London Escalade dinner 2010

A shivery London December evening: rain slanting across the yellow street lamps, residents scurrying past the thin Victorian brick buildings bound for home, snow forecast: Sherlock Holmes would have been very familiar with the street, and indeed lived not far away from the St. Moritz Restaurant in Soho (London’s only Swiss restaurant), the venue of the latest London Escalade celebration. The snow had already arrived in some parts of the country, and at the last minute prevented some people attending; however, 22 of us did make it to the restaurant, where we took our traditional position on the upper floor, and mystified the other diners with our doings (and indeed also the waiting staff, one at least of whom was from Zürich and had never heard of Escalade before). The greatest mystification no doubt attended the smashing of the Marmite, kindly supplied by the Alumni Office in Geneva, accompanied by the traditional recitation: "Ainsi périssent les ennemis de la république”. Unfortunately, the Marmite had this year arrived comprehensively pre-smashed in transit, so we had to pretend to smash it some more: the dashing Nick Hembrow and the indomitable Margaret (Morris) Spector doing the honours, as respectively the youngest and the oldest amongst us.

The total cast list (all LGB) was: Gilbert Bastyra 66, Eugenia Chossudovsky 58, Kalyan Das 69 and his wife Narola, Simonetta (Barzanti) Dixon 77, Robin Dormer 69, Jenny Hargreaves 65, Paul Harvey 81, Nick Hembrow 82, Rachel (Wood) Malloch 67, Anne Mowat 67, Roger Murray 67, Kim Perry 68, Debbie (Cooper) Poston 78, Joseph Rochlitz 74, David Smith 76, Sally Verity Smith 74 (our co-organiser), Sharon (Steinberg) Solomon 75, Margaret (Morris) Spector 57, Kelly Stelle 66, Michael Tabona 68, and Elizabeth (Ashford) Winter 61. A la prochaine fois.

Robin Dormer, LGB' 69

You could see some of the pictures from the evening in Nick Hembrow's album.

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