Hey DILFs! 

Do you have (or know) any 18-year-olds who are off to uni but can’t tell a colander from a can opener? Worried they’re more likely to get scurvy than STIs? Then you might like to shove them in the direction of the Off to Uni Cookery Workshop, which is being hosted by the Garden Museum next Wednesday and Thursday (9–10 September). 

Your gastronomically gormless offspring will learn how to make a few different meals that are low-cost and nutritionally balanced – including chilli sin carne and rice; puttanesca pasta; spicy dahl with fried egg; and banana breakfast muffins. They’ll also learn knife skills and all about safety in the kitchen, and they’ll be given tips on batch cooking, food safety for storing food, and budgeting tips. 

There’s a communal meal at the end of each session, which overlooks the museum’s courtyard garden – and it’s almost worth attending for that alone, because the garden is delightful. 

Each cooking “day” is only 2.5 hours long – enough time to learn how not to give themselves food poisoning, while still leaving plenty of hours for scrolling TikTok. It costs just £20 per day, and you can book one or both days. 

And if your kids are younger and, ironically, desperate to help you cook when you'd really rather they sat still and stopped dropping pasta sauce on the dog, here are many other ways to occupy them this weekend.

Enjoy! 

Jeff xx

PS There’s a fantastic competition below; be sure to enter it.

Brassworks at Woolwich Works
Saturday 5 September, 10:30–21:00
Woolwich Works, The Fireworks Factory, 11 No. 1 Street, SE18 6HD
FREE
Age guidance: suitable for all

Woolwich Works seems to be getting increasingly expensive. I've recommended loads of their events over the years, but some of the ticket prices lately have required a consultation with the household finances.

Maybe the events themselves have changed, maybe it's inflation hitting Woolwich Works particularly hard, or maybe there's some other perfectly reasonable explanation. Whatever the reason, I was VERY relieved to discover that Brassworks is back this weekend and remains reassuringly, gloriously free.

And not just free because there's nothing to do but stand around all day risking tinnitus. You could do that – there are about nine hours of music in which to do so – but you could also attend some of the workshops throughout the day. All of them free. And at least one of them (OK, just one of them) involving a kazoo – the instrument it's almost impossible to be bad at.

Better still, the kazoo lesson isn't an end in itself. Once you've spent some time mastering the art of humming into a plastic tube, everyone heads outside to join the Brassworks parade through the Royal Arsenal – kazoos included.

If you'd prefer your children to come away with a slightly more transferable musical skill, there are plenty of other options. NYJO is running sessions where you can have a go on a tuba, while Crystal Palace Band will let you try out a whole selection of brass instruments after demonstrating how they're actually supposed to sound.

And if your children aren't musically inclined, there's always hula hooping. The Majorettes – a Guinness World Record-holding hula hoop troupe – are running a drop-in workshop where you can stay for five minutes or the full 45. Like I said: transferable skills.

Then there's everything you don't have to participate in. Crystal Palace Band will be performing ahead of their workshop, while the brilliantly named Brass Funkeys bring the sort of New Orleans-inspired brass that's previously got them onto stages at Glastonbury, Boomtown and Ronnie Scott's.

Most intriguing of all is Mr Burn, a half-hour show involving live-looped trombones and tubas, electronic drums, clowning, puppetry, fire and pyrotechnics. I can't begin to imagine what all of those things look like simultaneously, which is precisely why I want to see it.

There'll also be food and drink, garden games and a big stretch tent to hang out under between performances – so you can basically pitch up, stay for as long or as little as you fancy, and see what happens.

And after everything I said at the start about Woolwich Works getting expensive, I should probably emphasise this one more time: ALL OF IT IS FREE. Consider the balance redressed.

Find out more: https://www.woolwich.works/brassworks 

London’s Transport in Miniature: An Underground modelling themed one day mini-exhibition
Sunday 6 September, 11:00–16:00
Keen House, 4 Calshot Street, N1 9DA
£12 per person on the door, £10 in advance

In 1910, the Titanic hadn't sunk yet, the World Wars hadn't happened, women couldn't vote in general elections, the South Pole hadn't been reached, TV and BBC radio were still yonks away, penicillin hadn't been discovered, insulin wasn't available to treat diabetes, the NHS wouldn't arrive for another 38 years, stainless steel was yet to be invented, Sellotape and ballpoint pens were still things of the future, sliced bread wasn't around to provide humanity with a benchmark against which to measure all subsequent inventions, and nobody had ever done a crossword.

