Another Day at the Festival

And it's suddenly summer!
And I may as well give up writing fiction right now! This morning I heard the winning story from the children's competition on the Chris Evans show, which he was doing live from the Festival site. Anne Robinson read it out, and it was fantastic. And if she's this good at eleven....
Later, I was in the Elmley Foundation tent, where Chris Evans had been in the morning, to hear Phil Rickman, Belinda Bauer and Elly Griffiths talk about their crime novels and the concept of a 'rural noir' tradition. I always go to see Phil Rickman when he's here, because he is such an entertaining speaker - and his 'possibly worst review ever, and simoultaneously best review' had the audience in stitches. He's writing another Merrily Watkins story that involves the writings of Julian of Norwich - and this must be the quote of the day: "Julian of Norwich writes like Patricia Cornwell!"
Belinda Bauer is a new writer as a novelist, though she has previously been a screenwriter and a journalist. Her debut novel, which she described as being about the fall out from crime rather than a crime itself, won a Golden Dagger for debut crime writer - and within about a week, she had a two book deal with a publisher! Elly Griffiths writes about a forensic archaeologist on the North Norfolk coast - and her husband is now an archaeologist, so she should get the details right. I'll be looking out for her books from now on. Though she admitted that she never watched Time Team. "My husband was something in the City until he watched Time Team," she said, so she has a bit of a grudge against the programme!
I just had nice time to get the bus from the Festival site down to the Globe for the next talk. I'd left Islay with my neighbour while she had a clothes and knick-knacks stall outside the front door, so she could bask in the sun and get fuss from passers-by.
The Globe gardens are full of tents - sushi, beer, Pretty Rubbish vintage fashions, a big tent for acoustic events - it's packed. Inside the Globe, I'd come to see a talk called The Old Gods: England's Mythic Past, which turned out to be more about the concept of English culture and how it had changed over the years and how Englishness was not threatened by other cultures, but by capitalism and the concept of quantifying everything to make money out of it. The speakers were Jez Butterworth, Nell Leyshon and Paul Kingsnorth, and I thought it was interesting that Jez grew up on a housing estate with motorways in every direction, and Nell grew up in Glastonbury and the Somerset countryside, but they both had this strong sense of what Englishness was, and how it was more anarchic and organic than anything presented to the populace by governments. At the end of the talk, the speakers were each presented with a sunflower, just as Festival speakers are presented with a white rose.
Then I collected Islay from her blanket on the front step to wander up to the Castle Gardens to buy a t-shirt for my boyfriend. It's covered in bats, and he's a big vampire fan. The chap who makes them (he tie-died in purple and then printed the bats on top) has been coming to the Castle Gardens for years, and I always admire his stuff.
And the sun is still shining, and I'm wearing the vintage white cotton dress I got from The Old Curiosity Shop for the first time, because this is the first time it's been warm enough.