🚒 16 things to do in London this weekend with the kids (3–4 January)

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Hey DILFs!

It seems the people who programme London’s cultural life have collectively decided to take this weekend off.

It makes sense: I don’t think members of the public are in the mood for any type of enrichment or activity right now either. The children are all busy comparing Labubus and reorganising their Pokémon cards, and the grown-ups are feeling too gassy and emotionally overextended to deal with any outings. Plus we dads want to play with our new meat thermometer and drink our new whisky from our new Best Dad Ever mug, which is obviously a priority.

So it works well for everyone. Except me, who has a newsletter to fill. And you, who seem like the type who doesn’t like being in all day.

Don’t worry: there’s still just about enough new stuff to see you through. And then from next weekend, we’ll be back to having a terrifying number of activities to contemplate.

Happy New Year!

Jeff xx

1: Decorate a spinning top while learning the sanitised version of Roman partying

Drop-in Family Craft & Game: Celebrate Saturnalia with a Spin!
Saturday 10:00–16:00 and Sunday 12:00–16:00
London Mithraeum, 12 Walbrook, EC4N 8AA
FREE – drop-in (but it’s a good idea to book a free ticket to the Mithraeum itself)

The Romans were known to be pretty hardcore party animals, but I do like the London Mithraeum’s attempts to play down how these olive-oil-obsessed sandal-wearers celebrated the biggest holiday of the Roman calendar.

The festival of Saturnalia was about honouring Saturn and marking the end of the agricultural year, and it typically involved heroic levels of eating, enthusiastic drinking, gambling absolutely everywhere (with bets placed on just about anything), enslaved people openly making fun of their masters, ridiculous party dares, public yelling and singing, and rude jokes at dinner.

According to the London Mithraeum, however, Saturnalia was all about exchanging gifts, playing games, and children amusing themselves with spinning tops. Which is so much of an understatement that it’s verging on a lie, but I guess I should let it go because this is a family event after all – and no parent wants their kid reenacting what really went on at these events.

So, at The Mithraeum this weekend, you’ll get to celebrate Saturnalia by decorating your own spinning top and playing “Mithras-inspired games”. It’s the politest possible way to experience a festival otherwise known for its complete lack of restraint, and I reckon that makes it all the more charming as a result.

There’s so much else to see at London Mithraeum, so set aside some extra time for after you’ve perfected your spinning top.

Find out more: https://www.londonmithraeum.com/events

While you’re there…

👍️ London Mithraeum itself is an interesting place for a wander. It’s the remains of a Roman temple, built there around AD 240 and dedicated to a mysterious god called Mithras. If you want to feel like you’ve stepped inside Roman London, this is probably the place.

There are also nearby gallery spaces with things dug up from around the site – such as statues of Mithras and some coins, pottery and other everyday bits – to provide a bit of everyday detail.

Funny story: when it was first discovered in the 1950s, it was sitting right where a new office building was intended to be built. But instead of choosing to move the proposed office block to a new location, the planning committee decided to take the temple apart and rebuild it on the roof of a nearby car park, about 100 metres away. The rebuild didn’t go especially well: it ended up at the wrong height, some of the stones went back in the wrong places, and most people involved eventually agreed that relocating the office block might have been a better idea than relocating an invaluable Roman temple.

Decades later, Bloomberg (the financial news company) came to the rescue by redeveloping the site back in its original location. The temple was taken apart again, surviving stones were returned as close as possible to where they were first laid, and – unlike the 1950s rebuild, where the reassembly was more guesswork than archaeology – this version is much more transparent. For example, when original material couldn’t be confidently put back in the right place, modern stone was used instead – and it’s been made obvious which bits are Roman and which bits are just there to stop the whole thing falling apart.

2: Enjoy a Christmas ballet that finishes before anyone starts bargaining for snacks

The Nutcracker
Saturday and Sunday, 11:30, 13:30 and 15:30
artsdepot, 5 Nether Street, Tally Ho Corner, N12 0GA
£13.75 per person
Age guidance: all ages

There are so many blimmin’ Nutcrackers these days, and they’re all just called The Nutcracker – even though some are full-fat, traditional ballets; some are trimmed-down, family-friendly “first ballet” versions; and some have been cheerfully re-engineered into a non-ballet involving cardboard mice and a noticeably freer relationship with the original plot.

After careful inspection, I can confirm that the artsdepot production sits firmly in the middle camp. It’s a child-friendly ballet version of The Nutcracker, keeping the familiar journey of Clara and her Nutcracker Prince into the magical Land of Sweets – with the Mouse King, Snow Queen and the Sugar Plum Fairy all present and correct – but pared down to be clearer, shorter and much more manageable for littler audiences. The performance clocks in at about 50 minutes, making it a gentler introduction to the story than the nearly three-hour full-scale productions you might see elsewhere.

One reviewer summed it up neatly last year, calling it “a skilfully condensed version that keeps all the magic without losing its charm”.

