Summer soirée hits the spot
23/06/2023
More usually associated with a wintertime in a City of London venue, Shaun Carroll’s much-missed Blockers’ Lunch made a welcome return last week in the disguise of “Blockers’ Summer Soirée,” a disguise which involved the swapping of coats and scarves for short sleeves and G&Ts…
A sell-out crowd of nearly fifty people gathered around midday at Smith’s restaurant in Wapping. The venue, well-known for its fish dishes, sits on the banks of the Thames and the fine weather had ensured a photogenic variety of interpretations of the “informal” dress code. You’ll rarely see such a colourful gathering at a leasing-related event.
Thursday’s half-percent interest rate rise certainly did not dominate conversations as there was so much else to catch up on, and with no speakers, Powerpoint presentations or big formal speeches to be made, people got entirely lost in networking, both at Smith’s and later at the Town of Ramsgate pub, five minutes’ walk further downstream, where Blockers more or less took over the bijou beer-garden.
To mangle the Twain quote, Leasing World’s reports of the death of this great institution prove to have been greatly exaggerated. Last September we had heard it would not be happening that year, and we wrote, "People would travel hundreds of miles for the Blocker experience, as much for the banter as for the way the Blockers’ Lunch tended to mark the first point when they could finally reveal what kind of a year they’d had…The chance to catch up on news from a wide assortment of block discounters, brokers and independent lessors, and solutions providers to the sector, was not one to be missed.” That’s all still the case, whatever the season…long may it continue to be so!
Our thanks go out to Shaun Carroll and the convivial crowd who made Leasing World feel so welcome at what somehow still appears on the expenses form as a business event.
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