Breakfast Club Saga - and Meeting to Discuss the Cuts

Just to confirm that there will be a meeting at Hay School on Wednesday 13th February, at 6.30pm, to discuss the cuts proposed by Powys County Council.

Latest news on the Breakfast Club is that the Welsh Government has got involved. They have written to Powys County Council making clear their deep concerns about the plans, according to Kirsty Williams, AM. Lots of people got in touch with her about the matter.
The Welsh Government have asked for the answers to some questions they have, and have pointed out that Powys County Council may be in breach of its duty under section 88 of the School Standards and Organisation (Wales) Act, by setting criteria for eligibility for free school breakfasts.
The Welsh Government also wants to know what consultation has taken place with the schools and other interested parties (such as parents) and what impact assessments have been made. The County Council has 10 working days in which to respond.

Following on from this comes a press release from Myfanwy Alexander, the Powys Cabinet Member for Learning and Welsh Language:
“School breakfast clubs are valued by parents and carers wherever available. Whilst provision of the breakfast is free, parents and carers are expected to contribute to related childcare costs routinely across Wales.
“The fairer funding formula was reviewed earlier this year and while there is no longer a specific line for breakfast clubs funding is available within the delegated funding. In fact, the level of support to Powys schools is increasing by £1m for the 2019/2020 financial year.

“It is a decision for the head and governing body to decide how funding is used provided it is spent in-line with Welsh Government legislation.”

So this seems to be putting the responsibility for the breakfast clubs at the door of the head teachers, despite an earlier email saying that the heads would have to produce a business plan to pay for the breakfast clubs if they wanted them to continue.

The full details of the whole saga are available on Gareth Ratcliffe's Facebook page.

County Council Cuts

I was in quite a good mood this lunchtime.
I popped into the Red Cross Shop to buy a giant pair of knitting needles - I'm going to attempt to knit up some lucetted cord into a bedside rug. When I was still doing historical re-enactment I made lots of cord on my lucet around the campfire, but didn't have anything to do with it afterwards.

(Something like this).

Then I had a look at Facebook while I was eating lunch - and the first thing I saw was a post from Gareth Ratcliffe about this year's round of cuts by Powys County Council.
They need to save £14 million this year - and they seem to be going about it by targeting the most vulnerable in society.
One of the things they want to do is to cut all Breakfast Clubs in primary schools from 1st April. Not only do the Breakfast Clubs feed the children; they also provide essential child care for working parents.
At the same time they want to cut the provision for three and four year olds from twelve and a half hours a week to ten hours a week.

Meanwhile, there's a renewed threat to Hay Library - they want to save £200,000 from the Library budget, and one of the ways to do that will be to shut ten small libraries across Powys. The portfolio holder for libraries will be visiting Hay Library at 10am on Monday 4th February - so I hope someone will be there to challenge the cuts.

There will be a HOWLS meeting at the school on Wednesday 20th February at 7pm to discuss what to do about this, and another meeting the previous Wednesday (13th February) to talk about the other cuts to services - I'll post the time for that as soon as I'm sure of it.

Tea and Chat at Cartref

Cartref Care Home is starting a new initiative. Every alternate Friday, starting from February 1st, they are hosting Tea and Chat Sessions from 3.30pm to 4.30pm. The aim is to offer friendship and support to older people in the community.
The sessions will not just be tea - they're planning crafts, visiting speakers, board games, reflexology, pamper sessions, music, singing, jigsaws, poetry, painting, flower arranging, basket making, pottery, gentle exercise, and more!
Also home made cake!

They have also asked for donations of knitting wool and gardening magazines to be dropped off at Cartref, and are asking for anyone with a skill they would like to pass on or something interesting to talk about to get in touch with them on 01497 820621.

Hay Walking Festival

This year's Walking Festival isn't until 10th to 13th October, but it's already in the planning stages.
There will be a public meeting at the Swan on Thursday February 7th at 7pm, to discuss ideas for themed walks, and to encourage local people to get involved.

