Climate Choir

 The COP26 conference is about to start in Glasgow, and yesterday the Hay Climate Choir sang in the square, standing on the new steps up to the Castle.  The song about taking your canvas bag to the supermarket was pretty catchy!

The Climate Choir meets every Tuesday evening from 6.30pm at the Globe (or in the Globe Garden if it's good weather), and they're always looking for new members.

I was going to have photos, but I've had technical issues - since I had my laptop fixed, I can no longer access my gmail account.  I can still be reached on my BT account at lesley.arrowsmith468@btinternet.com

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A little while ago I heard a local lady complaining to Andrew Williams, who works for the Hay Castle Trust, about the new steps.  She said that the deep steps that spread out at the bottom around the edge of the square would only encourage tourists to sit there, and she thought this was a bad thing.  She seemed to think that the steps had not been built with local people in mind.

The first time I saw those steps being used was by the Talgarth Male Voice Choir in August, at the World War 2 Commemoration weekend, and the second time I've seen them used was yesterday for the local Climate Choir, so I don't think the lady needs to be concerned that the steps will not be used by local people.

Re-opening the Castle

 The hope is that, despite all the delays, the Castle will be ready to re-open by 1st April next year.  That would be the ideal date, since it's Hay Independence Day, as fixed by King Richard Booth.  There will probably be some sort of ceremony, possibly with a parade through town.  One of the other ladies on the tour with me is involved with the Castle volunteers, and is hoping to get something organised.

One of the delays has been in getting a set of glass doors which have been made in Italy.  The team at the Castle did source local material as much as possible, but some things had to be specially made further afield, and because of Brexit, it's been very difficult to get the doors delivered.  They're hoping that they will arrive around December now, and be fitted in the tower by February.

Touring Inside the Castle

We entered the Castle by the door from the lawn (or at least, it will be a lawn again fairly soon), but there there will be a second entrance at the top of the steps from the Honesty Garden.  This will lead directly into the King of Hay Bookshop, and off to the side down the corridor is the counter for the cafe - the kitchen being at the end of the corridor.  

Across the way is the big room that has been used in recent years for events, and that will be the cafe.  There was a plan to turn the stable block into the cafe, but that's been put on the back burner for now.  When the Castle re-opens next year, the buildings round the yard will be retail units as they were before.

Upstairs, there are offices and toilets (there's an accessible toilet near the cafe counter on the ground floor), and one room has been kitted out with a lot of storage space for educational purposes.  The Hay Castle Trust got a grant from the Clore Duffield Foundation to set it up.  The Foundation only has two other educational rooms in Wales, both of them at St Fagans.  The idea is that it will be used by school groups, or local groups like Local History Societies, and so forth, and will be suitable for talks, courses and workshops of various kinds.

One part of the first floor has been re-inforced, because a printing press is going to be installed there!  It's the one that is, at present, in the cafe at Booth Books, and they are hoping to have people there who can work it, and encourage visitors to have a go.

Upstairs again, what was once the attic space is now going to be an area with comfy chairs where members of the public can go to quietly read - there will also be displays showing the history of the castle, including oral history (for instance, an interview with one of the firemen who helped to put out the 1977 fire).  I think this may be where the historical costumes will be, too.

On the other side of the building, the room has been reinforced with steel mesh in the walls and ceiling, to make it as impregnable as they can so that top art galleries will be able to loan displays.  The first exhibition planned for the space will be a collection of portraits of authors, from the National Portrait Gallery.  

And then we were heading up again to the top of the tower, where the new viewing platform is:

It's easy to see why the Castle was built in that spot!

Castle Tour - Blending Ancient and Modern

 I was invited on a tour of the Castle, together with a couple of other ladies who have been involved in helping the Castle Trust, and it was great fun!

First of all, we went into the old site office, where Nepal Bazaar used to be, to change into hi-viz vests, white hard hats and steel toe capped boots, since the Castle is a building site at the moment.  I brought my own hi viz, but it's a long time since I had my own steel toe capped boots (I was issued with a pair when I was on the Castle Mall dig in Norwich, thirty years ago!).

Andrew Williams was guiding us round, and he started outside the castle, where the lawn used to be.  It's all churned up at the moment, but eventually it will be landscaped, and available for people to picnic, or just sit around on.

He started by explaining that he fills in a report for the Clerk of Works for each week of the project.  At the beginning of the renovation, it was thought to be an 80 week job - and they're now on week 166.  Some of this is normal building work delays, but a lot of it is Covid, and some of it is because of Brexit causing delays in materials arriving.

