I was lucky enough to get a ticket to Agile In The Ether IRL in Liverpool which was on the 6th & 7th February.

There was 27 of us from all over the place including a strong presence from the South West. We had four sessions led by participants, a lean coffee and a retro. My absolute favourite session was Simon Manby’s British Sign Language session. He had some slides and the first one said ‘no more speaking from here’. He taught us some helpful things including Hello, Welcome, My name is and others. He had also created some cue cards which included the finger alphabet.

To begin with I found signing hard to follow and to know which way round I should do it. Tbh I am not the most co-ordinated person anyway. Eventually I got it and was quite proud of myself when I decided I needed to get to grips with the alphabet and worked out that the ones I was most confused by were the vowels. That made it much easier.

I have said before that I would love to learn BSL. I am going to look out for a course at the local college…and keep practicing my finger spelling.