Today I’ve hit the grand old age of 26 I suddenly feel rather old, though not as old as my mother was trying to make me feel earlier today when she got slightly confused and started telling me that I was now in my second half century!

It’s been a rather nice weekend. Yesterday was a quiet day – we did our housework in the morning (how terribly grown up!) and then in the afternoon Tim’s sister and her little boy came round to visit for a couple of hours. By 7pm it was exactly the sort of wet and windy November evening when one wants nothing more in life than to stay inside a warm and cosy house watching X Factor It was therefore exactly the sort of wet and windy November evening when one wants nothing less in life than to set out for that most godforsaken of hellholes more commonly known as Coventry. That was, however, precisely what we had resolved to do. Things in life which are worth braving Coventry for are few and far between, but they do exist; Ikea is the main one, but this weekend we had a different motivation in the form of a meeting with fellow Esperantist R, whose band were playing in one of the city centre clubs.

Having had a glass of wine with dinner I was none too confident about my ability to navigate with Google Maps, but luckily Babel somehow managed to transport us to the correct location without any sensible input from either me or Google. We arrived a little early, not having got as lost as I’d anticipated, but the area surrounding the club looked a little dubious to say the least, so we drove round in a random circle to kill time. Not having met R before, we’d agreed to come bearing an Esperanto flag in order to identify ourselves. It was a shock to me that we even possessed such an item, as I can think of few Esperantists less likely to own such a thing, but we managed to attach it to my handbag in as subtle a way as it is possible to attach a bright green flag to one’s person

There were no problems anyway. We recognised R with little trouble and managed to locate a reasonable pub a five minute walk away. It remained reasonable for the length of time it took to drink a glass of wine, and then started playing a very grating sort of dance music unreasonably loudly. We tried to relocate to the pub next door but were rejected because of our trainers, so with the sad inevitability of every JEB meeting I have ever participated in, I ended up getting drunk in the local Wetherspoons

Joking apart, the Wetherspoons was perfectly pleasant and quiet enough to have a decent chat, although rather embarrassingly on the eve of my 26th birthday, I was required to show my ID to gain admission We certainly had a fun evening, and hopefully R did too I feel slightly guilty about the fact that we didn’t stop long enough to see the show, but it was already midnight by the time we got home, and I had to be up at eight this morning. Somehow I managed to drink one more glass of wine than I had previously intended to, so I am actually rather impressed that I subsequently achieved this feat.

It is, of course, easier to get up on a birthday than most other days of the year. I was curious to see what Babel had bought me, not having been able to make sense of any dropped hints. I would actually never have guessed in a million years that he would manage to choose me a jumper more stylish than I would have succeeded in choosing for myself, and I was also pleasantly surprised to receive a Blackmore’s Night DVD, not having previously expected that such a thing would exist. As if that wasn’t enough, Babel’s parents had been kind enough to buy me a SnugRug, something which I’d wanted ever since I first saw it in the Argos catalogue a few months previously, and Babel announced that I still had one present left. The final one wasn’t wrapped due to it’s excessive side, but hidden behind the sofas under a blanket…. my very own beanbag!!! I’ve wanted a bean bag for at least 22 of my 26 years and never been fortunate enough to own one, so I was inordinately excited and intend to sit on it for the rest of the evening

After a quick trip to church, where I have to confess that I passed on taking the wine because I really couldn’t face the thought of alcohol at that time of the morning, Babel and I headed off to visit my parents who had invited us round for a birthday lunch. We ended up with roast beef and yorkshire pudding which was a real treat for me, beef being probably my favourite food ever They’d bought me some pretty cool presents too – my parents had bought me a teapot, something which I’ve really missed since I moved out of home, and my sister had got me a German DVD – the film of Herr Lehmann, a book which I read last summer when Carolin kindly donated me a copy at during the Internacia Junularo Kongreso en Liberec. My parents also bought me the next translation in Boris Akunin’s Erast Fandorin series which I’m a bit addicted to, so all in all not a bad haul

Later in the afternoon the rest of my relatives popped by and I accumulated a few more pressies. My great aunt bought me a scarf and gloves, a pattern which seems to have repeated itself every birthday for the last few years, so that I now rather ridiculously have an entire drawer dedicated to scarves and gloves. She also gave me £20 of M&S vouchers which was very kind of her but made my heart sink, on the grounds that I’ve just spent 9 months trying to spend the £50 of M&S vouchers work gave me last Christmas and am 100% certain that there is nothing left in Marks and Spencers which I wish to buy My aunt bought me a poetry anthology, which was a surprising choice but a thoughtful one

Of course, no birthday would be complete without ducks and today I not only got a beautiful duck card, I also received the tiniest, cutest rubber duck you ever did see, which flashes different colours when you hold it in the palm of your hand And I had a very big chocolatey cake, the remains of which my parents happily let us take back home to Nuneaton. I’m waaaay too full to attack it tonight, but the thought of cake will help sustain me through a day of tedious accounting tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 29th, 2009 at 8:38 pm and is filed under Random rambling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.