The male room

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. It is a bright cold day in April, and Jon and I (both fortunate in having a sufficiency of excellent wives) are running a workshop at ACCU in Bristol. This is an overwhelmingly male conference, and we have a heavily skewed gender distribution: 30 men, 1 woman.

The workshop seems to goes well and the feedback is very promising. I'll be running this again a couple of times over the next few months and there are a lot of changes we want to make.

I catch up with the crew in the hotel bar. Austin and Rob describe last night's drunken discussion of a mathematical problem: if you take a stick and cut it into 3 pieces (randomly) what is the probability that you can make a triangle out of the pieces? They present two proofs that the answer is 0.25

For dinner, a posse of us head to the Old India restaurant. I think this outing might become a standard for the conference, in much the way Chutneys did when the conference used to be in Oxford. The food is good, but not outstanding - and there are plenty of dishes whose names are not familiar.

The bill is paid and the departure is precipitate. I've still a beer to finish and Rob keeps me company. We then trundle off to Woods for a nightcap. It's a small, wooden bar with a wonderful selection of whiskies and gins, completely empty except for the two staff behind the bar.

I enjoy a Balvenie and Rob goes for a more challenging Caol Isla. We blether among ourselves and with the bar staff. None of them have seen Angel's Share which seems like an omission that should be rectified.