Down at the Festival site

I finally made it this afternoon. The rain has stopped, but it's still very muddy - especially around the childrens' clay workshop, which looked like a swamp! I saw Mariella Frostrup filming the intro to today's Hay on Sky, and I went round all the exhibitions. There are lots of environmentally friendly organisations with stands, like the Centre for Alternative Technology, the Woodland Trust, and the Gaia Exhibition, as well as organic food from Rachel's and Xtreme Organix, Eat Natural, and some gorgeous looking fudge from Burnt Sugar. Cadw and the Brecon Beacons Park Society are there too. I did like the Guardian's House of Hay, made of straw bales (but then I've fancied having a straw bale house for years - either that or a whisky barrel house, like the ones at Findhorn in Scotland, made from the enormous barrels that are used to age the whisky).
Wiggly Wigglers are there, too, with their own little garden, a chap doing regular talks about green gardening, two chickens, and lots of bird feeders. They do a whole lot more than worm composting, now!
They even got into the Church Times last week! Clergy and laity (that's you and me) in the Diocese of Liverpool are trying out something called the Bokashi Bin, which composts food waste that you can't put on ordinary compost heaps, like meat and fish scraps, without smell. It's Japanese, of course. Wiggly Wigglers are one of the websites mentioned that supply the bins.

Anita said she'd been to The Next Big Things, a writing group from Carmarthen, and she said they were great. Tony had just been down to the church for a concert. He said that Vivaldi's Four Seasons is one of the few pieces of music he thoroughly enjoys all the way through - and whatever they played today was like that - he thought it was wonderful.
Boo has been going up to the Globe, and said that the poetry readings were good, and that she's enjoyed what they've put on all week.

To end on a sad note, the swans who were nesting on Booth Island, close to the canoe landing stage, have lost their nest as the island was flooded by the recent heavy rain. This is the second year that they've lost their brood.