After work today was the first rugby game of the Six Nations schedule, the England vs Wales game. Many of the hashers had agreed to meet at a pub where we often watched the game, which happened to be right on the Overland train route. Once I realised this, dashed out of my house, just in time to make the train and make it to the game on time!
Alas, in my hurried rush, I had no time to stop at an ATM, and only as I made my way to the pub did I realise I had no cash on me whatsoever. When I exited the station, I looked around to see if I might find an ATM nearby, only to turn around and realise that there was one...behind the ticket barriers I had just come through. Blast!
Okay, so I had no cash on me, but perhaps I could buy drinks for others and use my credit card, right?
I arrived and was greeted by Matt (one of my favourite people), who told me as he bought me a Guinness the exciting news that his girlfriend's father was shortly going to be joining us!
I'm sure this will sound totally random, but the last time Matt's girlfriend's father came to town (for Matt's 30th birthday), I actually had the best time talking to this guy. He's a professor at Penn State, just really smart and interesting, a fascinating person to talk to. So I was definitely excited to see Professor Gray again!
After a bit, Matt's girlfriend arrived with her father, and after all required hellos were exchanged, I was then all to happy to get into conversation with Professor Gray. (I was rather tickled to learn from Matt's girlfriend later that her father had been looking forward to seeing me as much as I had been to seeing him!)
So in the midst of rugby, we were talking about whether Hank Paulsen let Lehman Brothers collapse due to a personal vendetta against Dick Fuld. I of course was talking from my knowledge from reading Andrew Ross Sorkin's "Too Big To Fail" (which I never actually finished reading). It was only after a bit that he let it slip he used to be a managing director of Lehman Brothers and so knew all of the players personally. Indeed, he hadn't come with his wife because she was currently back in the US interviewing Obama. I sometimes forget in my enthusiasm for chatting with this guy, that I'm a bit out of my depth! I read the books, this guy lives it...
The game was also a great show, as England won, and Johnny Wilkinson came out to play with 16 minutes left in the game. His hair looked a bit long, but he still made his kicks and it was just great to see dear old Johnny, still managing to bring the magic after all of this time. How I miss seeing Johnny play!
It should also be mentioned that this entire time, Matt refused to let me buy him a drink in return (he claimed he didn't want to drink too much "while the boss is in town"), and Professor Gray kept making sure I had another drink in my hand as soon as my previous one got low. Forget about going out with no cash, I was managing to get quite tipsy without spending a dime!
Finally the game was over, the screen rolled up, and most of the crowds decided to head out. I must admit, the DJ was playing quite loudly, but my entreaties (and those of others) to get him to turn down the noise a bit went unheeded. After five of us had all gone up to the DJ to ask him to turn it down (and we'd seen others do the same), we pretty much decided to give up and head home.
Unfortunately at this point I still had nearly a full pint of Guinness left to drink (damn my pattern of being a slow drinker!) so I couldn't exactly leave with everyone else. Hence I ended up hanging around talking to the few folks left, and ended the evening chatting to a guy who struck me as a good-looking but probably thick rugby type. Giving that I didn't care much at this point, when he asked how I came to London, I just answered honestly that I had studied at Oxford. You can imagine my surprise when instead of being intimidated, it turned out that he'd been at New College, Oxford and had been working in Hong Kong for a while. Perhaps not just another good-looking dumb rugby type after all! I sort of wonder if I should have given that conversation more consideration, but I was tired and they'd turned up the music in this place too loud, so I begged off and went home. Too bad, he seemed like a nice guy, but I just wasn't up for it!
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