LET'S GO: HAMPSHIRE (THANKS, INTERNET!)

For the edification of you Yanks in the U.K. for UMG’s A&R confab this week—not to mention the stay-at-home folks who are wondering where their colleagues went—we offer a few useless facts about Hampshire, England. Some members of our crack editorial team, having run out of crack and turned to huffing shoe polish, mistakenly believed that Hampshire was in London rather than the south coast of Blighty; then again, they also thought “Brexit” was something on the bargain menu at Denny’s.

Fortunately, our astute U.K. office head, Rhian Jones, corrected the geographically challenged colonists—who were directed to a place called "Wikipedia” and were surprised to learn that the Internet could be used for subjects beyond esoteric porn. Here are some things they copied and pasted:

• Hampshire is the largest county in South East England, home to the prominent port cities of Southampton and Portsmouth, and famed for housing the birthplaces of the Royal Navy, Army and Air Force.
• It boasts two national parks, the New Forest and South Downs. New Forest is actually new-ish, having been established in 2005. By comparison, Oxford’s New College was so christened in 1379.
• Other places to visit include the Winchester Cathedral of song and story, Buckler’s Hard (again, nothing to do with porn—it’s an old shipbuilding town with a maritime museum and yachting marina), Blackwater Arboretum and, if you tire of natural beauty and venerable history, the Bombay Sapphire Distillery and Ringwood Brewery (“Home of the Boar”—their ales are highly regarded).

In our next installment, we’ll use GPS technology to find our own asses.