by Henry VIII visits a Christmas market and discovers festive pricing has no ceiling whatsoever
I once fixed the price of wine across the entire kingdom with a single proclamation. A wooden hut beside a fake ice rink charged me nine pounds for mulled wine served in a boot I did not want to keep.
The Hut
The market itself stretched the length of the South Bank, hut after hut selling roasted chestnuts, felt reindeer antlers, and a suspicious quantity of items described as artisanal that appeared, on closer inspection, to be identical products with different labels, a marketing trick I recognised instantly from several tailors who once charged me double for a doublet described using the word bespoke.
The Souvenir Cup
I was informed, after ordering, that the nine pound price included a souvenir boot shaped mug, which I could either keep as a memento or return for a two pound deposit refund, a system that struck me as an elaborate way of charging seven pounds for wine and disguising the remaining two as a choice. I have levied clearer taxes on entire counties.
The Queue For The Toilet
The queue for the toilets ran longer than the queue for the mulled wine itself, a genuine engineering failure I found more offensive than any actual military defeat I suffered in my original reign, given that at least in Boulogne I understood roughly why things were going wrong. Here, nobody could explain it, and a man in an elf costume simply shrugged when I asked him directly.
The Ice Rink
I watched, rather than attempted, the ice rink, having concluded that a man who has already broken one leg jousting in 1536 owes it to history not to break the other one falling over near a hut selling waffles for eight pounds. A child beside me, considerably more confident on skates than any adult present, offered me unsolicited advice about my centre of gravity, which I chose to receive graciously.
The Verdict
I left the market two hours later, nine pounds lighter for the wine, four pounds lighter for a bag of chestnuts I did not finish, and in possession of a boot shaped mug I will almost certainly never use again, and yet, walking home past the lights strung along the river, I found myself already planning to return next week. I once dissolved institutions for extracting less money from the public with less charm than this market manages nightly, and somehow I still want the mug in a different colour.
The Return Visit
I went back three days later for more chestnuts, entirely without shame, and was recognised on sight by the same stallholder, who called me boot man, a nickname I have decided to accept with genuine pride rather than the wounded dignity it probably deserves. I once commanded armies. I now hold minor celebrity status at a chestnut stall on the South Bank, and honestly, of the two, this one comes with better snacks.
None of this does my diet plan any favours, chestnuts included. Further reading on the wider chaos of modern Britain: London’s own renaissance in charging you simply for looking at things, the full field guide to the capital’s grifts, mulled wine included, the full eyewitness account of how I came back in the first place.
