Dinner begins with a gong, a shuffling into the hall and a frantic scrambling for seats in good company, a pause with heads bowed as the fellows arrange themselves at the high table, and a grace. Servers materialize and vanish with finicky appetizers and dirty dishes; with corkscrews for the wine we’ve carried in and mops when we spill it.
There are minor variations among the colleges: at Homerton the gong is replaced by a bell; at Churchill only the high table is expected to wear gowns; at Queens’ the grace is a dense paragraph of Latin, and at Trinity requires the involvement of two tables; at Robinson (godless and anarchic) there is neither high table nor grace. St. Cat’s serves cheese, many colleges have a sherry course, and Pembroke is known, from time to time, to produce meals cooked sous-vide.
Pennying, though technically forbidden, is frequent (particularly at boating events). Diners come armed with pockets full of copper coins, the distribution of which (and the forced drinking that accompanies it) is governed by numerous ancient rules. I had a particularly nasty introduction to the engineer’s penny, which, folded in half with a pair of pliers, fits easily into the mouth of a wine bottle.
On special occasions at Churchill booze from the college cellars flows freely: champagne before dinner, white wine with the first course and red wine with the second, port and claret1 with dessert, sometimes Madeira and whisky subsequently in the SCR or Fellows’ Dining Room.2
At “common tables”, when the fellows dine below, the master leads the after-meal toast: “To Her Majesty the Queen! To our founder, Sir Winston!” Otherwise we wait until after the high table has retired to the SCR3, at which point an undergraduate initiates. Sir Winston gets the first place.
“English” for Bordeaux. ↩
Invitations to the SCR and FDR have lately been restricted in the aftermath of an overly-festive post-dinner drinking session which imperiled a Warhol print and several historic pieces of furniture in the College’s possession. ↩
At UK schools with college systems, membership is divided into a JCR (for undergraduates), MCR (for postgraduates) and SCR (for fellows). CR stands for “common room”, except at Cambridge, where it stands for “combination room”, except at Churchill, where it stands for “common room”. These acronyms also designate the physical spaces in which the respective bodies meet. ↩