🏎️ 5 things to do in London this weekend with the kids (22–23 February)

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Hey DiLFs! 

That exciting thing I was planning to share with you this week? Damn: you remembered. NEXT week – I promise. Hold me to it! 

For now, let’s not dwell on that: let’s instead look at all the wonderful goodies I’ve compiled for this weekend, to help you see out half term in style. 

Enjoy! 

Jeff xx

PS Random question:

1: Watch a live orchestra help a dog throw a party

CBeebies Wildlife Jamboree
Sunday 23 February, 13:00 and 15:15
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX
£14–£35 per person
Southbank Centre age guidance: 2+

When I googled this event for further details (because seriously: a shrug emoji is more informative that the info you’ll find on the Southbank Centre website), I realised that a recording of the entire performance is available on iPlayer. It’s from July 2024, so – unless CBeebies has been on a hiring spree of cartoon characters or the definition of “wildlife” has changed recently – it’s likely that the one this weekend will be quite similar. 

Still, I’d recommend you get tickets to the Royal Festival Hall rather than watch at home: there’s nothing quite like the atmosphere of a live orchestra performing alongside animated undersea adventurers and various weird-looking dogs. 

Oh yes, but what is it exactly? The gist is that there are real people on stage accompanied by cartoon characters on a massive screen behind them, and together they’re planning a huge jamboree with some unusual wildlife guests. Dodge (that effing puppet dog who must have the world’s most generous golden handcuffs deal because he’s in EVERYTHING CBeebies-related) is there, and he’s in charge of invitations. Which I think means: chaos ensues. 

There are singalong songs, highbrow tunes, and various scrapes and escapades. The CBeebies East London Schools’ Choir will be singing, and the Sinfonia Smith Square orchestra will be providing the music – which relieves me greatly because the Sinfonia Smith Square orchestra is the best. (I mean, they sounded very much in tune when I last saw them. I don’t genuinely know if they’re “the best” because I can’t tell an orchestra from my elbow, but everyone seems to highly rate them.)

Find out more: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/cbeebies-wildlife-jamboree 

While you’re there… 

👍️ I can’t wrap my head around the concept of Rollercoaster (on Saturday, also at the Southbank Centre), but it sounds like the sort of thing I wish I’d booked before agreeing to a playdate that day. “Strap in for pop-punk juggling as juggler Wes Peden shares his cutting-edge tricks inspired by corkscrews, adrenaline and high-tech seatbelts.”

As well as focusing on, err, cutting-edge harnesses (at least they have an eye on safety?), the show also features “a four-metre transparent tube making balls spiral around Peden’s body”. The juggling is apparently next-level, and is “accompanied by electro beats composed of distorted rollercoaster sounds”. YMMV, but that last bit is enough to make me glad I went with the playdate option. 

👍️ For something a little more low-key, go see There’s a Bear on My Chair (Saturday and Sunday) – which is the first ever stage adaptation of two books: There’s a Bear on My Chair and There’s a Mouse in My House by Ross Collins. 

2: Learn how fortune-telling got a glow-up

Tarot - Origins & Afterlives
Saturday 22 February, 10:00–17:00 (and other dates until 30 April)
Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, WC1H 0AB
FREE (but booking is required)
DiL age guidance: 6+

Note: tickets for this Saturday are nearly gone, but you can book for many other dates in the future. 

Tarot reading is a topic that – much like queueing etiquette – I should be more open-minded about. 

I only realised this approximately 15 minutes ago, after reading a helpful review of the exhibition that puts tarot in context and gives it much more backstory. To show you how far I’ve come already, I can now appreciate that tarot is much more than “scam artists scamming vulnerable people with their scammy little deck of scam-infused cards. SCAM.” When tarot first became a thing, for example, it had a kind of humanist angle and was a serious game that allowed people “to mediate the complexity of the world around them” – and it seems to be returning to these roots, somewhat, at the moment. 

Go me for personal growth! 

