Eating out in Central London with a toddler part 1

Posted on April 28, 2012 by katese11

I know what you’re thinking – this is SHEER MADNESS. Toddlers+Central London don’t exactly make for a calming dinner experience. But it is possible. Let me take your trembling hand and explain how.

Firstly, it’s about timing. Places that seem tolerant of small people at lunchtime may not be so friendly after 7PM, when they’re full of loved up couples who have yet to experience the hell joy of parenthood. Especially when those small people are overtired and should be in bed.

Secondly, it’s about restaurant choice. And as you may have guessed, that’s what I’m going to talk about today.

I don’t need to explain the *ahem* challenges of eating out with a toddler. If you want to know, Crappy Pictures explains it a whole lot better than I could. With pictures too, albeit crappy ones! And if you’ve googled “Eating out in Central London with a toddler”, then you probably have a toddler of your own. If you don’t have a toddler of your own, you don’t want to know.

Suffice to say, this is not eating out with a baby. This is not rocking up with a sleeping bundle in a sling or buggy and discreetly breastfeeding during dessert. This is not taking out your “Oh, look he’s eating broccoli!” Baby-Led Weaning baby, who’s so amazed by the prospect of eating something other than gin-flavoured milk that they’ll sit in a highchair for hours, pulling a gyoza to pieces and smearing hoi sin sauce over their face. No, this is your easily-bored, tastes-ever-changing, unpredictable toddler. This requires quick service, tolerant serving people and ideally paying upfront (for the purposes of a quick exit). Where do you find somewhere like this in the heart of one of the world’s busiest cities TM?

Lately, I’ve been wussing out. As I may have mentioned before, our church meets just north of Oxford Circus and finishes at 1pm. We’ve tried a mixture of packed lunch (for Roo) and trying to get home before eating (for us) but since I got pregnant, it just doesn’t work for me to wait till 2 or 3 to eat. So, eating in Central London is pretty much unavoidable. But -as per my opening statement – I’ve been wussing out a lot recently and going to places like Pret and Leon for a hasty sandwich before Roo loses it completely. Pret is fine on the day that Roo decides to tolerate sandwiches/ham and cheese croissants but sandwiches have been out of favour for a while now. I bought him a snack box at The Royal Festival Hall today and the sandwich element was rejected entirely (the cheesey biscuits, apple juice and grapes were well received though). So Pret is probably a no-no for now.

Leon is better but they are all so very small. The one on Regent St (North side) is barely big enough to manoeuvre a buggy round. I went to the Strand branch with Roo on Friday, in a fit of spontaneity and hunger, and that was bigger but still massively busy at lunchtime and we had to squeeze a bit to get onto a table with the buggy nearby. Still, the menu is child-friendly and they have a special meal box (£3.95ish?) with home-made fishfingers, fries, peas etc in and a free activity sheet. The fries are really good. REALLY. On Friday, Roo had already lunched on pasta salad by the time I ate, so it was fine that he just sat and ate fries. Quite frankly, anything’s fine right now. For the sake of vitamin C, I made sure he had some ketchup with them. So, Leon would be grand for a quick and tasty meal if you could be guaranteed a seat.

So, let’s step it up a notch, from the essentially grab-a-lunch places to somewhere adult folk might consider a destination. First off, Nandos. You might consider this neither an adult place nor a destination but Nathan and I used to go there every Saturday before we had kids. So there. The photo above is from Nandos, Wilton St (Victoria) and was from a day when Nathan was trying out some effects on his phone camera. The photo at the top of the page is from Nandos, Cardinal Place (Victoria) and was from a day when Reuben was refusing to look at the camera. You came to this blog for quality photography, right?!

Nandos is very child friendly and they have branches everywhere. Everywhere! When we first went to the Reading branch, the branch list fitted on to the back of the menu. Things have changed a bit since then – Victoria alone has two branches (as you can tell from the last paragraph) and we’ve also been to a couple in Soho, one in Covent Garden and one in Great Portland St. Not to mention Bethnal Green, Camberwell, Elephant&Castle, Brixton, Clapham, Islington etc. Obsessive, us?