I will be at the Swan that evening, but I will be Stitching and Bitching in another room.

Concert at St Mary's

St. Mary's church puts on a lot of concerts, and this one coming up caught my attention.
I'm not a fan of jazz generally, but I do like the music of Stephane Grapelli and Django Reinhardt.
On Saturday 2nd February, starting at 7.30pm, Mike Piggott and Martin Litton will be playing a selection of Stephane Grapelli hits. They also promise some "unusual instruments".
Tickets cost £12 and are available online from www.hayjazz.org or on the door.

New Threat to Libraries

Hay Library moved into the new premises at the school, with some funding from the Welsh Assembly. They got some extra funding from Hay Festival so it could open for longer hours than Powys County Council were prepared to pay for.
All seemed well - but now there's a new round of spending cuts coming up again, and libraries are in the firing line once again.
Powys County Council are proposing to cut the funding for staff at Hay and nine other libraries. They want to make a saving of £200,000. Ironically, the old library building is on sale for around that price.
Overall, Powys County Council need to find savings of £14 million in the coming financial year, and a further £20 million up to 2023. Gareth Ratcliffe has posted a copy of the letter from County Councillor Rachel Powell explaining this, and suggesting that anyone with ideas on how to keep the libraries running should contact the Chief Librarian Kay Thomas on kay.thomas@powys.gov.uk

There's a good team of volunteers at Hay Library, but they cannot run the place on their own, nor should they be expected to. Libraries need professional staff, and they need them more than ever now, when libraries are contact points to find out about things that used to be provided by a dedicated County Council office in Hay, like information on benefits and housing.

Powys County Council are having a consultation process, and as part of this they are holding an drop in session at Hay Library on Monday 4th February from 10am to 12 noon (how they expect people who are at work to attend I don't know).

HOWLS, the Hay-on-Wye Library Supporters group, will be meeting in the Library on Wednesday 20th February at 7pm to discuss this latest threat to the future of the library.

Refugee Away Day

Hay School is hosting the next Refugee Away Day organised by Hay, Brecon and Talgarth Refugee Sanctuary. The school will be open on Sunday 27th January, with activities such as glitter tattoos, nail varnish, face painting and crafts, and a show by Hay Theatre Group at 2.30pm.
The organisers are asking for donations of dried food (rice rather than pasta), tinned food (especially fish) and toiletries for the refugees to take away with them. These can be dropped off at the school any time this week, or from 9.15am on Sunday morning. They would also be grateful if anyone can donate biscuits or cake - they will be providing food and drink during the day.
One of the refugees coming to Hay on Sunday will be Otis Bolamu, who was recently threatened with deportation back to the Republic of Congo. He wants to thank some of the people who signed the petition for him to stay in this country personally.

Plastic Free Hay Meeting - the year ahead.

We gathered in the downstairs dining room of Kilverts - and had to pull the table away from the open fire before some of us roasted!
One of the members of the group has been trying to find out where the recycling collected by Powys County Council goes to, without much success.
Another has joined Extinction Rebellion, a movement which has similar but broader aims than just concentrating on plastic waste, and will keep the group posted about what they get up to. The Hereford group is very active, and a new group is starting up in Brecon.

So far the group have been visiting local retailers to talk to them about reducing the use of plastic. They've also been talking to Andy Fryer of Hay Festival. However, shops like Spar can't do much because they get their products from a central supplier. It's the suppliers that need to be contacted and persuaded to change. However, one success story is the sale of milk in glass bottles at Londis, who have more control over what they stock. The group has stickers to give out to show that shops are reducing their use of plastic.
They also mentioned the new paper bags and wrappings at the butchers on Broad Street, and the feeling was that Geraldine Gibbons will be doing something similar when she moves her shop across the road into the new premises.
It was noted that the chemists sells bottled water from a fridge, which is not good as far as plastic waste is concerned - but they are also stocking things like bamboo toothbrushes, which is a positive sign.
Meanwhile Addymans are phasing out plastic bags in their three bookshops.