There’s no live orchestra, as you’d get at the big, traditional productions – but tickets are also roughly 90% cheaper than the one at the Royal Albert Hall. So, pros and cons I guess.

Find out more: https://www.artsdepot.co.uk/event/the-nutcracker-2

3: Settle into a story that treats emergency vehicles like the night-shift heroes they are

The Good Night Garage: Storytelling and Singalong
Sunday 4 January, 11:30
Discover Children’s Story Centre, 383–387 High Street, E15 4QZ
Free with entry ticket (adults and children £10, 1-year-olds £5, under-1s free)
Age guidance: 3+

When I looked up Tori Kosara, the lady who’s leading this storytelling and singalong session, I discovered that she’s best known for working on children’s books tied to big, recognisable brands – which sent me down a lengthy rabbit hole of a style of children’s publishing I hadn’t really considered before.

You’ve probably seen them without thinking twice – My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic; Hot Wheels: The Race Before Christmas; Optimus Prime and Megatron’s Racetrack Recon! Familiar worlds associated with big children’s brands, turned into something you read at bedtime rather than step on at 7am. I’d never considered how these books appeared in the first place, or how deliberately they’re put together.

All of which is a fairly long detour, given that this event isn’t one of those books at all.

At Discover, Tori will be reading from her book The Good Night Garage, which doesn’t have a big brand attached. But it does something similar by starting with something children are already obsessed with – emergency vehicles – and building a story around them.

The story itself is a gentle bedtime one. As night falls on Motor Isle, Fire Truck, Ambulance and their friends head out on important night-time jobs, quietly keeping everything running while the rest of the town sleeps, before finally being tucked in themselves at dawn. It’s cosy and reassuring, and also a nice bit of low-key appreciation for the people vehicles that keep turning up while everyone else is dreaming about ice cream and unicorns.

Once you start noticing how well stories work when they grow out of childhood obsessions, it’s hard not to start wondering what else could get the same treatment. A Crayola bedtime story about not drawing on the walls. Or a book inspired by children sprinting wildly round birthday parties – possibly sponsored by Clarks, featuring the unfortunate kid who wanted the cool flashing-lights trainers from another brand and ended up with blisters.

Which feels like enough thinking for one listing.

Find out more: https://discover.org.uk/event/the-good-night-garage-storytelling-and-singalong

While you’re there…

👍️ There are, of course, the two floors of Story Worlds and the Story Garden that this centre is famous for: immersive, exploratory play spaces “where children and their imaginations can roam”. The Story Worlds and Story Garden are advertised as suitable for 0–11s but I reckon that’s a bit optimistic: more like 0–8s.

👍️ Head to Westfield Stratford City for any food you might want before/after visiting Discover. The centre has a cafe, but I can’t imagine many people being delighted by its offerings.

4: Watch penguins tap-dance their way through identity crises and ecological collapse

Happy Feet
Saturday and Sunday, 11:00
The Garden Cinema, 39-41 Parker Street, WC2B 5PQ
Pay what you can
Age guidance: rated U

I’ve never seen Happy Feet, and after reading the plot summary on Wikipedia, I briefly considered keeping it that way. It is astonishingly complicated. Penguins! Dancing! Exile! Religion! Environmental collapse! And yet… critics liked it (76% on Rotten Tomatoes), audiences liked it too (70%), and it was a huge box-office hit when it came out in 2006 – so clearly this is a me problem.

Very loosely speaking, Happy Feet is about a penguin called Mumble who can’t sing (apparently a crucial penguin life skill), but can tap dance. Rather than being impressed, his fellow penguins find this unsettling – and when a fish shortage hits, Mumble’s unusual dancing is blamed. And then he’s promptly ostracised from the community.

From there, things get weirder. There’s a journey involving new penguin friends, a romance with a penguin called Gloria, and an environmental storyline that eventually leads Mumble into direct contact with humans – whose overfishing turns out to be the real problem. This confrontation takes the form of more dancing – which feels in poor taste to me, but clearly what do I know?

When the film first came out, critics and commentators spotted allegories pointing in all sorts of directions – including difference, conformity, religion, race, queerness, neurodiversity and environmental responsibility. Some of them are unmistakable if you’re watching as an adult; some only really emerge if you’re actively looking. (And if all this sounds overly ambitious for a children’s film, it’s worth knowing that Happy Feet 2 reportedly engages with the Greek bailout. I will include a link and then back away slowly.)

What’s interesting, though, is that none of this seems to have dampened its appeal among children. Most appear to take away something much more straightforward: 1) it's fun to watch penguins dancing, and 2) wall-to-wall music is never a bad thing.

Which suggests that Happy Feet works on more than one level. You can pick at the themes if you feel like it, or you can just sit back and enjoy a tap-dancing penguin doing his thing. Both approaches are entirely fine.