But back to Central London! I would recommend the Covent Garden branch – friendly staff, loads of space downstairs and just the right amount of peri-peri spice. The lift has been known to get stuck with Nathan in it, but hey that’s just funny, right? I had my birthday party in the one in Glasshouse St (Soho) and again, lots of space downstairs and a mostly-functioning lift. The other Soho branch hasn’t been my favourite since I had some slightly pink chicken there, years ago. These things linger in the memory. Great Portland St is new but furnished in the manner of my school science lab and had an alarm going off most of the time we were there. The toilets were pretty cool, though – they were in individual beach huts. Both Victoria branches were fine but nothing to blog about. All restaurants have a kids menu, with the option of chips or something healthier (Roo always wants chips) and they give you crayons and an activity sheet. The service is fast and you pay upfront, both of which make it easier for toddler-dining. There is a reason we’ve been there so often…

And then there are all those other places, like….well, you may have to wait, This post is way too long already, thanks to my witterings about Nandos. But I hope you learnt something. Part 2 will be along soon!

Posted in Cake and the finest wines known to humanity (eating out) | Tagged , | 7 Comments

A dream come true….

Posted on April 10, 2012 by katese11

My Google map now has its own tab from the homepage and all the icons come up with links to the relevant blog posts. It’s so beautiful I could cry. Check it out!

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St James’ Park – 30/03/12

Posted on April 2, 2012 by katese11

It’s springtime! Kinda! For now, anyway. And springtime means hanging out in parks even more than we do in winter. Last Friday’s park of choice was St James’, with our good friends Tammy and Jake. I’ve been there a fair few times with Reuben but I was keen to try out the playground this time. But more on that later…

St James’ Park is a pretty park. That’s a good start. Some of the Royal Parks (e.g. Hyde) tend to be a bit flat and featureless for large sections, with the kind of grass that’s been abused by festival goers and protesters for years. But St James’ has a kind of landscaped feel to it, and (apart from the end of the Marathon) is largely free from the kind of crowds that ruin the grass. See, pretty! Springtime is probably the best time to visit, as the blossom’s out and it’s not yet overrun with tourists. It’s also green and not the yellow that Central London parks go by the middle of July. There’s a lake, which is always a nice feature, a cafe and a lot of green space. It’s long and thin, but for a park minutes away from Piccadilly Circus it feels remarkably spacious.

So, what is there to actually do? The first thing Roo was keen to do was play on the deckchairs but we were trying to get to the toilets at the time (I mentioned last week that you always need to know where your nearest toilet is at 35 weeks. Well, 36 weeks is no better) and I’m a little paranoid about him playing on the deckchairs in case someone tries to charge us. It’s £7.00 a day, which seems excessive to me – we paid 8 Euros for a pair of sunloungers last time we went to Spain, so it doesn’t seem great value in comparison. Basically Roo, I don’t care if they’re green and white and stripy – these things may be exciting to you, but they’re not worth seven quid to me. Sorry poppet.

Happily, he seemed quite content to sit on Tammy’s blanket and play with Batman toys for a while, eating a picnic at the same time. If this seems out of character, I should probably point out that it was his second park of the day and he’d walked much of the way there from home. Turns out that even hyperactive toddlers fancy a sit-down every now and then. Obviously, it didn’t last and he was soon off hitting trees with sticks (mostly harmless) and trying to breach the fence (also mostly harmless but try explaining that to all the “Ooh, is that your child? You should keep an eye on him” people). Jake had an ice-cream, so naturally Roo forgot that he had never previously shown any interest in ice-cream and wanted one too. Specifically an “ice-cream badge”, whatever that may mean. Anyway, he got one and we shared it so that it didn’t melt everywhere. And then he wanted another one, hence trying to breach the fence to get back to the “ice cream shop”. But he’s way too short to get over it. Bad luck once more, Roo!