There was a discussion of compostable bags, with a query about how compostable they really are - one lady has been fishing bits of supposedly compostable bag out of her compost heap since all they seem to have done is break up into smaller pieces, which is a problem. Other bags are advertised as "degradable", but what does this really mean? The corn starch bags were felt to be a good idea, but the idea of any substitute for plastic bags to be given out in shops was felt to be a retrograde step, when there had been so much effort put into persuading the shopping public to bring their own bags.
Research was obviously needed into the bags, but the group were warned not to go to the manufacturers for advice, but to companies involved in waste, such as Cymru Waste (possibly WRAP Cymru? which is what came up when I Googled).

Members were also concerned that the free school milk that is given out at Hay School comes in little plastic bottles which are then thrown away. Again, this is a problem that the school cannot necessarily solve as it comes from the County Council, who arrange the contract for a group of schools, and the suppliers.

Actions for the future for the group include going round all the cafes in Hay to see if they can reduce their plastic use - and later, maybe a pub crawl!
In the coming year the group also want to organise at least one event with a speaker - the Globe have offered to assist here, and it might be possible to put together a workshop on cutting down plastics. Another possibility is approaching Andy Fryer to ask him to talk about the recycling policy of Hay Festival.
One member said that the Welsh government website has an area showing what every County Council has done with their recycling for the previous five years. Actually, it seems to go back further than that, and can be found by Googling "Welsh government local authority municipal waste statistics".

Also being passed around the table was a copy of the 'i' for Friday, with headlines about waste being burned in incinerators because there are not enough facilities in the UK to recycle different materials. Also, the waste that used to be sent to China is no longer going there, as China will not accept it any more.

The group also want to go to visit the waste facility in Worcester where waste from the Herefordshire side of the border goes. As Hay is on the border, the members have to be aware of the different strategies of two different County Councils. One member said that, when a visit was organised, they should go in a minibus rather than their own cars, because of carbon emissions, and someone suggested hiring the Dial-a-Ride bus for the outing.

Other groups that Plastic Free Hay felt they should keep in touch with include Plastic Free Powys, and there is a Greenpeace campaign about plastic. On Saturday 2nd February, from 10am to about 4pm, Greenpeace (and a lady from Plastic Free Hay) will be outside Tesco in Hereford with a shopping trolley for shoppers to put any un-necessary plastic wrapping into, and at the end of the day this can be photographed, and later returned to Tesco with an appeal for them to reduce the amount of plastic they are selling. Tesco was chosen for this because it opens onto a public footpath. If the protest was happening in a supermarket car park, they could be made to move on, as that would be private property.
They were also encouraged to get in touch with the Woodland Group, who have all the equipment for litter picking, for another future activity.

There was a brief discussion about washing up sponges, which cannot be recycled, and I mentioned Greenbrands cleaning products, which is one company that sells scourers made out of luffas (loofahs?) and pan scrapers made out of pieces of coconut husk - which can just be put in the compost when they come to the end of their life (www.greenbrands.co.uk).
Another thought for the future was to have an A-frame blackboard in the market, with a different plastic reducing idea every week chalked up.
Finally it was noted that the green waste bins will be disappearing from Hay Car Park soon, to be replaced by a scheme where householders have to buy bags to put their garden waste in, to be collected at the kerbside.

