davidgillon | Drinking in Good Company...

I met with my old university crowd last night, those of us who live close enough to London to get there easily, anyway. It's something we've done about this time of year for ages.

We were supposed to start as usual in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street, so past company would have included Dr Johnson, Ben Jonson, Dickens, Mark Twain and P G Wodehouse. Access is a bit wobbly, as you might expect of somewhere rebuilt in the 1660s (you can see the front door in the wikipedia article - I had to get out of the chair to get in and out). But otherwise it's pretty conventient to get to - train to St Pancras, swap platforms onto Thameslink, two stops to City Thameslink and it's about 200m up Fleet Street.

I arrived about 6:15, Bill the tax consultant arrived about 6:30, and I'd only just gotten him a pint when he got a message from Linda and Andy "We're in Ye Olde Cock Tavern, access will be better for Dave" - well, maybe, if I wasn't already in the Cheese! So we finished our pints, and headed up to Ye Olde Cock - another few hundred metres up Fleet Street, emphasis on the up. Bloody hills.

Access in Ye Old Cock was better, I could roll in and straight to the back where Andy (senior accountant) and Linda (chair of an academy trust) had a table (handily right next to the accessible toilet), but it does have the advantage of having moved to more modern premises in 1880, so it's not quite the same pub as where Samuel Pepys got 'might merry' with an actress in 1668. Jez (sub-editor on the FT) joined us a little later and we set about catching up. I'd seen Andy and Linda at the reunion last year, but Bill and Jez missed that, so had a couple of years worth of catching up to do.

And then we set about putting the world to rights. For such an establishment group of professions, we've all remained fairly left-wing (well, except for Bill, but we make allowances, his public school got to him at a vulnerable age). Though increasingly putting the world to rights seems to include lamenting that we've turned into our parents.

The others claimed to have eaten, but Bill and I hadn't, so we thought we'd order something, eventually settling on a few bowls of chips and a 'pork sharing board' - when that turned up it had a couple of scotch eggs, a couple of cumberland sausages, two sausage rolls, and a bag of what we had to go back to the menu to find out was 'bacon popcorn' - deep-dried bacon bits in breadcrumbs - which was very more-ish. As pub-food it was pretty much perfect. The others looked at it, sampled the popcorn, and then decided they were hungry after all.

Time rolled on and Jez decided he needed to make a move, so we all headed off in four different directions, promising to do it again next year. I got back to City Thameslink, got myself ensconced on the northbound platform and contacted the control room to get someone to come and handle the ramp. "We can see you on the video, sir. My colleague's just coming up behind you." Which he was.

But before he got the ramp down, he told me he just had to make a quick announcement on the tannoy, which he did. "Will all passengers please note the 22:54 is the last northbound departure from this station for the evening".

Eep! I had no idea! Services run until much later from St Pancras and I'd just assumed there wouldn't be an issue getting back there. Just as well Jez decided he needed to leave when he did.

St Pancras was thankfully troublefree - the last time we did this, the ramp didn't turn up to get me off the Thameslink train, which was announcing "This train will now be fast to Bedford". I had to stick my foot in the door to stop it closing until the driver came and got the ramp himself, while discouraging the crowd of a hundred pre-Christmas drunks offering to lift me off. Back into Chatham for five past midnight and a 10 minute waddle up the hill to home.

And so to bed