The best laid schemes…
My first excursion into Esperantujo has already been well documented in Issue Three of Saluton. Whilst attending ‘Ni Festivalu’ was an enjoyable and fulfilling experience, it was not one which passed off entirely without incident. Alas, whilst I long for a quiet and simple life, I rarely seem to achieve it! Having lacked the time to attend any Esperanto meetings during the spring and early summer months, my second attempt at speaking Esperanto was scheduled to be the JEB Somera Renkontiĝo in July. This time, I felt confident that nothing could possibly go wrong…
“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley”, wrote Robert Burns in 1785. Until we teach mice to speak Esperanto (a task which I don’t feel equal to, mice being somewhat scary creatures with teeth), it isn’t possible to make rigorous scientific comparisons, but I would like to meet a group of young Esperantist mice which has ever had worse luck in organising a summer get-together than JEB. Aware that I am bravely sticking my neck on the line here, I nevertheless choose to hypothesise that such a group does not, indeed, exist.
JEB’s first official meet-up outside of a BK for several years got off to a shiny bright start, with a flurry of activity in the forums. Working from the objective assumption that Birmingham is the centre of modern culture and civilisation, we decided to use it for the only purpose for which such an iconic city is fit; a convenient place to change trains. Detecting a slight Midlands bias amongst our interested members, we decided to stage our meeting in Stratford-upon-Avon, a delightful town famous for being the birthplace of both several members of the Klaxons, and some Elizabethan bloke who wrote plays.
Daniel White kindly volunteered to book the accommodation in a local B&B and by a mixture of bullying and blackmailing, I concentrated on accumulating attendees. In the end we made it to a grand total of seven, which maybe doesn’t sound too impressive, but given that it was the first time any of us had tried to arrange such a meet-up, we felt rather proud. After a little debate, we settled upon Saturday 21 July as the momentous day. The very date itself appeared to me to augur well, being as how it was exactly six months since my adventures at ‘Ni Festivalu’. Yes, I had a very good feeling about this indeed…
It would appear that next time I am in the vicinity of a doctor, I need to get my premonition radar checked out.
Friday, 20 July dawned bleak and grey. As the morning wore on, clouds began to congregate in the sky in the same slightly threatening manner as the youths outside my local off-licence. The wind began to howl ominously, and by lunchtime the heavens had truly opened. To say that on Friday, 20 July 2007 it rained, would be as gross an understatement as to say that on 9 November 1989 some Berliners knocked down a tiresome bit of Lego. The downpour was torrential! Inch by inch the entire of central England began to disappear under a blanket of rain. River after river burst its banks; homes, roads and railway lines were submerged, and life as we know it ground to a damp and squidgy halt.
I woke up on Saturday, July 21 to find my worst nightmares confirmed; Birmingham appeared to be inaccessible from all four compass directions. I had arranged to be in the city centre early to meet Marteno, a Slovakian Esperantist living in London to whom, in a moment of madness, I had offered to give a guided tour of my home town. I set out mournfully, devoid of hope that he or indeed anyone else would make it within fifty miles of Stratford that day. In a strange twist of fate, however, which says a lot about the randomness of our beloved national rail network, his train arrived thirty minutes early.
I was a little bit apprehensive about the role of tour guide. For a start, it is difficult to show somebody the sights of a town which is somewhat sightless. It is even more difficult to do so in less than perfect Esperanto in the rain. The plan had been for the tour to last an hour, during which time I was to be accompanied by our esteemed president Tim, who had promised to help with linguistic difficulties. I had threatened Tim with painful death if he dared to be three minutes late. In the event he arrived three hours late, on the grounds that his train line was submerged and he had to take a National Express coach. Men always have such feeble excuses!
For three hours Marteno and I thus contemplated the architectural delights of Birmingham, which Marteno cheerfully reassured me were really not quite as ugly as Soviet housing estates. Apart from a slight moment of international embarrassment when I led us proudly into Chamberlain Square and my guest enquired as to whether this was the Chamberlain who had betrayed Czechoslovakia, the morning passed without incident. We were soon joined by Daniel who had swum from Liverpool, and navigated our way to the coach station to collect Tim. Mission accomplished, we headed back to the train station in high spirits. Stratford, here we come!