Hay Camera Club

I went into the Blue Boar yesterday, to have a half of London Pride while my washing was in the launderette The wash takes 26 minutes, which is just about the right time for me to drink a half pint of beer while reading my book in comfortable surroundings.
While I was there, I noticed a new leaflet for Hay Camera Club.
When I first came to Hay, the Camera Club met above the Cheese Market, in what is now the holiday flat, but they haven't been there for years, and I'd kind of forgotten about them.
Now they meet every Tuesday at the Masonic Hall on Brecon Road from 7.30pm, and they have an impressive programme of events planned from January to April.
Next Tuesday, for instance, there is an Ask The Panel session, with an expert panel answering questions on anything photographic, and the following week Roy Carr is the presenter of Images of a year in the life of a Sheep Farmer.
They also run competitions, and compete with other clubs.
They are a mixture of expert photographers and complete beginners, and everything in between, and welcome visitors.
Sessions are £5 to non-members, including tea and coffee - and sometimes home made cake! There is an annual subscription for members.
They even have a website (with some gorgeous photos on it) at www.haycameraclub.co.uk

Plastic Free Hay Meeting

The group will be meeting at Kilverts on Monday 14th January at 7.30pm. This is to set goals for the coming year - new ideas and new recruits are welcome!
I will probably be going along to take notes.

Good News for Otis

The Facebook page for the Hay, Brecon and Talgarth Sanctuary for Refugees now has a post up to say that Otis has been released from detention, and is heading back to Swansea from Gatwick.
This isn't the end of the process - he still has to go through the legal process to stay in the UK as a refugee - but at least he's not going to be put on a plane back to the Congo.

Plastic Free Butcher

I always go to the butchers' on Broad Street when I want Cumberland sausage. It's not real Cumberland sausage, which looks like one long fire hose of a sausage - these are made up into linked sausages like any other sausage - but they are very nice. (And they're advertising Haggis for Burns Night as well, now).
This time I found that they have stopped using plastic in the shop.
They pick up the meat and wrap it with paper, and they put the wrapped meat into special paper bags, which are sealable, leak proof, and can go into the freezer. They're even recyclable.

A Munitionette's View

Cusop History Group are starting off the year with a look at the women who worked in the munitions factory at Rotherwas in two World Wars. The talk is by Angela Williams, and is at Cusop Village Hall at 7pm on 11th January. Tickets are £3 for members, £5 for visitors and include refreshments.

Sculpture Trail

Yesterday, the Bailey Walk down by the river was closed, so that this could be created:

The tree was damaged in Storm Callum last October, leaving the stump behind, and yesterday it was transformed into this wonderful, detailed sculpture by local chainsaw artists Danny and Harry Thomas. This is just the beginning - when I went to take a photo I met one of the organisers walking his dog, and he said they have plans for a red kite and buzzard in the future.
This is the Community Woodland Group's contribution to Shared Spaces, a project run by Hay Town Council and funded by Natural Resources Wales. It's on the lower path, the Bailey Walk, just a little way from the Bridge towards the church.

Vowchurch Common

One of my New Year's Resolutions this year is to get out and do more walking.
I've never been up to Vowchurch Common, though I've been past on the bus very often, so I looked it up in a little book called 100 Walks in Hereford & Worcester. This gives a round walk which includes Monnington Court, which I thought was very interesting until I realised that this wasn't the medieval Monnington Court which was reputed to be the hideaway of Owain Glyndwr in his last years after he disappeared (that's at Monnington-on-Wye,), despite what the book says. This was a much later house, though it does seem to have a medieval motte right next to the house.
The walking book didn't even mention the hill fort which is clearly marked on the OS map by Poston Lodge (I'm beginning to think it is of dubious usefulness), and this looked far more interesting, especially since both the Lodge and the hillfort are described in Pevsner. Poston Lodge was built as a hunting box in 1780.
So I designed my own walk.

