Life hasn’t been all hard work, though. I was invited to run a five-day training course for some of our recently-promoted graduates, based in Alicante, Spain. Since I only had a week of vacation, there was no way I could turn down a week in the sun.

There were over 400 participants involved in the training, and we managed to take over the entire hotel. The weather was great, with temperatures in the high twenties and low thirties, warm water in the pool and lots of sunshine. My biggest regret was not bringing sunscreen – even though my time outside was limited (as I was preparing classes), I still managed to find enough time in the sun to burn myself. I spent the rest of the trip doing my impression of a lobster.

Delegates playing ping-pong by the pool

Relaxing by the pool

Cruising on a dolphin…

Flying fish!

Playing in the pool

They really laid on a lot for the guys. They had chartered a plane from Paris for all the French delegates, and there was a real party atmosphere as we headed to Alicante. On the second night, they rented an amusement park exclusively for us. On the third day, they brought in all sorts of games around the pool for a team-building afternoon. My two highlights of that day: first, the rest of my team-mates assuming I was a recent graduate (haven’t felt quite that young since I was carded at a bar in the US) and the second, someone coming up and complimenting me on my good English (I was the only native speaker involved in the training!)

The class itself was a lot of fun to run – I have run similar classes before so didn’t have to do much preparation. The delegates do most of the work themselves, and present back on the final day (after spending all night in a nightclub we rented for their exclusive use. Many didn’t get back until 6am, but they still managed to be up and working at 8am despite being told they weren’t required to start until 10h30! That’s a pretty dedicated group.) Here are a few pictures of them giving their presentations…

Students presenting their case studies

Students presenting their case studies

Students presenting their case studies

Students presenting their case studies

Students presenting their case studies

Students presenting their case studies

Students presenting their case studies

Students presenting their case studies

Students presenting their case studies

Students presenting their case studies

Students presenting their case studies

And here are a few team shots as we presented the awards…

The most important moment of the week – the winning scores are revealed!

Student team

Student team

Student team

Student team

Student team

Well, finally some progress on a number of fronts. After what seems like a lifetime of dealing with government departments, we have finally managed to gather together all of the documents we need to submit our wedding dossier in France. I’ve got certificates of just about everything, translated, stamped, and sealed by government agencies I didn’t know existed. I’ve even got a Certificate of Celibacy (which is basically a certificate that says “this certificate doesn’t exist in the UK” – come on, with the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe you don’t think we issue many of these, right?)

So arrived back from a couple of glorious days in Paris – beautiful sunshine and warm, clear skies (all of which I only gazed through the office windows) to be greeted by three days of rain for our three-day weekend in the UK. We had a lovely meal on Thursday night at L’Etoile, a horrendously-overpriced restaurant with a great view of the Arc de Triumphe. I caught the Friday night Eurostar back to Ashford and reminded myself again how civilised rail travel can be.

Three rainy days later and it was off to Amsterdam, this time via London City airport and the comfort of a VLM Fokker 50 turbo-prop. The weather was windy and the ride was bumpy – I fly a lot, and this was the sort of “I think I might throw up a little bit” kind of bumpy. I managed to land in Amsterdam vomit-free, but not before I’d managed to spill my half my Coke down my shirt. I like to do big first impressions when I arrive in a new town.

The Hotel Pulitzer was lovely – loads of old townhouses all knocked into one. Just as well, too, as I didn’t see the outside of the hotel much in the four days I was in Amsterdam. The course went really well (must have been down to the quality tutoring!) and, with the exception of a few Germans who wanted to be spoon-fed the methodologies, was received with rave reviews. I left on Friday night totally shattered and arrived at Schiphol to discover that my flight had been cancelled.

It was chaos at the airport – despite having a fully-flexible ticket, they couldn’t seem to load me onto another flight. My passport was being passed between the check-out counters like a hot potato. After thirty minutes of phone calls, they finally managed to get me onto a flight.

How the Dutch are the tallest people in the world is beyond me. The food was, without exception, crap. I hardly ate anything in four days. Breakfast was reasonable enough, but lunch consisted of sandwiches so stingy that even the English seem generous and thin, watery soup that would discourage even young Oliver Twist from begging for more.

Dinner was a choice of meats in gloop, surrounded by vegetables in gloop and served with potatoes in gloop. I don’t know what the Dutch name for our dishes was, but I suspect it was something like Meet en Gloop met Karrets en Gloop. Bear in mind we were staying in a 5-star hotel and eating at (supposedly) some of the best restaurants in Amsterdam. The monotony was only broken up by the unexpectedly pleasant starters – Smooked Feesh en Gloop.

Enough about Dutch cuisine. Back home on Friday night for a beautiful, sunny weekend in Canterbury. Mowed the lawn and caught up with errands on Saturday, then spent the afternoon in the park. Sunday we took the Corvette out for a spin to the Duck Inn, a lovely country pub, where we sat in the garden and had a lovely pigeon breast salad (“PoopenShijtenBuurdBoobs met kein Gloopsaus” in Dutch), then headed back to the park for a few beers and some sunbathing.

Off to my new client this morning, and a chance to do some real client work for a change. So far, so good – watch this space!

* Please note: the Dutch translations in this entry may not be entirely accurate. I don’t actually speak Dutch.