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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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The last few weeks have really tested my fear of heights - which I didn’t actually realise I had until I went to Go Ape and my legs basically stopped working 🥴 I used to think it was a fear of flying (I’ve always hated it but make myself do it anyway) but it’s definitely a general heights thing. Last week we headed to This Bright Land at Somerset House, which wasn’t as exciting as I’d hoped. In fact the only thing there really was to do was ride the Ferris Wheel, so up we went 🙃 Not entirely awful but I wasn’t keen on the bit when it stopped for ages when we were right at the top to let people on. And tickets are £5 per person, which I kept reminding myself is a hell of a lot cheaper than the London Eye, but still 💸 There are a few different things on here each day. Tomorrow they’re screening Coco and then self portraits by local school children. There’s also face painting and some kind of Story Trail treasure-hunt thing, but in general we thought it could have been a lot more exciting. At the very least some kind of ice-cream stand would have been great. Maybe something to play on for kids who don’t fancy sitting in front of a film for two hours. Anyway, I’m going to be avoiding tall things for a while…

Did you know you can watch more than 95,000 films for free at the @britishfilminstitute Mediatheque? Not all of them are child-friendly but lots are, with special family collections and loads of animated titles. Just turn up whenever they’re open, settle into a booth and strap on a pair of headphones (or take your own). I thoroughly recommend the hilarious film about a bunch of school kids visiting London in the 60s, complete with ridiculously plummy accents.

The last pop up we went to in the @anyahindmarch Village Hall site was the Santa’s Grotto, which I thought was a bit pants for the money since Santa ‘fell asleep’ before I could take a photo 🤪 We enjoyed this latest instalment in the space, the rather revolting but nonetheless intriguing Ice Cream Project, a lot more. Here, you can buy ice cream flavoured with cult food and drink items including Kikkoman soy sauce, Heinz baked beans and HP sauce, among some other slightly less minging sounding things. I didn’t try any because they’re not vegan (or I assumed they probably weren’t anyway), but Babu and Ro opted for Polo and PG Tips flavour respectively and they seemed to go down pretty well. I can’t remember how much they were but it wasn’t loads. I think maybe £3.50 each. You can also buy big tubs to take home!

I love @richardwoodsstudio . His new The Small House commission at @southwark_cathedral is intended to spark conversations about why so many live in substandard housing (read the blurb on the cathedral website for the full explanation of the piece). It’s free to visit until the 31st of August and there’s no need to book.

FINALLYYY 🌈 😍 And it was everything we dreamed of and more. I don’t understand how the Infinity Rooms can be booked up for the best part of a year and we walked into this in five minutes but whatever. If you haven’t been yet and you’re in London get yourself down there! Such joy. Such simplicity. The @yayoikusama_ @uniqlo_uk @tate Play Obliteration Room is on until the 29th of August. It’s free and there’s no need to book - just turn up. Already planning a return trip!

20 THINGS TO DO IN AUGUST IS LIIIIVE - and (almost) all of it is free. Tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell that mum you always make awkward small talk with in the school playground. Tell everyone. Please. Thanks 💛 (link in bio)

Have you ticked Hampstead Beach at @jw3london off your school hols list yet? I’m so glad the paddling pool is back this year - this isn’t a particularly shady spot in the middle of the day so the cool water is very welcome. It’s free and always feels really safe despite being on a main road thanks to the big gates, security guards and the fact that you have to go down in the lift to access it. Only bummer is you have to hand any outside food over at the door (they check your bags, although someone had definitely smuggled a packed lunch in when we went). The beach is open Sundays-Thursdays 10-8 and Friday 10-4, and closed for Shabbat on Saturdays. You don’t need to book. There’s a beach menu with lots of kids’ options, fairly reasonably priced ice cream and iced coffee (although the person in the cafe looked very annoyed when I ordered it with oat milk and they had to make it specially 🙃). Head down on Mondays and Wednesdays for free Beach Club sessions for 0-4s feat. crafts, singing and yoga. There seemed to be a lot of buckets and spades etc. for general use but maybe take your own to be on the safe side.