In an attempt to distract him from more ice-cream, we went to find the playground. On the way, we saw all manner of duckies (I think the ones pictured above are herons. Or maybe pelicans. I’m not too sure), and there was a specified area on the north side of the bridge where you could feed aforementioned duckies. What you don’t want to do is what we spotted one toddler doing – feeding the pigeons. Once you attract those things, you never get rid of them. Eventually, we got past all the duckies (and there was a LOT for a little boy to stop and look at) and got to the south-westermost corner to find the playground – under construction. How disappointing! Why does this happen to me so often? No signs to say when it’d be open again but it looked like they were just giving it a clean-down and spruce up pre-summer, so it should be open again soon. From what we could see, it was fairly small, with a “natural” sandpit and wooden play equipment. I imagine it’d get overrun in the high season but beyond that I can’t really comment. We left the park and walked a couple of kilometres to Causton Street Playground instead

VERDICT: A lovely park but would have been nice to try out the playground while we were there.

More details here (official website)

 


3ChildrenandIt

Posted in Token attempts at fresh air (parks) | Tagged , , , , | 13 Comments

Vauxhall Park – 28/03/12

Posted on March 29, 2012 by katese11

I kinda assumed I’d done this one already being as it’s local and large-ish. Turns out I hadn’t. So, here goes…

Vauxhall Park is another one of those fairly eclectic type parks that has a bit of something for everyone. Like Vauxhall itself. So you have the winos shuffling round, the clubbers still coming down from the night before…and the odd mother and toddler.  The main draw for Roo is a play train (although we have to walk past the near identical one in Peddlar’s Park to get there) although on this occasion, he was pretending it was a bear cave (“tiptoe, tiptoe, tiptoe”). Once again, he can see the real trains from the park, which is always a boon. There are some nice carved wooden animals to play on and some picnic benches, which I quite happily sat at while Roo was driving trains/hunting bears. There’s also a playground, with a couple of climbing frames (none of which are a great toddler size) and swings. What’s missing from the playground nowadays is the yew bush, which was removed after a  few complaints about the combination of toddlers + poisonous berries. Apparantly Lambeth Council never considered this before….

What else? Well, there’s a nice Italian cafe, which does pasta dishes, fresh apple juice, ice cream and yummy cakes (their lemon meringue shortbread was something quite quite special). I haven’t been there recently but at last glance, they welcomed rowdy toddlers. There’s also a lavender garden, a one o’clock club and bizarrely a model village.

With all this on offer, Roo naturally wanted to do three things – 1) chase doggies 2) play in the dry fountain and 3) get into the one o’clock club before it opened. Can these toddlers not read?? He made several bids for freedom as I sat sunning myself at the picnic tables but luckily the friendly park cleaner kept returning him to me. Before he wandered off with the winos anyway….

VERDICT: A nice local park, with lots of green space and decent play facilities

More details here (official website)

Posted in Token attempts at fresh air (parks) | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

A Sandpit Special

Posted on March 26, 2012 by katese11

Recycling old posts, you say? Lazy, you say? Ah, shoot me.

Of course “ah, shoot me” are not words you want to utter in some of South London’s less savoury sandpits. And neither are the words “Go on Roo, see what you can find. What’s that shiny thing? A needle? Oh”.* Hence this round up of the best sandpits in London**

It’s been sunny these last few weeks. Roo has been asking for the seaside and places to “dig for treasure”. Mummy has been too pregnant to contemplate leaving London to go to an actual seaside, so we’ve been spending a lot of time in sandpits. In the last four days, we’ve been to four different sandpits. Today I’m home without him (hooray for Maternity Leave!), so naturally I’m writing about sandpits. Call it continuing a theme…

Anyhoo, on with the countdown…

5) Causton Street Playground
A gem in the middle of residential Pimlico. A paddling pool is the natural life partner of a sandpit and here you can find both. A lovely holiday vibe!

4) Archbishops’ Park, Lambeth
A local one for us but pretty new, with lovely clean sand and surrounded by grassy banks to sit on. And random pirate decor.

3) Holland Park
An entire play area filled with sand! What else could you ask for??

