County Councils Work Together

 Four county councils along the Welsh Marches have agreed to work together to secure funding support from both the UK and Welsh governments.  They'll also be looking for more investment in the region and exploring ideas for new large projects that will benefit the whole region.

The County Councils are Powys, Herefordshire, Monmouthshire and Shropshire.  They all have similarities, being mainly rural areas, and I think it's good to see collaboration between the authorities instead of them each competing for funding individually against each other.

The common issues they all have include transport, skills and housing, energy, climate change, tourism, and internet connectivity.  Between them, the four authorities have a population of around 750,000.  For comparison, that's more than Manchester (553,000), but less than Birmingham (1.15 million) and both those cities have mayors who are able to act on the behalf of all their populations, so it should be a good thing for the Marches Forward Partnership to speak with one voice to government, too.

Appeal for Children in Gaza

 I just saw the poster for this event today.

It's at the Parish Hall on Saturday 2nd December, from 3pm to 8.30pm, and the suggested entry fee is a £5 donation.

In fact, it's several events rolled into one.

From 3pm to 3.45pm, there will be a guided meditation with Graham from River Flow Yoga.

From 5pm to 6pm, there will be a presentation on the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Israel and Palestine, with Neil Stone, who is a member of the organisation.  There will be a Q + A session after the talk.

Then from 6.30pm to 8pm there will be a screening of a documentary about how violence has transformed the lives of ten Palestinian children after the 2014 war.  There will be a discussion afterwards.

In between these events, there will be art workshops for all ages, including postcard printing with Prints of Hay, a bake sale fundraiser, and stalls with educational literature and information on other intitiatives.

The poster ends by saying there will be zero tolerance of any kind of hate speech, or antisemitism, or Islamophobia.

I'm hoping to get along to at least part of this event.

Enchanted Wales - Cauldrons and Miraculous Heads

 I treated myself to a talk at the Winter Festival, in St Mary's Church.

The speaker was Miranda Aldhouse-Green, who has just written a book called Enchanted Wales, so this was all about the myths and legends of Wales.  She's an archaeologist, and a professor at Cardiff, and I've heard her speak before, at a Pagan Conference.  She was talking about gods in Roman Britain then, and she was fascinating.

This time she brought her own cauldron with her.  Cauldrons are important in Welsh mythology, particularly the one that Bran the Blessed gave to the King of Ireland, which would bring dead warriors back to life (but unable to speak).  In archaeological contexts, they are often found buried with treasure or weaponry inside them.  She also gave a brief outline of the story of Bran, his sister Branwen, and the war with Ireland - when Efnysien, Bran's brother, leaps into the cauldron that revives dead warriors and breaks it apart, dying himself in the process.  Bran is fatally wounded in the war, and tells his followers to cut off his head (miraculous heads are also an important part of Welsh mythology), which continues to converse with them for many years, until he tells them to bury it on the White Mound in London, to protect Britain from invasion.

In the question and answer session, she was asked what her inspiration for becoming an archaeologist was, and she talked about the books of Malcolm Saville, especially Lone Pine Five, set around the Long Mynd in Shropshire (in fact, set so securely round the Long Mynd that a fan of the books used to lead walks to places that were mentioned in the text).  One of the characters finds a Roman spoon in a cave, and that was the moment she decided she wanted to be an archaeologist.

Someone else asked if she'd had a 'silver spoon' moment, and she said she had.  She was a student on a dig in Usk, and she found a Claudian coin (minted during the reign of the Emperor Claudius, so very early in the Roman period in Britain).  She knew that nobody had touched that coin for 2,000 years, until she picked it up again.  It's a very special kind of excitement, and I know exactly how she felt, because I felt it too when I was an archaeologist - mine was a Saxon pot that hadn't been touched since the Saxon housewife threw it in the rubbish pit because it had a hairline crack in it.

Up until that point, the other speaker for the evening hadn't said much at all, but now he took over.  He was the storyteller Daniel Morden, and he was spell binding!  He told the story of Gwion, who stirred the cauldron with the potion of inspiration in it for a year and a day, and accidentally got the inspiration for himself, instead of it going to his mistress's son - which sets off a wonderful chase sequence, with Gwion and Ceridwen changing form again and again, eagle chasing hare, otter chasing salmon, until finally Gwion changes himself into a grain of corn, and Ceridwen becomes a hen and eats him!

"And that's the end of the story!  No!  Stories don't end like that!"  So he went on to tell of Ceridwen becoming pregnant and giving birth to Gwion, who then became the great poet Taliesin.

The last time I heard a really good storyteller like that was Hay's own local storyteller Rob Soldat, who sadly died a few years ago.

Daniel Morden went up to the Castle later that evening to tell more stories there.

