One good thing about having a top floor flat now is the birdwatching.
The other day four red kites were flying over Hay - four! When I first came to Hay I was excited when I saw a buzzard, and there weren't any kites at all.
I was making a cup of tea when I noticed movement outside my window. When I looked up, a red kite was gliding sideways past the window, looking in at me. It was close enough for me to see every feather.
A real "wow!" moment.
It's a lovely sunny day, and Leominster Morris were out in all their finery this morning - pheasant feathers in their top hats, blacked faces and brocade jackets.
They were actually dancing up at the Castle, but I came across them after that, when they did another dance in the middle of the Buttermarket, where the Mad Hatters Craft Fair is going on today.
Summer must be a coming in!
The footpath towards the Warren is closed at the moment because of fallen trees.
I had plans for tomorrow. It's a day when the Herefordshire Hoard is available to be seen by the public, and I was going to go into Hereford to view it. In the evening, I was going to go to the Cusop History Society talk about Roman roads (and more recent roads) which was postponed from the other week because of the snow.
I will actually be staying at home, so I don't inflict my stinky cold on anyone else.
Ah, well.
Last night, the Hay Shantymen sang at the Globe to launch their new album, Songs from the Shed.
The event was sold out - I got there at quarter past six for the six thirty start, and the Globe was already pretty full. I got a seat upstairs on the balcony, so I had a very good view.
I liked the way they incorporated verses about Hay into some of their songs (and saying they were more handsome than Fishermen's Friends!), and talking about Hay being on the East coast of Wales!
Quite a few of the shanties were unfamiliar to me. The first one I could sing along to was the Mingulay Boat song. In the second half, though, they sang some old favourites like Strike the Bell, Second Mate (let us go below), Going Down to Old Maui, the Wellerman, and their final encore, Bound for South Australia. I also liked the way different members of the group sang the solos for different songs, giving everyone a chance to shine.
They did a brisk trade in CDs after the performance, and also had buckets out for the RNLI, which is their charity. 50% of the profits of the CD will be going to the RNLI.
My CD came this morning (I pre-ordered when I got my ticket), and I'm looking forward to listening to it later.
John Price has kindly sent me the link to the February meeting of Cusop History Group at Cusop Village Hall.
There's a talk about Cusop Castle by Tim Hoverd, the archaeologist from Herefordshire Council, and updates on the research that's been going on about Cusop Church.
Cusop Castle is on private land, and is also a Scheduled Ancient Monument, so no holes can be dug, or geophys a la Time Team done without applying for a license. In the case of Cusop Church, a faculty would have to be applied for from the diocese for any archaeological work, but it would be fascinating to find out more about both sites. Cusop Castle is a very unusual shape for a Border castle - there's no motte, and Cusop Church may once have had a round churchyard, which is a very early, Celtic, feature.
The meeting rounds off with a short AGM.
The new date for the Roman Roads to Railways talk is Thursday March 23rd, at 7pm, at Cusop Village Hall. Cost is £3 for members, £5 for non-members, and includes wine.
Unfortunately, the film has copyright material in it, so can no longer be viewed publicly, so I have deleted the link.
(all the more reason to turn up to the next meeting in person!)
You never know what you'll find when you start browsing in a charity shop. The other day I was browsing at the Red Cross shop when I noticed an interesting LP.
The title is Simple Gifts, by two folk singers I'd never heard of, but the title track is a mixture of the original Shaker hymn "Tis a gift to be simple" with the more recent hymn with the same tune Lord of the Dance. I have happy memories of singing Lord of the Dance at junior school - our headmaster was quite keen on modern music at assembly. The singers are Benjamin Luxon and Bill Crofut. The picture on the back shows two enthusiastic looking young men with impressive beards.
I know quite a few of the other featured folk songs, too - the Four Loom Weaver was another song we sang at school, as well as The Fox and Johnny I Hardly Knew You.
A bargain for £2! ("Oh, but it's signed on the back!" said the volunteer at the till. "So that's £200....").
