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For Tiny Londoners & Their Adults

Bablands is a resource for Londoners who find themselves with a small creature to dress up and entertain. Part-magazine, part-guide, Bablands follows the adventures of Babu and Roro as they seek out London’s coolest kids’ shops, best child-friendly hangouts and activities that won’t make mummy want to gauge her eyes out with a weaning spoon.

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20 things to do in London with kids this October is ALIVE 🧟‍♀️ - and available to read via the link in my bio. Loads of brilliant stuff happening this month, including some very cool looking new exhibitions involving robots, monsters and…. um, Elmer the elephant 🐘 Enjoy!
I found my new favourite coffee shop. Unfortunately it’s in Chiswick (nothing wrong with Chiswick, it’s just really far away and a total bastard to get to). @chief_coffee lives inside the most beautiful building - a Victorian bottling factory in an adorable mews. Not only is the coffee here great, but they have a Japanese gaming arcade upstairs and a Pinball lounge downstairs. Also chocolate milk and vegan cake. It’s basically perfect. You need notes for the arcade (to change into Yen using the machines) and we didn’t have any. They also looked really complicated to use. The pinball machines were perfect though - easy for the kids to do and they took pound coins 👍 Anyone on here live in Chiswick? If so can we be friends so we have another reason to revisit?
New must-see work down by @tate Modern! Come Home Again by the brilliant @esdevlin in collaboration with @cartier highlights the 243 species on London’s extinction priority list (how terrifying that there are that many in London alone) by encouraging passersby to learn their names and hear their stories. The work consists of a sliced-open replica of St. Paul’s dome (it’s directly opposite the cathedral), filled with renderings of each species and a QR code you can scan for each one. A beautifully relaxing soundtrack featuring voices reading the name of each species in Latin and English, as well as the voices of the birds, insects and other creatures, is played during the day, with an interpretation of Choral Evensong performed live each evening at sunset (7pm). It’s so lovely and it’s only on until the 1st of October, so check it out ASAP!
Brilliant volcano feature at Colindale Park, visited a good few weeks back. Otherwise a fairly bog-standard playground with a slide that kids can ascend via a network of ropes inside a plasticky house-shaped shell (they actually really loved that) and your usual mooncup roundabouts, bouncers and bucket swings. The volcano is accessible via a rope ladder or you can climb the smaller rocks/rock face. It would have been even better if it had a slide or you could tunnel through it somehow. Not the sort of park you’d probably spend all day hanging out in, but we had a nice hour here.
This was only three weeks ago but it feels like forever ago now. Kind of missing the hols and having them both around all the time even though it almost killed me 🙃 This is Ravenscourt Paddling Pool, which is obviously closed now but definitely one for next summer’s to-do list. The playground isn’t great but the pool has recently been renovated and it’s a really nice spot. I booked via eventbrite because I heard they were pretty strict but when we got there there was no one checking. Anyway, like I said it’s a bit late now, but well worth saving!
Inside the very cool Into Sight installation by @sony at @cromwellplace . Think infinity room vibes with a massive Sony TV at the end. There was a small queue when we visited mid-afternoon yesterday (only about 10 minutes long) and they only allow 10ish people in at a time. It’s on until this Sunday the 25th (closed tomorrow, obviously) and free to visit but you need to book a free ticket via the Cromwell Place website. Part of @l_d_f_official , which in my opinion peaked in 2019 and hasn’t matched it since 🥲
The new season of @squish_space is lush. It’s inspired by the Earth and features its own soundtrack as well as squishy snakes and an amazing printed ceiling canopy that Roma had so much fun throwing balls into and then trying to get them down again, plus the usual squashy slide, light-up balls and loads of tactile fabrics. A couple of people have asked if I think Roma’s a bit old for this now but she still seems to get so much out of it (and is pretty good at managing not to squash the babies). The space is so conducive to imaginative play and I love seeing all the games she comes up with here. You still need to book via the website but it’s free and there are loads of spaces for this coming week, with more being announced soon.
Potentially entirely useless post informing you that it’s the last weekend to see @colourscape_music_festival this season when it’s actually completely sold out on their website and I have no idea if they offer walk ups. This was our third visit and it’s one of our favourite things ever. We paid £11 per adult and £6 per kid as a treat while we had family staying and it was so much fun, if ridiculously sweaty in there. We all started off with the coloured capes they give you on entry but abandoned them pretty quickly 🥵Excellent hide and seek op. Weird fever dream fodder. I want one for my garden.
We all absolutely LOVED @jurassicworldexhibition - it’s legit like being in the film, although I thought the tag line “the closest you’ll ever come to living dinosaurs” was a bit presumptuous. I mean how do they know? 🦕 I loved that the staff are all actors and pretend the whole thing is real - it makes it so magical for the kids, although the flip side is that it’s so realistic younger kids might be a bit scared at times (Roma, who is three, was fine once she got going but was a bit freaked out by Barbara, the first dinosaur we were confronted with). There are about nine rooms in total and you’ll move through some of them faster than others but all of them have interactive elements, whether that’s animatronic babies to pet, digital interactives in the lab, dino bones to dust or live shows to watch. It’s not cheap at £26 for adults and £18.50 for kids, but worth it for a special treat for a dinosaur fan. Our visit took about an hour but you’re allowed to go back through the rooms and could spend a lot longer than that if you wanted. Reel coming soon! There’s no closing date but you can currently book dates until mid-January.
