Hallowed beef stroganoff

Tony, one of our directors, took me to lunch at Kings College canteen. It feels like a primary school kitchen with bowls of generic chocolate dessert and custard but as we walked into the imposing main hall with our trays outstretched, he informed me I'd collected my beef stroganoff from the fellows' counter. Apparently I'd strode up with such confidence that I blagged it. But I don't think fellows usually look like rugged 30 somethings in puffer jackets. If I'd realised this setup in advance, the sheer fact of needing a separate counter for fellows would have soured my generic chocolate dessert and green custard.

King's College dining hall has late paintings of various historical bigwigs such as Robert Walpole, the first UK Prime Minister. I wonder if he'd be making statements about reintroducing bear baiting in the UK as he'd 'always been in favour' of it, while around him Georgian era peasants died of very preventable diseases that they were deemed by the establishment to have brought on themselves.

There is an immediate sense of grandeur when entering most Cambridge colleges from the outside. Kings and St Johns the other day are particularly noteworthy. Not for the first time I was transported instantly to the medieval era and the film Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, praying desperately not to run into the creepy priest or scary witch on the flagstones. The colleges are expansive behind their gates and walls and it's a lifetime's work trying to understand how they all fit together.