Exhibitions at the Castle

 Yesterday I went up to the Castle to have a look at the new exhibitions.

There are three of them.

On the first floor, around the printing press, there are delicate pastel prints by Sue Hunt, done while she was on a residency in Osaka, Japan, at cherry blossom time.

Upstairs again, there's The Humble Mug - hand crafted mugs from a variety of potters, and all for sale.

Then in the art exhibition space is Dark Skies.  The room has been kept very dark, apart from illumination for the photographs, most of which are of the night sky, taken by Judy Goldhill.  There's also a recording playing in the background of ambient noises on the Brecon Beacons during a star gazing session.  Not all the pictures are local, though - one is of the Milky Way above Namibia.  I spent quite a bit of time in there - I like stars.

The exhibitions are all free, but you need to buy a ticket for the Castle to get to them.  They run until 7th January.

As a local, I can get a special discount ticket for £3, which lasts for three years!  I hadn't got round to doing it before, but I did it yesterday.  Unfortunately, they had run out of the passes temporarily, so I'll have to go back to pick mine up.  In the meantime, all the details were recorded with the highest technology - written in a school exercise book!

Outside on the Castle lawn were the tents for the Winter Festival, so I also slipped in there to look at the Festival bookshop, and came away with Sacred Britannia by Miranda Aldhouse-Green, who I was seeing later that afternoon.  She was talking about Welsh legends, but this book is about the gods and rituals of Roman Britain.

Winter Festival Weekend

 The lights were switched on very successfully last night - the square was packed full of people, there were two traction engines with trailers (and Santa) and a fire engine, and the edges of the square were lined with food stalls and stalls with local beers and ciders.  In the Buttermarket, the school was raising money with tombolas, and there was a bucket collection for the Christmas Lights.  There were choirs on the Castle steps, and George the Town Cryer was up there too.

I don't watch TV, but I understand that this year's celebrity, Hamza, was on Strictly Come Dancing.  He seemed happy to be doing the honours.

Several shops around town opened late, too, from Oil and Oak at the end of Castle Street (which was blocked to traffic for the evening) to the Childrens Literature Laboratory by the Buttermarket, so I had plenty of opportunity to do a bit of Christmas shopping, too.

And today, the Fairtrade Fayre is in the Buttermarket, with usual stalls Love Zimbabwe and Tools for Self Reliance, Zaytoun selling Palestinian olive oil and nuts and other foods, jewellery from Timbuktu, cakes from Hay, Brecon and Talgarth Sanctuary for Refugees, and more.

Tomorrow, Hay2Timbuktu are running fund raising events at the Globe.  Tickets are available from the Poetry Bookshop.

There's Welcome to Wild Town! a poetry show for kids with AF Harrold; The Star Whale, and interactive poetry and painting adventure with Nicola Davies and Petr Horacek (I'm sorry - I can't do the accents on his name); and Jackie Morris and Cathy Fisher will be in conversation with Nicola Davies about the making of the picture book The Panda's Child.

Facebook Tutorial

 I've had a couple of conversations over the last week or so with people about Facebook, and both of them seemed to think that Facebook was a really scary place.

That may have been true once, but honestly, these days Facebook is one of the safest social media sites in existence.  All the ranty people seemed to move to Twitter, and the youngsters do TikTok or Instagram (and the wierd people do Tumblr - I like Tumblr!).

I find Facebook invaluable for local community information.  If you follow the Hay on Wye Community Notice Board page, you can find out about local events, or someone will post about a lost dog and a couple of hours later it will have been claimed by the owner, or you can ask what's happening about the roadworks, or see vintage photos of Hay.  The Hay Woodland Group posts information about the path by the river and the Warren, and wildlife photos.  

I also keep in touch with friends in different areas of the country through Facebook, and I follow pages about archaeology and books and Star Trek and Doctor Who, and some of my favourite authors like Dorothy Sayers or Ben Aaronovitch or Mary Stewart. 

*

If you haven't tried Facebook before, you first have to join the site (as usual with these things, you need a password).  Once in, you have a Feed, and your own Home Page.  Both of these will be empty to start with because you haven't posted anything, and you haven't made any friends yet.  

So you start to search Facebook (there's a handy little search bar at the top of the page).  Facebook will also suggest people or groups that you might know or be interested in, and you can look at those or ignore them as you choose.

For local information, I recommend:

Hay on Wye Community Notice Board. 

(there are also pages for Talgarth, Clifford, Cusop, Llanigon, Three Cocks, Hay and Brecon Chat, Glasbury and so on).

Hay Woodland Group

Hay Pride

Hay Castle Trust

St. Mary's Church, Hay on Wye

Cllr Gareth Ratcliffe News and Updates

The Globe at Hay

Fairtrade Hay

Hay Music

Richard Booth's Bookshop Cinema

Stuff for FREE in Hay on Wye and Surrounding Areas 

(I was going to include a Hay Library page, but none of them seem to have updated recently).