I took the twenty to ten bus from Hay, and got off just beyond Peterchurch at Poston Mill, where the caravan park is. A little way along the main road, I turned off up a driveway which was also a public footpath, which led up to Poston Lodge. The views of the Golden Valley are fantastic, and this morning there was sunshine with a slight haze in the air.
It was impossible to miss the hillfort - it's just in front of the house, with a high mound and two banks behind it, all within the private grounds of the Lodge, so I couldn't get a good photo. The public footpath is well-marked, and has been diverted around the Lodge through the forestry plantation. In one direction it heads for Stockley Hill and Peterchurch, and the other is Vowchurch Common.
The bridleway was well signposted until I got into the middle of the forestry plantation, where the path petered out somewhat. I knew I should be heading in roughly a straight line by then, and was able to follow recent hoof prints in the mud, so I knew I was on the right track.
This brought me out at the top of the long steep road that leads back to the main road. There's a scatter of houses down the hill, wherever it gets flat enough to build, and a lot of them seem to be old cottages that have been extended. About half way down the hill there's a track off to the side which leads to houses with the wonderful names of Quercwm, Little Reeve and Frogs Hollow. There's a derelict cottage at that turning, and across the lane from it land has been levelled and a retaining wall built - it looks as if a new house is about to be built there, and there was a family sitting round a campfire with their dog when I passed.
At the bottom of the hill I crossed the main road to go down to Vowchurch, which is only a little way. I sat in the churchyard on a bench facing the river to eat my lunch. It's a very charming spot, with the church, a big timber framed house beside the churchyard, and a little stone bridge across the river:

After lunch (one of the wonderful sausage rolls from the Wholefood shop, and coffee from a flask) I had a look round the church. It's lovely inside, with an early font and some beautifully carved 17th century benches among the treasures. It was also the parish church of Lewis Carroll's brother, Skeffington Hume Dodgson, from 1895 to 1910. There's no record of Lewis Carroll having visited, but they did write letters to each other, some of which have been collected. There's a leaflet and a small display of pictures at the back of the church, including one of Rev. Dodgson fly fishing in the churchyard, not far from where I had my lunch! It was a lot more open along the river bank then!

Since I was so close, I went across the bridge to Turnastone, where there's another little church. This one was locked when I visited, but I did see my first snowdrops of the year in the churchyard:

I also found this house/garage/shop/post office (though I don't think it's in use any more):

I still had plenty of time before the bus back to Hay was due, so I took the public footpath along a stream that runs parallel to the River Dore, back to Peterchurch. Along the way, I found this sign, about Rowland Vaughan's Waterworks at Vowchurch, and the 2015 dig that uncovered some of the evidence for the system he'd built to flood the meadows at certain times of the year to improve the pasture (I think it's just about legible if it's enlarged):

I got back to Peterchurch with plenty of time to spare, and peered into the windows of the police station, which is now for sale - the police are operating out of the fire station now. The bus home was about ten minutes late, but I had a very sweet ginger cat keeping me company while I waited.

Science Fiction at the Baskie!

Bob Evans, who runs the weekly music sessions at Baskerville Hall, discovered that this Wednesday was National Science Fiction Day, posted it on Facebook, and before you knew it, the evening had a theme!

We started with Star Trekkin (across the universe), complete with handouts showing the guitar chords. I think I last sang this at a Star Trek convention in the 1980s (probably along with In the Navy changed to In the Starfleet).
I chose Fireball XL5 as my TV theme of the week, only to discover that guitarist Martin had also chosen it - so he sang it too, with the extra verse that was on the record! There were lots of songs with stars (Starry, Starry Night) and the Moon (Moon River), as well as the usual mix of pop and folk and exotic instruments (David brought his Chinese bawu and Welsh pigborn), and a Noel Coward medley from Susan (Dear Uncle Harry, Bad Times Just Around the Corner and Stately Homes of Old England).
We even got Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star on the squeezebox from Autoharp Simon - which made it sound like a morris dancing tune!
Much fun was had by all, though it was noted that there was a certain lack of Doctor Who related music - I'll have to see what I can do about that :)

Archaeology at Hay Castle

Here's a view of Hay Castle from across the river, covered in plastic.
Meanwhile, inside the castle, the archaeologist on the project, Peter Dorling, has been busy inside the medieval tower. The Victorian owners of the castle built a brick vaulted wine cellar there, and seven wine bottles were found hidden behind the brickwork!
Another interesting find was shards of Venetian glass from the 15th or 16th century - something elegant and intricate to drink wine from.