Last weekend was the annual JEB Summer meet-up which this year took place in Felixstowe. Previous JEB summer meet-ups have been in Buxton and Stratford. Previous meetings have been various degrees of fun but this year was probably my favourite; firstly because it was so relaxed and secondly because we were at the seaside

The day kicked off with a rather early start for me, leaving home at 9am to ensure I got to Leicester for 11. Babel and I were planning to be in Felixstowe by three, something which he assured me was going to be possible with the inclusion of an hour for lunch, despite my protestations that it would take five hours to get there. Babel turned out to be nearer the mark than I was and we did indeed arrive in the early afternoon after a very pleasant, if slightly warm, drive down to Suffolk and an enjoyable stop-off in a little pub somewhere called Stowmarket. I was impressed that we managed not to get lost during the entire journey until right at the end when we were looking for our campsite and Google Maps played its favourite trick of insisting our destination was somewhere where it couldn’t possibly be; this time, off the fifth exit of a roundabout which only had four exits (more…)

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 (more…)

I’ve just had one of the most enjoyable weekends I’ve had in a long while It started (too!) early on Saturday morning, when Babel arrived to collect me with a car-full of Esperantists. It is a firmly held belief of mine that one should not get up before half ten at a weekend unless there is an exceptional circumstance, and I was unsure as to whether this qualified as one We were headed to Worcester, where we were holding the latest JEBmeet-up. I don’t know Worcester terribly well, and so had decided to be prepared by emailing Babel a selection of maps for printing. Sadly, I emailed them to his work address, under the mistaken impression that he was working on Friday evening, or else I made a stupid typo, because he never received them, and so finding our way to the agreed meeting point became more traumatic than I had hoped (more…)

I’ve just had yet another lovely weekend All my weekends seem to be lovely recently; a combination of it being summer and my boyfriend now having a car! This particular weekend was an event which I had been looking forward to and organising for some time – the second annual JEB summer meet-up. We had a summer get-together last year which was very enjoyable but, erm, kind of wet. We were a little unlucky with the weather, having chosen the Saturday after the Friday on which half the Midlands flooded and a location (Stratford-upon-Avon) which was uncomfortably close to a river. We made the best of it last year, but I think a recurrence of the problem would have been a signal from the Big Man in the Sky that JEB really shouldn’t be holding summer meet-ups, and so I spent much of the latter part of the week anxiously watching the sky and frowning at any dark clouds. (more…)

I’ve just spent a rather exciting weekend in Southport, attending the annual British Congress of Esperanto. I don’t want to write about it too much here, because I have to write a couple of articles about it and am in danger of getting bored before I begin, but it was very fun indeed

It started rather frantically on Friday evening with a mad dash to get out of work and onto the correct train. I actually failed miserably in that respect, despite having printed my itinerary off National Rail several days previously. I had indeed memorised the said itinerary and had no doubts at all in my mind that I needed to catch the 18.03 to Edinburgh, getting off in Wigan and continuing from there to Southport. Arriving at the station, I looked at the departure board and quickly established that the 18.03 to Edinburgh was departing from platform 8a. Cool. I text my boyfriend, who was meeting me from Leicester, and told him to meet me there. Progressing to the platform myself, I idly started reading the sign above my head which listed the intermediate stops on the journey, and was slightly confused by the fact that Wigan North Western was not given as one of them. Perplexed, I took my timetables out of my bag and confirmed that I was indeed supposed to travelling on the 18.03 to Edinburgh. Hmmm. How odd. (more…)