Trip to Cambridge

Twice a year, at the Club we make a trip up to Cambridge and to Oxford, as a bit of a recruiting trip and to promote the club.  Today was the day of the Cambridge trip, so although I hadn't checked it with my boss, I slipped out of work a bit early and caught the train up to Cambridge, trying my best to work on my iPhone for the entire trip.

When I got to Cambridge, I ran into a chap I recognised from the committee, and we were able to share a cab up to Senate House, which was quite convenient.

Once there, the cocktail party started soon after, and I did my usual rounds, chatting to groups of students and talking up the club.  Working the room, the way I always do.

One of the staff came and found me for my speech at around the midpoint of the evening, and so I gave a short-but-sweet talk, hitting on all of the main points about the club, and hopefully it was well received by the crowd of 300.  I don't know, I think I'm pretty good at public speaking in that I don't get nervous (why everyone loves to make me give speeches), although I still could learn a few lessons from politicians who are so adept at "winning over a room".  Still, everyone in the crowd praised me later on a good speech, so hopefully I did an okay job.

After the event ended, we all went to a local restaurant for dinner, where we had to race through our meal to make the last trains back from Cambridge to London.

Still, we had some lovely champagne before dinner, scallops to start, then nice big juicy steaks for a main, and then after the first crowd left for the 10:30 train, we had some plum and pear crumble, with muscat wine for dessert.  (I had been starving, so I was quite delighted to stuff my face).

Then, just in time to catch the train, the Assistant Secretary, one of the younger guys at the club and I all went to catch the train.  The young guy almost immediately fell asleep on the train, which since we were catching the last, slow train of the night, was kind of annoying.  However the Assistant Secretary and I kept up a good patter of conversation, and as he mentioned something about taking "a person" out on a date the next night, it suddenly clicked with me:  The Assistant Secretary was gay!  I can't believe I'd missed it previously, but suddenly everything in his manner became hugely obvious to me.  No wonder I've never seen him out with a cute girl on his arm...

While I was sitting there regretting not having taken the earlier and faster train, the young guy woke up from his sleep long enough to suddenly vomit all over himself.  Oh my God, that was mortifying.  Because here this kid had vomited in front of a member of staff, and also since he was with us, it's not like we could just discretely move away from him, we had to sit there with him and try to clean him up.    Ewwwwww....gross!

Once we got back to London, the Assistant Secretary parted ways with us, I think relieved to escape the stinking vomit of the young guy, who I was now still stuck with.  I managed to get us both onto a night bus, and then actually got involved in a friendly conversation with a random guy and his girlfriend, in the way that is only possible on a London night bus.  At least they were more fun to talk to than the smelly guy next to me!

Finally, once we were almost entirely across London, I put the young guy on the bus for the last leg of his journey, and made my own way the rest of the way home.  At least I was lucky in that the Tall South African was awake at 2 AM, so I texted him the entire way home.

Once I was home and had flopped into bed, I heard my phone ringing, but since it was past 2 AM and I was pretty certain it was just the Tall South African, I let it ring.  I was just too tired to talk at this point.  What a long day and an painful trip home!