Working in the Club Room

I’m in Cambridge today, a luncheon for my (only) employee and meetings with investors.  Tomorrow is a syndicate meeting in London,  with plans to be back to the coast before nightfall.

Cambridge is having a beautiful summer’s day.  Banners are flying for the upcoming Tour de France bike race, passing through town on 7th July, and the Lent Bumps boat races are on for this weekend.  It’s the mix of deeply familiar and wholly new that defines each visit and so many things ‘Cambridge.

The people are the part that I miss.

All of the old places and routines surround me,  restaurants and shops, the college and science buildings, Waitrose and the Park n Ride / Guided Bus.  So I always catch myself expecting to see familiar faces around each corner. 

But they are never there.  It’s a  strangely disconnected déjà vu results.

The Neutron Bomb was an iconic concept in the 1970’s, a weapon that would remove people without damaging the buildings.  Cambridge has that same ‘post-Neutron’d’ feel (as did Vanderbilt when I returned years after graduation). 

 

This evening is the annual Wolfson Sports Recognition Dinner.  Lots of young men with flushed faces and skewed ties, telling stories with a cadence of sophisticated irony expected of Cambridge.

Another hour and they’ll set aside the pretense and the night will really begin.