Entered on 14 May 2002 at 9:42 a.m..

Marshall Dinner

Yesterday we had our official Marshall dinner preceded by a trip to the US Embassy. The Embassy meeting was uneventful but a good place to meet up with everyone, none the less. After that we all split into small groups. The group I was with headed down the street to a restaruant called the American Burger. We all ordered milkshakes and other greesy food. Not quite as bad as the Varsity, but we all got our fill.

That lasted for about 3 hours. The good news was that the American Burger wasn't doing much of a hopping buisness, so no one cared that we monopolized two tables by the window for such a long period of time. It was great to be among friends.

Eventually we headed towards Carpenter Hall for our dinner. I don't think I've ever been to such a fancy dinner. I had 4 glasses at my setting 3 of them with stems. One for water, white wine, read wine and port. Dinner was great. We had duck, which wasn't bad. It did prove quite entertaining though, because they left a piece of fat/skin on one side of the breast. This made the duck very hard to eat, because that skin wasn't about to give up easily. I talked with some of the Marshall's later and we all laughed at how we were having to saw away at this very elegant dinner, with out looking like we were putting that much effort into eating.

The speeches were great, and so was the company. I had a wonderful time at the dinner. Afterwards we headed back to our respective places and some of my year took me back on the tube as far as they could. Well when we got to our first tube stop, the doors to the train had just closed, so we faced a 3-5 minute wait for the next one, but then the conductor opened them and we all jumped on. Due to the way we were standing, I jumped in one door and eveyone else jumped in another door. Unfortunately they were in different cars. Well I only had to travel one stop, so when I walked off I went over to knock on their window and say, good bye. I was met on the way by a chinese fire drill with run by huggings as they all ran from one car to another.

I then ran/walked the unbelievably long distance that it is possible to walk from one tube stop to the next and hopped on a train back to Milton Keynes. I just happened to bump into a 2nd year Marshall heading home on the same train. Thank god we found each other. The train ride, which normally takes 40 minutes was scheduled to take an hour (this was the 23:45 train) and ended up taking an hour and a half. To make maters more memorable some rugby fans were in the car with us singing.

I finally collapsed in my bed around 2am this morning, very happy to be off of that train.

previous - next