2) Marylebone Green, Regents’ Park
Getting a feeling of deja vu yet?! Huge, deep sandpit with built in play huts

1) Coram’s Fields
Not one but TWO sandpits, one with slides and water play in the middle (you’ll hate it, your toddler will love it). Lots of space to play, which is just as well seeing as Coram’s is super-popular in the summer…

Sorry to Brockwell Park – you didn’t make the list cause I was in a bad mood when I visited. And Victoria Park – you missed out because I forgot about you. Scientific this is not….

*Disclaimer #1 I have never found a needle in any sandpit, South London or otherwise

**Disclaimer #2 In my completely biased and slightly limited opinion. You want objectivity? This isn’t the blog for you…
Update 09/09/12 – I made a sandpit map! Check it out!

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Regents’ Park (Marylebone Green) – 25/03/12

Posted on March 26, 2012 by katese11

So, Regents’ Park. Or at least, one end of Regents’ Park. I wouldn’t attempt the entire thing in one post – it’s ma-hoo-sive. This, if nothing else, we have learnt from the first episode of the new series of The Apprentice. It’s big. So let’s just talk about the South-East corner (Great Portland St side) and the Marylebone Green playground.

Several things led to us sitting in the sandpit at the Marylebone Green playground for an entire Sunday afternoon. First was that episode of The Apprentice – is there anything those people can’t sell to us gullible public?! – , next (and more importantly) was the unseasonal glorious sunshine we’ve been enjoying this week, next again was the lack of ANY green space remotely near the University of Westminster, which is where our church meet….and lastly was Roo’s proclamation on Sunday morning that he wanted “chips for lunch”. A plan was formed (in my head at least) – go to church, walk up Great Portland St to Regents’ Park, find one of those little cafes that sell chips, have chips for lunch. In the sun. Unlike wannabe-entrepeneuers, wear sensible shoes. All elements of my thought process neatly dovetailed together.

Of course, there were flaws to my planning. The first being that I couldn’t find any chips. I remembered there being a small cafe-van inside the playground – and there was! I remembered it as selling chips – and it didn’t! So I left Nathan and Roo in the playground and walked off on a mission. First stop, The Cow and Coffee bean just inside the Inner Circle. They didn’t sell chips. Weirdly focussed on dairy and caffeine-based products. Who knew?! Next, The Honest Sausage halfway up Broad Walk. They didn’t sell chips either. But by now, I was too hungry to care, so I queued for a few hours, got queue jumped by several tourists and eventually procured three organic hotdogs. Luckily, Roo had forgotten he ever wanted chips for lunch and was happy to eat his sausage, as long as he didn’t have to leave the sandpit to do so. Unluckily, in carrying three open-trayed hotdogs all the way back to the playground, I got ketchup on my dress. Humbug.

So, the playground itself? Jolly nice (as were the hotdogs). As other blogs have pointed out, it could probably do with a lick of paint but we are unfussy about such things, as we’ve spent enough time hanging out in decrepit council estate playgrounds that we appreciate anything  even slightly better. And this was much better. A massive sandpit, with little houses in it, three frames to climb on, two roundabout type affairs and two types of swings. Lovely! The frames seemed a little steep for Roo to get up unaided (basically a scramble net or a sheer wooden ramp to climb) but he was fine once he’d had a shove-up.The sandpit was one of the best ones we’ve been to this week (and we’ve been to four this week), and it’s handy to have toilets on site, even if you do have to take a child with you in order to use them. Sneaky, I know but when you’re 35 weeks pregnant you need to know there’s one nearby….

VERDICT: A fine place to spend a sunny afternoon. Could have done with more chips.

More details here (official website)

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London with a baby

Posted on March 16, 2012 by katese11

No, I haven’t had it yet! Still very much pregnant and very much fed up with it…. But a facebook post from a friend visiting London with her 6-month old made me feel like I should dig into my memory banks and retrieve some of my “wisdom” on trekking about London with a baby. The post from my friend mentioned having to feed and change her baby in the foyer of a bank and made me realise that not everyone knows where the baby facilities are. So, here we go…

Your first and most obvious port of call is coffee shops. I’m ashamed to say that the major chains score higher on the baby changing facilities than those lovely independant ones you like so much. Why am I ashamed to say that? I love Starbucks! The red cups and gingerbread lattes truly make it feel like Christmas. Their raspberry frappucinos were the only thing I wanted when I had morning sickness.  And the coffee is so yummy. I know certain coffee-snobby friends will be hitting the “report abuse” button right now but hey, I like Starbucks and I will admit it. Have just admitted it, even. And they have good changing facilitites.