I went up to the Castle yesterday to have a look at the exhibition of Eugene Fisk's paintings and sketches, and was very pleased to discover that it's free.
The blacksmithing exhibition is still going on, too, outside the exhibition room, and several exhibits are different from the ones I saw last time I visited it, so it's worth going again to see the new stuff.
I started by looking at the landscapes. There are local pictures, like the cover art from his book Oh Happy Hay, and a picture of his house (also the Kilvert Gallery) in Clyro. There's a whole group of pictures of Italy, mostly architectural, and a series of paintings of places along the route of Gerald of Wales' Journey around Wales in 1188 (he came to Hay at the beginning of this journey, to help drum up enthusiasm for a Crusade). Eugene was planning to make the pictures into a book, but the work was never completed.
He also did portraits, and several of his pictures of members of the Welsh National Opera are featured - he was commissioned to paint them. There's also his portrait of King Richard Booth.
Many of the pictures are not for sale - the average price of the ones that are seems to be about £1500.
There were also some of his sketchbooks and diaries laid out on tables (he had beautiful handwriting).
And there was a short video playing in one corner, giving his life story from his time as a member of a teaching order of monks to his life as an artist after he left the order, and his long association with Clyro and Hay.
There's even an opportunity to own one of Eugene's sketches - there are three on offer, as raffle prizes (I wish I had room to put one on my wall!).
Sadly, there was nothing about the work he did with Hay, Brecon and Talgarth Sanctuary for Refugees - he sketched many portraits of the refugees at open days, and collected them into a book called Only Connect.
On the way out, I started chatting to the young lady at the desk by the door of the exhibition space. It turned out that we have a shared love of archaeology, and she is very much looking forward to see the students return to Arthur's Stone in the summer. We also have a shared love of the City of Norwich, where she went to university, and I spent two years digging up the Castle Mall (six acres in the middle of the city which is now a shopping centre).
I was sorry to hear of the death of Paul Harris, at his home in Spain, this week.
Paul was a bookseller in Hay for many years, at Oxford House Books on Broad Street, and before that he worked for Richard Booth in the days when Richard went on book buying tours of the United States.
He also led the Republican uprising against King Richard in 2009, which culminated in an effigy of Richard being beheaded in the Buttermarket, with a group of English Civil War re-enactors providing a military escort! That was a fun event, and Richard didn't seem to mind too much.
It snowed steadily all of yesterday, so Hay was pretty well blanketed this morning.
Only a few hardy souls turned up for the Thursday market, and several shops and cafes were either closed or closing early.
However, the Fairtrade coffee morning went ahead as planned at Eighteen Rabbit.
I overslept, so by the time I got to the shop, Jenepher had finished her presentation, and was chatting to people. There was a video to watch on a laptop, though, and the coffee was very nice indeed - I bought a packet. There was also cake.
It's Fairtrade Fortnight at the moment, and I was chatting with Chris on the Fairtrade stall on the market last Thursday.
This coming Thursday, there will be a coffee morning at Eighteen Rabbit from 10am to 1pm. Their special guest is Jenipher, from Uganda, who has been organising farmers in Uganda (mostly women) to produce coffee which they now market under their own brand. It's available at Eighteen Rabbit, and she will be talking about how they make it and offering samples. The event is free, but donations of £1 minimum are requested.
Then in the evening, Cusop History Group is meeting at Cusop Village Hall. Tony Usher is giving a talk on Roman Roads to Railways - how the transport networks shaped the fortunes of Herefordshire. It starts at 7pm, and costs £3 for members, £5 for non-members, and includes wine.
[Edited to add: the Cusop History talk has been postponed due to snow]
I'd assumed that I was going to a book launch for a book of poetry. James Roberts is a poet, after all, and the launch was being held at the Poetry Bookshop.
In fact, Two Lights is a book of nature writing, and the extracts James read out over the course of the evening were beautiful.