@goapebattersea is hands down the most hideous thing I’ve ever done in my life - and I had a 60-hour labour with Babu and nine full months of hyperemesis with Roma 🥴 I didn’t realise how TERRIFIED I am of heights until I did this. I got the full leg wobbles and sweaty hands, and had to talk to myself across all the crossings to get through it (and get an instructor to go over the flying carpet one with me because I was convinced I was going to die 😭). Babu was obviously a lot less of a wimp than me but she still freaked out in places. I didn’t realise that once you’ve done the safety briefing you’re pretty much on your own - just you and the trees 🤢 I’m amazed you only have to be over 1m to do the Treetop Adventure - Roma is nearly 1m tall and there is no way in hell I could have done this with her - it gives me the wobbles just thinking about it. Anyone done it with an under-5?!

I wrote my second book 😭😭😭 It has nothing to do with kids but it deserves a spot here regardless because it was such a labour of love. It’s all about eco-friendly things to see and do in London - most of them better without kids tbh, although I did drag Roma on most of the visits 🙃 So much love for my amazing publishers Ann and Martin @hoxtonminipress and editors @florencemaisiefilose and Octavia Stocker - all the loveliest people in the world to work with. I feel so grateful and lucky and I’m crying 😭 Link in my bio to pre-order if you fancy it (I’d be really grateful!) It’s full of incredible places and businesses who are all working their knickers off to reduce their impact on the planet, all right on our doorstep 💚

Black Mirror vibes at @immersive.gamebox on Sunday. This was exactly the silly, escapist (and, mercifully, air-conditioned) fun we needed, but it is painfully expensive for how long you get (we were there for about an hour). Immersive Gamebox very kindly comped us the tickets as it was for a work project, but it would have cost £96 for two kids and two adults, which is WILD. You can choose what game you play: we went for an Orwellian alien aptitude test complete with banging 80s soundtrack, but you can also opt for Shaun the Sheep, Angry Birds or a Junior Bundle consisting of two 15-minute family games. Kids have to be at least five to play. These two are five and six and both had moments of frustration, but overall they seemed to enjoy it. Anyone else been?

Posting at 10 in the morning because why the hell not? It’s not like we’re going anywhere today (I really want the melty-face emoji but that would involve updating my app and losing my 36 drafts 🙃). @thehardlifeoflilyandviolet told me about this amazing @craftscouncil exhibition the other day and it looked too good not to check out immediately. We’re fairly local to this place and I didn’t even notice it was there until the other week, but it’s brilliant. The current Craft School programme is running throughout the holidays and features big squishy blocks (not just for little ones - we saw adults building towers out of them!), a making table complete with coloured paper, stickers, fabrics, glue, scissors and loads more (you’re free to rummage in the many, many boxes they have there and there’s a big pile of prompt cards for creative inspiration), a light-up sculpture and an exhibition of winning entries from @yinka_ilori ‘s Craft School: Yinka’s Challenge competition. It’s such a beautiful space and really chilled and lovely. There’ll be a free workshop every Wednesday in August at 1pm. The space is open Wednesday-Saturday 11-5. You can book a free ticket on their website but we didn’t and there was no one else there.

I think I’ve recovered sufficiently from our trip to @hobbledownheath last weekend to talk about it now 🙃 Not that it wasn’t great - it was - it was just such a mission and so hot and there was SO MUCH to see. We didn’t quite manage to do everything but I didn’t want to drag the kids around too much and they were happiest in the indoor Playbarn and on the water pillows in the heat, so we mostly just stayed on those. As I said in my reel, the outdoor structures are amazing but I think I prefer the ones at Epsom *ever so slightly*. However, the incredible indoor play here just swung the overall experience for me. The parks are different enough that they’re worth doing individually (if travel/money allows - admission is eye-wateringly expensive). I REALLY want to revisit the Epsom site in the holidays now as I think they’ve added some bits since we last visited (but again, we’ll have to see if funds will stretch 🥴). Admission is £18 for ages 2+ and free for under-2s, and this buys you four hours on site including an hour in the Playbarn (more if they’re not busy). There are four or five different play areas, lots of animals, the Playbarn with this amazing crochet climbing structure and a chance to take part in other activities such as Zorbing and ball nets at neighbouring attraction @grippedlondon - whose slides look truly hideous. Any questions just ask and I’ll try and answer them.

