Tanya Gold: The sheer horror of Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland

Winter Wonderland is a Christmas-themed playground that lands on the sorry part of Hyde Park in November; the part that is munched underfoot, and is sad, and makes money. It sucks up children and spits them out fatter and closer to death, but happy — at least that is what their parents say. The children themselves look drugged, or frightened, because their parents are invariably screaming at them. From the north, Wonderland looks like Coney Island, a cold, bleak fairground from Scooby Doo, with seagulls screaming and circling, far more than is usual for central London. That is when I begin to mistrust Wonderland. We are here for the same thing, these critic gulls and I: the food.

There is food in Wonderland; piles of food, most of it fake, or ersatz, or pretend food. There are shacks and huts and pubs and outlets; there is also an ice rink, a circus, a fairground, an ice kingdom, and Santa sweating obesely in his grotto; then there are the shops, selling every form of tat known to child.