Susie belongs to the Cambridge Women’s International Club (CWIC). They meet regularly for coffee and splinter groups for doing a variety of activities. Once a year, they get together and do a dinner with spouses. Well, this last Saturday was the Annual Dinner with spouses.
Overall, we had a good time. We arrived at the Plough, which is in a nearby town called Shepreth, during the end of drinks. We ordered a couple of glasses of wine. Strangly, we’ve noticed restuarants pour two size glasses (small and large). Not only are the glasses of different size, but the bartender pours them quite full. This does not give much room to swish around the wine and open it up. Instead, we had two large glasses with what felt like half a bottle of wine in each. In the future, I think we’ll order a large and split it between two glasses.
Another oddity with dinner parties in Britain is seating is designated boy-girl and your spouse is normally at a different table. I understand this seating system is to open folks up to socializing with new people and probably also to separate spouses who dominate the conversation (i.e. expose other poor souls to me :-). Nevertheless, I expect there were times when Susie and I wish we were next to each other. Considering most folks are squished into tiny spaces, it’s hard to do a subtle slip away without being noticed. This can be a significant problem if you are caught sitting next to a winning personality.
Though it wasn’t a date (as Susie and I kind of hoped we could be closer with each other), everyone seemed to have a good time. There wasn’t a lot of boring work oriented talk, but there were plenty of smiles and laughter. So, a successful evening worth repeating next year.