I thought I’d post about our visit to @slimeplanetofficial since I just vinegared a load of the stuff out of Roma’s hair 🙃 My kids hadn’t slimed before but they both love clay and PlayDoh so I knew they’d be into it. Workshops last an hour and include personal slime-making (choose from the Original, Glow or limited edition Tropical workshop), GIANT group slime-making and a chance to learn loads of things about slime. You get to take home two pots of slime (the one you made and some of the group slime) and it lasts for ages - we visited a few weeks ago and ours is still very much going strong, for better or worse 🥴 Tickets cost £15 per child and they must be 3+.

The SNUG loose play parts have been on a very long holiday (I think we last saw them maybe three years ago) but they are BACK in Lewis Cubitt Park behind King’s Cross, just in time for a heatwave that makes them too hot to play on 🙃 Also, my kids are much more interested in the fountains. No idea what the “opening hours” are for these but they seem to be out all day at the moment.

Roma’s favourite fountain… and my least favourite 🥴 - not because it’s not fun or beautiful but I’m always terrified she’s going to kneecap herself on those steep bits or get swept away by the rapids and disappear down the drain. I’m sure it’s actually very safe…

The new @hobbledownheath is officially open 🥳 I’m not sure I rate the outdoor play structures as highly as the Epsom one but Hounslow still wins for me thanks to the amazing indoor play barn complete with crochet climbing web - and the fact that there are smaller outdoor frames that are a bit less intimidating for younger kids. No underground tunnels here though! I’m going to do a longer post later but for now here’s a taste of what to expect 🐴 (invite).

The last time we went to the @gardenmuseum we had a really awful time. Babu was maybe two and I was there with a friend whose child is a year older. The two of them were pretty merry but not doing anything too terrible, and yet the comments from other museum-goers - some direct, most indirect but loud enough for us to hear - about how apparently badly behaved they were and what crappy parents we were - were fairly relentless. I decided that this just wasn’t a place you take kids, and made a mental note not to bother returning. Fast forward four or so years and the same museum has just opened an exhibition explicitly aimed at children, so obviously all of the above went out the window (also I give a lot less of a shit these days) 🙃 The exhibition is themed around Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden - a book I had as a kid but don’t remember a single thing about so clearly it didn’t make a huge impression on me (although I kind of want to read it now after reading Kerri’s @kerri_and_sprog review of it). The exhibition is very small, but we still managed to spend about an hour in it, courtesy of the wooden gardening and vegetable market toys. The rest of the museum is great for small kids too. I’m not sure if this is a recent development or it’s just that I was so desperate to get out of there last time, but there’s stuff everywhere. We were meant to do two museums yesterday but ended up staying here all day because it was SO much better than I’d expected. Aside from the Secret Garden exhibition, we made flower collages, played with a (BRAND NEW - we literally unboxed it 😮) LEGO set, played with a digit interactive where you have to go on a voyage to find flowers to exhibit at the Crystal Palace, and a wooden garden-building set that we must have played with for about an hour and a half. The only downer aside from the entrance fee (we’d planned on going to the free opening party but couldn’t make it in the end) is that the cafe is really fancy - which kind of ruled it out for us 🥴

I had the best day with my big girl on Saturday. We packed a lot in and went all over London but it was still so chilled without the three year old, lovely as she is 🥴. We started off with a visit to the beautiful @popbox_art MakeShop in Peckham, making disco vegetables (mushrooms) out of clay, as well as drawing and collaging them. This is usually a six-week course and parents don’t stay, but founder and teacher Emma very kindly agreed to let me stay and for Babu to do a single taster class as it was for a work project. The MakeShop is such a gorgeous environment for the kids and Emma is amazing - so inspiring and brilliant with the kids (who were all lovely). Really recommend signing up for a course if you’re local. There are different classes for different (school-age) age groups after school and on weekends, as well as preschool classes during the week.

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