The above photo of The Red Lion is courtesy of TripAdvisor
When the e-mail came through from the Keele Alumni office, suggesting an informal “Keele In The City” at The Red Lion on Parliament Street, the timing seemed perfect to me.
I expected, by chance, to be in Westminster that afternoon, a few hundred yards away from The Red Lion pub.
I e-mailed Bobbie Scully (who is often at work in the Supreme Court, across the road) and John White (who often hangs around in the Palace of Westminster lobbies) to see if they were around and/or up for it. John said no, while Bobbie said yes to meeting around there, but suggested that we make it a quick drink and then a longer meal to catch up after so long – good thinking in my book.
As it turned out, my afternoon meeting in Westminster was somewhat curtailed, so I sloped back to the flat for a couple of hours, waving at the pub as I descended into the underground, then sloped back to Westminster early evening.
Down in the tube station at mid-afternoon, I ran into my photographer friend, Steve, who proudly showed me the pictures he had just taken of Theresa May with Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS) – one of which looked rather like the one at the top of this article – click here – but clearly is not exactly the same photo.
I hadn’t seen Steve for ages. He wasn’t an official photographer for this MBS visit, but apparently he had been the Prime Minister’s official photographer for the general election. He told me one or two things about our dear leader that didn’t surprise me but still horrified me. The word “chaos” is the one that sticks in the memory, perhaps due to frequent repetition.
I returned to Westminster about 18:50, some 20 minutes after the appointed hour with the Keele Alumni but 40 minutes ahead of the sort of time I figured Bobbie might show up.
Derby Street – the side road on one side of the pub – was chock full of police vans, which were themselves ram-packed with policemen. I recalled the wise words of Malcolm Cornelius, formerly of the Keele parish in our day:
“it is extraordinary how many policemen you can get inside one of those vans”.
I wondered whether the police had been tipped off about the Keele Alumni gathering. Facebook, after all, is said to be a fine source of security intelligence. The Keele Alumni announcement was full of key words that might trigger security concerns for the authorities…
Keele…Law…Moot…Court…Parliament…Basement…March…Red…
…sounds well dodgy, algorithmically.
I wandered through the pub in search of the basement, then saw the roped off stairs, jumped the barrier, went downstairs and found it was all locked up. Confused, I wandered back through the pub and then got caught up in a massive swarm of policemen on Parliament street, all heading from the vans towards Downing Street.
Now dazed as well as confused, I was unwilling to go back inside the Red Lion, which was absolutely heaving with people – unlike my previous visit there, to decompress after the Payroll Giving Awards. 2011 I think that was, when we held the event at Number 11 Downing Street and I met GOD – I’ll certainly retro-blog that evening in the fullness of time.
Seconds later, a drove of legal-looking folk marched purposefully down the side of Derby Street. Although I recognised no-one, the look and demeanour of this flock could only possibly have been the Keele Law Moot lot.
I joined the throng, as the advanced members of that party threw aside the basement rope and stormed the basement.
“I tried that five minutes ago – it was all locked up down there”, I said, dolefully.
“Oh, don’t worry, they’ll soon negotiate our way in”, said a cheery member of the moot party…
…which indeed they did. Very rapidly. Of course they did. They’d just been mooting all day.
I was assured that no actual donkeys were separated from their actual hind legs in those negotiations. On reflection, by the standards of mooting in the Supreme Court, persuading a publican to open his doors and sell drinks to thirsty Keele Alumni was probably not an especially tough argument to win.
So we were in.
I didn’t recognise anyone, but soon I was approached by a gentleman named George who had studied Psychology and Sociology in the 1970s. We chatted for a while as the moot brigade got their drinks orders in and started to quench their debate-weary thirsts.
Soon after that, Zoë Hollingsworth from the Alumni team came up to me. She had clearly mugged up on some of my post Keele activities and we chatted about charities a bit – a shared interest.
Then a very pleasant surprise – Andrea Woodhouse (formerly Collins) showed up; unexpectedly (to me), although she insisted that she had mentioned her intention to visit on her Facebook page. Perhaps I live on Facebook less than most people, but unless a Facebook posting specifically hails me, I’m unlikely to see a friends posting, unless, quite by chance, I am on-line around the time it is posted. But no harm done – it just made it a nice surprise for both of us on the evening.
Then Bobbie showed up.
Then we all chatted and drank for a while – drinks gatherings are a bit like that.
Around 20:00, Bobbie and I figured we should go and claim our Roux At Parliament Square table, so said goodbye to the drinks party. A shame in a way, as it was a very jolly, not overly noisy and not over-crowded gathering. We’d have enjoyed meeting some more of the people there.
Still, Bobbie and I really wanted to catch up with each other – we hadn’t had a chance to do that for a long time – so a quiet restaurant with some fine food and wine was probably a more suitable setting for that.
Out on the street, the police vans had all gone. The mean streets of Westminster had returned to a more tranquil state – perhaps those dodgy-sounding key words from the Keele Alumni message had now been reinterpreted as benign. Bobbie and I strolled the couple of hundred yards to Roux.
The food at Roux really was superb. They sort-of specialise in tasting menus, but I didn’t really fancy those and Bobbie was happy to go along with a more regular choice of dishes, so we had:
- Dorset crab with Apple, Fermented chili, Dashi (Bobbie’s starter);
- Pork cheek with Carrot, Ale, Mangalitsa black pudding (my starter);
- Venison with Savoy cabbage, Pine, Alsace bacon (Bobbie’s main);
- Halibut with Cauliflower, Grape, Tarragon (my main).
We even both had a desert. Wines by the glass to complement the food.
It was great to catch up with Bobbie – no excuse really for leaving it so long but we have both had a lot of family stuff to deal with over the past few years, not least conclusive parent stuff.
Bobbie insisted on picking up the tab, noting that she (and Dave) had enjoyed our hospitality several times in succession…
…then Bobbie suggested that, on that basis, she probably should have taken Janie out to dinner rather than me.
I passed on that last reflection to Janie, while showing her the above photos.
Janie expressed envy at the sight of the meal and agreed with Bobbie that she has suffered an injustice…
…I don’t yet know how Janie expects me to redress this matter, but no doubt I’ll find out soon enough…
…I might need some of those Keele moot people to help argue me out of this tight corner.
Heck, but whatever the penalty, it was worth it – a most enjoyable gathering and then dinner.
Thank you, Keele Alumni team, for setting up the evening.