Happy anniversaries

It's been a week of anniversaries.

Waterloo (200), Institute of Economic Affairs (60), Hunters & Frankau (225). Enough has been written about Waterloo so let's start with the IEA.

On Thursday I joined several hundred people at The Brewery, a venue that, as its name suggests, occupies the site of a former East London brewery first built in 1750, 65 years before Waterloo.

The event was to celebrate the 60th birthday, or diamond jubilee, of "the UK’s original pro-market think tank".

An impressive crowd was there to mark the occasion. Among the guests were MPs (including government ministers), broadcasters, journalists and bloggers, representatives of other think tanks and pressure groups, and many supporters and benefactors.

A huge effort had gone into the evening which included a drinks reception followed by dinner and after dinner entertainment. (I believe my former colleague Angela Harbutt had a major role organising the event. She and her team did a great job.)

Dinner was accompanied by a series of speeches and short films that highlighted the history and work of the IEA but although it was a tad self-congratulatory (who can blame them?) there was no sense of resting on laurels.

The future was addressed too with the announcement of a new project with a fancy name I can't quite remember. I was distracted by the fact that Ukip press officer Gawain Towler kept leaving our table to respond to media enquiries about Nigel Farage and Suzanne Evans. He later tweeted "Shockingly bad night at #iea60". To be fair, I don't think he was referring to the event itself.

If I had one very small complaint (not even a complaint, more an observation) it was the lack of serious recognition for the IEA's Lifestyle Economics Unit.

Granted, there are many important issues to address but lifestyle - including the economics of smoking, eating and drinking - is likely to dominate the public sector agenda at local and national level for many years to come.

Economic socialism was discredited and then abandoned in the UK thanks in no small part to the founders of the IEA and those who followed them.

Lifestyle socialism is the latest threat to our liberties but when faced with an audience of the great and the good even the IEA seemed reluctant to mention it.

And so to another, very different, celebration, the 225th anniversary of Hunters & Frankau, the UK's only importer and distributor of Cuban cigars.

Incredibly this family run company was in business 25 years before Waterloo and is still going strong. That's quite an achievement.

Last night they invited a couple of hundred guests to Belgrave Square Garden in London for an evening of cocktails and cigars.

It was an outdoor event, naturally, but there was a tented village that offered maximum protection in the event of bad weather.

Fortunately it was a lovely evening but many of us stayed inside, reluctant to venture far from the cocktail bar.

I enjoyed the IEA event but this was a lot more relaxing. No politics, no rhetoric, no Ukip press officer threatening to resign at any moment, just a simple evening dedicated to three simple pleasures - smoking, eating and drinking.

At The Brewery on Thursday night only a handful of guests took the long walk to freedom (aka the designated smoking area outside the building). At Belgrave Square almost everyone was smoking, even me.

On arrival we were given a Montecristo Media Corona. During the evening more cigars were offered, "for tasting".

To take home we were given an H&F Commemorative Anniversary Box featuring a Ramon Allones Hunters & Frankau Aniversario 225 and a Bolivar Belgravia UK Regional Edition 2015.

The canapes were delicious and my only regret was failing to sample all five cocktails that had been invented for the occasion.

So, happy birthday, IEA, and happy anniversary, H&F. I hope I'm still alive for your next big celebration!