What a blast it was at the Whitehall Striders' Savannah Christmas breakfast last Monday morning. Unlike last year, there was no need for me to sit my linen, church dress gingerly on a savannah bench, normally frequented by sleeping vagrants, because the committee, chaired by Anthony Smart, had brought four chairs for "the church clothes people."
Smart, who is also manager of the styrotex bar, which stocks every kind of liquor but no coca cola, brought his daughter, Toni, a qualified Chartered Accountant, on holiday from the London School of Economics where she is now pursuing a law degree, to the early morning do.
In the midst of their celebration which, as usual, was accompanied by much heckling, Roy Bisnath and Yvonne Gordon took flowers from the Striders to the Belmont home of Joyce Graham, a retired hospital nurse with slight physical impairment who walks the savannah every Saturday morning with her son, Gregory. We also missed a regular, Mannie-Singh, who has not been walking within recent times.
Shakespeare's motley crowd could easily have described the breakfast guests on the two benches opposite to Queen's Royal College. Smart, Peter Christian, Dr Ian Prevatt, Ossie Grey and Bisnath in running clothes after a ceremonial Christmas lap; Jim Anatol in home clothes on his way to deliver his sister's gifts could not resist stopping; others like Stokely Regis, Robbie Bastien, Valerie Granger and Gordon in crisp casuals; and others like Diane Campbell and myself in church clothes.
But it was Mervyn Campbell (the vet), a regular strider, who came first in exercise garb, and reappeared hours later in church clothes after Mass with wife, Jean and daughter Danielle, who brought the house down. The tall, burly doc in smart navy long pants and white shirt neatly tucked into belted waist, minus 'signature' cap, with salt and pepper hair neatly brushed down like any choir boy. Regis, a regular churchgoer, did not bother with Mass because said he "I already went to church on Sunday morning" whereupon I pointed out Sunday morning had absolutely nothing to do with his Christmas Day obligation.
So great was the party which is usually ended by 9 a.m., that most of us never left the bench until long after 10 a.m. As the words of the cricket song go "It was a lovely day for Christmas breakfast."