Magical Mystery Tour

You’ll all have seen this, but I couldn’t let it pass without comment.
Lapland Dorset (and by extension Lapland Wolverhampton) have been steadily ripped apart all week by the press and trading standards for promoting themselves as a winter wonderland, a festival of festive joy, when in fact they were just some tents in muddy fields, surrounded by scruffy imitation huskies, bored staff and run by chancers who saw everyone coming.

I mean, let’s be clear here: It was bound to be shit. Even aided by the coldest winter in eight years and several heavy frosts (if not actual real snow) it would have been impossible to live up to the hype of the original website, even if, to me, it was all suspiciously vague. What exactly is a ‘magical tunnel of light’? Surely an ‘absolutely magical scene’, given that magic isn’t real, is open to some interpretation?

Who goes to these places, anyway? Who reads about something that sounds like a nauseating con and thinks it’d be a good trip out for the kids? Who pays £25 a head for this sort of rubbish – plus extra to enter the so-called bustling Christmas market, which was really some trestle tables in a shed display the contents of a couple of old suitcases the organisers found in the attic? One woman splurged £3,000on 132 tickets for a social club’s outing. She has my sympathy, but was it really the right sort of place for them to go?

Okay, so may be it’s just me. Perhaps some people like tat. But my favourite bit of the whole fiasco, is the parents who became so angry at their darling one’s naive vision of Christmas as a happy and jolly time being shattered, then really put the boot in on the whole broken dreams theme by kicking the shit out of Santa. If that’s not going to make the delightful tots burst into tears, then they’re made of sterner stuff than most of the parents.

The thing I find interesting is the sheer number of people who turned up in the first place. People had a terrible experience and the place has been rightly shut down, but the owners did get away with it for a while. In other words, it proves that with a clever website and not a shred of honesty we can all get away with anything.

Here’s an idea: I’m going to turn my flat into a museum highlighting the wonders of the world. A palace where visitors are taken on a mystery tour of the exotic. They’ll ride on temporal time-looping luxury carriages throughout the entirety of human endeavour; from the gleaming spires of Chicago, to the yawning chasm of the Grand Canyon. From seeing the peaks of Scotland to the hearing the roar in the Coliseum as gladiators battle tigers. From the beguiling wonders of Constantinople to the teeming crowds Delhi. Everything from the sweat to the tears will seep into the visitors’ consciousness. At the end of this life changing experience they can feast on some of London finest cuisine.

What I’m really going to is put all my holiday snaps on the wall, make a suitably bad mix CD, bring them into the middle of the flat and spin the around rapidly. Then I’ll give them a cup of tea and piece of flapjack.

No, no, no.

What am I thinking? That’s a ridiculous idea. In fact it’s almost as crazy as if the BBC commissioned a Saturday teatime programme that consisted of an ex-international cricketer and some bloke off that dancing show trying to avoid being plunged into a swimming pool by a giant moving polystyrene wall with shapes cut of it. And if it was hosted by Dale Winton and everyone had to wear skin tight silver catsuits and got so over excited it was embarrassing to watch... I mean that’d be seriously bonkers.

Oh. Wait a second.

Just goes to show: no idea is ever is stupid enough to not appeal to someone, somewhere.