DECK THE HALLS

Another night, another formal hall. I love this aspect of Cambridge. Last evening saw us at Darwin College for the Christmas formal hall, complete with turkey dinner and Christmas pudding for dessert. Still haven't got up the guts to take the camera into the actual formal dinner hall - I think the flash would provoke the ire of the more traditional college members, besides which I am also trying to get over my phobia that camera snapping madly = unsophistication because this sort of formal event doesn't occur every day in my world, and thus is worth carefully documenting - but here's a nice shot of us in the study after dinner, enjoying our port and coffee:



From left to right, we are: me (obviously), Ray (again, obvious), Brodie and Melissa from Canada, Steve from the US, and Geidre from Lithuania.

I will limit my comments on the dinner itself to reminding you that we are in England, and while British people may extoll their wonderful food (Rebecca, I'm talking about you!!) I just don't seem to be able to fall under its spell. And what is with all the meat? Dinner started with a "salad" - make that a hunk of cold salmon on a token piece of lettuce (salmon counts as meat in my world) - and progressed to turkey with some sort of meat (i.e., unidentifiable) stuffing, some other mystery mushed meat wrapped in bacon to resemble a sausage, and roast potatoes, carrots and brussel sprouts to round out the meal. At least the carrots and potatoes were good, and thank-goodness for the free-flowing sherry, wine and port.

(Note to any British folks reading my blog who are now offending at my description of their cuisine - I just had to get this out of my system and the problem is much more likely to be me (I am known as a pretty picky eater) than the food itself. Also, the Brits I have met at work think that my lunches are not particularly edible, so persnickety tastebuds probably go both ways).