Mad Dining Club Dinner

The Mad Dining Club are a group of Cambridge undergraduates with aims and expectations from life as the Cambridge Nightclimbers, and I had received a number of supportive e-mails from them over the course of the previous term. It made sense to meet up sometime to swap stories and chew the fat, so myself and the MDC president managed to overcome the logistic problems that plague these kind of endevours, and agreed to meet for dinner sometime.

Unfortunately I was the only nightclimber who could make it in the end, and the president of the MDC - Mad Hatter - managed to get two of his cohorts to turn up; their codenames were March Hare and Vosseler.

In a typical cloak-and-dagger style all I knew was to meet them at the Victorian post box outside King's College porters lodge at 19:10 on Wednesday the 27th, with the plan being to head on to a formal hall at a suitably neutral college. I turned up on time, and after the initial awkwardness of meeting new people for the first time, I was told that the formal hall idea had fallen through as Mad Hatter had been unable to get tickets at any large college in time for the event. So we walked off to a restaurant called 'The Depot' on Regent Street instead. On the way there we had the opportunity to break the ice some more by talking about this web site, and the MDC site, and reveal a few facts about ourselves to gain each others trust.

When we got to the restaurant I was somewhat surprised at the cost of the food there, as were the MDCers, I believe, but Mad Hatter fortunately had a discount token, which made the cost a bit more bearable. We order a bottle of wine to get into the right mood, and settled down to examine the menu. In the end I had tiger prawns, a mixed salad, and toasted bread and butter, which certainly hit the spot - the food might have been expensive, but it was very tasty. I think that Mad Hatter and Vosseler had lamb, and March Hare ordered swordfish steak.

Over the meal we talked about the drive behind what we do, and swapped anecdotes on climbs and expeditions. Vosseler showed me his collection of home-made lock picks, manufactured from large paperclips squashed using a vice, and explained how to pick the ever popular D-locks that are used to secure most bicycles around Cambridge. I was shocked at the ease with which they could be cracked. Naturally I should point out that all these activities are not undertaken maliciously - none of us are thieves or vandals, and it is the intellectual challenge that draws us to these things.

After dinner I suggested that we head on to a pub, and nominated the Fountain Inn, as it has Old Peculier porter on tap. This was where disaster struck - an old friend and former fellow undergraduate was sitting ensconced in one of the alcoves in the pub, and as I entered he shouted out my real name, giving away my true identity to the MDCers! But Vosseler, March Hare and Mad Hatter were kind enough to tell me their names and colleges, and we talked a lot more freely for the rest of the evening.

A few pints on we headed off to March Hare's room to consume some wine and port, and sit in a less smokey and quiet environment. We discussed some more recent operations, and I shared a couple of ideas with them concerning practical jokes that could be played on the university and some of the colleges around town. They in turn told me of their plans to hold another dinner in an unusual place. It was interesting to compare our differing modii operandii (is that the correct plural? I guess not - perhaps St. Peter can tell me) - the MDC is much more organised and military about their activities, preparing in advance and using proper equipment, whereas we are a bit more haphazard, wandering about waiting for a window of oppertunity to open by chance.

Having had a couple of pints in King's bar before the whole evening began, I was somewhat more drunk than the rest of the group, and at about eleven o'clock I decided that I should leave while I was still able to stand. So I bade the group farewell, and staggered out of the college to head home, after a most enjoyable evening.