The downside to this is that you have to buy something. This is not like sneaking into a pub or McDonalds to use the loos and then walking nonchanantly out. When you have a screaming baby and you leave the disabled loo smelling like the subway at Elephant & Castle, it is very difficult to be either nonchalant or subtle. So, you generally have to buy something. The upside to this is that you may then be able to sit down and enjoy your drink in relative comfort. Some of the best times I had with Roo as a baby were when he fell asleep at a convenient time and I could just sit in a coffee shop and enjoy my (decaff, soya milk, extra sugar) caramel macchiato. Coffee shops also tend to be fairly breastfeeding friendly, especially if you get one of those comfy chairs, so for a couple of quid you’re sorted.

Of course, this time round such things will be a distant memory. Unless the impossible happens and Roo sleeps at the same time as the baby, our cafe trips will continue to be less of the “sip coffee, read trash magazine” variety and more of the “WANT MORE PINK CAKE MUMMY!” variety. We had a successful trip to a local cafe the other day, where Roo and his friend Ayla sat quietly for almost half an hour, eating all the icing off their pink cakes. But you can just imagine what happened next. High jinks doesn’t begin to describe it…

But, back to babies! So, you don’t have the time or money to faff around in Starbucks. Where next to change your baby? I suggest you head to the nearest free tourist attraction. In London, you are never far away from a rat, a Starbucks (see above), a member of Madness (Camden only) OR a museum of some sort. And free museums – even the smaller ones – tend to have disabled access and baby changing. The photo above is of Roo and his cousin Leo outside Tate Britain at four and seven months respectively. They did not appreciate the entrants for that year’s Turner Prize but they did both get breastfed and changed there. And to be honest, their mothers didn’t really appreciate the Turner Prize either. I don’t really “get” art…. Other centralish museums include National Portrait Gallery, British Museum, Tate Modern and if you’re in the city, the Museum of London. Of course, if you’re in the vicinity of the South Bank, there’s the ever- reliable  Royal Festival Hall , with its free changing facilities, loads of room to breast feed and its policy of letting mothers hang out in there all day without paying…

But what about if you’re stuck in Oxford St? I’m sure I’ve posted about this before but Mamas and Papas at the top of Regent St has a lovely feeding room (with rocking chair) and changing room. Mothercare at Marble Arch also has changing facilities. Then there’s the major stores  – House of Fraser, Debenhams, M&S, BHS and John Lewis all have toilets/changing rooms.  Don’t go into the shoe shop I used to work in and demand to use the staff toilets, otherwise your child will wet themselves on the shop floor. That cuts no mustard with the Floor Manager, trust me. Especially not when there’s a perfectly good department store next door. If you’re shopping somewhere more ….designed e.g. Westfield, you’ll find feeding rooms and changing there too (and I LOVED the ones at Westfield). I haven’t been to the new Westfield in Stratford (it always bothers me that it’s not called Eastfield) but I’d think it’d be much the same. I have fed on a shop floor before (Monsoon in Oxford St) and didn’t get kicked out, but it wasn’t ideal. I also fed on Bethnal Green station, which was also not ideal due to a strange Eastern European man trying to befriend me….

And I think that’s all I have to say on the subject of baby London for now. Particularly because a little boy who is definitely not a baby anymore (“No baby – Percy!”) is nagging me to go to “Number One shop” and buy “teddy bear crisps”. He may also be under the impression that he’s a small green tank engine, but that’s a whooooole other story…

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Cinema with a Toddler – 25/02/12

Posted on March 3, 2012 by katese11

OK, so this is a bit of a tangent for this blog, though I’ve done lots of reviewing of various movies and things over the years so thought why not? Going to the cinema was something I did with my toddler, in London, so that’s all the excuse I need. Ritzy in Brixton, if you’re interested. It’s a Picturehouse and I would recommend both their cake and their baby screenings. Enough info, I think.

