retiredmartin

Christmas Eve 2024. Cambridge.

You left us outside King’s College Chapel as the first notes of “Once In Royal David’s City” signalled the official start of Christmas, at least if your name is Gerald or Maggie and you live in a £2m townhouse in Newnham.

I thought we should go full-on tourist and make a first visit to the Eagle in a decade,

but it smelt of cabbage and all the tables had reserved signs on them.

An Italian asked me if this was where DNA was discovered and I was able to confirm that, yes, “the secret of life” was invented here in 1953 by the bloke from The Fly over 3 pints of Greene King Rocking Rudolph.

Never mind the secret of life; in Wetherspoons you’ll find ALL human life, though in truth the Regal was a bit less boisterous than hoped, and whatever folk were drinking it wasn’t the Otter Amber, a rather sharp and wishy-washy 2.5 at best.

I had my first ever date here (the Regal cinema* not Spoons), somehow contriving to get lost finding the exit from the Spoons and finding myself out in the alleyway. It wasn’t a promising start.

Anyway, you don’t subscribe for nostalgia, though I’ve enjoyed The Live & Let Live, particularly when they put on Green Devil.

Just Citra and Pulsar from Oakham today, both a cool and clean NBSS 3.5+,

and a rare sighting of Black Sheep this far south.

A cosy backstreet cask and conversation pub, packed with families and friends.

Perhaps a bit plainer than the Cambridge Blue across the road, but still tons of breweriana.

But it’s the banter you come for.

Back in Waterbeach for this glorious sunset.

Yes you could almost find the Fens attractive. If you’d never set foot in Sheffield.

*Remarkably, it wasn’t Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, it was a horror movie.