{"id":10220,"date":"2012-11-21T10:30:34","date_gmt":"2012-11-21T10:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/?p=10220"},"modified":"2012-11-21T10:25:39","modified_gmt":"2012-11-21T10:25:39","slug":"festive-ice-skating-at-somerset-house-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/festive-ice-skating-at-somerset-house-london\/","title":{"rendered":"Festive ice skating at Somerset House, London"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ice<\/p>\n

In my world, anyone erecting\u00a0Christmas\u00a0trees before December has even started<\/em> should be forced to co-habitate\u00a0with\u00a0Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, \u00a0Donner and Blitzen for a month. In a cave.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, big business thinks rather differently, and London is already firmly in the grip of \u00a0the\u00a0big festive cash-in, while Oxford Street basks in the glow of Marmite-themed Christmas lights.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Ice<\/p>\n

Somerset House, off The Strand in central London, has got its holiday season baubles jangling early this year, with a huge Christmas tree in the courtyard looming over the temporary ice skating rink, which was erected as early as November 6th.<\/p>\n

\"Ice<\/p>\n

It used to be that the sheer novelty of ice skating in the central of London in November was enough, but now the\u00a0experience\u00a0is ramped up further with thumping dance music and disco lighting\u00a0accompanying\u00a0the skaters\/handrail grippers.<\/p>\n

\"Ice<\/p>\n

I had a go skating here a few years ago, but my limited skills meant I wobbled between short bursts of relatively fluid\u00a0movement\u00a0across the ice followed by periods gripping on to the handrail for grim life.<\/p>\n

If you fancy skating with aplomb<\/del> falling flat on your face too, you need to book online here<\/a>, with session tickets starting from\u00a0\u00a37.50 to \u00a315.\u00a0\u00a0The ice rink will be open until 6th January 2013.<\/p>\n

[Somerset House website<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my world, anyone erecting\u00a0Christmas\u00a0trees before December has even started should be forced to co-habitate\u00a0with\u00a0Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, \u00a0Donner and Blitzen for a month. In a cave. Unsurprisingly, … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[194,193],"tags":[24,10,376,137],"class_list":["post-10220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-london-features","category-places","tag-christmas","tag-london","tag-skating","tag-somerset-house"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/somerset-house-ice-skating-02.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQI7P-2EQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10220"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10231,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10220\/revisions\/10231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}