September 17, 2008
Harrogate - Guru loves it! A long-term patron of the annual Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development conference, he has of course found time in his busy diary to make the pilgrimage for the final time before it moves to Manchester next year.
And while Guru is happy to report that his visit hit all the right spots - haunted hotel room, tick; boozy night at Carringtons, tick; falling asleep at the back of a seminar, tick - Yours Truly was rather disturbed by constant talk of the bedroom.
Suspicions were, ahem, aroused when a number of attractive young HR things told Guru they had spent the previous evening in bed - together. They got there early, ordered a few drinks and passed a wonderful few hours before retiring satisfied, they said. Guru almost choked on his parma ham and berry canape when they invited him to join them that night, only to be sorely disappointed when he relaised bed was actually B.E.D and stood for Burnsey Eat Drink, a restaurant near the conference centre.
Guru had just about got that out of his system - that's what that box of tissues in hotel rooms is for, right? - when he attended the first seminar of the next morning and was told by the speaker to discuss with other delegates how he was viewed in the bedroom.
Yes, Mind Gym co-founder Octavius Black made HR professionals tell each other what their partners thought of them in bed, their friends thought of them in the front room and their work colleagues wanted from them in the kitchen - or something like that. It was all apparently a bizarre attempt to explain how HR professionals could help their organisations through the credit crunch, but Guru's mind had drifted irreversibly back to those images from the night before.
So a fond farewell to Harrogate. Guru wonders how on earth Manchester can replace it.
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