Baby, it's cold outside

Whenever I hear someone’s thinking of getting a puppy, I always ask if they’ve considered a toddler instead. There are similarities – boundless enthusiasm, weeing on the floor – but toddlers have the edge because they’re reluctant to go out in bad weather. They won’t stand by the door holding their reins and looking hopeful. They will resist vigorously, clinging grimly to inadequately earthed items such as crystal vases.

But though they object, pre-schoolers, like puppies, need to go out every day and romp off some energy. Where to, when it’s cold and wet?

Expensive:

Monkey Bizness. Massive cushioned aircraft hangar. Not dear in money terms, if you take just one toddler and stay all day. Costly, however, in terms of the toll on your sanity.

Lewes Castle. Marvellous dressing-up room in which to enact fantasies of being a thirteenth century toddler. Town model will hold pre-schoolers’ attention for just seventeen seconds.

Paradise Park. Unbeatable for indoor activities. Most toddlers are terrified of the implausible looking dinosaurs but the kind staff will let you bypass them.

Budget:

Library. The children’s section is very good. Not free, as your child will force you to rent a Pingu DVD which you will fail to return, incurring enough fines to have bought the damn thing outright.

White Hart. I’ve never tried this but am told that toast costs about 50p and you can watch swimmers in the pool below. The White Hart does not market itself as a ‘toddler hang-out’, so use sparingly.

Ocean Adventure at the Leisure Centre. Tiny, low-rent Monkey Bizness. Has a crèche most mornings so you can have a grown-up swim/quick nap. Hot chocolate from the machine is better than the tea.

Toy Library at the All Saints. Toys, biccies, tea, company. Only open on Wednesday mornings, no point banging weepily on the door at other times.

Toddler groups. There are enough of these in drafty church halls that you could spend your whole week lurching from one to the other. Terrific if you find like-minded parents. Beyond depressing otherwise. (LDC keeps a list.)

Free:

Wyevales Garden Centre. Much missed is the unfenced koi carp pond, but there are lovely wooden playhouses (boring people call them ‘sheds’). There’s a café so you might have to spend money at some point.

Inside Outside. New ‘creative playgroup’. Their website hints they’ll be outside whatever the weather, before admitting they have a nice big warm tent. Untried but it looks good.

Toys R Us. Before your child realises this a shop, tell them it’s a toy museum. Don’t buy anything or the gig is up.

Booth Museum. Only if you can face explaining the principle of taxidermy. Thing Two set off an alarm last time.

Grange Gardens. Technically outdoors, but on cold sunny days before the café opens the benches near the hatch are bathed in warmth. Toddlers, sprinkled with Grange magic, will play happily for ages. Thing Two and I are often the only people there, so keep it to yourself.

Beth Miller. Published in VivaLewes.com

I know where it's at, if you wanna have a good time

We were gathered in the school playground in friendly manner round Hoxton Mum, newly arrived in town.

‘I’m looking for a music group for Django’, she said, indicating the suckling toddler half-hidden under a discreetly arranged hemp scarf, ‘He really responds to jazz.’

‘The All Saints Centre’, I told her, ‘Wednesday mornings.’ I decided not to mention that it’s more Humpty Dumpty than Humphrey Littleton.

‘Thanks!’ she smiled. ‘And toddler groups?’

‘There’s a good one at the All Saints on Fridays’, answered Pells Boy, dropping his coat over the Beast’s head to stop her drawing blood again.

‘Right’ she said, frowning a little. ‘And once Lysander and I have sorted a nanny, where’s the cinema?’

The resounding chorus of ‘All Saints’ was so loud, I was surprised not to see Nicole and Natalie Appleton waving from the top of the climbing frame.

Who needs Battersea Arts Centre Barbican South Bank malarkey when you have a central town venue with such versatility? I go there so often, I’m thinking of moving in.

My favourite All Saints activity is the toy library. Thing Two and I go every Wednesday. He eats jaffa cakes and insists on wearing a Buzz Lightyear outfit so small he looks like a squashed sperm, while I gratefully accept a cup of something hot from the saints who run the place: could be tea, could be Bovril, who knows, and who cares, someone else has made it. Then I sit and chat to the regulars: Scary, Posh, Ginger, and Decaf Man, who are sipping their own drinks with appreciative winces.

And what’s not to love about a cinema where the mix of pathos and violence is played out more vividly in the grimly determined fight for gallery seats than on the screen? I’ve often been trampled underfoot by tiny old ladies who batter up the stairs and leap decisively into a comfy velvet banquette, flinging any coats or bags already there over the balcony with a celebratory whoop.

The All Saints also hosts some great gigs. A couple of years ago, Crèche-Manager and I managed to break out of the house at the same time, and pitched into an unrecognisable venue. We’d been there only four hours earlier at a children’s party: celery, humus and sobbing.

Now it was a dark dangerous scene of pulsing music and hot sweaty bodies. We threw ourselves into the melee with abandon, following the parental maxim of, ‘We’re paying for a baby-sitter, we haven’t time to wait for the third drink to kick in before we’re uninhibited enough to boogie.’

It needs some work before it will fit on a t-shirt but as a philosophy it’s unbeatable. We shimmied, we grooved, we cut a rug; and when the night was over (10.30pm or it’s another six quid), we were near enough to walk happily home.

We’re hoping to be there for a similar bacchanal this Saturday at the psycho thing: we’ll be the ones already dancing when you arrive.

Beth Miller, 1st April 2009. Published in VivaLewes and in Viva Lewes magazine, May 2009. Photo by Alex Leith