A treasure hunt in Brighton

For our annual training day we went to Brighton. Now if you want to start a day at 9:30am but put it in Brighton, and then find that the hotel we are staying in is not the hotel where the training is, it all means a very early start if you live in North London. So I was up at 5am for this. On a very grey drizzly morning.

 Training was in Jury's Inn Waterfront hotel (not the Jury's Inn by the station which seemed to have confused those who booked the event). As you can see below, in a town renowned for its fine Regency architecture, a bit of a brutalist throwback. Our training room also had the disadvantage of being sandwiched between the kitchens (lots of clanking) and a school (lots of piping voices). But other than that it was fine.

After a morning of training exercises we had lunch followed by team bonding. A Treasure Hunt. So we were split up into teams and had to find various things, pieces of information (mostly found on signs by statues, pubs etc) and complete tasks to be evidenced by photos or videos on our cameras/mobiles. Winner won, er, a stick of rock. Well it wasn't really about treasure.

So among the tasks were kiss a stranger - see below

 But the really weird task was to video a group of people doing the can-can. Which we did by bribing a French school party. Obviously, nothing wrong in paying school children to do an erotic dance for you in a public park, is there?

 Another was to be photographed with a Justin Bieber calendar. Mark made the ultimate sacrifice.

 Inevitably a little trip in Brighton takes one to the Royal Pavilion. A fine example of what you get if you give too much money to the idle rich. Certainly one of the most significant buildings of the regency period in England.

A need for the team to be photographed with a pink bull. Naturally.

And someone pointing at a goose. (Some controversy over whether this is a goose or a duck.)

 And finally Alex playing piano at Brighton station. Lucky we had a genuine musician in the team (but unfortunately not on his specialist instrument, although surely the piano and the saxophone are pretty similar right?)

So much for the treasure hunt. Of course the real bonding was to be done over dinner and copious quantities of alcohol, although we were somewhat distracted by Wales v Belgium on the big TV.

But a good time was had by all, even those who were doing karaoke in the small hours. But not for me. Typical of the Japanese, not content with death railway camps in Burma, they come up with an even crueller punishment - karaoke. Not a fan.