Frieze Sculpture is back! It’s one of my favourite things on the cultural calendar and I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since we went to see the last one in a torrential rainstorm @christinarosebrown ! It was so much lovelier today 🌞 In terms of my favourite pieces, it’s a toss-up between Ugo Rondinone’s ‘yellow blue monk’ and this, Shaikha Al Mazrou’s
I’ve been a bit quiet on the Instagram front this week while Roma gets settled at nursery and I finish a work project, but I’m very excited to share that I’m expecting my third book baby (and definitely not my third human baby 🥴). An Opinionated Guide to Big Kids’ London: the Best of the Capital for 6-12s is now available to preorder from my amazing publisher @hoxtonminipress , with copies due to be sent out from the 3rd of October. It’s full of tried-and-tested places to drag older children (you can also buy the 0-5s version if you’re not quite there yet!), from puppet barges to pug cafes and bouldering walls to bowling alleys. Shout out to my big girl Athena for humouring me on countless schleps across London in the name of research. I’ll pop a link in my bio now. Thanks so much for all your support 😘
High time I posted a new playground I think. This one by @playequip is in Queen’s Gardens in Croydon, which has just opened following a two-year revamp. @funplacestoplay and I came down a couple of months ago on our way to Kidspace to see if it was open and were so gutted to find it finished but totally fenced off - then heard it had opened a few days later 😂🥴 It’s got a toddler area with a little slide and trampolines, and a bigger kids’ bit with a treehouse slide, big bucket swing and a balance obstacle course. All three of our kids (ages 2, 3 and 6) really liked it and we spent all afternoon there. The landscaped design and leafiness makes it a really nice place to hang out and apparently they’re putting a cafe in next, which will make it even better. Definitely worth a visit if you’re down there.
Did you know there’s a massive new Brewdog underneath Waterloo station… with a SLIDE? It also has its own bowling alley, indoor ice cream van, photo booth and own version of the Happy Meal, the Hoppy Meal. Also beer. It’s so good we went two days in a row (hence the outfit changes 🙃). More info to follow but I probably don’t need to keep doing this now that I’ve found the ultimate parental utopia. Huge shoutout to @jesslucybranch for this absolute banger of a suggestion.
Back-to-school haircuts with the lovely Emma of @cropsandbobberslondon the other day 💇‍♀️ Emma’s set up shop in one of our favourite kids’ shops, the beautiful @a.small.triangle in Homerton (there’s even a very on-brand white cutting Merc), and is there every Tuesday - although she might switch to a weekend day depending on demand, TBC. You can book a slot with Emma via the Crops and Bobbers website or send her an Insta message. Or, if you’re closer to Essex Road, she has a salon there too. It was such a fun experience and Emma even braided the girls’ hair into French plaits - something I’ve never quite mastered, to Babu’s massive disappointment. Prices vary by age - check the website for details.
That feeling when it’s SO NEARLY the end of the summer holidays 😭🙆‍♀️ We popped past @outernetglobal to check out their Room to Breathe installation on the way down to Croydon yesterday (as you do). @the_ouchie_fixer very kindly tagged me in a story about it the other day. I realised when we got there that we’d walked past it before but it was showing a boring part of the looped video so we just carried on walking. This bit is lovely though - so pretty and chilled, and with a box-breathing prompt designed to calm 🧘‍♀️(it even worked on the girls!). It’s very small - literally two walls and the ceiling. The other two walls open onto the street. It’s on every day from 11-12, 2-3 and 6-7 and there’s no need to book - just turn up. It’s definitely not worth making a special trip for but you could combine with the Flannels installation and the Selfridge’s inflatable labyrinth. We tried to combine with St. Giles’ Churchyard playground, which it’s really close to, but there was a woman standing outside it screaming at someone down the phone and the girls got freaked out so we left and went to the little Store Street/Alfred Place playground and pink climbing frame outside the Building Centre instead, and then played inside the centre for a bit.
20 awesome things to do with kids in London in September is live - and has been for three days but I forgot to post about it because I’m STUPID. Sign up for emails to be alerted the second I put it up next time 🙋‍♀️ Loads of great stuff happening this month and most of it is freeeee (I think only three things are paid). Link in bio. Have fun.
There’s an inflatable black labyrinth next to the Selfridge’s toy department and I love it so much. It’s only smallish but it’s brilliant for in-store hide and seek. Devotion Strategy (that’s its name) was designed by artist Jan Vorisek for German fashion brand Ottolinger, and formed part of the latter’s A/W 22 show. It’s on display as part of Selfridge’s’ Superfutures exhibition until the 18th of September.
Our last messy play experience for a while, possibly ever (with the two of them anyway) 😫 I love that at six and a half Babu still loves this - minging tea-making table and all. They were so engrossed in painting this castle at the end we didn’t notice everyone was packing up and leaving, and they were SO messy by the end of it with all the paint and pink shaving foam that hosing them down was totally pointless. So proud 🥲 Thanks so much to Kylie @messituplondon for bringing the mess so I don’t have to deal with it at home. Mess it Up in the Park is back in Priory Park this Friday. It’s £12 per child and you need to book ahead.

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