard games has made me see and experience London in a completely different way, and discover parts I never knew existed.
Trying to smuggle a cashbox up my jumper, during a fake heist of an old police station in South London, has to be one of my highlights of 2011.
Between £10 and £21 for each activity, usually lasting a couple of hours. For some events 100% of the revenue is donated to Mind. The crew are great and events usually end in the pub.

fire-hazard.net
twitter.com/firehazardgames

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On an unassuming road in Hackney, tucked between hip coffee shops and scruffy auto repairs, you will find Viktor Wynd's Little Shop of Horrors.
Upon entering you will be greeted by a party of giant taxidermied antelope heads and African voodoo masks. Tomes of mythology and the occult line the bookshelves while armies of butterflies and beatles roam any left over spaces on the walls.
The resulting experience is a bit like falling down Alice's rabbit hole and re-emerging in a world that is part 17th century curiosity cabinet, part 70s sci-fi movie gone wrong.
As well as being toted as a museum of the weird and wonderful, the shop also holds regular art exhibitions. Framed works by the likes of Mervyn Peake and the Mexican surrealist Leonora Carrington have recently been displayed. There are also regular lectures (on subjects you never knew existed), workshops, puppet shows and films.
The shop is part of the wider 'Last Tuesday Society', who are also known for holding some of the most decadent masked balls and afternoon tea dances in London.

viktorwyndofhackney.co.uk/
11 Mare Street, London E8 4RP
+44 207 998 3617
Google map: bit.ly/v1XqfH

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In the heart of historic Bloomsbury, just opposite the British Museum on Bury Place, lies the wonderful Blade Rubber Stamps shop. I have spent hours enthralled by the weird and wacky stamp designs on display. This shop takes me back to a time of traditional innocence and reinvigorates and inspires the dormant creativity left behind in childhood. The shelves are lined with stamps in all shapes and sizes but if you want something more personal, customised designs can be made-to-order. Ink pads can be found in a delightful array of colours. There are seasonal designs and plenty of Santa Claus', tree designs, angels and snowmen ready to be stamped onto personalised cards in time for Christmas. The shop also stocks everything you could possibly need to make beautifully designed scrapbooks including glitter, stickers, buttons, brads and eyelets. Once you are hooked or if you need to kickstart your creativity they even offer classes to help improve your decorating skills.

www.bladerubberstamps.co.uk
12 Bury Place, London WC1A 2JL
+44(0)845 873 7005
Google map: bit.ly/ublTzt

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St.Pancras Gardens is surely the quirkiest park in London full of quiet corners and eccentric memorials.
In the middle sits St.Pancras Old Church, one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in Europe. The surrounding park is what remains of the old churchyard cut through from 1863 by construction of the Midland Railway into St.Pancras Station. The exhumation of the graves was overseen by Thomas Hardy, then a young architect, who placed many of the headstones in a circular pattern around an ash tree, whose roots now entangle the stones around what is known as Hardy's Tree.
When the churchyard was re-opened as a public park in 1877 the Burdett-Coutts Sundial had been added as a memorial to all those whose graves had been exhumed and moved elsewhere.
Among the graves that were left in situ are those of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft and the monument designed by Sir John Soane for his wife. The latter will look very familiar to most people because it was the inspiration for Gilbert Scott's design of the K2 red telephone box.
All this for free in a lovely park with a beautiful fence and gates all recently restored with the help of the Heritage Lottery Fund.

191 Saint Pancras Way, London NW1 9NH
+44(0)20 7424 0724
Google map: bit.ly/mSFivF

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