🕺 5 things to do in London this weekend with the kids (26–27 April)

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Hey DILFs!

Before my eldest started school, I had no idea how much time he’d spend not being there. 

For starters, the school day ends at an hour that suits no one other than extra-curricular instructors. Then there's the fact that there are more inset days than I've googled “What's an inset day?” and forgotten the answer.

The school year is basically one long holiday, broken up with an occasional hour or two in a classroom. 

And when they are at school, they’re actually not – they’re either in a church being a background donkey with a tinsel tail, or in a field wearing a paper crown and throwing beanbags at cones like it’s the Olympics. And we’re expected to be there too.

Still, the upside of all this chaos is that London is full of brilliant things to do – especially during the holidays.

If you’re a DILF Club member, you’ve already had access to all the best Easter events, and you knew about them well in advance – before they sold out.

Now we’re somehow almost in May, which means half term is coming – and I’ve already started pulling together the best things to do with your kids (many of them free or very cheap, but still ticketed).

Not in the DILF Club yet? Let’s fix that in time for May half term. Membership costs the equivalent of £3 a month, which bla bla price of coffee bla bla Starbucks etc. Here’s what you’ll get: 

⭐ The Golden Ticket: an extra weekly email about the events you seriously need to book ahead for. (All the best stuff sells out way in advance.)

⭐ Access to my complete database of future events, so you can browse, plan and book any time. You can filter by date, venue, price and a whole lot more.

⭐ School holiday specials – such as the May half term guide. 

⭐ Occasional special editions about the most-requested topics.

Join The DILF Club today! 

For now though, a mere week or so away from the next bank holiday (and about four weeks away from the next half term break), here are your tips for this weekend. 

Enjoy! 

Jeff xx

1: Bounce around a basement indie disco

How Does It Feel To Be Loved? All-Ages Daytime Indie Club
Sunday 27 April, 12:00–16:00
The Phoenix, 37 Cavendish Square, W1G 0PP
Adults £6, children (14 and under) £2
Age guidance: suitable for all

If you’ve ever been to the daytime family rave called Big Fish Little Fish and wondered why you’d put yourself through such torture, I know the feeling. I wasn’t into techno music or acid house back when I could actually hear high frequencies and throw shapes without pulling something, so what on earth was I thinking when I bought tickets? 

The HDIF daytime family disco isn’t 100% my kind of music either, but the whole event is much more laid-back ​​– and I enjoyed a good 70% of the songs when we went a few months ago. There were indie classics from the likes of Belle & Sebastian, The Smiths, Allo Darlin’, Velvet Underground, Neutral Milk Hotel and Sleater-Kinney – but if that's all too “oversized cardigan and tiny scarf” for your liking, there was also lots more “poppy” , indie-adjacent music like The Supremes, Beach Boys, Otis Redding, The Temptations and Pulp. (When we went, Common People was by far the most danced-to song of the afternoon.)

It’s in the basement of a pub, which means yes: there’s alcohol. As for keeping the kids happy, there are glowsticks galore. And we saw plenty of home-brought snacks when we were there, which means there’s no need to spend a tenner on a plate of padrón peppers that won’t get eaten anyway. 

HDIF is far more low-key than Big Fish Little Fish – but what it lacks in glitter cannon, it makes up for in the avoidance of tinnitus. 

Find out more: https://www.howdoesitfeel.co.uk/hdifkidsdisco.html 

2: Ditch the blockbusters for miniature masterpieces

Clermont-Ferrand 2025: Short Films for the Family
Saturday and Sunday, 11:00
The Garden Cinema, 39-41 Parker Street, WC2B 5PQ
Pay what you can
Age guidance: rated PG

I recently took my two boys to watch A Minecraft Movie, and – like the good dad I am – I came seriously prepared for the most important event in my eldest son’s life so far. I reduced my phone’s screen brightness to 15%, ensured the cinema had guest wifi (because 5G is a bastard in most multiplexes), brought a portable charger, and starred my “must respond to” emails in advance. 

That’s right: I planned to use the 90 minutes of scathingly reviewed chaos to do admin by the light of a giant pixelated orb.

Unfortunately for everyone in my inbox, I adored the film and watched the entire thing. I didn’t understand a hefty chunk of plot (the Earth Crystal/Woodland Mansion stuff went right over my head), but it didn’t matter: it was so much fun. 

Fun, but not intellectually nourishing, some might say. So to provide my children with a more balanced cultural diet – one that also features complex emotions, beautifully developed characters, imaginative storytelling, quiet humour and beautifully odd little worlds – this weekend I’m taking them to see a collection of short films that won awards at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival.​

Some of the descriptions for these films seem much more insane than anything you’d find by Disney, Marvel or Warner, but I always trust that The Garden Cinema (which screens films from the Clermont-Ferrand festival each year) knows what it’s doing. The cinema is in a beautifully restored Art Deco building, and there are no ads, a thoughtful programme, and a real commitment to showing films you won’t find in a generic Cineworld. 

