Plan B at the Castle

"Dress warm", it said on the ticket - and "bring a torch".
I had visions of being led down secret passages far under Hay Castle - but the dressing warmly is only because the place is almost impossible to heat, and I didn't need a torch to get up the drive - there were plenty of lights on for us to see our way.
So around 100 people associated with Plan B met to chat, drink wine, nibble snacks and find out what the state of play is at the moment.
Which is in Limbo.
Once again, Powys County Council seem incapable of making a decision.
Members of Plan B have worked incredibly hard over the past year, issuing and collating a survey to show what the people of Hay actually want in their town, and presenting a report to the County Council. Tim Organ has designed a new, green, school, and there's been fund-raising going on, and meetings and so on.
So Malcolm Smith, the chair of Plan B, made a speech setting out the situation as it stands at the moment.
For the moment, there will be no new development, so Hay School continues to crumble while the surrounding schools either stay open for a bit longer or close and the children are moved somewhere more crowded.
It seems that the developer, when investigated, did not have an audit trail. "That means they hadn't done their sums" was the translation on the evening. It also seems that they have put a new submission in to the County Council, but nobody knows what it is.
Meanwhile, the chap who was in charge of education for Powys seems to be no longer in that position - and there are rumblings from the Welsh Assembly. They seem to be dis-satisfied with the way Powys are running their education service and may step in to take over in the county.
Myfanwy Alexander, from the Welsh Assembly, has said that Hay is the jewel in the crown of Powys - "no, of Wales!" - and they would not take any decisions which would spoil the town.
So things look vaguely hopeful for Plan B - but that didn't mean that they wanted to spend any of their fighting fund on drinks and snacks, hence the £5 ticket for the evening. It may be necessary yet to pay lawyers.
But the main purpose of the evening was to get to know each other. Plan B is such a large group that a lot of members are not sure who else is involved. I seemed to spend a lot of time chatting about the castle to various people - now the bookshelves have been removed, you can see the floor plan on the ground floor much more easily, with a large fireplace at each end of two rooms, with a corridor between them. The original staircase was behind the door at the end (that was destroyed in the fire of 1979) and the modern staircase is close up to one of the big fireplaces. Which sucked all the heat up out of the rooms, despite heaters having been on for hours.
There was a couple from Eardisley who always seem to have visitors while Hay Festival is on, and the couple who did a marathon bike ride for charity, and the chap who has a field for caravans where my sister and her family stay when they come to Hay, who asked me how they were getting on. And many others. Maybe it was the time of the meeting, or the time of year, or that these were the people who had most free time, but it was generally a crowd of older people from Hay - no young parents, for instance, that I noticed.
So now we'll just have to wait and see what the New Year brings.