Skip to main content

Dickens in 4D


What the Dickens? It's a theme park with an Oliver Twist. Click to enlarge.

Dickensian England was a pretty brutal place all round. Our modern-day Scrooges and Bill Sykeses are no match for the mean-spirited and violent originals from the nineteenth century. That's why I was delighted to discover that the world of Charles Dickens has been lovingly recreated in a Chatham theme park called Dickens World. According to the leaflet I recently picked up, 'some parts of the attraction are not suitable for children under 1 metre tall or those with a nervous disposition'. It must be truly scary. I'd definitely want to be at least 1m 2cm before consumptively coughing up the entrance fee.

"Be thrilled," the copy thunders in the style of a B-movie trailer, "by the tales of Dickens' foreign adventures in a stunning 4D cinema show in Peggotty's Boathouse."

4D? I've only just got used to putting those special glasses on for 3D. Forgive my ignorance, but isn't 4D the kind of thing that only exists in postgraduate classes in theoretical physics? I expect there must be a wormhole at the back of Dotheboys Hall. As you head towards it, you're confronted by a resting actress who's dressed as Mrs Squeers and threatening you with a bowl of brimstone and treacle.

I feel I owe it to WARTE readers to make the trip at some point in the near future and report back on these very pages. In fact, I'm already picturing the journey...

"Please excuse me, Madam," I ventured hesitantly, "but I wondered if I might prevail upon you to direct me with the upmost urgency to Dickens World? I have a natural incapacity in matters of geography and find myself somewhat disadvantaged."

"You mean that place where they all dress up them costumes? It's down by the cinema, next to the Factory Outlet."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Fawlty Towers script? Si, senor!

Ok, so I gave ChatGPT the following scenario: "Imagine a theatrical script for a situation comedy set in a hotel in Torquay, England. The proprietor is called Basil, an eccentric man who believes the calibre of guests to be low. His wife, Sybil, is often frustrated by Basil's incompetence. They employ a Spanish waiter called Manuel, who struggles to understand English. Basil suspects that two guests, who claim to be married, may be lying." Here's what our favourite AI came up with: Scene: The hotel lobby in Torquay, England. Basil is standing behind the reception desk, looking at a piece of paper. Sybil is standing next to him, looking annoyed. Manuel is hovering nearby, trying to look busy. Basil: (to Sybil) I don't know why we get such low-calibre guests at this hotel. Look at these two - Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They claim to be married, but I suspect they might be lying. Sybil: (sighing) Basil, it's not our job to judge the marital status of our guests. Just m...

Becoming a Twister board

I spent yesterday evening in an old factory building off Brick Lane playing kids' games with an organisation called Fun Fed. The idea is that a bunch of adults get together and act like children for a couple of hours. We played tag and stuck big coloured discs on ourselves so that we could become human Twister mats. There was an awful lot of running around and I was thinking that I ought to get to aikido a bit more often. Being a child is very hard work.

It's been a tough year. Let's give ourselves a clap.

If something didn’t smell right about the UK handling of the pandemic, the British public was never going to notice. But they knew that if they couldn’t smell something, they really ought to get a Covid test sent to them in the post. There has been something incredibly British about the DIY swabs and their delivery via the gig-economy workers of Amazon, hasn’t there? Touch of corona? I’ll pop something in the post to you. Should be with you tomorrow. I suppose it was inevitable that we’d need some new kind of system. After all, the coronavirus outbreak was the first thing in the history of the NHS that couldn’t be cured by paracetamol, rest and plenty of fluids. This understandably left GPs flummoxed and anxious. The UK decided pretty early on that if you were ill with a novel pathogen – which proved deadly in maybe 1% of cases – you really shouldn’t go to the doctor. You should STAY AT HOME and spread it quickly to your flatmates or family members. And because they were now at ...