These child-friendly shorts are all foreign, but there’s no dialogue… which means I can do my admin in peace this time. 

Find out more: https://www.thegardencinema.co.uk/film/clermont-ferrand-2025-short-films-for-the-family/ 

While you’re there… 

👍️ You’re temptingly close to Sir John Soane’s Museum (totally free to visit) – a bewildering place that’ll make you feel better about your own living room clutter. It’s the former house of architect John Soane, who effectively donated it to the nation after his death because he despised his son and didn’t want him to inherit anything. 

The house is pretty much as Soane left it – and yes, that includes the sarcophagus in the basement, the hundreds of sculptures, and the innumerable Chinese ceramics, Greek vases and Roman glasses. If you’re a neat freak, you’ll self-combust. 

3: Stroll among vinyls, upcycled clothes and immaculate cars

The Classic Car Boot Sale
Saturday and Sunday, 10:00–18:00
Granary Square, King's Cross, N1C 4AB
Adults £7 per day if booked in advance (under-12s free), or £8 on the day

The boomer generation will be sobbing into their commemorative Charles and Di tea towels when they read what car boot sales can be like these days. 

No Ford Mondeos or Vauxhall Zafiras jammed full of rusty golf clubs, Nokia 3310s, dog-eared Mills & Boon or Rosemary Conley VHS tapes. At the Classic Car Boot Sale, which is held in King’s Cross a few times a year, you’ll find vintage fashion, upcycled furniture, designer collectibles and classic vinyls – all available to buy from the meticulous boots of vintage vehicles. 

There’ll also be a special “heritage car display” of the “avant-garde French creation” that is the Citroën DS, celebrating its 70th anniversary this year. If you’ve been a DiL reader for a while, you’ll be aware that none of these words mean anything to me and I have no idea what I’m saying. If you’re excited by this news, though, I’m glad. 

As for other things you’ll find at The Classic Car Boot Sale… there’s street food and a bar inside a Routemaster bus; vinyl-spinning DJs playing rock ‘n’ roll, indie, reggae, and a whole lot of other stuff; classic pinball machines and a mini-Ferris Wheel for everyone in the family to enjoy; a mobile art gallery designed by Sir Peter Blake, where you can explore pop-art iconography; a DIY t-shirt design area,  to create your own preloved t-shirt using exclusive Classic Car Boot Sale patterns; a Repair Fair, to learn repair and upcycling techniques at workshops; and a few other things that you’ll just have to be surprised by on the day because the world is running out of semicolons. 

Look… some things in life are fine as they are and shouldn’t be messed with. There’s a time and a place for a punctured paddling pool and a broken Nutribullet in a muddy field. But if you’d prefer your second-hand shopping with a side of actual joy, this version wins hands down.

Find out more: https://www.citizenticket.com/events/hemingwaydesign/the-classic-car-boot-sale-king-s-cross-april-2025/ 

While you’re there… 

👍️ If you’ve ever been to the Granary Square area before, you’ll probably have seen Word on the Water – a bookshop housed inside a 1920s Dutch barge, which has been floating on the Regent’s Canal since 2011. 

It’s filled to the brim (both inside and out) with a variety of fiction, nonfiction and children’s books, and you can visit the website to check if they have what you want in stock. I recommend going anyway: it’s super-cosy in winter (thanks to a wood-burning stove) and full of life in summer (thanks to a variety of performances – from jazz bands to poetry slams – on its rooftop stage with a solar sound system). All events – including the various workshops and talks held throughout the year – can be found on the shop’s Facebook page. 

I’ve always seen it in the same place on the Regent’s Canal Towpath, so I didn’t realise that, due to canal regulations, it used to have to change location every two weeks. But one day the exhausted and exasperated owners decided to break the rules: they squatted in one location for six months. The members of the Canal & River Trust were NOT happy, but – following a campaign led by the shop’s supporters – they finally relented and gave the bookshop a permanent berth. 

If you want to learn more about the fascinating history of the bookbarge, The New York Times (of all places) wrote all about it a few years ago. One particularly fun excerpt: “‘Our problem is reverse shoplifting,’ Mr. Privett said. People are constantly sneaking books onto their shelves, without asking for payment, he said. ‘Sometimes we find one we know for sure wasn’t there before, and it’s been signed by the author.’”

