Winter Skating…Craze or Just Crazy?

Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful, and since we’ve no place to go – well, let’s go ice skating.

Ice skating is a pastime that returns to the capital with a vengeance year on year. It’s a real winter craze – or is it just crazy?

I, like the rest of London, buy my ice skating tickets weeks in advance as I mentally prepare myself for the onslaught of Christmas festivities. Two years ago I ticked Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland off my list (pleasant, if you like German markets and talking moose), so in 2010, after weighing up the alternative options, I took out a mortgage to buy two tickets for ice skating at Somerset House.

I was lured by the Tiffany & Co sponsorship, the promise of London’s top DJs, and the catchphrase ‘glamour with your gliding’. I should have known that no amount of expensive silver could make my gliding glamorous (but I remain more than willing to test this theory).

On arrival, through tube traffic and tourist-packed London town, I queued to get my ice skates. My socks got wet at the shoe exchange. My ankles hurt from the awkwardly shaped boots, already worn by hundreds. Yet on to the ice I lurched.

They say having wet, cold toes can ruin an otherwise enjoyable evening. Or something like that. At first the beauty of the night escaped me; I felt disgruntled at having paid £3 for an orange juice, my face muscles ached from giving all the smoochy couples around me the evil eye, and I realised to my dismay that I had just paid a small fortune to go around in circles repeatedly for an hour.

In the wonderful setting of Somerset House, however, it was difficult to remain unimpressed – even for a practised grump such as me. In very few places can you shout gleefully to your friends across a public open space. On dry land you’re not meant to laugh when a friend of yours falls flat on their face. Only at an ice rink can you grab onto strangers passing you by without being arrested or – at the very least – punched.

As I floated around like a snow queen, tripping over collected ice-shaving piles in time to the music, there was little not to enjoy. The extravagantly enormous Tiffany-blue box to the left of the ice rink was a teasing metaphor for my experience: exciting, full of promise – ultimately empty – but charming nonetheless.

Image by fsse8info courtesy of Flickr