The Time, The Place - Part The First

There are familiar faces that crop up throughout your life - sometimes expectedly, oftentimes not so much - but sometimes there are places which seem to keep randomly recurring at key moments. One such place for me is the Trafalgar Tavern in Greenwich.

Being the home of the National Maritime Museum (as well as the place where they make time before shipping it out to the rest of the world), Greenwich is fairly well populated with pubs featuring words like Nelson, Trafalgar, Hardy, Cutty Sark, Gypsy Moth and so on in their names. The Trafalgar is one such old drinking establishment, a lovely old place situated on the river. It's a pleasant if unremarkable pub downstairs but it is upon venturing upstairs that you discover the huge and rather stately function rooms. It is to these rooms that I have been drawn at selected times in my life...

First on the list was my unofficial sixth form ball at the age of eighteen. The school had, naturally, organised an official leavers ball but no one really relishes the idea of school-approved and sanctioned fun so one of the boys in my year took it upon himself to go off and organise a ball of his won. This was my first time at the Trafalgar function rooms but, I have to admit, my actual memory of the event is somewhat hazy - mainly due to the fact that I would have been very, very drunk.

I didn't really think about the place much again but, around eight years later, I was to find myself once again standing in those rooms but for a very different reason...

To Be Concluded