My boyfriend recently read a book called “Battle Royal” by Kirstie MacLeod, and recommended it to me as something well worth reading. Nice as my boyfriend is, we don’t necessarily share the same taste in books, and so as a rule I might be rather apprehensive of his choices Nevertheless, he reviewed it so positively that it really did sound rather interesting, and I decided to give it a go. I started reading it for half an hour a night when I was in Bolton last week, to help me wind down from writing my article for La Brita Esperantisto. It did indeed have the desired result of sending me to sleep. (more…)

Working my way through the free Esperanto ebooks at my disposal, on the train to Leicester this weekend I started a story called “El la vivoj de Esperantistoj” by someone called V. Stankievic. I had no idea what I was letting myself in for, but I’d forgotten to pack one of the more traditional books that I’m currently reading, and it seemed like a good way to pass an hour. I finished it off last night, more out of obstinance than anything else, and a slight curiosity to see whether it was actually for real, or just very heavy irony. If I wanted to be mean, I could make the point that it appears to have been published in Germany in 1896 and thus expecting heavy irony was a bit unrealistic of me. (On a wild tangent, I once had a German friend who, as the closing line to a bitter argument, exclaimed at me in a very reproachful manner, “I have been many things, but at least I have never been ironic!”) Sure enough, it turned out to be a story utterly devoid of irony. Reading it was kind of like watching a train wreck and thinking, “Please make this actually not be for real..!” (more…)

I’ve been meaning to upload my photos from Geneva for ages, but have been too lazy to transfer them from my phone to my computer. I’m not allowed to install any phone software on the computer, you see, and I haven’t figured out how to remove the block on me using infrared of bluetooth, so my only option is to painfully email the photos to myself two at a time However, there’s nothing like spending a week by yourself in a hotel room in Bolton to make you think sticking pins in your eyes would actually be rather entertaining, so this evening after having dinner and washing the soap out of my hair, I decided to dedicate myself to the task Unfortunately, it’s now so long since I made my posts about Geneva that it doesn’t seem worth rejigging them for photos. So I’ve decided to make a mega sort of post here which contains all the photos instead… (more…)

Last night, I accidentally washed my hair with soap I know, I know – how utterly ridiculous (more…)

Today I have achieved something which I have been trying and failing to accomplish for the best part of three years now – figured out how to make my work computer access Yahoo mail! I am so excited that I felt the need to make a post to commemorate the occasion What I have done is, of course, a highly illegal manoevre, but I am taking comfort from the fact that I have only persevered so long in the belief that it was possible because one of my colleagues had figured out how to do it, and she has just been promoted to manager. (more…)

One of the books which my boyfriend bought for me with my vouchers on Thursday was ‘Engleby’ by Sebastian Faulks. I knew nothing about the novel at all and bought it purely on the strength of the author’s name. When I did A Level English at school, our specialist subject which we had to study for three hours a week over two years was the literature of World War One, and the school library had a permanent waiting list of people who had requested the sole copy of ‘Birdsong’. That novel was too long for us all to read together in class but pretty much all of us read it in our own time, primarily I suspect because the teacher had mentioned that there was sex in it. (more…)

My God, sometimes I really feel like the rail service in this country is in no way superior to that of a developing nation. I caught a train before 8am this morning with the expectation of being in Manchester before half nine. For the first hour or so of the journey, things went swimmingly well and I even managed to bag myself a seat. Around nine we pulled into Stoke on Trent and a few passengers disembarked from the train. We continued to sit there for a few minutes, then there was a sudden announcement that all trains northwards were cancelled until further notice and could we all please get off. (more…)

With the cancellation of my flight, my weekend got off to a bit of a rocky start. I’d had to get up at four in order to get to the airport on time, and was a little annoyed that my taxi had set me back a whopping twenty five quid Admittedly my mother had warned me about this, explaining that a new change in legislation meant taxis were charging substantially more for fares at antisocial hours, but even so I felt faintly outraged. Nowhere near as outraged, of course, as I felt when I got to check in and became aware of the debacle with my flight. Despite the fact that it wasn’t quite six am, I was so frustrated that I had to go to Costa’s for an iced latte (any excuse), and spent the rest of the time wandering around the poor selection of shops in Birmingham airport’s grubby little terminal two. I was tempted to buy my boyfriend a handheld fan which squirts water on the grounds that he constantly experiences menopausal hot flushes, but in the end I didn’t because I figured he was probably too macho to want to use it in public (more…)

This weekend I am travelling to Tuebingen to visit my sister who is staying there. This involves flying from Birmingham to Stuttgart, the nearest airport, and the only carrier to offer this service is the airline regular travellers affectionately refer to as Fly-may-be. This is an airline which has an appallingly bad track record of cancelling flights simply because it can’t be arsed to run them. My parents were travelling to Stuttgart with them a couple of weeks ago, and they arrived at Birmingham airport to find that their flight had been “delayed”. It was delayed for a couple of hours until it became clear that Fly-may-be weren’t even trying to find a replacement aircraft. Instead they decided to transfer everyone to their Frankfurt flight and treat the Stuttgart passengers to a two hour trip down the Autobahn. (more…)

So, this evening I decided to eat in Starbucks. This was due less to a particular desire to eat in Starbucks and more to the fact that by the time I had cleansed my footwear of mud, Costa was closed. (more…)