We were standing on some of the new flagstones outside the front door of the castle.  They're the same stone as the steps leading down to the square on the other side of the castle, and the stone was chosen (and agreed on by Cadw, the National Parks and other interested bodies) to look modern, rather than to simulate something old.  He pointed out the gables on the front of the building - three are original, and two were reconstructed last year, and those are built with exactly the same stone as the original, and blend in perfectly.  So the thinking has been that as much of the original fabric of the building should be preserved as possible, but the new parts should look modern because this, too, is just a phase in the history of the building, and in a hundred years, people will be looking at those steps down to the square and thinking how quaint and twenty-first century they are!

Then we went into the entrance hall, which is at the side of the building which was affected the worst by the fires in 1939 and 1977.  That end of the building had been open to the elements.  Now there is a roof, but the re-building has left the space open up all the three floors, with mezzanine galleries.  This is where the modern and the ancient fabric have to fit together like a jigsaw:

The modern brick will not be covered up - behind it is the lift shaft which gives access to all the floors and the viewing platform at the top of the tower.

And at the top of the tower, there are skylights (Andrew said they were supposed to be self-cleaning) which also look very modern:

The black steel is basically holding the building together, and behind the skylight is a good view of the Jacobean chimneys.

Elsewhere, the original beams have been retained, and the original roof was taken down and refurbished with original tiles over most of the area of the roof.

Ice Age Ponds

 As part of the One Planet feature in last week's Hereford Times, there was an article on ice age ponds in Herefordshire.

I knew that the area around Letton had been a lake during the last Ice Age, but I hadn't realised that the ice had left behind a lot of smaller ponds, too.  Even better, the ponds are havens for wildlife, and some species have been there for thousands of years!  For instance, tubular water-dropwort is only found in Herefordshire in these ponds.

Over time, though, many ponds have become overgrown, dried up, or been filled in when they were no longer useful.

Herefordshire Wildlife Trust has been involved in a project to find and restore as many of these ponds as possible, along with the Herefordshire Amphibian and Reptile Trust and Herefordshire and Worcestershire Earth Heritage Trust.  So far they are aware of about sixty ponds, and the next stage is to restore some of the dried up ponds, which will have dormant seeds in the soil waiting for water to return so they can germinate.

They are also looking for traces of the rare medicinal leech - leeches used to be used by doctors to suck blood from patients, and modern medicine has also found uses for leeches in microsurgery, and reconstructive surgery such as finger re-attachment.

There's a website with more information at www.herefordshirewt.org/iceageponds

Save the Wye

 Last week, the Hereford Times published a special feature, the One Planet: Campaign.  It was bringing together information about the environment and climate change, with special attention on Herefordshire and the Borders.  This will be a monthly feature.  As part of the feature, they launched their Save the Wye campaign, calling on the authorities to tackle the pollution in the river.  This includes the River Lugg, which is a tributary of the Wye.  The area is already a Special Area of Conservation, and Sites of Special Scientific Interest - which begs the question: what are rivers like which do not have the same level of legal protection, since the Wye has been allowed to get into its present poor condition?

It has taken citizen science projects along the river to draw attention to the pollution in the water, when it should have been dealt with by Natural England and the Environment Agency - which have not been adequately funded by government.

The Hereford Times would like to involve as many people as possible in its campaign, and they welcome contributions from people who can tell the newspaper what they are doing to champion the natural world and combat pollution.

In the run-up to the COP 26 (UN Climate Change Conference) in Glasgow at the end of the month, this seems like a very good idea.

Hay Writers' Circle

 The Hay Writers' Circle are holding a competition - it's the Frances Copping Memorial Prize for Fiction, named after the lifetime president of the Circle, who died last year.

The competition is open to anyone, members or non-members, and should be of a piece of fiction between 600 and 1500 words, on any theme.  The closing date is Tuesday 16th November, and the fee is £5 payable by cheque or BACS.  The entry form can be found on the Hay Writers blog at https://thehaywriters.wordpress.com

There are also cash prizes, sponsored by Parthian Press, of £50 first prize, £15 second prize and £10 third prize.  Parthian Books are a Welsh publisher, based in Cardigan, and the publishing manager, Carly Holmes, has agreed to judge the competition this year.

New Boiler

 

Yesterday I had Mark Vaughan and his assistant in the house all day, fitting a new gas boiler.  They were very efficient, and I now have a new thermostat to play with.  I'm sure I'll soon get it adapted to my routine.

