A Saturday in Nottingham
On Sunday I did something I should have done a long time ago and tidied my bedroom. I’ve never had a messy bedroom, even as a small child, but this year it kinda started to get out of control, chiefly as a result of the wondrous number of books which Babel bought me for Christmas and my birthday. I had originally started piling these up on the desk in my room in a neat sort of heap, but the pile grew and grew and spread onto my chair and the surrounding floor space too at such an alarming rate that the whole lot was soon in serious danger of collapsing on top of me in the middle of the night, rather like a coal tip. It took a good few hours of dusting and rearranging, but finally I found a solution which involved disposing of some pointless shoeboxes and putting the majority of the clutter on my desk under one of my chairs. This might not sound like much of an improvement but my room looks substantially better for it and the advantage is that I can now keep my computer and our congratulations cards on my desk rather than on the floor. The wireless still isn’t working properly, but it’s still nice to have a computer 
Saturday was the JEB Spring Meet-up, something which I had organised and then when I realised it involved me not having a lie in on Saturday morning, something which I wished I hadn’t organised. Happily I managed to convince Babel to catch a later train than the one which he had been advocating so I did manage to have a much needed sleep, and he was nearly late for that train anyway 
It was a remarkably good turn out as JEB things go, and I think that if I count all the people who attended at any point then it comes to ten We met initially in a very nice pub called The Navigation in Nottingham where the burgers were totally delicious, the chips were very edible and the bar staff were kind enough to let me finish the end of the bottle with my glass of wine After a spot of Esperanto conversation we decided to head off elsewhere and those people who are more local to Nottingham pointed out a few of the sights to the rest of us. We saw the castle along with the famous statue of Robin Hood, and Nottingham just generally gave the impression of being a very pleasant sort of place
As evening drew on, we found ourselves in one of the town’s stranger drinking establishments, however. I have no idea what it was called but it was a very dark sort of pub which gave you the impression that you were in a cellar even when you weren’t, by virtue of having practically no windows. The walls were all black with strange, scary decorations, and I was glad I wasn’t brave enough to venture to the toilet because I later heard tell that they were playing strange, howling noises in there! Mercifully we didn’t stay longer than one drink, and soon moved on to a Wetherspoons where I was most affronted to be asked for ID, seeing as I’m 25 and engaged and all They let me in though, and much as I might knock Wetherspoon’s main meals, I have to confess that the puddings are really good. I had an utterly delicious slice of chocolate fudge cake, and Babel had a very tasty looking piece of sticky toffee pudding
All in all it was a thoroughly enjoyable day, and it was nice to catch up with some friends. Particularly with Gavan and Katja, who were kind enough to buy Tim and I an anniversary present and card By the time I got the train back to Leicester it was very late and Babel rather generously volunteered to give me a lift. This turned out to have been a major mistake from his point of view, because by the time we had caught the bus back to where his car was parked and he had driven me all the way from Leicester to Birmingham, it was gone 11 at night and he had to be at work by seven. I’m really sorry, Babel 
A nice weekend, then. This week has been not so nice so far and I could blog at great and tedious length about how unhappy I was in Wigan last week, how stressed I am in Banbury this week, how I’ve not got time to do any of the things I’d personally like to do (including, as you may have noticed, blogging)… but that would just be boring. And at the moment, you really just have to be grateful that you have a job at all
Tags: Esperanto, JEB, nottingham