Division Bell

Posted on 2012/03/25 11:32:04 (March 2012).

[Tuesday 20th March 2012]
Iain at the office proposed going to Oliveto for lunch today. I had their Caprino pizza, which I haven't had for a while, and was very good as always.

In the evening we had some welcome drinks for a person who had just joined the project. This started out with a rather tedious and predictable visit to the default-nearest-pub-to-the-office which I found particularly banal and will-to-live sapping on this occasion. So I attempted to expand the horizons of my colleagues, and persuaded at least some of them (with surprising reluctance) to go a bit further afield, and visit some new and different places. I had a hankering to head into Westminster, and visit some politically themed pubs, the timing of which was perfect as it turned out there was a debate in the commons this evening.

There's a TV screen in the Red Lion (I'll forgive them on this occasion) showing live coverage from inside Parliament, so we could follow along with the debate on the health service that was going on just over the road, and presumably lots of the other suit and official-looking-badge wearing clientele of the pub had also been involved in. Rather excitingly, while we were in the Red Lion the division bell went off. Whilst it wasn't clear who, if anyone, in the pub was actually an MP - there wasn't an obvious mad rush to the doors when the bell went off - what appeared to be a parliamentary taxi showed up a few minutes later (despite parliament being literally a stone's throw away from the Red Lion) to round up our diligent political representatives, who apparently would rather be in the pub than waste their time with trivial matters like deciding the future of our country's health service.

So I found that all rather exciting anyway. Although I'm not sure if the majority of my colleagues wouldn't have just preferred to stay in the dull pub where the evening had commenced.

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