  Here's the old boiler, shortly before Dickie Hebbard came round with his wheelbarrow to take it, and all the other bits of scrap metal, away.  I was very impressed with the way he packed his wheelbarrow - there's definitely an art to it!

Winter Festival

 The leaflets for the Hay Winter Festival are out now - with a mixture of online and live events from Hay Primary School and a stage on Cae Mawr field, a move from the old beast market site where the last Winter Festival with live events took place.  I remember the days when the main summer Festival was compact enough to take place around the school, too!

The Festival will be happening from Wednesday 24th November to Sunday 28th November.

Only one event is only available online - in which the winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction talks to Craig Brown, from Hay Primary School.

The Wednesday evening conversation and concert is live only, and will be on the Llwyfan Cymru Wales Stage on the Cae Mawr Field.  Also live will be the switching on of the Christmas Lights, on Friday evening, and Father Richard playing the organ to The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, in St Mary's Church, and on Saturday evening there is live stand up comedy, also from the stage on Cae Mawr Field.  The last live only event will be from Hay Primary School on Sunday morning, and is called The Lights that Dance in the Night, with Yuval Zommer.

Free online events will be available to view from 15th November, and there is a free programme for schools on Wednesday and Thursday.

Local author Owen Sheers is on the programme, along with Miriam Margolyes, Jonathon Porritt, Bear Grylls, Jeanette Winterson, and many more.

Vintage Bentley

 

Seen on Broad Street - a magnificent vintage Bentley.

Trip to Hereford

 I had a voucher for Marks and Spencers, for being part of a Covid testing scheme (still negative, thank goodness!), so I had to go into Hereford to spend it.

I had a pleasant chat with some people waiting for the bus this morning - a lady from Normandy who is on holiday from her job in a bookshop in London (so of course she came to Hay!) and a chap from near Bolton in Lancashire who is walking the Offa's Dyke Path a bit at a time - he was heading home to his job for the weekend, and starting back on the Path next week.  He thinks it'll take him a couple of weeks more to get to Prestatyn and the end of the Path.

It was nice to see that the paper timetables at the bus stop are now up to date!

Masks now seem to be optional on the bus - at any rate, only about 50% of passengers were wearing one.  They're pretty much optional in shops in Hereford too, but I was wearing mine.

I spent my voucher very easily in Marks and Spencers, on a men's white shirt I need for a costume some time in the coming year.  I like their men's shirts - they're always long enough in the arms for me, and good quality.

I've started a habit of always going into Cult Vintage to look at their silk shirts, too, and I found a perfect scarlet one for my Young Man, who is going to a Vampire event soon - it should go very nicely with his dark suit and his fangs.  I also found a roll neck black jumper, which will be perfect for another costume - it's been very hard to find a decent jumper with the right shape of collar to cosplay the Demon Crowley from Good Omens in his 1967 outfit.

Something else I've got in the habit of doing is visiting the stall in the main square to buy Monkhide Mead.  I noticed that the shape of the bottle had changed from the last time I was there, from a wide, flat bottle to a round one.  "We used to source the bottles from Germany," the stall holder said.  "I don't really need to finish that thought, do I?"  He said that the last lot of bottles they ordered got as far as a warehouse in Calais, and no further, so eventually they had to cancel the order.  The new round bottles come from Yorkshire.

I had time, too, for some very nice oolong tea from the little tea shop near the Old House in the main square.

Hay Music is Ten!

 Hay Music has celebrated its tenth anniversary, at their annual Friends and Patrons party at the beginning of September.  There was cake!

Over the lockdowns, they kept going with online events, and more recently have been getting back to live performances, notably with their mini-festival in August.

There are difficulties, though, since they are having to limit the number of tickets available for performances so there can be adequate social distancing, which means they can't get as much revenue as they used to do - and they would like everyone who wants to support them to turn up for the concerts.

The next concert is by the Ligeti String Quartet, on Friday November 12th, from 7pm to 9pm at St. Mary's Church.  

They've been to Hay before, in 2016, when they packed out the upstairs room at Booth's Bookshop.  This time, they're demonstrating how music from folk traditions have influenced the string quartet repertoire from Beethoven to the present day, finishing with Bartok's 5th string quartet, which includes the melodies of Hungarian folk music.  Tickets are £15, or £7.50 for students.

Good News for the Post Office

 Work will start in November to put a permanent Post Office counter in Country Supplies, with Syd Morris as Postmaster.