Christmas Dinner at Wolfson College
The occasion was the Christmas dinner at Wolfson College. Before it, a stop at a pub whose entire ceiling is papered over in whisky boxes — hundreds of them, edge to edge, under an old Truman Beers & Ales sign — which is a strange thing to drink beneath and hard to stop looking at.
The paths at Wolfson were wet from rain, a sandwich board pointing everyone toward the Porters' Lodge. Inside, a tall tree strung with lights, crackers on the tables, and place cards with each person's meal printed right under the name — soup, turkey, tart. There was a world map pinned up nearby, bristling with pins for everyone's home country, thickest over Europe and Asia.
Walking back afterward, the lights of a riverside pub were doubled in the water, and the Fitzwilliam Museum stood lit up behind its columns, banners hanging for the Black Atlantic exhibition. Cambridge in December closes down early and glows anyway.
