I was at the
Restaurant and Bar
Grill in
Manchester last Tuesday evening. Our VC,
Martin Hall, retires in June. As he is just
about to start a sabbatical between now and then we were out celebrating his
time with us and wishing him well for the future. The
weather outside was bitterly cold with a strong wind blowing. It made arriving
at the restaurant looking half way presentable almost impossible. There was a
good crowd of people there to join in proceedings and to share memories of the VC's
many achievements. However, the speeches were brief, and the service was slow, and
as I was driving, it was non-alcoholic beer for me all night – deep joy.
My vegetarian option was a butternut
squash and goats cheese tart with a lemon and thyme butter sauce, served with
winter vegetables. It was an OK vegetarian meal, but like
Mahatma Gandhi had so
often found, it was a somewhat bland offering. In 1888, Gandhi came to
London
to study law. He had promised his Mother that on coming to
England, he would abstain
from sexual activity, meat and alcohol. However, he found the vegetarian meals prepared
by his landlady to be both boring and bland. It was perhaps not surprising then
that Gandhi joined the
Vegetarian Society, a group established in 1847 to
support, represent and increase the number of vegetarians in the UK. He was
later to be elected to the Society’s Executive Committee.
Last Friday evening I was
reminded of this story. I was in conversation with someone describing a paella
they had made that week. Whilst he had used tiger prawns in his recipe I was reassured
that it was possible to make vegetarian paella. This conversation led on to a
tale of how Ghandi's dissatisfaction with the vegetarian food he found, and his
subsequent education of the
Inner Temple cooks has resulted in there always
being a vegetarian option on the Inner Temples restaurant menus. I don’t know if
this is true or not, but it was a good story. On this night out I wasn't driving
so the beer was alcoholic – great joy.
In fact not only was the beer
alcoholic, it was real beer brewed in the
Bank Top Brewery (a micro-brewery in
Bolton). The
occasion was an educational trip with friends and neighbours to the brewery. Again
the night was bitterly cold, the wind blowing, and eventually snow falling.
The night started at the breweries own pub the
'Ale House'. And then it was a taxi ride on
to see the brewery, learn how the beer was created and brewed and taste as many
of the real ales as possible. What surprised me was finding out it had been 11
years since I had last taken this trip.
I think my Mother would prefer it
if really was 11 years between beers. Unfortunately for my Mother, and fortunately
for me, I have discovered a micro-brewery close to the House in Scotland (the
Solway Brewery in Castle Douglas). However, there is another almost sobering reason for the gap. The last time I went, instead of taking a taxi home, three neighbours
and I decided to walk home. One of my neighbours, possibly due to a rapid onset
of flu, struggled to stay upright. So my neighbours and I helped him home
safely. We left him just 6 feet away from his backdoor and then rest of us went
our own ways and called it a night. All he had to do was get out his key, open the
backdoor and he was home and dry.
The following morning my
neighbour turned up to say thank you for helping him home. And to say that on
leaving him the previous evening, he had slipped and cut his head open. Indeed,
he did look like a younger version of the former
USSR president
Mikhail Gorbachev.
Not a problem normally, but 4 days later he was due to walk his daughter
down the aisle on her wedding day. I am not sure if this influenced the fact
that we didn't go for a beer as a group of neighbours for another 11
years. This time we provided our neighbour with some Health and Safety advice
and equipment. Moral of the blog, drink responsibly, and keep healthy!
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