Welcome to my blog, where I take pleasure in words and pictures, be they my own or those of others. I'm a creative individual, and the crafty side I explore on my 'other blog', Picking Up The Threads, which I hope you'll visit too. I'm sure you understand that I have sole copyright of my original work and any of my contributions, so please ask if you want to use them. A polite request is rarely refused. So, as they used to say on the BBC's 'Listen With Mother' radio programme, many years ago: "Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin."

Friday 12 May 2017

Celebration Meal

The photo prompt for Sepia Saturday 6th May (Yes, I know, I’m a week behind!) was a menu card. I have rather a lot of these saved over the years from weddings, and ceremonies connected with Education or the RAF. So, I decided to choose just a couple which marked special occasions for my husband and me.


In 1973 I came to the end of three years teacher training and was duly invited to a ‘Going Down Dinner’ to mark the leaving of my cohort, to go on to the world of work or, like me, on to a further year’s study to obtain a degree. Here’s the menu from that event, on 22nd June 1973. Not a very exciting offering I think we can agree.


























I didn't graduate until 1974, so my graduation portrait is a year after this celebration dinner. There must have been some sort of meal but I have no recollection of what.

My husband-to-be had already graduated in a ‘Passing Out’ ceremony at RAF College Cranwell, to mark the end of his officer training. There was a rather nice lunch, which I attended, and is indeed the only souvenir we seem to have of the day, apart from a formal portrait of the cup winners. Here he is back right.

























The menu was slightly more upmarket and made somewhat jollier by the addition of a glass or two of wine and some rather splendid band music to accompany it.


Join us for this week’s Sepia Saturday, where the theme has moved on from menus to the early days of cinema.

9 comments:

  1. Both menus looked pretty good to me! Of course what you see on the menu and what is actually placed before you and what you taste can mean different things. Our local college has chef-training classes and when classes are in session, they put out once-a-week 3-course dinners that are amazing at very affordable prices with deserts such as crepe Suzette, cherries flambé, and baked Alaska to name but a few. Mmm mmm delish!

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  2. Menus are excellent prompts for both memories and Sepia Saturday. I can see you now in my mind's eye doping Zorba's Dance to the music of the RAF College Band.

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  3. Seeing these cards reminds me of a dinner and dance card from when my dad was in college. Their dessert was "mints and cigarettes." Who was in charge of that dinner?

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  4. I can't imagine wasting fresh asparagus in aspic...I'm hoping they used canned. That music program looks great! And extensive. What rock did I crawl out from?...I didn't realize Charlie Chaplin wrote that theme. And all the other music in his films. I'm impressed that you still possess the menus and that you can find them!

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  5. Asparagus in Aspic. Could have been a crime novel, Nell. You graduated the year I got married. I didn't get my first gong until 1996, from the OU. We drove all the way to Exeter for the ceremony, and I think we stopped on the way home for fish and chips.

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  6. I think your graduation portrait is lovely. However, the name of the college did give me pause, as I was wondering if it had any sports teams, and then what a mascot might be, or what the teams might be called, and I was totally stymied! Good to see that you had minted potatoes on your menu, or minted peas on the other...it must have been more popular than creamed ones at any rate!

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  7. British Formal Dinner Titles do not translate well west of the Atlantic :-}
    The band program was interesting for the familiar old chestnuts and movie themes I know but haven't played in years.

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  8. What a great idea retaining menus. I can't say that I ever have.

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  9. Strawberries always make a meal feel rather special, although now they are available year round, not quite as much as they once did.

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