Ah. The weekend. Mike Hopkin's

birthday was on Monday, so on Friday there were worky drinks at the Old Queen's Head in Islington. It was a great time and I met some cool people, including Ruth in PR, but during the revelry I lost my horns! One was recovered, but one was just lost. I was absolutely gutted :(
Getting home was a small fiasco, as the tube and my bus home stops running around midnight. So I went home with...you know ;D
At around 4 in the morning, I got a text from the barman with whom I left my number and illustration of the missing horn. He found it! Yay! Crisis averted.
On Saturday morning we explored Stokey, including a really cool, old graveyard. It was like a small wood in the middle of the city, with really cool, old headstones. Some were large, some were small, some were heart shaped. I definitely need to see more of these. Stoke Newington is probably most like a smaller Eureka Valley in SF - some hipsters here and there, but not totally amok with them. It still has a lot of old school personality.
On Sunday I made my big journey to Chipping Norton. Spearhead runs a series of corporate training courses and I'm scheduled to take "Management Training".
The instructions on the course sheet say to take the train from London to Charlbury and then from there, to call a taxi for a short 10 minute ride to Chipping Norton. Easy. I hop on the 6:37 train bound NW and show up in Charlbury at around 8. Hmm. It's kind of dark at the station and there are no taxis waiting around for my business; I guess I'll walk to the downtown and wait in a cafe or something.
"Downtown" Charlbury is dark and deserted. Surely, even a one horse town such as this has a pub open at this hour? The Rose and Crown seems open; I give it a shot.
"Hi, I'm lost. Can I get a taxi to Chipping Norton?" The locals pretend to be disinterested by the shivering american chinese girl who just entered their bar. The friendly barman gives me a list of taxi drivers operating in the area. I call them all - they're all either driving someone to Heathrow or simply not working at this godforsaken hour of the night. "Can I hire a horse then?" I ask the barman. The patrons laugh, as if I had just told a joke.
One of the young guys (like 22 young) in the bar approaches me. "Would you like to have a pint with us?" What the hell, I'm stuck in this useless hamlet; maybe I can drink with the boys until the sun comes up and Pete decides that it's taxi driving time again.
So I get a glass of flat warm ale and sit with them. Apparently, I am drinking an old man's beer. I ask about Charlbury - they say it's full of dossers and complete crap. Well, there must be some hidden gem here? No. We make a list of everything in Charbury - the news agent, the wedding shop, the hair salon, the Pot et Fleur - the list covers only about a dozen lines, and all are businesses that are either completely necessary, or to spruce up your quaint country home.
They want to know all the usual - Do you have a gun? You live in California? Where are you really from? I give them my usual rhetoric. Then this: What kind of music do you listen to? Ah. This is certainly one aspect of England I love. I doubt the know who Tristeza are and I'm not even sure Morcheeba are still cool here any more. "I'd love to learn about some English bands while I'm here. What's good?"
Enthusiastic shouts - the list I make (two columns - one for bands, one for D&B) covers the page.
Time to move on to The Bell, the other pub/hotel in town. They have Blanc!! But it's £4.30. I'd better refrain; $8 for a beer is just too rich.
They tell me Charlbury is a total sausage fest. Sam, the worldliest of the bunch, is the youngest of 7 boys, no girls. Pete, THE black kid in town and chef at The Bell, is one of two boys. Well then, what do they do on the weekends? We're doing it right now - go to the pub. Also, the drugs are really good around here. Like coke. And meth. What? I guess I shouldn't have been surprised - meth is the scourge of boring little towns everywhere...
One of their friends shows up and has a pint with us. He lives two miles away from Chipping Norton (henceforth called Chippy) and can drive me there. Yay! But that little shit slinks out ten minutes later without a word. So back to square one.
"What the fuck am I doing here?" runs through my head regularly throughout the night.
The Bell is closing up so Sam, Pete, and I hang out at Sam's house for a bit. It's a really nice place - his mother must work hard to keep it that way with 7 boys, though only about three or four of them are living at home now. Sam kindly offers me the couch, but Pete has got a spare room with an actual bed, so I very gratefully accept. I spent that night in the spare room of the chef of The Bells in Charlbury.
Next morning. Wake up, with one thing on my mind: find a bus or taxi that will take me to Chippy by 9:45. I don't want to go into this again, but there is nothing. Crap. Maybe someone at Spearhead can come get me. Finally, a break. The good people oblige me by sending their managing director to pick me up in his Bentley. David is super cool too.
The Spearhead site was located in Chippy's "industrial park". The class consisted of my instructor, six middle aged white guys, and me.
I was apprehensive about taking a management course. Dilbert really has nothing good to say about managers, and they're complete idiots in Office Space. HOWEVER, I am completely willing to say that I was misinformed and totally wrong. Management training was excellent. It will certainly help me to do my job better. I also have a much better idea of what managers are supposed to do at all. I see now that I have been doing a lot of the support/training aspects but completely ignoring the planning/moving ahead part. I'm looking forward to helping my staff out this way.
Ooh, yay. Mirella just sent me an email saying that she's pouching me some Junior Mints :)