A gradual gradient of graduands

I graduated yesterday. Well, technically I graduated a few months ago when my results were published, but the ceremony was yesterday. The journey there was made unecessarily stressful by a combination of the tube strike and of an idiot woman pulling the passenger alarm in protest at the train being diverted from the Charing Cross branch to the Bank branch. Potential time taken changing branches at Camden = two minutes. Time spent half in and half out of Kentish Town station waiting for a supervisor to come and investigate the alarm = twenty-five minutes. Where's the logic?

Once I got to the Royal Festival Hall, where the ceremony was being held, everything went fairly smoothly. Parents found, gown sorted, photo taken. The photo was potentially the most important part of the proceedings. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be the one to tell my Grandma she wasn't getting one! After a bit we heard the PA system vaguely in the distance and split up to go and take our seats. At some point I became aware that everyone was moving in the same direction. Away from the hall. Toward the exits in fact. And at that point I started to actually listen to the PA system, and realised that we were being evacuated from the building. Hundreds of gowned, mortar-boarded students and their familes were summarily turfed out onto the Southbank in the freezing November wind. Several of the more determinedly entrepeneurial stall-holders from the nearby Christmas fair seized the opportunity by opening up early and starting a brisk trade in hot chocolate and mulled wine, while the ubiquitous tourists looked on in confusion, probably wondering if this was some kind of quaint English tradition. Eventually we were allowed back into the building, although none the wiser as to what the security alert had been due to, and took our seats. Thirty seconds walking across a stage willing myself not to trip up, and one hour, fifty-nine minutes and thirty seconds of mind-numbing tedium later, we emerged, filled ourselves with free prosecco and escaped.

In the evening my parents took me for an amazing dinner at the Cinnamon Club in Westminster. I'm not a food blogger, and strongly suspect that I'll sound like a bit of a twerp if I start talking about the food in any detail, so I'll limit myself to saying that it was absolutely delicious, beautifully presented and very much enjoyed. My parents amused themselves thoroughly by laughing at me blushing at the sommelier, who evidently considered it part of his job to flirt with any remotely eligible female who crossed the threshold. I can't say I minded too much, since he was very obliging in finding me white wines to match every course (my red wine allergy is one of the great tragedies of my life), and his decorativeness was second only to his skill at his job.

All in all it was a fun day. It didn't exactly run smoothly, but then the things that I'm involved in rarely do. Still.....at least the chaos that follows me everywhere gives me something to write about.