The obvious question is: what the hell did everyone do all day (assuming they survived long enough to find out)?

Intriguingly, quite a lot of them went roller skating. Britain was in the middle of a full-blown “rinking” craze, with hundreds of indoor roller rinks around the country and live bands playing while people skated.

But not everyone was whizzing around in the Edwardian equivalent of knee-high socks and sweatbands under a giant disco ball. Some had found another way to pass the time: making trains very small.

By December 1910, there were enough serious enthusiasts in London to form The Model Railway Club – now recognised by Guinness World Records as the oldest model railway club in the world.

And it's still going strong: it has its own purpose-built headquarters near King's Cross, where members meet every Thursday evening to spend several hours caring deeply about things measured in millimetres.

And this Sunday, the club is holding a one-day exhibition called London's Transport in Miniature.

There'll be miniature versions of London trains from right across the past 130 years, from the earliest days of the Underground to the brand-new Piccadilly line trains. Some have been built completely from scratch, others from kits or using 3D printers, and there'll be demonstrations of the techniques used to turn all those tiny components into working model trains.

The star attraction is Copenhagen Fields, an enormous model recreating the area around King's Cross as it looked between the wars. Alongside the trains, there are tiny streets, buildings and people, trams running along a 1930s Caledonian Road and Underground trains disappearing beneath it all. Have a look at the photos on the event website: the level of detail is bonkers.

If your kids are remotely into trains, I don't think I need to work particularly hard to sell this to you.

Oh, and clearly model railways weren't only popular because there was bugger all else to do in 1910. The Model Railway Club is now the biggest in the UK by membership – despite us having since invented video games, the internet and approximately 400 streaming services. Making trains very small, it seems, is still right up there.

Find out more: https://themodelrailwayclub.org/events/londons-transport-in-miniature/ 

👍️ There’s a newish German bakery on the corner of Pentonville Road and Islington High Street called Zeit für Brot – which you can’t not say with a German accent – and I’m often walking past it on my way to the Islington Vue. I’m usually hot and harassed with two children in tow, so I've never actually made it through the door – despite being fairly certain that most problems could be improved with an emergency German baked good.

The range of products looks incredible. For bread, there’s Kartoffel-Spelt (potato-spelt), Walnuss-Dattel (walnut-date), and a whole host of other items that have been given a German/English mashup name. I don't know if it's on purpose, but I like the German/English mashups of some of these items.

And then: oh my goodness the Schnecken. They're sweet buns named after their snail-like shape – Schnecken means “snails” – and you need to see the Raspberry-White Chocolate Schnecke and Chocolate Schnecke for yourself because they're the most delicious-looking things I've ever seen.

Are pastries more your thing? Same as my youngest. I’ve shown him the website and he’s drooling over the Franzbrötchen (similar to a cinnamon roll) and Kardamomknopf (cardamom knot). It’s just a shame he’s not into chocolate – and I’m not into brioche: I’d love to order the Schokoweck (chocolate chip brioche bun) because it’s the loveliest word to say out loud.

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Summit Ally Pally
Fridays–Sundays, 11:00–19:30 (and some other weekdays too – see website)
East Court, Alexandra Palace, Alexandra Palace Way, N22 7AY
Adults £28, 8–17s £22
Age guidance: strictly 8+

If I were to keep a notebook of profound things my children have said, it would contain precisely one entry.

When my eldest was six, we were on our way up a rollercoaster in Vienna and I was doing a lousy job of hiding just how many bricks I was shitting. “You know,” he said, “there's a difference between something being scary and something being dangerous. This is scary but not dangerous. It's fine.” Blimey. 

