The Festival Buzz

It's happening now. Town is thronged with people. The Castle Grounds are full of stalls (including two tepees and a Vietnamese cafe). There's live music in the market square (a full scale folk orchestra when I passed by) - and swingboats. I loved swingboats when I was a kid - and now I'm too big for them.
Up in the Castle Gardens, the Cardiff Red Choir was singing (definitely Old Labour, and very good singers), and the Berkeley Owls did a display, including getting the members of the public to form an arch with their arms for the owl to fly through!
There are buskers everywhere else - you pass from one performer to the next all across town - an accordian player at the top of Backfold, and a glockenspiel on Castle Street (or is that the wooden version? This on was metal, and the player was very good).
Islay has been loving it - all these kind people who tickle her tummy and offer her chips, and all she has to do is look cute.
Following the Socialist theme, Arthur Scargill will be speaking at the Castle later, and there was a film about protesting against arms dealers, and the limits of peaceful protest in the UK, called On the Verge.

Last night I went to see Rosanna Westwood's pictures of Mali at Addyman's, and met the film crew again. I also got talking to John Evans, a photographer who also has an exhibition in Hay this week, which I went to see today. He spent many years as a sports photographer, but he also went to Mali in 1991 and took photos of the salt caravans and the salt mines out in the desert.
I also met the journalist from Germany who emailed me recently, having noticed posts about Timbuktu and the twinning with Hay on the blog. She's been doing freelance work on the ancient manuscripts of Timbuktu, so she'd managed to come over from Hamburg to meet Ann Brichto (who started it all) and see the Jump4Timbuktu people at the Festival site later in the evening - and possibly to see the Tuareg band Tinariwen as well.