To the Senior Common Room, for dinner

The SCR serves decent, if uninspired, meals throughout the evening. You rarely eat there, but tonight might be a good opportunity to spend time with your colleagues and find out what they think of the changes you've made to the country and the college. Not that they know things have changed, but you still think you'll find their opinions enlightening.

You could mistake the SCR for an old-fashioned gentlemen's club. Leather armchairs, discreet staff, a dining room with silver service, a library separate from the one used by the graduates and undergrads, about the only differences are that the canteen is open to members as well as employees and the games room has computers and go-boards rather than a billiards table.

When you enter, you find a few fellows in the main room having a quiet drink to wind down after a long day. The attendant is a young woman of perhaps twenty-five. You wonder whether she is a former student, as she's slim and attractive, but you're feeling hungry and make your way to the canteen.

Three members of your department are eating together at one of the tables, including Dr. Mary Donohue, the oldest member of the faculty still teaching. She still has the same iron-grey hair and much-mended tweed suit you remember, but is significantly thinner than she was the last time you saw her. Clearly, your rules are having some unexpected effects.

Your colleagues haven't noticed you yet, but when they do, they're sure to invite you to sit with them, so you take a look round from the doorway, before going to the counter to pick your meal. The canteen is not particularly busy yet, with perhaps thirty fellows and junior staff eating. The clerk of the president's garden, Monty ("just Monty, dear boy"), is eating with several of the more active members of the college's governing council, whilst some of the younger teaching staff and junior research fellows have pulled two tables together and are having an animated discussion, the bearded college rugby coach Luke Harrison is holding forth to his audience of half a dozen female tutors (all of whom are at least ten years his senior and are hanging on his every word) and the young blonde lectrice, Mlle. Léa Dupond, is standing at the counter, apparently debating between the oily fish and a green salad.