So, the film itself. I love the Muppets. Miss Piggy was always one of my icons growing up (kick-ass, glamourous, bilingual – what else do you need??) and when Julie Andrews guest starred, it was like two of my heroines coming together in a beautiful meld. I’ve been a little hurt over the years by the bits of crap that the Muppets have lent their name to. I mean – what is going on with “Muppet Babies”?! That’s not canonical. Or even funny. Grrrrr.

You can see why I was a little nervous going to see the latest offering. But good reviews and my brother convinced me that this was worth going for. And we weren’t disappointed! It was ace! You should go see it now.

“Why?” I hear you asking me (although that may be the voices in my head again). I’ll tell you. First, there’s the songs. It’s rare that I watch the opening credits of a film and feel reassured by the “music by” credit. It happened during Juno – I’d been taken to see it by a friend and wasn’t entirely convinced (pregnant teenager? Really?) but the “music by Kimya Dawson” line perked me up. For those not in the know, Kimya is half of the Moldy Peaches, and someone Nathan bumped into dressed as a gorilla at the Reading Festival (Kimya was in the gorilla suit, not Nathan). At the time, we had a game going where “meeting a pop star” won you 50 points, so that won the game for him. Anyway, I love her music and the fact that she had liked Juno enough to write some songs for it made me feel better about spending the £3.50 to be there (Peckhamplex). Turns out Juno was great anyway. Still love that film.

Sorry, ma-hoo-sive digression there. Point was going to be that the music for this film was written by Bret Mackenzie, of Flight of the Conchords fame. If you don’t know who they are, then….oh, just google it. Needless to say, I was expecting great things and they were delivered. From the anthemic “Life’s a happy song” to the gangsta rap of “Let’s talk about me”, every song was funny without being ridiculous and infectious without being annoying. Can you tell I got the soundtrack today? And listened to it three times?

Classic Muppets songs weren’t missed off either – there were two versions of the Muppet theme and two of “The Rainbow Connection”, one of which was so beautiful it had me in tears. But I was in the front row, and Nathan and Roo had gone to the back so no-one saw. That means it doesn’t count. If a tree falls down and there’s no-one to hear it etc etc…. In true Muppet style, there were also a few covers, including a fine Ce Lo Green number, performed by chickens.  That really is the beauty of this film – it’s very much rooted in this century, from the song choices to the celebrity cameos, yet it has the feel of a classic 70s Muppets movie. While we’re on the celebrity cameos, I won’t say too much that might spoil the surprises, but there are a LOT of them. Some fairly gratuitous, some absolutely genius, lots that I didn’t twig first time round (thank you internet for enlightening me!).

And what about the plot? The actual film bit? Well, it’s predictable and feel-good but hey, it’s a kids film. The script is witty and not too clever-clever. I’m never sure about human leads in Muppet films but Jason Segal is excellent casting (mainly because he looks a bit like a muppet) and Amy Adams does a good job too. Chris Cooper is excellent at being ever so evil – he’s not really someone you’d call in for a romcom, is he?! There are shades of the first Muppet movie in there (quite delibrately, I think) but it doesn’t feel like treading on old ground. I loved Gonzo’s first scene.

Anyhoo, I’m going to stop there for fear of spoilering but go and see it. Your toddler will love it (Roo spent the afternoon bobbing his head to the soundtrack and asked to “watch Kermit frog” on youtube) – at least for the first hour and a half. Admittedly, he was verrrry restless by the end and scooting all over the place but I figured that no-one in an 11am Saturday show could be terribly precious about that kind of thing. I also figured that giving him free and easy access to a bucket of sweet popcorn could be directly related to the restlessness. But overall, he enjoyed it. Did I mention they screen a new Toy Story short at the beginning? Added bonus for Roo! And for us!

Enjoy. You don’t need to thank me.

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London Film Museum – 24/02/12

Posted on February 29, 2012 by katese11

Ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-da!