He also showed a short video (which is also up on YouTube) of scenery around the Begwns, some of it shot from a drone, in gorgeous, crisp black and white photography. There was a slide show of some of the other birds and animals he mentioned in the book, too, including a wolf - which was not the same wolf as he'd met in Canada. He'd been hiking with his wife, when a wolf jumped out of the woods, sat on the trail to stare at them, and then disappeared into the woods again. This is apparently very unusual behaviour for a wolf - so maybe the spirits of the wilderness were trying to tell him something....
Nearer to home, he describes star-gazing on the Begwns above Hay, and links it with the swans on the pond up there. He also talked about the swifts travelling from Wales down to Africa on their annual migration, and years ago he travelled a similar route through the Sahara and into the Congo, and further south. Later, when we were chatting, Melanie of the Poetry Bookshop said how pleased she was that he'd mentioned the swifts, because a previous owner of the poetry bookshop had written poems about swifts.
This is also a book about loss - he talks about the curlews on the moorland around Hay, and how there used to be around 60 pairs up there but now there are only 3 or 4 pairs - and he describes the extermination of wolves in Britain in the seventeenth century. One of the last wolves was killed not that far from Hay. (In the north west of England, near Cartmel, another Last Wolf was killed - it's a sad story I've known since I went to University nearby at Lancaster). Not only have we lost the wolves, but we've lost the vast forests they used to roam in - all the way across to the Midlands.
The area of Canada he visited is about the same size as Wales (but with higher mountains), and still pristine, unspoiled wilderness. In Wales, the same sort of woodland habitat is restricted to tiny areas, like one of the Brecknock Wildlife Trust reserves (I forget the name - I visited a very long time ago), where you had to inform the Trust if you wanted to visit, in case you needed to be rescued!
I bought the book - I always try to buy books and CDs by people I know (and I've known his wife Julia since we were on the Fairtrade committee together).
Being a man of many talents, James has also illustrated the book with his own artwork. I'm not sure of the technical terms, but it looks like watercolours done in black ink? Rather like Jackie Morris's pictures of otters, one of which is sharing the window display with James' book and art.
I'm very much looking forward to reading the book.
When I went up to the Globe yesterday evening, there was a big "Closed" sign by the gate - but I went up and tried the door anyway, and sure enough there were people in there. On one side of the room were a couple of philosophers, and on the other side, about 7 or 8 people for the Climate Cafe - most of them were also members of HOWLS.
Paul, who runs the group, had sent his apologies due to illness, so the conversation was perhaps not quite typical of other climate cafes that have been held here.
We started off with the Hay Handbook. This was produced in 2015 with great effort and fanfare and, as Mark Robinson pointed out, it was out of date the day it came out. As with many things in Hay, there wasn't the momentum to keep it going and there was never a second edition. People who set up groups in Hay tend not to inform a central noticeboard or booklet or, these days, website, so it can be a lot of work just to find out how many groups there are in Hay and what they do. However, there was some discussion about renewing the Handbook. The first task would be to go through the 48 pages to find out which groups are still active, and by the end of the evening Janet Robinson had volunteered to do the first ten pages.
Michael had a lot to talk about at the meeting (so was unable to take notes!). He's been doing a lot of research into setting up a Citizen's Assembly for Hay, in collaboration with the Library. It comes under their remit of educational work. This isn't just a matter of calling a meeting - facilitators have to be trained to guide the process first.
He wants a Citizen's Assembly to discuss three main areas of interest. First - could Hay have its own community energy source, for instance a wind turbine owned by the town?
Secondly, Food Security - how can Hay organise a system of local food producers selling their produce in Hay, so that Hay can be more self-sufficient in food, especially in these times when there are random shortages in the shops.
Thirdly, Mental Health - how can the local community work together to identify people who are struggling with depression or other forms of mental health issues before it becomes a crisis that the NHS needs to deal with?
So, Food, Energy and a more supportive community - they're all things that relate to the climate crisis, and they're all things that a small community should be looking at to survive in the future.
As part of his research, Michael came across an organisation which is funded by the Welsh government. It's called Egin, and the website is egin.org.uk When he contacted them, they told him that there would be help available, when Hay got the the stage of deciding what was needed.
