Bullingdons

Regular readers will know that I call the cycles provided by the Santander system operated by TFL Bullingdons, in honour of the way that the Mayor of London at the time that these cycles were launched spent his time at Oxford - observing in passing that my understanding is that he inherited the system from his predecessor as mayor, one Ken Livingstone. I also have a memory that the original spade work was done by one Peter Mandelson, but I can find nothing about that today, so I must have got him muddled up with someone else.

So I was interested to be reminded by the 'Cambridge Independent' of the Cambridge version of the Oxford club known as the Pitt Club, now getting on for 200 years old. A club in Jesus Lane which I remember from my childhood, a place with a rather pretentious neo-classical frontage, quite modest in size and rather shabby, which must front for a much larger interior. A building which started life as a Roman Baths in the middle of the nineteenth century, but was soon part occupied by the Pitt Club who went on to buy the whole in 1907. But times got hard, and they had to lease the ground floor to Pizza Express in 1997, a lease which has now rolled over to the Kibou chain of Japanese restaurants, to be found at reference 5 and snapped at the top of this post.

Another shot of the new restaurant.

Some grub from the Battersea branch, turned up by Google. It might have been fun to give it a go, but it is rather pricey and I am not at all sure about Japanese food. Put another way, it might be haute cuisine, with Japanese food in Japan swimming in Michelin stars these days, but I am not at all sure that it is my cuisine. Too much raw fish.

The club itself has been relegated to the first floor, although it is not clear where that might be. And no clearer in either normal or satellite view in gmaps. But it does seem to be an exclusive club for male and female toffs: people who can hold their own with all comers, people who are good at sport, people with plenty of tin. I imagine the principal activities are well oiled meals and even more well oiled parties. But not so much tin that there was not some bother with Pizza Express about a drinks license, with the club wanting to freeload on the Pizza Express license. Perhaps these sorts of clubs are dying out, like their cousins of St. James, now mainly given over to the sales representatives of large companies, who use their gilded pillars and plaster to impress their prospects.

PS 1: for some reason, I am reminded of reading about a club called the Junta, more exclusive and venerable than the Bullingdon, albeit fictional. Introduced on page 116 of my copy of reference 7, previously noticed ten years ago at reference 8. I have turned the pages a bit this evening, but will I ever read it again? Will I ever meet anyone else who has read it at all?

PS 2: I was impressed with the print version of the Cambridge Independent. Not aware that we a reasonably serious, paying-for local paper here at Epsom.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_Pitt_Club.

Reference 2: https://archive.varsity.co.uk/647.pdf. The story at 2006.

Reference 3: https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/25788. The story at 2023.

Reference 4: https://www.varsity.co.uk/features/24278. A story from the inside. Anodyne.

Reference 5: https://kibou.co.uk/locations/kibou-cambridge.

Reference 6: https://www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk/.

Reference 7: Zuleika Dobson or an Oxford love story - Max Beerbohm - 1911. Reprinted by Yale University Press - 1985. Embossed on the spine for the Folio Society. Printed in Italy.

Reference 8: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-tale-of-two-charities.html. First notice of the foregoing. Also first notice of Colin Thubron, no idea now why, who resurfaced quite recently, around ten years later, as noticed at reference 9 below.

Reference 9: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/11/a-trip-along-amur.html.