We queued for 20 minutes until the grinning ticket man at the door of the changing room said, “computer says YESSS!” and opened the doors to a crowd of excited wannabe skaters with gloves and pink cheeks. We skated on the open-air rink, which is lit by stars and Christmas tree lights and braziers on tall poles. We admired the glamorous palace recreated out of London’s dull old births, marriages and deaths registry from the glassed-in café at the side of the rink, over mince pies and mulled wine. We watched the youths who’d dared each other to climb the ice wall but who found, once kitted out in their boots with knives in the soles and crampons and abseiling equipment, that they couldn’t stop their legs shaking. And we stopped at the Courtauld’s gift shop in one corner of the courtyard and bought expensive hand-painted papier-mache Christmas baubles for our tree.
We could also have dropped in to the Hermitage Rooms in a second corner of the courtyard, to look at the latest treasures from the Russian art world. Or we could have stayed and eaten, grandly, under ship-shaped chandeliers in the Admiralty restaurant in a third corner. But the smallest member of our group, aged three, was tired after an hour of hanging off his parents’ arms as we glided round the rink screaming with joy. “That was the best evening out we’ve ever had,” he mumbled happily before falling asleep in the car. And it was: like a holiday in Chamonix or St Petersburg or Vienna – or all three – speeded up into a single breathless and exhilarating hour.
Winter sports in London used to mean nothing more glossy than pre-ski training - going out to some distant suburb with a posse of schoolchildren in old jeans and anoraks and skiing for about fifty yards down a slope of upturned scrubbing brushes. But now open-air skating rinks are popping up all over the heart of London. You can skate in the City power zone - round and round in a tiny goldfish bowl of a rink at Broadgate Circus, or at Canary Wharf or Mansion House.
This winter, for the first time, you can even skate in the Gothic shadows of the Natural History Museum, just yards away from the dinosaur halls inside. No wonder Madonna's daughter, Lourdes, MTV presenter Donna Air and cellist Julian Lloyd Webber turned up for the opening night in November.
But that’s not all there is to winter sports in London. A city now full of Russians must necessarily offer more. The elegant invitation to a Christie’s auction that dropped through my letter box recently gave me a hint of a still faster-growing seasonal sport, involving Britain's newest caste of wealthy immigrants. Charles Cator, Chairman, Alexis de Tiesenhausen and Amjad Rauf, Directors of Christie’s, were kind enough to request the pleasure of my company at a private view of
Important Russian Pictures and Works of Art, Silver
And
European Furniture, Sculpture, Carpets and Works of Art sales
I knew this would be fascinating. It’s London’s Russian art auction week, with sales of Russian art at Sotheby’s and Christie’s and Bonhams and MacDougall’s.
While Russians were poor, these auctions used to be sideshows in the auction season. But now Russians are rich and longing to flash their cash. They’ve caused a boom in all London auction rooms. But what they want most is art from their own homeland to decorate their mansions in London.
As William MacDougall, of MacDougall’s, puts it: "The first thing the new millionaires do is buy the mansion because they grew up in a hovel. The second thing they do is stare at the blank walls. Then they buy art, and because they tend to be nationalistic they choose paintings from their home country. So art prices rise." The sales have got big. In 1997 Sotheby’s Russian sales had an annual turnover of £1.3 milllion. This year, the house’s London sales alone will total £27 million and a New York sale recently brought in £18.3 million.
I couldn’t make it, though I gloated over the gallery of highlights of the Russian pictures to be sold, including a very chocolate-boxy Aivazovsky seascape and a peaceful marsh under a big sky by Levitan, which were displayed on the web.
But a friend – an Englishman living in Moscow – did manage to drop by with his Russian intellectual art-gallery wife before coming away to dinner with me later. He was rocking with laughter.
What was so funny? I asked, bewildered.
“It was hilarious!” he said. “The poor Russians were in seventh heaven. There was champagne. Canapes. And a lot of very nattily got-up English aristocrats in their tweeds and silks, charming them."
Most people are a bit scared of tough New Russians in their shiny clothes, the ones who’ve made a quick few million bucks by being tough and ruthless in Russia and have come to spend them fast in London. It’s conventional in Britain to be a bit sniffy about where they got their money from. But my friend was half-sorry for them as well as amused.
“The Russians didn’t stand a chance. It was obvious they were going to have the money charmed right out of their pockets – and end up paying ten times over what they should for a lot of old furniture from the homes of a lot of terrible old chancers with titles.
“There’s no one like the English for taking gullible foreigners to the cleaners. It was a class act. It was like bear-hunting.”
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