392 Cavalry & Guards Club, for lovely wine lunches, dressy dinners and weddings
The Background
You have to be very careful when taking photos in ooh la la venues. Some stately homes forbid photos. Either they want to charge you money. Or they want to check who is taking photos so that if they are burgled they can guess who was the culprit or where the photos were published to attract unwanted attention.
I would not want to be blamed, or censured, or feel guilty. So I reckoned a photo of a Champagne bottle which will be emptied and thrown away could not attract any anxious attention from the building's security team.
What you can see is that the curtains and carpet have a co-ordinating pattern.
Accessories and Props
The staff have supplied buckets for the Champagne starter drink for our lunch. It was a bring your own bottle lunch. My husband Trevor had chosen the menu from the club choices. He matched the style of drink to the food. Champagne, with almonds and cashew nuts for the pre-lunch chat, white wine with the starter, red with the meat, and sweet wine with dessert. He had supplied the champagne starter drink. Other guests contributed their bottles. This involved a lot of correspondence with the guests and venue to get the drinks to the location, the right number and style of glasses supplied. (The venue charges corkage.)
Angela's Clothes
My colour scheme was orangey red and black.
The Sandals
Trevor had looked at my outfit and said, "You are wearing beach shoes." I needed flat shoes for walking around to get to and from the venue, up and down stairs at stations. We had carefully chosen the route from several choices to minimise walking and to eliminate stations where we would have to carry suitcases containing heavy bottles up the stairs.
I tried on closed shoes but they no longer fitted. I had enough to carry with a suitcase containing one fo the guests bottles which they had delivered to us, meeting in central London earlier. (Trevor had decanted some of the wines to removed the black sediment at the bottom, and re-'corked' the bottle with a top.) The sandals with Velcro or close and loop would adapt to my feet changing size outdoors and indoors, whatever the weather.
The Socks
I added socks. From my point of view, socks prevented the shoes from rubbing. From the bystanders point of view, firstly, socks would prevent any odours, which is why smart restaurants and clubs in hot countries forbid open shoes and sandals.
Secondly, the socks also looked a bit smarter, less undressed and beachy. The right socks could cover my toes, ankles, all the way up to the hem of the skirt or dress.
Be careful to pull down the hem of the dress. I had hoisted up the skirt with a belt. I wanted to be sure of keeping the skirt up when running along outdoors. Long skirts can catch in your shoes' heels and toes and trip you up.
Indoors, static, I had to be sure to let the skirt down at the venue. For photos. And to look more co-ordinated.
For most of the event, I was seated. The important part of the outfit was the fancy jacket and shiny satin scarf.
Fabrics
In fact, I looked better in real life than I do in the photos. The fabric of the Chinese Mandarin collar jacket is satiny and so is the back of the scarf. The scarf is two sided and I have reversed it so as no to have the patterned side clashing with the pattern o the jacket.
The Scarf
The scarf acts as a napkin to protect my jacket and top from getting stained by the lunch.
I was there for a wine lunch, bring your own bottle, matched with the food.
In another room was an Irish overseas military reunion, although none of the people I spoke to were Irish, they were descended from Irish families, or married into them, and now based all over the world, as far away as Nigeria.
The men all wore the same tie. They were piped into lunch by an Irish bagpipe player in a kilt. (Same as the Scots bagpipe but Irish.)
Later in the year we were unable to make a booking because of a wedding.
Club guests
Our lunch was a small group of 15.
Another group of
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