(That was the Pearl & Dean theme tune by the way. I’m setting the scene)

So, the Movieum! As it used to be known…I haven’t been there since a trip in October ’08, a week or so before our lives changed forever (funny story – I peed on a stick, now look at him!).  I remember it as being a bit dark inside but quite interesting. The website said it’d been updated and improved, so I was keen to go again. My brother and sister-in-law were up, which seemed like a good excuse, so we went.

A few things to know. First off, it’s quite pricey to get in (£13.50 for an adult) but there are ways round it. None of us paid full price and I’ll tell you how. Roo is a child under five and therefore gets in free, my sister-in-law is disabled and so she gets a concession price (£11.50) and my brother, as her carer, gets in free! And as for me….well, here’s the sneaky bit. There’s another concession (£11.50 again) for people who live in Lambeth. Don’t ask me why or how, but if you live in certain postcodes – including SE11, you get a discount. Boom! Take that, tourists….

Talking of disabilities, the problem here is that the step-free access is a little…..complex. On the website, it advised to call first if you needed access but as it was, we flagged down a friendly Russian flyer-er and he took us round. If it had just been me and the buggy, I probably would have carried it up the steps, especially if I’d known just how complicated the step-free was. Basically, go past the entrance to the museum, right at the Eye, past the gift shop and playground, to the back of County Hall. Under a car park barrier, into a loading bay, up a ramp and round a corridor, then up in a lift. This brings you out into the middle of the museum, so you then have to go through the corridors in order to pay at the front desk. In other words, a bit of a faff. But at least it had disabled access – that’s the main thing, right?

So, what was in the museum? Lots of film memorabilia including costumes and props. A few big rooms, with several smaller rooms, based around themes (Harry Potter, Heroes, Horror etc…). Also an exhibition on Ray Harryhausen. All very interesting, but the problem with rooms full of valuble props is that toddlers probably aren’t meant to touch them. And in case you hadn’t noticed, Roo is quite…handsy. To be fair,  there were no signs saying you couldn’t touch, but nothing that encouraged you to jump in either. In the main room, there was a phone box (from “The Krays”) and a throne (from “Elizabeth”), both of which Roo had an illicit play in/on, but I wasn’t convinced he was meant to.

In another room, there was an original set from Star Wars, which was roped off (in a totally toddler-resistant manner…or not) and that was clearly out of bounds. Photography was also verboten. But the weird thing was that the set was surrounded by pictures of people leaping around the set with light sabers. Presumably then, you could pose in there for a price…but there was no further information on how you could do this. Weird. And so, it was another place to haul Roo out of by the scruff of his neck.


So, what did he like? The model of the dinosaur skeleton, the giant Simpsons in the corridor (how did he know who the Simpsons are?! I’ve never watched it with him. I blame the lodger), the big golden seat in the main room (see above) and the driving booth. Ah, the driving booth. Definitely the most fun thing in there. It’s essentially a vintage car with both a camera and screen in front of it, so it films you then projects your image onto a background of London footage. While playing old-school chase music! Roo loved it and shouted “Hooray” every time the one-minute film finished and we “arrived” back at County Hall. We spent more than one minute in there, as you can tell. If only they had a few more things like that, it would have been well worth the money.

VERDICT: An interesting collection but not the most toddler-friendly place

More details here (official website)

Posted in Token attempts at culture (museums) | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Victoria Park – 23/02/12

Posted on February 26, 2012 by katese11

So, it was my birthday. You forgot, didn’t you? Ah well…don’t worry about it. It was only my 31st. That’s a non-birthday if ever I saw one.

As most people do, I decided to celebrate my birthday in the leafy enclaves of Bethnal Green. I suppose it’s fitting – we went to North London for Reuben’s birthday and West London for Nathan’s birthday, so it was only fitting to go to East London for mine. Otherwise, we risked spending a birthday in – shock, horror – somewhere we actually lived. Imagine that. The difference here was that I didn’t have to go for an eye test on my birthday, unlike my boys. That’s cause I organise the eye tests. Poor boys.

