This was originally a sign painted on the wooden door round the back of Booths, in the side street where the Cinema now is, in the days when Richard Booth made a big thing of bringing books into Hay from all over the world.
Parking on Lion Street to unload lorries may be more difficult - it's a narrow road (well, the side road is narrow, but it is also used by traffic less).
So I'll keep watching to see what appears inside the shop....
I went up to the coach house of the Castle after work to have a look at the new evening market. It's open from 4.30pm to 7pm.
Artistraw Cider was there, and the chap who sells organic veg in the Cheese Market on the Thursday market, and a lady selling meat, but there wasn't really any room for any more stalls.
I felt a bit embarrassed, because I hadn't gone up there to buy anything - just to have a quick look, and at that moment I was the only potential customer there.
Meanwhile, the seagull on top of the post box disappeared - but he hasn't been pinched. He's just at Pugh's shop for a while and will be reunited with his chips soon!
The evening before the Book Fair at Hay Castle, Hay Cinema Bookshop invited all the booksellers to a reception in the garden. The weather was perfect for it, there was wine and delicious nibbles made by the lady from Chapters, and I met some really interesting people. I ended up discussing South African archaeology with a lovely couple.
The book fair itself didn't feel quite so crowded as last year, but I did go quite early. There were 18 different booksellers, and the most interesting book I saw was the original novel of The Prisoner, the 1960s TV series starring Patrick McGoohan - whose picture, in the iconic Village blazer, was on the front cover. It's by Thomas Disch, who was a reasonably well known SF writer from the 1960s onwards.
I had some jobs to do at home that didn't take as long as I thought, so I turned up just in time to get a ticket for the bookbinding talk. There were about a dozen people there, who all seemed to be very knowledgeable. It was a fascinating talk by Arthur Green, who is a book binder, book conservator, and also teaches bookbinding and bookbinding history. He is based near Malvern, and has a website at greensbooks.co.uk
I now know a lot more about how books are put together as physical objects, from the original leather bound books that were stitched and laced together, to the common hardback today which became a common style in the early 19th century, where the boards of the book are printed separately to the interior of the book, and then glued together. He made a passionate case for the second volume of the 1832 set of Byron's Life and Works being the most important book in bookbinding history. The first volume was made with a flat spine, with the title on a piece of paper stuck to the spine. The second volume was case-bound - with the boards produced separately and glued on, and so were the other books in the 17 volume set.
Even though the process became mechanised, though, there was a lot of handwork, often done by women who hand stitched the sections of the book together. One of the ladies in the audience has done research on the suffragettes, and talked a bit about the numbers of women bookbinders she had come across.
He also talked about the invention of book cloth, which made it feasable to use cloth rather than leather to bind books. This is a starched cloth (so that the glue doesn't soak through the fabric) which was mainly produced in Manchester.
Françoise, from the Cabinet of Curiosities, had an interesting snippet of information to add, too. The early Beatrix Potter books were bound in calico from the Potter family business. When we left at the end of the talk, through the book fair, it was quite exciting to find a pretty Beatrix Potter board game on one of the stalls, Paths and Burrows, with four adorable little model rabbits as playing pieces.
With the news that the Warren had been granted bathing status came the requirement that the water was tested by the local authority - and they have immediately discovered that there is bacteria in the water which makes it unsafe for bathing.
Hopefully, they will now do something about it, by which I mean finding the source of the bacteria and stopping it from coming into the river, not just putting signs up.
Some people have been continuing to swim anyway, but it is at their own risk, now that they know the dangers. Just off this picture to the left were some people sunbathing on the beach, and a couple of people paddling - and I passed a very wet dog on the path on the way down.
There were two pairs of swans on the river too, which is more than I've seen for a long time.
And when I was walking back down to Broad Street, a procession of motorbikes went past, from the bridge up past the Clock Tower - there must have been about 50 of them!
The second PBFA Book Fair to be held at Hay Castle is this Saturday from 10am to 5pm.
Entry to the book fair is free.
As well as the booksellers, there will be two talks.
At 12 noon Arthur Green will be talking about the use of cloth in English bookbinding in the early nineteenth century. He is a book conservator and book binder, and a bookbinding historian, based in Malvern. The cost of the talk is £8.
At 2.30pm, Jeff Towns is giving a talk called The Wilder Shores of Dylan Thomas. He used to run the Dylan Thomas Mobile Bookbus, and spent fifty years at Dylan's Bookstore in Swansea. He will be bringing out a book of essays on Dylan Thomas shortly. This talk is also £8.
Both talks will take place in the Clore Learning Space, upstairs in the Castle, and tickets are available from Hay Castle Trust.
Hay Cinema Bookshop is holding a reception for the visiting booksellers on Friday evening between 6pm and 8pm, outside in the garden if fine!