The exhibition presents a sequence of important moments throughout the history of tarot – from the origin story through all the transformations that the cards have undergone due to the influence of artists, mystics and writers. The gallery says it has some extremely rare and sought-after cards on display, and I’ll have to trust that they’re telling the truth because I only became non-cynically interested in tarot 17 minutes ago. What I do know is that “Austin Osman’s Square hand-painted Tarot deck” sounds AWESOME, and I hope I’m not disappointed when I see it for real. 

Find out more: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/tarot-origins-and-afterlives-2025 

While you’re there…

👍️ Coram’s Fields is around the corner and I will question your child’s honesty if they say they don’t like it there. It’s a seven-acre space with multiple playgrounds (each with different facilities), sand pits, a cafe, lawns, picnic tables, a wildlife garden and a paddling pool. Adults are only allowed in if accompanied by a child, which makes the place feel extra wholesome and friendly. 

The only downside? As with most places that contain “Fields” in the name, it’s outside. And it’s February. You’ll be standing around outside in February. 

👍️ Lamb’s Conduit Street is lovely for restaurants and cafes at all price points, as well as shops that sell stuff you don’t need but have just decided you really want.

3: Enjoy steel bands, storytelling, and just a bit of empire chat

Commonwealth Festival
Saturday 22 February, 10:00–14:30
The Chapter Office, Westminster Abbey, 20 Dean’s Yard, SW1P 3PA
FREE (but you need to buy general admission tickets: 1 adult + 1 child: £30, extra child £13, extra adult £30
DiL age guidance: suitable for all

I used to live near a Commonwealth-themed cafe in Finsbury Park called Blighty. Their Full English was nicknamed The Winston, the Full Vegan was The Gandhi, the Full American was The Lincoln and… you get their drift.

The Winston featured bone marrow, which I mention only because “genius”, “yum”, and “WHY DID I NOT EAT THERE DAILY I’M AN IDIOT.”

“The Winston” is also why the cafe was stormed by activists in 2018: they decided that naming a sausage and some beans (and of course the bone marrow) after Mr Churchill glorified colonialism (which the owners strongly denied).

Where was I going with this? Oh yes. First: bone marrow in a Full English should be mandatory. Second: my actual point…

I’m surprised that Westminster Abbey has a Commonwealth Festival. I assumed that many people (rightly or wrongly) equate “celebrating the Commonwealth” with “celebrating colonialism” – and that the Abbey would rather stay away from anything that risked placards and egg-throwing. 

Maybe the Commonwealth is less controversial than I thought, because Westminster Abbey couldn’t be making a bigger deal out of it than if it strapped a giant crown to the London Eye and had the King bungee jump off it.

There’ll be performances (steel bands, Māori dancing, African drumming), family workshops, storytelling, arts and crafts, educational bits, and photos and archives to “pour over”, which I hope is a typo but I’ll double check when I visit.

It all sounds like fantastic fun, although I’m still not sure if it’s a history lesson, a celebration, or just a way to get kids excited about drumming while adults sidestep the empire chat.

Find out more: https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-events/special-tours-and-events/2025/february/commonwealth-festival/

 While you’re there… 

👍️ Most museums or visitor attractions have two choices for where to eat. There are the cafes that offer an assortment of overpriced muffins, a couple of limp sandwiches and not much else. And then there are the restaurants – where vegetables are “braised”, salads have “soft” leaves, butter is “cultured” or “miso” or “sage”, and prices are “I guess we’ll have that damn cafe muffin after all.”

If both options strike you as equally undesirable, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by The Cellarium Café and Terrace. It serves proper food you’ll actually want to eat, and is reasonably priced (unless you’re comparing it to Wetherspoons, in which case nothing will ever be reasonably priced again). 