His advice came back to me last weekend as we prepared to ascend Ally Pally. Our lovely guide was busy quadruple-checking that my harness was strapped on correctly, which – rather than reassure me – convinced me that the experience was both scary AND dangerous.

Turns out it was neither. It was peaceful and beautiful – and even though I was literally climbing onto the roof of a palace, there wasn't a single moment when I wondered what the hell I was doing up there.

To give you an idea of just how un-scary it is, Summit doesn't even try to put off nervous climbers. St Paul's, by comparison, explicitly warns that its Treasures Tour isn't suitable for anyone with a fear of heights. Summit's FAQs actually ask, “I'm scared of heights – will I be OK?” The answer is basically: “Yep: don't sweat it.”

Ironically, once you're actually climbing, all that safety equipment becomes extremely reassuring. Your harness is attached to a safety line that runs alongside the steps, and as you climb, you simply slide the attachment clip along with you. So although you're very aware that you're walking up the outside of an enormous building, it never feels remotely precarious.

Our guide also gave a running commentary as we climbed, with plenty of interesting facts about Ally Pally and its history. My only gripe was that he couldn't answer quite a few of my follow-up questions – and, for once, these weren't questions so obscure that nobody could reasonably be expected to know the answers. For a building with quite this much history, I'd have liked a little more of it.

The views, though, are fantastic. Most of London's famous high-up viewpoints put you right in the middle of everything, but from Ally Pally you're far enough away to see the city as an actual skyline. The Shard, St Paul's, the London Eye and the towers of the City and Canary Wharf are all spread out in front of you, with a ridiculous amount of London between you and them. And once you reach the top, you can walk around and see the whole lot in 360 degrees – apparently as far as 25 miles on a clear day.

One lesson from our experience: if you're planning to go with kids who are under the age of eight, don't accidentally reveal that fact as you're about to climb up the building. A parent in our group let slip that her remarkably tall son was just six, and they were promptly ejected from the group, just as we were about to start.

Find out more: https://www.summitallypally.co.uk 

👍️ Go ice skating at Ally Pally! Be sure to check the opening times before you visit, because they’re all over the place. 

As You Like It
9 September–25 October (SORRY! It’s only when I finished writing that I realised it won’t be open for this weekend! But you can book for next weekend instead)
Shakespeare’s Globe, 21 New Globe Walk, SE1 9DT
Standing tickets £10, seated £28–£88
Age guidance: suitable for all* 

I used to think The Parent Trap had the most ridiculous storyline I'd ever come across. Two parents divorce, take one identical twin each, move to different continents and agree never to mention to either child that she has a sister.

But I've just read the Cliff Notes for As You Like It – it somehow escaped my GCSE English syllabus – and WE HAVE A NEW WINNER.

I'm sure there are subtleties and metaphors and 400 years' worth of academic analysis that I'm failing to appreciate here, but dude: this play is one heck of a sillyfest.

Reassuringly, it's an extremely enjoyable sillyfest. There are two separate sets of feuding brothers, multiple banishments, a wrestling match, a woman disguised as a man teaching the man she's in love with how to seduce her, another woman falling in love with the first woman because she thinks she's a man, terrible love poems nailed to trees, a court jester, some shepherds, a lion attack and FOUR impending marriages. Oh, and one of the baddies abruptly finds religion at the end, thereby solving one of the remaining problems.

According to people who know far more about Shakespeare than I do, he knew exactly what he was doing with all this mayhem. As You Like It is considered one of his greatest comedies, and Rosalind one of his best female characters: she's funny and clever, and spends most of the play firmly in control of the madness around her.

And yes, there is indeed Proper Meaning beneath all the silliness: the play has lots to say about love, identity and the roles we all play in life. In fact, this is where “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players” comes from.

Will your children understand all of this? Goodness knows. Adults who've seen it a dozen times can still struggle to remember who some of the characters are, so I wouldn't set the bar too high. Fortunately, confusion is practically baked into the thing, and this production sounds particularly good at making sure it doesn't matter: there's loads of physical comedy, ridiculous costumes, live music, audience participation and a court jester who spends much of the play half-naked in a giant ruff and white pants. They can worry about all the underlying messages when GCSE English eventually requires them to worry about such things.

