Well, it's official - Hay has been granted Fairtrade status! The Council have had a letter, and the Fairtrade committee have a certificate to present to the Mayor. Just as well we were planning a party anyway!
So we're all running round like mad things now, making the final preparations - picking up the booze and the bunting, the fairy lights and the balloons. There'll be short films: "I've got six minutes about bananas!" Jo announced; world music (well, African mainly - I took along my tapes of Jewish kletzmer music, and Iroquois chanting, just to see if they'd be any good, but Jo deemed them not appropriate.); stalls selling Fairtrade goods, and Manu and his drumming - so we have to set up a stage tomorrow as well as an area for people to watch the films. The mayor will be there, to accept the certificate on behalf of the town - and this is the new mayor, Peter Lloyd, who was the deputy mayor until Gareth went off to become our county councillor. (I saw Gareth the other day, striding across the road in his chip shop apron, with a box of Rice Krispies under one arm and his mobile phone clamped to his ear. Wish I'd had a camera!).
We open the doors of the Parish Hall at 7.30pm on Saturday 14th (that's tomorrow), and everyone in Hay is invited.
The celebrations have been somewhat marred by a disagreement about a picture to go in the new Directory of Fairtrade businesses and organisations in Hay - a disagreement which our chair felt so strongly about that she decided to resign from the committee. It's a shame, especially now, just at the moment of success for Hay, but it's her decision and she won't be swayed from it.
Without her hard work, of course, we wouldn't be where we are today at all - she kept the whole thing going, and was very committed, so the achievement of Fairtrade status is really due, in a large part, to her.
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