Luckily, the Big Guy remembered my birthday and organised a gloriously sunny day for me. Remarkable, given that it was snowing exactly two weeks before. Nathan was off work for the day and we skipped off to Bethnal Green with happy hearts.

First stop,the Museum of Childhood. In fact, that was my entire plan (lunch at the Museum cafe with Roo’s godmother, who works next door, followed by a romp around). But, as we know, plans change. This plan changed. For more than one reason.

Exhibit A  – the hordes of schoolchildren swarming over the sandpit. That’s just a turn of phrase, by the way – they didn’t have schoolchildren in a cage as an exhibit. Maybe they should have, but they didn’t. It’s not child cruelty if they have a sandpit in there, right?! Anyway, point being there were a LOT of school trips in there. Possibly the same school trips that were swarming all over the Transport Museum the day before. Dang children are following me everywhere this week! And it’s a bit stressful. They’re all so much bigger and stronger than Roo and the sight of hundreds of them stamping on my little boy in the sandpit was quite distressing. He didn’t give a toss – obviously – but I did.

Exhibit B – the unseasonable sunshine. You can’t waste a day like that inside, watching your toddler getting eaten alive. So, after lunch and a reasonable amount of playtime, we made a break for it. And our destination was Victoria Park, the expanse of green that stretches from Hackney Wick to Bethnal Green to Bow. No real reason, just needed to get away from those kids….

I’ve been to Victoria Park twice before. The first time was to see Radiohead and I remember it as being a big park, in the dark, with Radiohead in. I also remember a guy at the end trying to skip the queues at the gates by leaping over the railings. And getting stuck. Ouch! The second time, I was meeting Roo’s friend Katie (and her dad) and we went to the Hackney Wick side and tried to meet them at entirely the wrong cafe/bandstand combination. They found us eventually but we had no idea where we were. The whole park was being renovated and bits were roped off, but we did have a go on these ridiculously big slides (see above). Really, they’re HUGE aren’t they? To get some perspective, those specks at the top are Katie and her dad. Scariness.

Anyway, this time we went to an entirely different bit of the park and it looked a lot prettier than last time. Really, way prettier than you’d expect an East London park to be. There was a lake and a cafe next to a lake and…a portakabin next to a cafe next to a lake. Ah, that’s the East London I know and love!

The map said there was a V&A playground nearby, so we headed there. Another pleasant surprise! It looked new, and a quick google search informs me that it was only opened on 10 December last year. With Christmas and the cold weather since then, there’s barely been a chance for the vandals to get out there and trash it. Even vandals go to their Mum’s at Christmas, right? And stay in when it’s cold?

“Kate, stop buggering about and furnish us with some facts!” I hear you (both of you) cry. OK then. It’s what I would call a natural play area, sprawling over a large area, with wooden fences dividing each bit. From the photo above, it looks like a medieval village. You wouldn’t be far off with that. There were little wooden huts, a swing made out of plaited rope and a treehouse kinda affair, which we decided was too high for Roo. I know he’s keen on Winnie the Pooh at the moment and it did look like Owl’s house but that’s no reason to break his neck, is it?

Talking of neck-breaking, check out the precarious ladder going up to this slide! I’m guessing it was intended for bigger children (and this photo doesn’t show quite how tall the ladder was -at least above my head height) but there’s no telling the boy. So, Nathan went up – and down – with him. After that, he mainly wanted to play in the sandpit, which was at a more reassuring level – i.e. ground. He sat happily for ages, making snowmen in the sand, or rather instructing me to make them. There were also some cute wooden huts around the sandpit and I failed to get a picture where Nathan and Roo both looked normal in them. But here’s one of the failed attempts:

And here’s a nice one of them on the rope swing:

When I say “nice”, I mean Roo is climbing off as the photo is being taken. But no-one’s perfect. So, a lovely play area and a lovely sunny day.

VERDICT: A surprisingly nice play area, with a natural kinda feel. We missed out huge parts of the park but hey, there’s always next year…

More details here (official website)

3ChildrenandIt

Posted in Token attempts at fresh air (parks) | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments