A Typical Evening at the Rose and Crown

It was so hot we sat outside. There were a few locals, including Adrian the artist, a visitor called Ian who said he remembered staying up on Hay Bluff in the days of the hippy convoy and had been coming back to Hay ever since - and a young man from Singapore who Brian had taken under his wing, when he couldn't get back into his B&B.
Brian did a bit of ringing round, and the people from the B&B were eventually found - by which time I'm sure the young man thought that people in Hay are all crazy!
There was Brian's rendition of Buddy Won't You Spare Me a Dime, and the way the conversation jumped from listing famous Belgians to the prehistoric dig at Dorstone to early memories of Doctor Who, to comparing notes about an area of London several of us turned out to know, amongst many other subjects.
Then a neighbour ambled past on his way back from the meeting at Talgarth of the Community Land Trust which wants to do interesting things at Bronllys Hospital. He'd just joined up as a member, because he had spent time at the hospital, walking round the extensive grounds, and wanted to save them from being sold off and developed. Which reminded him of the sad state of Talgarth Hospital, which led to remembering the Taliesin Project which had tried to buy it when it closed as a mental hospital. They wanted to use the building as a sort of university of environmental projects, only to have the bid fall apart at the last moment when one of the committee decided to set up her own bid as part of a Christian group (which also failed). The winning bidder got the whole thing for less than the worth of the slates on the roof and it's been through several different hands since then.
The prospects for Bronllys Hospital look rather brighter than for Talgarth, which is still mouldering - someone tried to get planning permission for housing there recently, but it didn't get anywhere.
The meeting about Bronllys Hospital in Hay is on Monday, at 7pm at Hay School.
Later, Brian introduced Adrian to Elena, who has her art exhibition opposite his shop at the moment, so they could talk about art together - Brian is very good at networking and getting interesting people together.
When I left for the night, the remaining drinkers had just moved into the bar, and were still talking.