Winterville: naughty or nice?

Festive fun for the whole family that’s good for the local community; or a cynical exercise in Christmas commercialism by Tower Hamlets council to squeeze the most buck-bang out of Victoria Park?

Like the magic lands at the top of the Faraway Tree, the swift rotation of events that arrive at Victoria Park can portend both good and bad. While we locals may enjoy having festivals and fairs arrive on our doorstep, we also decry the tourism it brings to our sometime sleepy little London backwater – and the glow sticks and laughing gas canisters it can carry in its wake – not to mention the sozzled teenagers, and rattled old folk flung to the gutters by local kids on their go-faster Micro Scooters. Walking through Victoria Park on a heaving summer Saturday, you will oft hear the hiss of “get out of my village” through gritted, somewhat entitled local teeth.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m kinda excited about Winterville. I’ve already booked up the inevitable ice skating tickets – only a fiver to local residents – and surely better than an expensive early morning slog to Somerset House, however pretty it may be with its Tiffany gift box inspired / sponsored decor, only to discover the kids take to the ice like Bambi to a frozen pond with thrice the blisters.

And I am eyeing up the panto –  to fill those brittle deadwood days between Christmas and the flat fizz of (that’s kids for you) New Year’s Eve. Despite the Hackney Empire regularly hosting one of the best annual panto extravaganzas in the capital, I reckon my tweenage kids are more likely to get on board with Robin Hood in the Speigeltent than Mother Goose at the Empire,  and at only £8-10 per head for the former (the latter can clock up to £32 for a good seat) it feels like a reasonable alternative.

Having trekked up to Winter Wonderland last winter, only to be met by acres of muddy grass, overpriced and decidedly unfestive fairground rides (my ears don’t need the added windchill factor of doing loops at 60 mph when it’s hovering at zero degrees outside) I ended up warming up my frozen sorrows in spiced cider in the now ubiquitous and therefore uninspiring German Market. So it remains to be seen whether or not I like having something so spuriously festive on my doorstep.

No doubt, it will assuage the desire to go traipsing round a windswept park with no particular purpose than to exercise the dog, make room for another mince pie and get to the nearest pub ASAP. But whether or not Winterville’s commercial charm can compete with the local winter fair, until recently a genuine annual celebration of local baking, bad santa costumes and a crocodile of squeaking kiddies on fiddles ( as well as the hovering local fiddlers, of which I suspect there are naturally a few); But the Victoria Park Winter Fair seems somewhat depleted of late as local shops are taken over by less authentic, less locally invested enterprises. That’s London for you.

Yet, it’s still a nice to have – for a bit: it runs until New Year’s Day, by which time, I might well have had my fill. But come the winter, Victoria Park Vill-ahge, as it’s known locally by property savvy incomers – increasingly overrun by tourists and club-kids during the festival-frenzied summer months – can actually feel a little bleak. And given that I have a full three weeks of much anticipated time off over Christmas before I start a new job, it’s sure to offer many a helpful distraction to keep the kids amused, once we’ve gorged ourselves on a double helping of telly, board games and family.

But still, as the green boards went up around the park, shutting out the view from locals – and soon the hapless merry makers inside it, a hundred or so metres away from the village and its bedecked shops and restaurants and all that genuine charm  –  I couldn’t help feeling that I’d rather have a frosted stretch of grass to roam on and wintery trees overhead than a saccharine festival of bleary lights.

The hoardings went up despite ostensibly free-to-enter Winterville, like all these festive festival cash deer (as opposed to cows – sorry, couldn’t resist), scrooging the living daylights out of you, once you’re safely bedazzled by twinkly lights and huffing down on a mostly fruit juice and clove mulled wine to keep out the cold- £8 for a meatball anyone? My answer to that is, well it IS Victoria Park, darling, but then the real, born and bred locals, increasingly left out in the cold, would have something to say about it.

But is it any better than the overpriced, yet admittedly well-run Christmas pop-up theme parks where you pay to get in – around £60 a head for Lapland depending on the date – in Kent when my dad took us last year; now situated, I believe, in Berkshire; or the comedy guff-fest of Laurence Lewelyn-Bowen’s Magical Journey  – seriously – read the homepage – whose “chav elves” and fagging Father Christmas rather saw it off on its open day.) Well that remains to be seen, but at least it’s democratic enough that everyone can go- and what’s more “In the spirit of Christmas” than that?

In truth, all this organised festive fun leaves me feeling a bit how I feel come New Year – rather like I’ve over eggnogged the pudding. I think I will miss the rather simpler joys of the village church choir guilting the drinkers of the local pubs into a spot of Christmas giving with their unaccompanied version of Silent Night –  perhaps, the purest expression of what Christmas in the capital should be.

And so, in the end, I expect my overriding Winterville sentiments will be: Bah Humbug to all, and to an annual reprisal of Winterville, good riddance.

Update: Reprobate Tom and me squeezed in a visit last night while the kids were in Scouts. It was compact, well organised, far from full with squeaking twenty somethings in fur muffs, most of whom were sampling the food on offer, which tends to the Shoreditchy pulled pork slider variety. The fairground rides offer little attraction for those of us whose wombs feel like they might fall out if tumbled too ungently, so we had a gentle stroll, whilst supping on £4.50’s worth of mulled beverage, which seems not a bad price considering we’d got in free with nerry a bag check (it’s not the sort of event where knife totting yutes would bother attending.)

We scarfed down a Voodoo Ray’s gigantic pizza slice (probably the best value nosh on offer at £3.50) goggled at the rather snowy ice skating pit, the rather deserted roller disco (why have both? we pondered) and curiously at the rather charming Spiegletent which was last night attempting to woo the younger spender with club DJs Bugged Out (I realise how ancient this statement makes me sound) then spent £6.00 on an extra large portion of festive churros (they had cinnamon on them) to take to pick up the kids, who were already conveniently turning sugar circles from snowman biscuit making at Cubs, promising to return avec les enfants, in the morning. Winter Wonderland it ain’t but it’s a good enough distraction for the area, this year at least… But with a whole day of festivity planned, the event I’m most looking forward to today is the quaint annual feat of community that is the Victoria Park Winter Fair