December 2007 - April 2008

It was the kind of half-baked idea which pops into your mind when it’s already long past your bedtime. Both guild meet-ups to date had taken place in England, but the guild has members from all over Europe and a few from even further afield. We’d have been delighted to welcome them to our beloved land of tea, queues and drizzle, but the barrier of a return flight and a foreign country meant only a few could make it.

Late in the year, my grandparents came to visit me. It had been a few years since we had seen each other and, after I pointed out a lapdancing club that could be seen from their hotel window, we headed off into town for a meal. As we parted at the end of the night, they pressed a large bag of cutlery into one hand - either a family tradition I had yet to discover or a helpful gift for my new house - and an envelope in the other. I got home to find myself in possession of £2,000. Plus around 50 spoons.

When I called to thank them, they insisted I spend the money on something frivolous - mortgage repayments were out of the question. There were no stipulations about the spoons, so I put them to use eating cereal.

One night, doubtless after eating too many cornflakes, I started chatting to Brodos, one of the guild members I get on with best. I suggested a holiday: three weeks off work travelling round Europe to meet as many Bruces as we could. Being an idiot, he agreed.

If the first Brucecon taught us the uselessness of our organisational skills, the months that followed hammered the lesson home. We lurched, sloth-like, into action, gradually establishing a list of people bored enough to grant two lazy Englishmen access to their homes and fridges. Sporadically we found out where they lived and, eventually, we devised a rough route between them all, the potential cost of our flights rising by the day as the promise of advance-booking bargains retreated into the distance.

The plan was full of holes. Only by whittling down the number of stops on our trip did we manage to come up with something resembling a workable journey. Starting out from Stansted airport, near London, we would travel first to Finland, then to Sweden, then Serbia, Bulgaria and finally Italy, before heading home. With a few weeks to go, only four flights, an Interrail train ticket and a huge psychological wall stood between us and our holiday. Uncertain, we selected our ticket to Finland and clicked “accept”.