Pubs and more un-English weather

Having seen Mathilde off at Earl’s Court tube station, I headed back to Waterloo, and jumped on the first train to Guildford. Now was the time to remedy the pub-lessness of the past weekend – so I immediately set up a rendez-vous with the usual gang at the White House (amazingly the weather was still, well, amazing – so the White House beer garden seemed like an obvious choice). Having dropped off my bag at Phil’s, we immediately set off for a pub dinner and some pints. Soon we were joined by Stephane, Manue and Klaus. Events then took a sadly predictable turn – as we ended up playing the quiz machine at Fahrenheit 55 throughout the night (I was assaulted by definite feelings of Déjà vu…).

Next day, having spent the morning at the office, we headed off for a bit of team-building to Bisley – clay pigeon shooting was the chosen activity this time. Neither the Finnish Army training nor the previous shooting session at Bisley helped much – my shooting was decidedly average (well, I did score more hits than misses, at least). Stu was the top dog with 28 hits out of 30 (not bad considering he’d never fired a gun before, or so he claims ;-). After this we headed off to Fleet for the “real team-building” – that is, the pub (followed by an Italian meal). Although it has to be said things were far more civilised than these sort of events usually are – probably since there was no overnight stay included ;-). Steve was kind enough to drive me to my luxury 5 stars hotel (yeah right – we’re talking about the Holiday Inn at Basingstoke here – they really are taking the **** with their prices in this part of the country…).

On Wednesday I decided to pester Adrian for a place to crash – he’s always one of the top candidates (along with Phil) – the fact that he happens to live in Richmond is of course pure coincidence. Things took their normal course – after a couple of pints by the river (the sun was STILL shining, believe it or not – that’s the 6th day in a row now – must be some kind of a national record??) we had a nice meal, and headed back to watch the Apprentice (well, the last part of the program was an exception from the norm). Good night out, all in all!

Getting up for work was getting a bit tough by now, especially since Adrian insists on leaving home 7 AM! (what does he think he is, Finnish or something??) Anyway, I survived…. The destination for tonight was again Guildford, this time Pentti was kind enough to give me a lift. Having dropped my bags of at poor Phil’s place, we headed off to experience one of those English institutions – the Pub Quiz (at George Abbott, unlike the Stoke as usually). Mostly thanks to Phil’s presence, we did well enough to come second As usual, I contributed about 3 points with my odd tidbit of knowledge of world events, geography and cinema. Phil, on the other hand, probably got 20 by knowing all the English pop songs from the 80’s and who scored the overtime goal to clinch the 1946 FA coup 2nd round game between Tranmere Rovers and Ipswich town – or something along those lines). We also had some last minute support from Steve and Kartsa who made an appearance (long time no see…). We ended up giving the wine bottle to Pena, since we decided to carry on celebrating our success by (yep, you guessed it) the quiz machine at Fahrenheit 55.

Definitely time to go back to France and rest….