The reviews (of which I read many) are mostly very good. Critics love the actors who play Rosalind and Touchstone, while the comedy, costumes, live folk music and audience interaction get plenty of praise. One reviewer describes the whole thing as “a burst of late summer sun”; another says you'll spend much of it grinning.

It's not universally adored. At two hours 45 minutes, some think it's too long, others found parts of the plot hard to follow, and there's a fairly consistent complaint that all the fun comes at the expense of some of the darker, more interesting stuff underneath. Which, if you're taking an eight-year-old rather than writing a dissertation on Shakespeare, may not be the most devastating criticism in the world.

There is also one fairly enormous point in its favour: you're watching it at the Globe. It's not the original Globe – because it burned down in 1613 – but it's a reconstruction of Shakespeare's theatre, just a few hundred metres from where the original actually stood. Which means you're watching Shakespeare outdoors in a building designed for the plays he was writing. That's pretty special.

Find out more: https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/whats-on/as-you-like-it/ 

*”As standard, we don’t issue an age guidance for our full theatre productions – we welcome everyone and all ages can attend. 

Some plays, however, do contain adult themes and might not be suitable for younger children. The individual event pages on the website will give as much information as possible to help you decide, and on occasion will sometimes include a warning or guidance.” 

👍️ The Clink Prison was founded in 1144, and was burnt down in 1780 by rioters. There’s now a Clink Prison Museum a few doors down from the original site, and it attempts to recreate the conditions of being an inmate there. 

It’s HORRIBLE, in an interesting “glad I wasn’t alive then” kind of way. Gory as hell, and at times a bit scary. My boys didn’t mind it because they kept thinking all the blood was dirt (“Why is everyone in prison so muddy?”), and they loved the selfie room. They each received a lollipop at the end for counting how many rats they noticed throughout the exhibition… even though they were about 12 rats out. Thank you to the man at the ticket window for letting it slide and making my walk home less tantrummy.

Anansi the Spider
Until 6 September, 10:30 and 14:00 on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays; 10:15 on Saturdays
Picnic Lawn, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, The Regent's Park, Inner Circle, NW1 4NU
Adults £18, under-18s £15
Age guidance: 4+ (under-4s are permitted but everyone aged 2 and over must have their own ticket)

I first (and last) saw Anansi the Spider on Saturday 24 July 2021, and it was this exact same production, on this exact same lawn at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre – so I’m in an unusually good position to tell you all about it.

Or at least I would be, if I had anything resembling a working memory.

My clearest recollection is being surrounded by people happily eating throughout the performance, while my kid looked on in outrage because we had nothing. Why did we have nothing? Because, two days earlier, the theatre had emailed me and explicitly stated that food couldn't be eaten during the performance:

So if you go this time and the same rule still exists, please feel free to flagrantly disregard it as a small act of justice for what happened to me five years ago.

My second-clearest memory is feeling proud for noticing that the show takes place on an actual lawn, and bringing a picnic blanket to sit on. July was different back then: grass occasionally got wet.

And my final memory is that the music was fantastic. I couldn't begin to tell you what it sounded like, obviously, but the internet tells me there was West African drumming, singing and live music (including djembe drums). So I suppose I really enjoyed that.

As for the actual show: utterly no clue. So I've been back to the internet to find out on your behalf.

Anansi the Spider is actually three stories rather than one, drawn from the centuries-old West African and Caribbean tradition of Anansi tales. Anansi is a tiny spider who survives by being cleverer than everyone else. He's mischievous, greedy and boastful too, though, so being the cleverest animal in the story doesn't always work out brilliantly for him.

In one story, he tries to steal all the wisdom in the world and keep it for himself. In another, a snake offers him some vegetables in exchange for being allowed to whip him with his tail – so Anansi tricks a succession of other animals into taking the punishment instead. And in the third, he attempts to attend two dinner parties at once so he can eat twice as much food – and ends up with nothing.

The stories are told by three performers who take turns playing Anansi and all the other animals, using music, singing, dancing, physical comedy and plenty of audience participation.

Is any of this ringing a bell for me? Nup.

