We don’t often get to go on training these days, so when I found I’d been unexpectedly scheduled on a one day course I thought that worse case, it would be a day away from the laptop.

It turned out to be quite good, due entirely to the trainer who had a strong German accent and a fantastic sense of humour (which I originally put down to a touch of loopiness). If you’ve ever been on a training course in a new location you’ll know the standard introduction of ‘if the fire alarm sounds, please exit blah-di-blah…’

Our introduction was: ‘The fire exit is out the door somewhere. Please don’t leave through the window. We will have lunch. At some point. If you smoke…well, don’t. It’s very bad for your health. If you want anymore information on these things I will get you some professional help.’

no relevance whatsoever, but I liked it...

Having established that this was indeed Mr Trainer’s humour, I enjoyed the next one. Talking about a project he worked on at BA directly with Willie Walsh he was explaining that this particular day Mr Walsh was a bit stressed. This was not good for Mr Trainer as ‘…he even ate my last Mars Bar. Bastard.’ Then we had the ones that I think was probably due to translation issues such as ‘…if it’s something really urgent, like someone needs to die…’ (Needs to die?!)

And then those that were hilarious due to the passion behind them as he ranted (and remember the German accent here) ‘It is not cool for people to send e-mails at the weekend. Let us all agree that we will hate them.’

Maybe though, he was a little loopy after all. After lunch Mr Trainer told us to ‘Beware of the chickens.’ Then he clucked.

like this one too.

Still, by listening out for these quotes I probably took in more of this course than any other I have been on!:o)