Aside from, “Good God, how hairy is Tom Cruise’s kid!?” there’s only been one talking point floating around this week – the untimely death of the late, great Steve Irwin. He was a croc hunter, he was an environmentalist, he was a little ripper (you beauty!). The all-round entertainer was insanely driven by his desire to educate us about the creatures that share this planet. It seems profoundly fitting, therefore, that now be the time we should show him the respect he deserved and visit the the Natural History Museum in his honour. Surely you’ll agree it’s what he would want. And it’s free. Which, surely you’ll agree, is what we want. (Remember to put a donation in the box as you pass through the grand entrance though)

For those of you who have already had the pleasure of coming face to face with the NHM’s awesome dinosaurs, there are a variety of alternatives London has to offer that will expand your mind without decreasing your wallet. People, it’s time to don your ‘busy week’ protective clothing because London hasn’t seen you in a while and she’s pretty pissed off. Especially as there is so much going on.

Having spent at least 12 seconds trying fruitlessly to come up with an amusing link between the natural world and London, it is perhaps best to just leave you with the following summary of forthcoming events:

Pumping tunes slamming sculptures; the living conditions of an appartment on Mars; a life-size, animated adventure in menswear; and Poland Vs India, Pakistan, Bangladesh AND Shoreditch.

If music be the fruit of love, then most of us will end up having sex with a smoothie by the end of this week because there is plenty to keep us going until Autumn (yeh, sure, it’s not that far away). The Tate Modern has a fantastic new installation that marries music with art. The offspring of these marriages are then displayed next to their inspiring parents. Huh? Well, the basic idea is getting well-known musicians to study a piece of art from the gallery and then compose a piece of music inspired by said artwork. The season kicks off with The Chemical Brothers Vs Jacob Epstein and can only be heard at the gallery itself. Each exhibit will last for a month before everyone gets bored of listening to the same tune (a bit like Capital Radio) and the gallery is forced to find more musicians to be inspired. Future mash-up big styleee contributors include Roll Deep Vs Anish Kapoor, The Long Blondes Vs Man Ray and Klaxons Vs Donald Judd.

If you’re able to sneak out of work early on Friday (9th), thus avoiding that last-minute proposal left conveniently on your desk by Mr eager-to-get-the-weekend-started Bossman, then you could do much worse than take a jolly meander through the retail outlets of Carnaby Street and Regent Street. On this, the final day of City Showcase, the treats are juicy, plentiful and tasty enough to be left shamelessy running down your chin. Not only will you coo at the impressive range of fashion designed by today’s youth, but you’ll also catch a glimpse of the future in the crystal ball of rock legends. Now in its third year, the showcase has previously unearthed such nobodies as Razorlight and Keane. Clever, huh? Those musicians playing on Friday have been cut from the cloth of musical ingenuity. This cloth has then been tailored into suits. Suits that will be worn by you. Ooh, suits you! Singer/songwriter/dreadhead, Newton Faulkner, will be playing his funky jazz-rock at Regent Street’s Apple Store at 1pm; self-proclaimed urban folkies, The Tacticians, will be cheering everyone up with songs about temptation, love and failure at Ben Sherman at 2.30pm; and British Beef, tipped to be this country’s answer to Green Day (that would make them Grey-Overcast-&-Slightly-Drizzly Day, then) shall be rocking out at Piccadilly’s Virgin Megastore at 4.45pm. Splendid!

For a more sedate and tranquil affair you’ll have to wait until after the weekend (Monday 11th) when the Orchestra of The Royal Opera House will be performing a free lunchtime chamber recital at 1pm in the elegant Crush Rooms. Tickets are NOT available in advance and you can ONLY get them from the Box Office on the morning of the performance, so don’t try any funny stuff. Or else!

Picking at the nostril of art, the first of this week’s free bogeys is the Space Soon exhibition at the Roundhouse theatre in Chalk Farm. For a slender 4 days only (ending Wednesday) the main interior will be transformed into a homemade rocket, whilst the exterior of the building will adopt a ‘life on Mars’ space station approach, including sleeping quarters. Out of this world!

Until Thursday (14th) two friends, Rusty and Wiggs, will be hanging out in the menswear department of Liberty’s in Soho. Although Rusty and Wiggs are of human proportions and 3-dimensional in appearance, they do stand out in their surroundings as both of them are animated characters from James Jarvis’ Vortigern’s Machine and the Great Sage of Wisdom. The Machine, a magic slide projector, has deposited these intrepid adventurers into the surreal world of humans, much to the delight of us humans.

Finally, what is a weekend in London without a festival of some kind? Well, frankly, it is an impossibility. London cannot cope without them. The multicultural diversity of London we all take for granted will be proudly displayed on Sunday (10th) in two very different manifestations. Firstly, at the Brick Lane Festival in, errr, Brick Lane, everyone will be given the opportunity to perfect their skills of concentration as they gobble up racy curries whilst attempting to give their full attention to the fantastic live stage performances. At the 8th Polish Festival in Ealing our eastern European brothers and sisters will be proving how invaluable their artistic, scientific and commercial influx has been for this city since they joined the EU.

There, that should be enough to make you feel guilty about staying in or going down the pub this week.