Or not, as the case may be. The slight snag took the form of two officials standing in front of Birmingham Moor Street station, who informed us with something which felt suspiciously like malicious glee, that there would be no trains to Stratford-upon-Avon that day. The line was flooded in two places, and Stratford itself was substantially underwater. Tim confirmed that he had seen pictures of the flooded high street on the local news, while Daniel used his phone to enquire as to the dryness of our accommodation, and I tried to console myself that the duck I sponsor at a local sanctuary probably thought all its Christmases had come at once.
A flash of inspiration reminded me that there is in fact a spasmodic bus service between Birmingham and Stratford. I had no idea where it might depart from, but in a fairytale twist of good fortune, it actually passed us on the road and by virtue of madly chasing after it, we were soon safely on our way. Daniel and Marteno amused us, and probably most of the rest of the passengers, by randomly breaking out into Esperanto songs from time to time, and so it was that, wet and exhausted, we finally arrived at our destination.
Stratford appeared at first glance to be peculiarly dry. Whatever floodwaters there had been had receded from the shopping areas fairly swiftly, and only the park and grounds alongside the river really seemed to be waterlogged. Our rooms proved to be dry as a tome of accounting standards and, much as I would like to make the JEB Somera Renkontiĝo sound racy and exciting, after a much-needed lunch, we soon retired to them for an afternoon nap.
When we awakened some time before nightfall, our numbers had increased to the promised seven, being joined as we were by Mikeo Seaton and Katja and Gavan Fantom. We soon gravitated towards the local Wetherspoons, where we spent a very enjoyable evening conversing in Esperanto about fascinating topics I drank too much wine to be able to remember several months later. I was particularly excited to meet Katja and Gavan having, in the slightly surreal style which characterises my life, previously visited their house at a time at which they were absent from it, and since failed to make it to any social event they were attending.
Some of us turned in for the night earlier than others, and there was a brief moment of chaos at 9.45 the following morning when Tim accidentally noticed that the deadline for checking out without penalty was ten. After a slight battle to extract certain JEBanoj from their beds, we made good our escape and retired to a delightful street café for our breakfasts. There had been a distinct improvement in the weather, and later investigation proved that enough water had evaporated to allow the trains to start running again.
Somewhat relieved, we set out to see what Stratford had to offer. After deciding that the admission to Shakespeare’s Birthplace was outside our price range, we wandered down to inspect the murky remains of the floods, and by virtue of some fluke navigating on my part, found our way to the church where Shakespeare is buried. The old man selling tickets was kind enough to let even those of us of more advanced years in as students, and we passed a very interesting hour inspecting the inscriptions on the various grave stones. No that’s not irony, it really was very interesting and made us feel quite mature and cultured before we gravitated back to Wetherspoons to get lunch. The time to depart came all too soon and by mid-afternoon we were all speeding back off towards our respective parts of the country. Happily, the return journeys were as unremarkable as a fish in a chip shop and none of us had the misfortune to drown.
And that was the JEB Somera Renkontiĝo! The “Somera” aspect of it was slightly lacking at times, but with stubborn determination and perseverance we succeeded in overcoming all the obstacles the Rain Gods threw at us, and demonstrating that it takes more than a foot of rain and a collapse of the national infrastructure to stop us JEBanoj having a good time. For me personally, the weekend was an invaluable opportunity to practise my Esperanto with a group of friendly and understanding people who spoke slowly and simply when necessary for my benefit. It was a chance to learn new words and cement new friendships. For JEB in general, the event was an important milestone in our ongoing growth and revival and something which we plan to repeat at an as yet unspecified date in the future. Next time, we hope both that more of our members will join us and that no one will do a rain-dance. You may have better weather and cheese with the Young Esperantist Mice, but I assure you that you will have much more fun with JEB!
Tags: JEB Somera Renkontigxo, Stratford