The reviews are excellent, though. Apparently Anansi’s attempts to climb an enormous tree are particularly funny, and the audience participation never feels forced or patronising. The middle story even gets properly suspenseful as Anansi sends animals towards the waiting snake, while the whole thing stays simple enough for very young children to follow. There’s drumming and singing throughout, the kids join in, and at one point the world's wisdom ends up scattered over the audience as confetti.

I couldn't tell you for certain, but I'm sure you’ll love it. 

Find out more: https://openairtheatre.com/production/anansi 

👍️ Most other cities would kill for somewhere like Regent’s Park, so be sure to make the most of what it has to offer. There’s Marylebone Green Playground (which has some of the most unique playground equipment in London), the beautiful English Gardens, the world-famous Queen Mary’s Rose Gardens and my son’s favourite: the Japanese Garden Island.

This section 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.

The Three Little Wolves
Various days until 4 October, various start times (see website)
Puppet Theatre Barge, Richmond, TW10 6UT
Adults £15, under-17s £12
Age guidance: 4–10

Childhood in War (see my write-up here)
Daily until 28 February 2027, 10:00–18:00
Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road, SE1 6HZ
FREE
Age guidance: suitable for all

Horrible Histories at Ramses and the Pharaohs' Gold: The Exhibition (see my write-up here)
Until 13 September, 11:00, 13:00 and 15:00
Battersea Power Station, 2 Circus Road East, SW11 8DQ
Adults £32.95, 5–15s £16.95, under-5s free
Age guidance: 5+

Dinosaur World Live (see my write-up here)
Until 6 September, 11:00 and/or 14:00
Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre, 3 Fulton Road, Wembley, HA9 0SP
£10–£27 per person
Age guidance: 3+ (but see warning in the write-up)

The Comedy About Spies
Until 26 September, 14:30 and/or 19:30
Adelphi Theatre, Strand, WC2R 0NS
£20–£145 (tickets for a family of 4 from £80)
Age guidance: 10+

Cats (see my write-up here)
Until 19 September, 14:00 and/or 19:45
Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, The Regent's Park, Inner Circle, NW1 4NU
£15–£97.50 per person
Age guidance: 5+

The Gruffalo (see my write-up here)
Until 6 September, various start times (see website)
Lyric Theatre, 29 Shaftesbury Avenue, W1D 7ES
£10–£29.50 per person
Age guidance: 3+

The Timewalk Exhibition – An Immersive Journey Through Civilisations (see my write-up here)
Until 30 September, various timeslots throughout each day
Immerse LDN, Excel Waterfront, ExCel, E16 1XL
Adults £31.50, 4–15s £25, under-4s free (no ticket needed)
Age guidance: suitable for all

M.C. Escher: The Exhibition (see my write-up here)
Daily until 6 September, entry slots throughout the day
Embankment Galleries, Somerset House, Strand, WC2R 1LA
Adults £24.50, 4–12s £15.50, under-4s free (family tickets are also available)
Age guidance: suitable for all

Frida: The Making of an Icon (see my write-up here)
Until 3 January, 2027, 10:00–18:00 (until 21:00 on Fridays and Saturdays)
Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 9TG
Adults £25, 12–18s £4.37, under-12s free

House of Dreamers (see my write-up here)
Daily until 30 September, timeslots throughout the day
Immerse LDN, Excel Waterfront, ExCel, E16 1XL
Adults £28.90, 3–12s £23.90, under-3s free
Age guidance: suitable for all

King’s Cross Pétanque (see my write-up here)
Until Wednesday 30 September, 09:00–21:00
Pancras Square, King's Cross, N1C 4AG
FREE – just turn up
Age guidance: suitable for all 

1996: 30 years on (see my write-up here)
Mondays–Saturdays until 19 September, 09:30–various closing times depending on the day
Barbican Music Library, Barbican Library, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS
FREE – no booking required
Age guidance: suitable for all

Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait (see my write-up here)
Daily until 6 September, 10:30–18:00 (Friday and Saturday until 21:00)
National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, WC2H 0HE
Adults £27, under-26s £5, under-12s free