4: Explore the weirdness of being alive

Antony Gormley: WITNESS – Early Lead Works
Saturday 26 April, 10:00–18:00 (and Wednesdays–Saturdays until 8 June)
White Cube Mason’s Yard, 25–26 Mason's Yard, SW1Y 6BU
FREE

Before I had my first child, I’d often panic about all the questions he’d ask that I wouldn’t know the answer to ​– like, “How do magnets work?” and “Why do we hiccup?” Looking back, why was I so scared? A quick chinwag with the internet allows me to answer all these types of questions with the confidence of a man who definitely wasn’t just asking Chat GPT under the table. 

Instead of desperately trying to memorise facts about the life expectancy of tortoises and why we have eyebrows, I should have been crapping myself silly about my kids’ much deeper enquiries around existence and life on earth. Questions like, “Daddy… where do your thoughts go when you forget them?” and “What’s inside me when I’m not thinking?”

Grown-ups don’t tend to have such clean, untangled thoughts because we’re tied up with bulging inboxes, Amazon returns and whether we need more oat milk. It’s hard for us to tap into that mindset – let alone attempt any sort of response. 

Which is why it’s a relief that Antony Gormley still can. His early sculptures presented in this exhibition – lead-wrapped rocks, hidden water, sleeping body casts – aren’t trying to answer anything. They just sit there, silently and subtly putting forward questions about where we end, where the world begins, and whether lying face-down on the floor technically makes us part of the building.  If you’ve ever frozen halfway through unloading the dishwasher because your kid asked whether their shadow gets lonely, this is the exhibition for you.

While there won’t be any answers, your children (and you) might leave feeling a bit more at home in their bodies – or at least a bit more patient with the weirdness of being here at all. 

Find out more: https://www.whitecube.com/gallery-exhibitions/antony-gormley-masons-yard-2025 

While you’re there… 

👍️ On my “Paperclip to Porsche” scale of how much things cost, a sundae from The Parlour at Fortnum & Mason sits somewhere in the middle. So if you think your kids deserve a better treat than the squashed cheese string in your back pocket, go there. The ice creams are insane, the environment is fabulous, and everyone will be in heaven. Until the bill arrives. 

👍️ Want somewhere a bit cheaper but just as gustatorally (not necessarily a real word) satisfying? Try Kahve Dunyasi. It’s a Turkish cafe on Piccadilly with some of the best ice creams and cakes my family has ever tasted. As a bonus, the owners there will think your children are delightful – even if they’re objectively horrendous. 

👍️ St James’s Park has the best park playground in all of central London. We’ve argued about this before, and you know I’m right. 

5: Dive into the dazzling mysteries of light

Let There Be Light!
Saturday 26 April, 14:00–15:15
The Royal Institution of Great Britain, 21 Albemarle Street, W1S 4BS
£16 per person
Age guidance: 10+

Like most true Brits, I’m the master of self-deprecation. And I’ve recently realised there’s an incredibly useful (but often overlooked) aspect of being such a faux-modest nation: we can be genuinely befuddled and have no idea what’s going on, but our Hugh Granty, bumbling-plonker act makes it look like we’re just being funny and modest in a British way. 

For example, I read the description for The Royal Institution's upcoming talk about light, and – because I didn’t pay attention during Physics class and probably would have forgotten by now even if I had – I don’t know where to start with this sentence: “Discover how the laws of quantum mechanics, relativity and thermodynamics all fall apart without the electromagnetic spectrum and what lies behind the phenomenon that gives us the beautiful colours we see before us.” You might think I’m exaggerating my befuddlement, but I promise I’m not being self-deprecating. I just don’t know what it means. Do you? Please tell me you don’t. 

The talk “explores the special properties of light and shows that it is a necessary ingredient in all fundamental physics”. It’s aimed at families with kids aged 10+, and because I trust that The Royal Institution knows which topics and terminology are age-appropriate, I’m sure it’ll be fascinating and easy enough to follow. 

And yet… I’ve just read the bio of the speaker, “physicist and gravitational wave expert” Gideon Koekoek. He “obtained his BSc, MSc, and PhD in theoretical physics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Nikhef for subatomic physicsobtained his BSc, MSc, and PhD in theoretical physics,” and “spends equal time between education, research in gravitational waves and general relativity, and being outreach coordinator for the Virgo Collaboration, the Dutch Black Hole Consortium, and the Einstein Telescope Consortium”. Oh, and he “coordinates regional, national, and international projects for public, educational, and political outreach of gravitational wave science and Einstein Telescope in particular”. 

WHO HAS TIME FOR ALL THIS EXPERTISE???

It’s fine, it’s fine. We’ll all be fine. And if we’re not, at least the talk is “demo-packed” – so we can witness some mind-blowing experiments that will impress us even if we don’t understand the science. 

Find out more: https://www.rigb.org/whats-on/let-there-be-light-family 

While you’re there… 

👍️ The White Cube exhibition of Anthony Gormley (see above) is too nearby not to go – especially as it’s free.