In the last century tube strikes were not infrequent. One morning in the 1980s a colleague was at the end of a long queue at a bus stop in north London. An expensive car pulled over and the driver offered her a lift if she was going to the City.
She hopped in and her knight in a shiny Bentley asked about her job. She told him she was an oil futures broker with Czarnikow. “I’m one of your clients”, he replied. His company was Trans-World and it dipped a toe into oil trading. He was, still is, actually, David Reuben who owned Trans-World with his brother, Simon. Their businesses prospered and, according to The Sunday Times Rich List, this year they are the second richest men in the UK with assets of £16 billion. I only met him fleetingly, a handshake and a pleasantry, when I went to his office.
A decade or more later I rented a second home; an orangery in a walled garden near Pangbourne. I asked a friend from university to supper with her boyfriend, soon to be her husband. I hadn’t met him before and he was nervous on the drive over from Oxford that I might not offer him vodka. My friend put him straight. “Of course Christopher will have vodka, just don’t ask for a soft drink.”
These two trivial anecdotes have come together rather charmingly. The Reubens have endowed a new Oxford college for post-graduate students. Reuben College will have 120 students specialising in the study of cellular life, artificial intelligence and environmental change when it opens next year. The first President of Reuben College will be Professor Lionel Tarassenko, he who had vodka anxiety when we first met.
Meanwhile the young falcon, Jack, is getting along fine, annoying his parents and improving his flying and landing skills.
Tomorrow morning the Queen’s Birthday Parade takes place at Windsor Castle. It will be broadcast on BBC 1 from 10.15 am.
“The Queen will view a military ceremony in the Quadrangle of Windsor Castle to mark Her Majesty’s Official Birthday on Saturday 13th June, 2020.
The ceremony will be executed by soldiers from the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, who are currently on Guard at Windsor Castle, and feature music performed by a Band of the Household Division.
Upon Her Majesty’s arrival in the Quadrangle, The Queen will be greeted by a Royal Salute. A series of military drills will then be carried out as the Band plays, and the ceremony will conclude with a second Salute before The Queen’s departure.” (Buckingham Palace statement)
Neil Diamond has lockdown locks.