14 July 2016, 6 pm
I have found gin. It just so happens – and honest I had nothing to do with the choice of venue – that the terribly terribly posh hotel where the Gala Dinner is being held has a terribly terribly good bar with a terribly terribly fantastic plurality of gins. It has terribly terribly expensive prices too, but this is not my problem because I am meeting the Pee and he is buying the drinks. I pick a gin called Monkey 47 and it is so nice I drink it neat with nothing more than some ice and a slice of orange, and then spend forty minutes trying to make a lone bottle of tonic look sophisticated. The Pee also looks like he needs a drink. He has not been able to go on holiday recently and he is fed up of Brexit impinging on his Presidency. It was supposed to be a quiet Presidency, of the type euphemistically referred to as a Period of Consolidation, in which Mr Davies had instructed everyone to leave him alone while he swept up after me. Brexit has put paid to that. After the gin, I feel up to swanning around being Immediate-Past-Presidential in my pleated corpse. It is genuinely lovely to see so many familiar faces gathered together, even if I can’t remember all of their names. It is also genuinely reassuring to see that Mr Davies is dressed. I do lots of pretending to be sociable, and other people pretend to be sociable back. I tone down my usual ribaldry in case one of the can’t-remember-whos turns out to be a High Court judge or something. I see that I am the only patent attorneyette wearing a pleated corpse. In fashion terms this is a Good Thing, because believe me there is nothing worse for a lady than turning up in the same frock as somebody else and realising you are wearing yours the wrong way round.
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