So! Anyway! Friday 17th November, oh what a night! Our dear friend Naomi had worked long and hard and jumped through hoops to arrange for a grand total of fourteen of us to turn up at Corpus for formal together. Present were myself, Nam, Chrismo, Dan, James B., Julian, Rob, Rob's Canadian friend and co-worker Philip(pe?), Mike, Alex, Koki, Nam's friend Cat (Kat?), Sarah and Ching. It was the first time I had seen a lot of people in a while.
I haven't written this up fast enough so some of the details are slipping away from me. Rob and some others met me by taxi from Cambridge station, Dan having walked straight past me despite me shouting and waving at him and taken a bus into town. Rob and his colleague have a company which is apparently shooting up in awesomeness and having monetary and hierarchy rearrangement madness like only such startups can; they had come back from an extremely long meeting to tidy their stuff up and figure out the actual value of their company.
Kind of embarrassing, as the most complicated thing I'd done lately was set up a wireless network at home. Which was very, VERY easy. So I had little to talk about.
Rob has a cool terrace house near the station with too many computers and not enough furniture or decoration - geek pad, in other words, and I approved. Having come down after leaving work early I was already dressed but everybody else swiftly changed. We taxied to Corpus and the rest of them bought wine before we hurried up to Hall.
Where Nam informed us that there had been a snafu. There was no food for us. We were turned away at the door.
As we trudged back down the steps to New Court we debated whether the total absence of food made this the worst Corpus formal any of us had ever attended or, based on the usual quality of food at Corpus formal, the best. Not to be beaten, we regrouped in the bar, whipped out a Yellow Pages and started calling likely places, simultaneously attempting to console Naomi, who seemed (to me at least) perched delicately between exploding with fury and with tears, and to stop her from apologising to us for something which was quite definitely not, in any sense, her fault.
Number One, King's Parade - literally over the road from college - was rapidly found to be accommodating and we ate there instead. I was told that Corpus was going to be sent the bill although I never found out how much truth there was in that - certainly all I can remember paying is a £3 tip, most of which I fear should have gone to the couple at the table behind ours whose romantic dinner may well have been less romantic than planned, poor souls. If more cash is supposed to be coming from somewhere then I haven't been told.
All told, we had a great meal. I did, anyway. An individual whom we shall call "Dan" got startlingly drunk startlingly quickly - lack of practice, we hypothesise - but left to hook up with yachting types before the end. The rest of us caught up. Some of us are doing PhDs. Sarah claims to have cycled to Berlin in the interim, which is astounding, and have no photographic record of this, which is if anything more so. There was chatter, there was laughter, there were pennies and there was in fact an opening grace by James B. which caused our fellow diners to worry that this might be a cult meeting of some kind - oh no, dear fellow diners, something much worse.
We retired to the Corpus bar after being assured that the bill was paid, where we consumed livid blue drinks containing surprising amounts of alcohol. We played table football well into the evening. We visited the Van, Gardie's turning out to have a queue of unprecedented length outside it. We taxied home. We slept.
I had to take the train home early so I missed the trip to see Casino Royale. I never saw it when I got home which sucked, and I still haven't seen it now which sucks even more.
