The British Esperanto Congress is the last happening which I appear to have blogged about properly. The weekend after that, Tim and I went up to Halifax to visit our friend Rolf for an informal Esperanto get-together. Rolf’s girlfriend who’s from Belgium and her friend who’s from Croatia were over in the UK for a short holiday, and so it was a good excuse to head up north and have a weekend away. The Saturday evening was spent playing games and eating pizza in a rather chaotic manner. I sat out several rounds of Jenga, it not being an ideal game for those who are inclined to shake, but there was plenty of hilarity to be enjoyed from Babel’s performance. Poor Babel seemed to struggle slightly to understand the rules of the game, and lost spectacularly on at least one occasion After that we moved on to the card game Uno, a game about which I had previously heard a lot from my sister but never actually played. It was me who struggled with the rules on this one as they seemed to change at the speed of light I spent several rounds trying to work out what all the cards I held actually meant, and then the rest of the rounds waiting for people to explain to me when it was my go so that I could use them

It was a fun evening though, and after a MacDonalds breakfast the next morning we all drove out into the Yorkshire Dales National Park and went for a little walk. I don’t know the area at all, but the place we ended up at was called Malham Cove and it was very impressive, an enormous pavement made from broken limestone. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to do quite the same walk as everybody else, on account of the fact that it involved scaling a waterfall and I realised pretty early on in the proceedings that that was beyond me, especially as I was only wearing my trainers. I was quite prepared to wander back to the car and sit on my own for a few hours while everyone else carried on, but in the end Babel was kind enough to come back with me and with the aid of some helpful directions we managed to make it to the same end point as everybody else, just on a different route. The walk over, we headed to a carvery for food but I wasn’t terribly impressed because the vegetables were unlimited whilst it was only possible to go up once for the meat

The weekend after that, Babel and I stayed local, passing a pleasant few hours in Stratford-upon-Avon. We went rowing in a boat on the river and later played a game of mini golf, which I made the mistake of betting Babel in advance that I was going to win. Needless to say I ultimately didn’t and was then put to the expense of having to buy him a book. Actually we sort of fell out that day, although not over that, so perhaps it wasn’t the happiest… The following Monday was a bank holiday weekend but the weather was forecast to be truly appalling. It did indeed dawn grey and overcast, but we decided to be brave and head to Rutland Water anyway where we hired a tandem for a couple of hours so that I could get some use out of the new cycle helmet which Babel bought me for Christmas. It did pour with rain at some points, but when you were on the bike you didn’t actually notice it that much, and the effect was rather cooling. It was fun, although I ended up with a sore bottom for days afterwards

The weekend after that was Preston, and an event which I had been somewhat dreading. At some point in the distant past I was invited as the guest speaker to the Spring meeting of the Northwestern Esperanto Federation. It was the sort of invitation which it seems a really good idea to accept at the time, but which afterwards just made me think “aaaargggh! help!”. I am not someone who is good at public speaking and I am not someone who enjoys public speaking. It’s my idea of hell to be the centre of attention in so far as a room of people is looking at me, and I involuntarily shake like a leaf when I have to speak in front of two or more people at a time. I thus spent quite a long time beforehand writing my speech down on paper so that I could at least read it from the page if my mind had a complete blackout at the crucial moment and I was suddenly incapable of speaking Esperanto. As it happens, that didn’t occur and the whole business actually went a lot better than I was anticipating. The meeting in itself was rather good fun; we all got a cream cake, and Babel and Rolf both managed to win a prize on the raffle

After a night spent eating pizza and watching Youtube clips whilst drinking red wine out of a vaze, the next day we all decided to go to York. It was Rolf’s idea and a particularly welcome one because I had recently spent a couple of weeks working in York and been quite frustrated that I hadn’t had chance to see the sights. Rolf proposed that we walk along the city walls and indeed we did. I had had no idea that the walls were so extensive, and it pretty much took us the entire day, give or take an hour stop for lunch. It was thoroughly enjoyable though, despite the damp and drizzly weather, and we had some lovely views across the city centre

Last weekend was rather a quiet one in comparison. Tim and I went into Birmingham city centre, had a nice meal and then a few games of bowling, which I lost at the expense of another book I was a bit gutted as I genuinely consider myself to have a superior bowling technique to Tim The good thing was that it wasn’t an activity which took a terribly long time and I was thus able to get home on time for the Eurovision, which I must say I thought was a terribly good show this year, albeit marred by the terrible violence towards the Gay Rights protesters in Moscow earlier in the day.

This weekend was the birthday party of Babel’s little nephew Alfie, who is now two. Children’s birthday parties rank after public speaking as my idea of hell, but if I were a child it would have been a truly amazing birthday party complete with bouncy castle, trampoline and lots of cake. There was a very nice barbecue, plenty of jelly and icecream, and the birthday cake in the shape of a tractor worked out well with the tractor cake mould I’d found in Lakeland Plastics I spent a lot of the time sitting drinking wine in the shade and intermittantly making conversation with Tim’s relatives. Saturday night we relaxed with a few drinks in Leicester, and then on Sunday after a brief diversion to take Alfie to feed the ducks, Tim and I headed out to Rutland Water again to take advantage of the glorious sunshine. I had it in my head that I would like to cycle around the entire reservoir, although I had no idea until Babel told me afterwards that it was going to be 17 miles! 17 miles it nevertheless was, and I am rather proud of the fact that we managed it, even if we are somewhat sore afterwards

I regret to say that it wasn’t an entirely peaceful day, as I lost my temper and actually shouted for the first time in at least four years, perhaps even five years. For me that’s a big deal, because I very strongly believe that people should always stay control of their anger, and with a few exceptions, I would generally despise the sort of people who can’t control their tempers. It happened because I felt very provoked by the way in which someone had spoken to me, which is a way in which that person does speak to me from time to time and which does always make me incredibly angry. But normally when I get angry about such things, I am perfectly capable of not letting it show in the interests of maintaining as much harmony as possible, so I have absolutely no idea what happened yesterday, and all I can say is I hope it doesn’t happen again

There are a lot of other things I could blog about but they mostly involve work and aren’t very interesting. Weekends are often the only times worth living