First Fairtrade Fair

And if Chris Armstrong has his way, it will be the first of many! He's already booked a weekend during Hay Festival for us to do it all again!
It wasn't an auspicious start, with the day dawning wet and drizzly. Adele from Nepal Bazaar contacted us in a bit of a panic the night before, saying that her husband (who was going to cover for her) was ill and she had to go to a funeral - so could we please mind her stall? The funeral was for Romy, who used to exhibit her paintings in the little shop under Nepal Bazaar which is now Spellbound. She died very suddenly of cancer, on the night of the Nepal Bazaar fashion show, which was in aid of the Macmillan Nurses because of her.
Adele brought along some rather nice gingerbread and chocolate biscuits to say thank you to us.
LoveZimbabwe phoned Chris at about 9.30pm, saying that they could come after all - because the latest consignment of pottery had literally just arrived. She came with another Zimbabwean lady, who was selling jewellery to fund orphans.
And it's a bad weekend for funerals, because we didn't get the Mayor either. Mary Fellowes, the deputy mayor, turned up instead. She said she and Peter had tossed for it, and he'd gone to Dickie Elkington's funeral in Hay church.
The samba band gave her a good introduction - and they were really pretty good, all kids from Gwernyfed School.
"It's like the United Nations in here," Mary said in her speech, looking round at stalls representing Timbuktu, Zimbabwe, Georgia, Indian quiltmakers, Nepal, Zulus with Zimele, Burmese - some lovely scarfs sold by Athene, and Tear Fund covering pretty much everywhere else.
Hay School were there, too, as they have Fairtrade status. The children had been making biscuits, and newspaper bags like the ones from India which Nepal Bazaar were selling. Some of the children spread out on the floor and made some more there and then. Doing it in class seemed to have got them thinking, from the display board, where they were talking about what it must be like to make lots of bags every day, and how bad you'd feel if you didn't make enough and couldn't feed your family.
The mulled apple juice and mince pies went very well, all made with apple juice from Chris Armstrong, topped up with a donation from Maureen Richardson in Brilley.
Jo and Noel brought masses of mistletoe, all from one crabapple tree in their garden, and just about all of it sold. Noel had a wonderful sign up, saying that the mistletoe was local, organic, sustainably grown, didn't contain nuts, wasn't GM... and was grown by the Brilley Druid Co-operative. At the bottom it said "Naturally toxic."
Jo was fresh from first night triumph in the Brilley panto, Babes in the Wood, and slightly worried that the make-up for her moustache hadn't entirely come off! Ann Brichto drew it on for her, as the villain, and Derek was playing the pantomime dame. "There were two hundred people there!" Jo said - and they're doing it all again tonight. One little girl asked her in the interval if she was going to kill the Babes in the Wood - and when she didn't that night, was she going to kill them tomorrow night instead?