Find out more: https://www.thegardencinema.co.uk/film/happy-feet/

5: Read enormous gloomy jokes and realise design does most of the heavy lifting

Harland Miller at the Design Museum
Saturday and Sunday, 10:00–18:00 (and daily until 25 January – until 17:00 Monday-Thursday)
Design Museum, 224–238 Kensington High Street, W8 6AG
FREE

Some people see Harland Miller as a grifting one-trick pony. He’s the guy who makes large paintings that look like Penguin book covers, except the titles are all fake – and they’re also bleak, self-pitying, sarcastic and funny in a way that suggests he’s not having the time of his life.

When you read the titles on their own, stripped of context, they simply seem like a set of gloomy, self-absorbed phrases that you wouldn’t expect to see hanging in a gallery:

Death, What's In It For Me?
Narcissist Seeks Similar
Not Giving Into Willpower
Blonde But Not Forgotten
Tonight We Make History (P.S. I can’t be there)

But when you plonk those same titles onto a Penguin-style book cover, things change. At first, they appear like any other Penguin book due to their neat layout, respectable typeface and sensible colours. You get the impression these are just classics you haven’t heard of because you weren’t paying attention during English Lit classes. But then you actually read the titles and start to wonder if something’s going on – because no self-respecting Penguin editor would allow a story to be called Too Cool To Die… would they?

What changes isn’t the words themselves, but how much weight they seem to carry once they’re wrapped in a familiar bit of graphic design. On a Penguin-style cover, with all its built-in credibility, Miller’s titles suddenly feel worth a second look – largely because the packaging nudges you into paying attention.

Miller’s point seems to be that design tells us what to take seriously, and it’s a topic he’s been preoccupied with for a while – particularly after moving from Britain to Los Angeles, where the city communicates almost entirely through enormous bits of writing that use different typefaces and colours depending on what they’re trying to get across.

Which is presumably why, at some point, he stopped just thinking about this stuff and started painting the letters themselves – big canvases where the text, the colour and the layout are doing most of the work.

It’s these huge letter paintings that we’ll see at the Design Museum – not the Penguin covers, because tbh those do get a bit samey. The paintings will be upstairs, and downstairs there’s a separate small exhibition that focuses on his works on paper, which show how his compositions were built. The display includes new work made specifically for the museum, which lean harder into Miller’s interest in letters and layout – making it clear why his work sits in a design museum rather than a traditional art gallery.

Find out more: https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/harland-miller-at-the-design-museum

While you’re there…

👍️ The acclaimed Wes Anderson: The Archives exhibition is still showing at the Design Museum. It isn’t nearly as free as the Harland Miller one (adults cost £19.69 and 6–15s are £9.84), but it’s fabulous. Read my write-up here.

Other listings

This section now brings together both new events I don’t have room to expand on and selected older ones from past newsletters that are still running. If you see a “(see my write-up here)”, that’s your cue to click through and rediscover whatever Past Me felt strongly enough to write about.

Christmas Comes to Moominvalley
Until 4 January (various start times)
Jacksons Lane Arts Centre, 269a Archway Road, N6 5AA
£12–£26 per person
Age guidance: 3+

Grinchmas Afternoon Tea Sightseeing Bus Tour (see my write-up here)
Daily until 31 January, various time slots
Departs from Victoria Coach Station, 164 Buckingham Palace Road, SW1W 9TP
Adults £52, children £47
Age guidance: 5+

Me (see my write-up here)
Until 25 January (various dates and start times)
Little Angel Theatre, 14 Dagmar Passage, N1 2DN
Adults £17, children £15
Age guidance: 2–5

Dracapella (see my write-up here)
Until 17 January (various dates and start times)
Park Theatre, Clifton Terrace, N4 3JP
£22.50–£47.50 per person
Age guidance: 10+

The Firework-Maker’s Daughter
Until 18 January, various start times (usually 11:00 and 14:30 on weekends)
Polka Theatre, 240 The Broadway, SW19 1SB
£10–£​​29 per person
Age guidance: 6–12

The Tiger Who Came to Tea
Until 4 January, 11:00 and 14:00 on weekends, 10:30 and 13:30 on weekdays
artsdepot, 5 Nether Street, Tally Ho Corner, N12 0GA
£15 per person
Age guidance: 3+

The Gingerbread City (see my write-up here)
Until 4 January, 09:00–17:30
Unit 5, 79–81 Coal Drops Yard, Stable Street, N1C 4DQ
Adults and 12+ £13.50, 3–12s £8.50, under-3s free

The Gruffalo’s Child (see my write-up here)
Until 11 January, various start times
£10–£24 per seat
Lyric Theatre, 29 Shaftesbury Avenue, W1D 7ES
Age guidance: 3+

Mama Goose
Until 3 January, various start times
Stratford East, Gerry Raffles Square, E15 1BN
£10–£39.50 per person
Age guidance: 5+

Winter Funland
Until 4 January
Olympia, Grand Hall, Olympia Way, W14 8UX
£37 per person (under-3s free) or £145 per family ticket
Age guidance: suitable for all

Bluey’s Big Play (see my write-up here)
Until 11 January)
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX
£17–£37 per person
Age guidance: suitable for all

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