Somerset House, a handsome Georgian palace on the Thames, was once the office of the Inland Revenue, and the courtyard was a car park, but that particular hell is over. Instead there is Skate at Somerset House with Fortnum & Mason, which is a purple-lit skating rink next to a ‘pop-up’ shop or ‘Christmas arcade’. This, because all PR copywriters think they write for Jennifer’s Diary in 1952, is apparently ‘the most chic and complete Christmas experience in London this season’.
I doubt it. There is, for instance, no sign of Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, Father Christmas, or rogue elves, although there is a ‘twinkling 40ft Christmas tree hand-picked from the Kielder Forest’. Of course I can only think — how big a hand do you need to pick a Christmas tree? There has been a lot in the newspapers recently about tattooed elves smoking and saying ‘Have a shit Christmas’ in various Christmas ‘blunderlands’ and not exercising what A calls elf-control; why exactly elves have to conform to the same societal mores as, say, the women of Saudi Arabia I know not, but there it is.
There is, however, a selection of fashionable nightclubs and ‘après-skate’ bars selling truffles and champagne and, for all I know, magic dust.
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