I have just returned from a really lovely weekend at the British Esperanto Congress in Salisbury. This was only the second BK which I have attended, and I was a little apprehensive, both about some of the things I had volunteered to help out with during the weekend, and the fact that it was our first camping tent in Babel’s new tent. My anxieties about whether or not camping in Britain in April would prove to be a good idea were not helped by the horrible rainy weather which preceded the weekend, but luckily I was so busy with work that I didn’t have too much free time to dwell on it.

By a stroke of bad luck, I was working in London on Friday but needed to come back to Birmingham to take some files back to the office. The result was that Babel and I entirely missed the Friday of the congress. He drove down from Leicester to collect me on Friday evening, but it was gone 9pm by the time we left my house, and we had agreed in advance that we weren’t going to go all the way, so I had prebooked a hotel for us. Not just any hotel. Oh no, there was no expense spared on this weekend, and so I had reserved a room at the Travelodge Newbury Chieveley (more…)

I normally find Easter a rather sombre time as year. As a small child I would spend the latter part of Lent sobbing from genuine distress at the fact that Jesus was about to be crucified. In our primary school assemblies we used to sing a hymn called “They hung him on a cross” and when it got to the penultimate verse which starts “He hung his head and died”, most of us would have tears rolling down our cheeks, despite the fact that we knew the final verse would start “He’s coming back again!”. I would also dread Good Friday weeks in advance – partly because my mother would take out the Bible (the only time in the year when she would do so, I hasten to add) and read the Passion aloud, and party because we had to eat fishfingers. I hate fishfingers and as a child I wanted to be a Protestant so that I wouldn’t have to eat them. (more…)

Phew. Somehow I survived my first week in London, somehow being the operative word, because let’s just say things didn’t go entirely to plan

I had been looking forward to staying in the Hilton because I figured we might get nice rooms, so I was quite surprised when I checked in on Monday night to discover that it was the second worst hotel room I’ve ever stayed in in my entire life. The fact that it was only a single bed didn’t bother me, because I am perfectly happy sleeping in single beds, but the fact that the room was only wide enough for a single bed and so I didn’t even get a bedside table, was rather a disappointment. The second thing which struck me as I entered the room was that there was a nice long window at the far end of it. I approached this and pulled back the curtain to see what sort of view I had, and this is what confronted me… (more…)

Over the weekend I read another of the books which my sister had bought me for Christmas: ‘Sanisbar, oder der letzte Grund’ by Alfred Andersch. I was initially a little sceptical about the novel as I had never heard of the author before and the cover looked somewhat uninspiring, but by the time I had read the opening chapters I was completely hooked and couldn’t bear the thought of coming away to London for a fortnight without first getting to the end of it.

Published in the late 1950s, the book tells the story of a random group of people who all find themselves in the small German harbour town of Rerik in Autumn 1937. They each come from quite different walks of life, but are brought together by the one thing they have in common: a desire to leave Nazi Germany. From Rerik it is theoretically possible to escape to Scandanavia by boat, and thus the action focusses around one character, the unimaginative fisherman, Knudsen. Knudsen, who owns a boat, is the only member of the cast with the ability to attempt such an escape, but paradoxically the only person who has a good reason to stay where he is. His mentally disturbed wife would certainly be taken away to a concentration camp if he were to leave her unattended for too long. (more…)

English version

Dum mi estis ĉe Esperanto-Domo en januaro, iu donacis al mi libron, kun la peto ke mi recenzu ĝin por brita Esperanto-ĵurnalo. Mi ne povis rifuzi sen esti malĝentila, kaj ĉiuokaze mi neniam rifuzus akcepti senpagan libron, sed mi sciis nenion pri la enhavo de tiu, nur ke temas pri feliĉo.

Pasis preskaŭ tri monatoj, kaj mi ankoraŭ ne legis la libron. Mi ricevis multajn librojn je kristnasko, kaj mi ankoraŭ havas monton de nelegitaj libroj en mia dormoĉambro! Tamen post du semajnoj mi iros al la brita kongreso de Esperanto, kie mi tre verŝajne renkontiĝos kun la viro kiu donis al mi la libron. Do, venis al mi la penso ĉi-posttagmeze ke mi almenaŭ malfermu ĝin antaŭ la kongreso! (more…)

Blogging appears to continue to be at best spasmodic, which I regret, but I still seem to be very busy with work, and in the spare time which I have had, I’ve been trying to do things other than surfing the internet, mainly learning to type and to speak some limited Czech. Surfing the internet is at any rate severely hindered by the fact that our wireless connection at home is nearly permanently down, and since I upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress it’s become virtually impossible for me to log in and make a post from my phone (more…)