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4: Step inside an art-meets-sound experiment

Reverb
Saturday and Sunday, 12:00–19:00 (and other dates until 2 March)
180 Studios, 180 The Strand, WC2R 1EA
Adults £20, children 13–18 £15, under-13s free
DiL age guidance: 3+

This exhibition-of-sorts has been around for a while, but online descriptions gave me the thinking wobbles: I couldn’t figure out what I’d be experiencing. So instead of trying to explain it to you while second-guessing myself into a coma, I thought I’d just wait until I’d actually visited and seen for myself. 

That visit has now happened, and the seeing has taken place – and in many ways I have even less of a clue than before I went. The organisers say that Reverb “celebrates the intersection of art and sound” with “site-specific audio-visual installations and sonic experiences”, which I thought might mean art installations accompanied by weird sound effects – and occasionally I was right. (The melting ice block thing was pretty cool.) But mostly it seemed to be large-screen videos of music performances or of important events in history. 

Was I disappointed? No – for two reasons. Firstly, I’m clearly the problem here: I don’t think I’m cultured enough to appreciate this sort of art, whereas reviewers seem to love the concept and fully grasp what was going on. Secondly, I actually enjoyed it – and so did my kids. 

I found that if I ignored the  exhibition’s attempts to apply an overarching theme to everything – if I simply took each individual installation for what it is – it was a fantastic experience. Many of the music performances are brilliantly (and creatively) displayed, and the spoken word stuff provided some useful history lessons. 

I’ll never forget the look on my seven-year-old’s face when we entered the first “room” and watched Stan Douglas’s Luanda-Kinshasa; he was entranced, and couldn’t stop jigging along to the six-hour jam session. (We did not watch it all. Here’s a clip if you’re interested.) He even said it was better than The Floor is Lava song, which is high praise indeed. 

So yes. There’s a good chance I’m ignoring something profound or inspirational – a project of creative genius. But even if I am, I found a way to have a great time anyway. 

Find out more: https://www.180studios.com/reverb 

While you’re there… 

👍️ Waterloo Bridge has my favourite views in London. Look west to Big Ben, the South Bank and London Eye, and look east for Tower Bridge, Canary Wharf and St Paul’s Cathedral. 

5: Go karting indoors because British weather is what it is

K1 Speed (formerly Capital Karts)
Saturday and Sunday, 09:00–17:00 (junior races finish at 17:00; adult races go on until 23:00) and other future dates
15 Cabot Square, E14 4QS
£29–£69 per person, depending on number of races
K1 Speed age guidance: STRICTLY 7+ only

Have you ever worked for a company that invented testimonials for its website? I have. I may have even written a few of the glowing endorsements myself. And, as every fake-testimonial writer should do, I made sure they were realistic enough to pass for reality. 

The people at K1 Speed didn’t get the requisite training. The testimonials on their homepage are so anodyne and so conveniently concise that even ChatGPT would be like, "That reads like the first draft of a chatbot that got scrapped."

“Fantastic! Highly recommend. Great fun for all the family,” says one. “Kids loved it and safety was well maintained,” claims another. And my favourite, because it must have been ripped from the whiteboard of an in-house marketing meeting: “Great fun day out if you’re taking kids or just a big kid yourself.”

Anyway! This place has a 4.2 rating on Google (658 reviews), which seems more realistic. It’s “the UK’s fastest indoor go karting track” with “100%, all-electric karts” that can reach speeds of 45mph. It opened last year, but I never bothered to mention it because I thought it was 18+. (That’s because there’s another place in Canary Wharf called Fairgame, which is essentially an indoor fairground and looks amazing – and it is indeed 18+.)

Is K1 Speed actually worth it, though, or am I just using it as an excuse to blather on about fake testimonials and big up other venues that you should dump your kids to visit? It’s all those things. 

The genuine reviews have some decent criticisms and some slightly hmmm ones (apparently someone’s boyfriend wasn’t as good as he thought he’d be on the track). But it’s mostly praise – and parents agree that it’s a great day out. 

“Fantastic! Highly recommend. Great fun for all the family,” one might say.