Those of you who are, like me, still reeling from the linguistic dexterity and (extremely) caustic critique of our formal social secretary in his report of the recent Langdale trip will, no doubt, be awaiting this author's report of the preceding Annual Dinner with a heady mixture of hollow dread and eager anticipation, particularly in the light of his apparent celebration of all that is sordid or scandalous.
My aim here, however, is journalistic in the narrowest and most positive sense, and what was to be a memorable evening began with sherry in the rather optimistically named MCR Bar in Sidney Sussex College. Speaking as one with a rather longer experience of Sidney cuisine than justified by its qualities, I faced the imminent feast with a mixture of emotions. The rustic aroma of Sidney sewers did little to relieve my growing anxiety on approaching the Knox-Shaw room, venue for the evenings festivities.
A rather nervous photographer (and who could blame a man faced with men and women dressed in black tie yet armed with ice axes!) took the obligatory club photograph: as always its sartorial unusualness gave a somewhat misleading aesthetic representation of the club.
Confronted with the social difficulties of a seating plan, many hillwalkers were at first apprehensive. Clearly, however, the aforementioned device had been constructed as an experiment in micro-social engineering, and, by the end of the evening, had proved an admirable success.
Paul's late arrival and laboured consumption of a very pleasant onion soup entree was soon explained by his embarrassed admission that this was not, in fact, his first Sidney repast of the evening. Everyone else, however, proceeded on through Plaice Goujons and Chicken Ghoron (or Camembert and stuffed vine leaves for the non-carnivores) to gorge on a delicious white chocolate torte as an end to the main nourishments.
However, this was, to quote Churchill, not the end, not even the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning. Liquid refreshment in the form of liberal quantities of unexpectedly delicious wine was washed down with a variety of small change: before sustenance to body and spirit was replaced with sustenance to the mind. Commence the long-awaited speeches.
In his traditional review of the year, Keith outlined a variety of the clubs trips: to Kelsey Kerridge Climbing Wall, to Torridon and Fisherfield in winter, and (clearly the high-point of the year) the club trip to the Alps. Despite Keith's concern to ensure that his talk was well-referenced, this author failed to find any of these references in Stribley et al. (1996-97) Trip Details 96-97. Hilary's account, which followed, was focused around her gradual discovery of the club's reputation as a democratic and upstanding Cambridge institution, lacking any social pressure to stand for its elected posts, and where older members quickly drifted away in favour of younger replacements.
One such younger member, Pete, toasted the club, and hillwalking, before the speeches were rousingly concluded by Jane's offbeat but devastatingly perceptive and poetic account of the clubs trips, traditions, triumphs and tempests during the year.
The evening was concluded by a visit to a local tavern for further intellectual discussion and alcoholic indulgence, before a selection of those present moved on to coffee and aspirin in King Street. Clearly, for some, the occasion provided the stimulus for the development of new friendships of a varying degree of intimacy: while the authors cunning plan to rid himself of an Oxfam dinner jacket worth £10, and gain himself a room in Magdalene into the bargain, only narrowly failed.
The rest, as they say, is history. Lest some readers be disappointed with my exegesis, given the expectations aroused in advance, let me conclude with some more abstract reflections. For those felines amongst you not yet mortified by curiosity, I suggest that you will have to seek your fulfilment in less public discourse than in these pages. While impropriety, to quote Somerset Maugham, is the soul of wit, publicity is the weapon of prejudice. It is not rancour but subtlety that forms the true companion of humour.
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