Christmas Eve. December 2024. Cambridge.
Just noticed this blog has become a bit too pub-heavy of late and in danger of getting shifted from the “weird bloke on travels” category into “beer”. And that would never do.
I coaxed Mrs RM out of Waterbeach on Tuesday to explore an exciting city 5 miles south.
No, I have NOT become homesick for Cambridge since moving to Sheffield, but needs must.
And even an old almost middle-aged cynic like me will admit there’s something special about the carols from Kings on Christmas Eve.
No-one from Cambridge goes anywhere near the colleges of course; it’s entirely tourists with selfie sticks walking the streets.
But that’s OK; tourists fund my pension, and unlike North Korea we welcome allcomers here, as long as they don’t drink all our Guinness.
Mostly Japanese visitors, drawn to the UK by period dramas such as “Gavin and Stacey” and “Wolf Hall”. Talking of which, this is Henry VIII, isn’t it ?
In 1990 I did get (free) tickets for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, the service broadcast by the BBC to the world for near on a century.
Finding that no-one at work had the slightest interest in attending a formal carol service that wouldn’t include Slade tunes I made three visitors from Tokyo very happy by letting them have mine (free). They were thrilled to discover the seats were literally behind the choir.
No chance of a seat in 2024, but Mrs RM and I joined a tiny gaggle of locals at the rear entrance to the chapel to try and hear those wonderful opening lines to “Once In Royal David’s City” at 3pm, legally marking the start of Christmas.
We couldn’t hear that solo, so here’s one from 2016.
But as we walked away down Senate House Passage, the whole choir and organ and congregation came in, and you could just about feel the magic.
“Right” says Mrs RM, “time for a pub ?“.
retiredmartin 
Nice piece Martin, and whilst I’m not at all religious, there’s something about the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, from Kings College Chapel that, for me, signifies that Christmas is well and truly here.
I remember sitting in the deserted public bar, of the rather basic pub (Honest Miller), in the village where my parents lived, whilst home from Uni for the Christmas break. The landlord, knowing that the broadcast from Kings was about to commence, turned up the volume of the radio, kept behind the bar, and I sat there contentedly, listening to the service.
This would probably have been 1974, so some years before all-day opening came on the scene, so I’m really not sure what I was doing in the pub at that time of day. (Purchasing a bottle of gin, on behalf of my grandmother, possibly?)
What I do remember was a deep sense of calm and tranquility descending upon the centuries old public house, an experience I still remember today.
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Paul, A Tuesday in 1974 would have had last orders no later than the 3pm when the broadcast service started, so listening to it was probably one of those “lock ins” we so enjoyed fifty years ago.
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Mrs RM never has to search for the right thing to say.
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Yes, Martin, It’s Henry VIII. Or Anthony Worrall-Thompson.
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