The Cinnamon Club, Preceded By Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant Garde, Tate Britain, 14 December 2012

This Z/Yen seasonal event was great fun and especially memorable.

Before dinner, we went to the Tate Britain to look at the Pre-Raphaelites exhibition that was all the rage that autumn.

Arthur Hughes, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Naturally this was a good excuse to encourage people to dress up for dinner…

…as if the Z/Yen crowd in those days needed much excuse to dress up.

The Cinnamon Club, in the old Westminster Library, was an excellent venue. We had the whole of the upstairs mezzanine for our dinner.

I wrote a song that year specifically for the event. Rather a good one, though I say so myself, despite (or perhaps because of) the Christmas cracker joke in the first verse.

GOOD KEEN Z/YEN TRAINEES

( Sung to the tune of “Good King Wenceslas” )

ALL: Good keen Z/Yen trainees abound

Late work, no-one leavin’

Pizza boxes strewn around

Deep pan, crisp and even

ALL: On expenses came that fare

Though the bosses cruel

Through the vents came just cold air

Saving winter fuel.

 ALL: “Please, please Michael up the heat,

This ought to concern ya

We can’t work with such cold feet

Or with hypothermia”

MICHAEL: “I am wearing just shirt-sleeves

Positively shvitzing!”

ALL: Thus was Michael’s firm decree

Not all that convincing.

IAN: “We need flesh and we need wine

We can’t get warm hither”

ALL: Thus did Ian else opine

Spoken with a shiver.

ALL: So the Z/Yen team set its sights

On this cozy venue

Dressed up as Pre-Raphaelites

Gorging through the menu.

There is a big stack of pictures from that year’s revelries, which you can see through this link and/or the picture link below.

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