Saturday 2 June 2012

More Festival

It's a grey day, but the crowds have arrived.
I wandered round Hay looking at the exhibitions and the new temporary shops that have sprung up. There's vintage clothing next door to Golesworthys, and the antique chap from the market has set up outside one of the houses on Broad Street.
In the Buttermarket, there's Artisans in Hay, with iron work, and wooden toys, and beautiful ceramics, and book art, and soap (and more, of course).
Up at the Castle, the Old Chapel Gallery, from Pembridge, has set up next to the "high class junk" shop that's normally there, and in the stables is the Guild of Herefordshire Craftsmen, with ceramics and leather and bags and jewellery. There's a wood worker down in what used to be part of the Castle kitchen, too, and Castle tours, with someone explaining what the new Hay Castle Trust wants to do with the Castle.
In Backfold, there's a tombola stall outside the opticians.
In the square, the marquees and food stalls are up for Fair in the Square, and there's a stall explaining the Cheesemarket Restoration (while the shop fitters are busy down in the Red Cross shop behind them).
On Castle Street, the King has let his shop to someone selling crafts - and told the Plan B people they could use it as a base to get people to sign their petition. And today there's a booksigning for From Cows to Corpses (the life of a Herefordshire publican, I think). One of the craft ladies was most annoyed because she said local people were being excluded from the Festival site - apparently they'd applied for a stall there and been turned down. It's not true, though - Athene English is down there, and so are Richard Evans and Shelley Faye Lazar.
Tinto House has wooden sculptures in the garden again, and an art exhibition in their little gallery.
And there's bunting everywhere.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had heard that stall prices had gone up quite a bit at the festival site. I'm sure that might be a bigger point for annoyance for the smaller businesses, but the stalls there are pretty fantastic.

Pam Taylor said...

After reading your blog as usual which i always find enlightening,i think i must be the annoyed lady you referred to.Could i suggest you get the facts right.We are not a business which is usually in Hay.We are a group of ladies who facilitate a community group in Hay,live locally,shop in hay,eat in hay and generally contribute to the economy.We enjoy being part of the festival and approached the organizers in December.However they and others were not even interested i what we do-it was a closed shop.The king has NOT let his shop to us!.On a positive note people have enjoyed meeting us and seeing our crafts and its been great hearing views of the changing face of the festival

Eigon said...

My apologies for the confusion - you were in the King's shop, so I assumed that he had let it to you for the Festival.