I was last in here about thirty five years ago, and I don't remember there being a carpet. It is still however, as beautiful as ever, and it was lovely to see it again with soft lighting and a pleasant warmth after the foggy chill of the evening outside.
After we had had a drink and met up with one of the DSM's old mates, who we hadn't known was to be attending, so a nice surprise, we walked out through the Cloisters and in to Old Hall for the actual dinner.
See the long table under the portraits? That's High Table, that is, and for some unaccountable reason, that is where we sat. Placement had to have been done on a purely random basis, I do realise that. I'm not getting delusions of grandeur here, despite the motley collection of lords, ladies and deans I was sat amidst. In fact, at this point, I began to feel a strong sense of surrealism, not to mention that we had wandered on to the set of "Hogwarts" by mistake. I had never been in here before, only allowed to poke my nose around the door to look at the glories within. This was in the days before the college became co-ed, and women were only able to come in as visitors with firmly-set hours of ingress and egress (excess?) at that. I was involved in a couple of discussions, and earwigged other snippets, along those lines with other women of the same vintage, and indeed, this was why many of them had not been to any of these dinners before when partners of the female persuasion were not allowed still. See what I mean about surreal?
It was, however, quite lovely. Old Hall, built around 1449, is sublime. The lighting was predominantly by candles, the food was, considering it was in effect mass catering, excellent, and the wine...never mind flowing, it was a positive torrent. It did occur to me that there were no doubt many eminent medics in the august company, and just what was their opinion on this binge, eh? We ate an extremely superior fish cake on a bed of interesting leaves with a bearnaise sauce; broccoli and stilton soup; lamb cutlets, or in our case, a slightly anonymous if tasty cheese tart; tiramisu (the only false step, and I passed); and good cheese and biscuits. The stilton was formidable. Alongside this, there was Macon blanc with the first two courses, I forget what with the main course, and claret and port ad lib to finish. I had to fight the wait staff off more than once - I had promised to be good, and I kept my word. But an excess of alcohol might have been dangerous.....
It was unreal; for us, it was like playing dressing up; but it was also very enjoyable and in some curious way like for once being a grown-up. I think this largely because it was doing and being what I watched my parents being when I was a child, following the same rules and traditions, which I have never ever been or done, nor wanted, mostly. But just once in a while, a different sort of play.....
A final photo (I didn't, of course, take any of these myself). Aren't these sublime? I did have some note cards of some of them once upon a time, I got them from Salts, a good source of interesting stuff.
Originals from the Morris factory, she said, drooling gently.
No comments:
Post a Comment