There was a suggestion that the issues around Mental Health could be combined with the issues around Food Security. Getting people gardening is extremely good for mental health. There's a group called Edible Cardiff which has been linking people who grow food with people who want to eat it, and it seems to be successful.
Locally, there are several small groups involved in food production and distribution. The people at Chapters regularly cook ready meals from donated food for Brecon Food Bank, for instance - Cabalva, across the river, is one of the donors to this scheme. There are also small schemes in Boughrood and Gwernyfed (and of course, Primrose Farm has been around for many years). There's also the community garden just across the river from Hay.
One of the people at the meeting was from Llangammarch Wells, and she described a local Landowners Group which had been very successful in getting people together and connected. For instance, a farmer offered well rotted cow manure, and several people with gardens came to collect it. Meanwhile someone else was giving advice about mushrooms, and there was a herbalist, all of them getting in touch with other members of the community that they wouldn't have known about otherwise.
Another local group is Our Food 1200/Ein Bwyd 1200. They are building a network of land, from farms to small gardens, across South Wales, to grow local food - eventually they want to have 1200 acres, which would be co-ordinated so that different things were grown in different areas - no point in having a glut of courgettes! They have a page on Facebook, and Michael said they were looking into the possibility of acquiring a 90 acre farm near Abergavenny.
Michael also wanted to do something to get schools involved, and Françoise pointed out that schools locally are doing a lot already - she and her husband Pierre have been involved in that, with Botany and Other Stories.
Michael added that the Black Mountains College is also interested in getting involved.
He also talked about what Citizen's Assemblies could achieve - for instance, in Hereford the Citizen's Assembly came up with various policies that the County Council have adopted - but this is probably because there are quite a few Green councillors now. There has also been a lot of local disagreement with the policies, as a glance at the letters page of the Hereford Times will show. Some people still want a bypass, for instance.
In the end, there is only so much a small community can do, if national governments are not prepared to do what is necessary to mitigate climate change. Our own government do not have a good record on green issues, and in Alaska oil companies want to drill for oil in what are presently pristine environments. The COP meetings have generally been disappointing, too, generally agreeing to small changes without clear penalties for countries that do not meet the agreed targets for carbon reduction.
Françoise spoke eloquently about the Earth Overshoot Day - the day of the year when the Earth has used all the resources for that year - from that point on the Earth is using resources that are not sustainable, because the Earth cannot regenerate them. When the Earth Overshoot Day was first thought of, the date was in December. This year it's in July.
Her point was that global change is needed - but half a dozen people sitting in the Globe can't affect global change. We can't even change what is happening to the River Wye on our own doorstep. What we can do is small things like sharing food (there's a seed swap at the Globe on Sunday 5th March, from 2pm to 4.30pm, for instance, with children's activities).
This may seem like a rather depressing note to end the report on, but we are in the middle of a crisis, and we must do what we can to make things better wherever we can.
As an aside - I recently picked up a set of DVDs for Cosmos, the big TV series by Carl Sagan, which was on TV in 1979. I remembered him talking about astronomy, and the history of science - but what came as a surprise was the episode where he talked about climate change and how we, as a species, had a choice - either to go on as we were, or to make changes for our own survival. (He was also concerned about nuclear war - the Cold War was still going on back then). This was on prime time TV in 1979. The science was clear then - and yet here we are in 2023, with the Earth in a much worse state than it was then, and the effort needed to change that so much more urgent, and more difficult than it was in the 1970s.
Hay Castle Trust did a consultation a little while ago, as they considered whether to start charging for entry to the Castle.
They have now decided that they will start charging an entry fee, from March 20th.
The Great Hall, cafe and gift shop will still be free to access, but if you want to go upstairs the charge will be £5. However, that ticket will be usable for a year with no extra charge.
Anyone living within a 10 mile radius of the Castle will be able to get an entry pass, which will cost £3 and will last for 3 years.
Under 16s go free.
Comments on the Facebook pages about these changes have mostly been positive.
I'll be going to see the Eugene Fisk exhibition in the next couple of days, so I'll be enquiring about getting a pass then.
