Penny Black’s Social Diary: Lime Street Festival

Nothing clownish about insurance

The Lime Street Festival, run by the London Market Group’s Futures Academy and held outside Lloyd’s on a sunny Friday afternoon in July, brought the circus to the City to showcase careers in insurance.

More than 40 insurers pitched up tents and extremely colourful stalls with freebies, with a special mention going to Liberty for its doughnut wall and extra-strong SPF.

Supercharged with an abundance of free pizza, coffee and iced drinks, the teenagers were able to be their own career ringmasters, hearing directly about apprenticeships and insurance specialisms.

There were also a lot of questions about the industry’s “social life”.

For the youth of today, just remember that even if clowns on stilts may be gone the next day, the circus is always in town (or the City, as we call the wild EC3 postcode of London).

Penny’s Lunch Box

Tea may have played a pivotal role in the Industrial Revolution, but cream tea is what really keeps the cogs turning in many British institutions today as well as fuelling Penny Black.

Guests at Guidewire’s Marketplace Summit, held at The Ned, were treated to a selection of fresh scones with cream and jam, served in attractive bowls.

The biggest proof of the cream tea’s popularity was its lengthy queue, the opposite of the readily available mini burgers and finger sandwiches.

Five stars for flavour but four stars for presentation. Some fine china would not be amiss.