There are more, but I think these are plenty to get started with.

Once you have some of these, you'll probably see the names of people you know posting there, and you can ask them to be your friend by hovering the cursor over their name and then clicking on the box Add Friend.  When you do this, you see all the things they post on your Feed, and you can make comments if you like.  If you post something, then your friends will see it on their Feed, and can chat about it with you.

You can also send and receive private Messages that are not seen by anyone other than the person you want to contact.

If you see something you don't like, you can block that person so you never see anything they post again, or you can Unfollow them.  You do this by clicking on the three little dots on the same line as their name.

And that's really all there is to it.

Events at the Castle

 Three exhibitions are opening at the Castle on 24th November, just as Hay Winter Festival starts.  

The Humble Mug brings 150 mugs together from a variety of potters.

Dark Skies is a photography exhibition by artist Judy Goldhill.

And Reflections is a range of etchings made by artist Sue Hunt, when she was in Osaka, Japan for cherry blossom time.

Then on Saturday 2nd December at 7.30pm, Maritimum Wind will be playing Christmas music, with mulled wine and mince pies.  The concert costs £12, or £5 for a child, and 10% of the ticket price will be going to Shelter Cymru.

And on Saturday 9th December, it's the Hay Christmas Fayre, with 30 stalls in the Castle and the rest in the Memorial Square and surrounding areas.  There'll be over 100 traders altogether, with mulled wine, street food, carols - and a reindeer!  The perfect time to get those last minute Christmas presents!

Jo Lord's Pottery at North Books

 I stopped in at North Books on Saturday to have a look at Jo Lord's display of pottery - and came away with a lovely blue jug.

While I was there, I had a look at the bookshelves.  North Books sells new books, and I was pleased to see the Neil Gaiman Reader there, as well as Mary and Bryan Talbot's graphic novel Rain (it's about climate activists in a Yorkshire village).  There were also some picture books telling stories from the Mabinogion for children.  So that gives a general idea of the sort of books they stock.

Brave Potatoes

 The other night I didn't feel like cooking, but I did feel like some Brave Potatoes - or patatas bravas, one of the dishes in the tapas menu at Tomatitos.

It was quite a busy evening, but they found me a table in a corner where I could read my book in peace (Rise of the Rocket Girls by Nathalia Holt - a look at the history of space flight through the women who worked at JPL and Nasa).

I paired my brave potatoes with pork meatballs, and that was quite enough for a light meal, and had a half of the Lucky 7 Sipa which was on tap (a bit on the 'grapefruit juice' end of the beer taste scale, but refreshing, and went well with the meal).

It made a nice change to my routine - I must do it again soon.

Roadworks

 Welsh Water have packed up for the moment, and Belmont Road is open again - but they'll be back to dig their trench along Broad Street in January.

Meanwhile, there are still traffic lights on the bridge at the end of Cusop Dingle, where they seem to be completely re-building the bridge over the stream.

No Boots in Hereford

 Well, there are plenty of boots in Hereford, but none of them were what I was looking for - and I went into every shop that sold boots!

I thought it would be fairly easy to fulfill my requirements - I needed a pair of light brown, tall boots with a low heel.  I didn't care if they had zips or laces or were pull on.  They could be plain or decorated.  The important thing was light brown, and low heel.

I'd tried in Hay, first of all.  There's a lovely pair of boots in Golesworthy's that I tried on, but they were obviously made for someone with stick-like legs, because I couldn't get the zip to fasten all the way, and I don't have fat legs.  I just have healthy calves from doing a lot of walking.

So I assumed I'd have more choice in Hereford - and I was wrong.  There were plenty of black boots, and a few dark brown boots.  The only boots that came even vaguely close to what I was looking for were either nearly thigh length (which would just be silly) or, again, too narrow for the zip to fasten.

So I came home, logged onto ebay, and found a suitable pair for a reasonable price in two minutes.

No wonder our shopping centres are dying!

Muffins

 Just by chance, on Thursday, I passed Bernie's cake stall in the Cheese Market when there was only one pear and chocolate muffin left.  It looked lonely, so I took it home, and it it probably the best pear and chocolate muffin I have ever had in my life!  All of Bernie's cakes are highly recommended (and I'll be back soon for more).

Lots of Music Everywhere!

 I'm coming the the realisation that the Christmas season is almost upon us, and there are all sorts of concerts planned in Hay.

Hay Music have got the choir of Clare College, Cambridge in St Mary's Church on Wednesday December 6th, at 7pm.  Tickets are £20, or £10 if you are under 25.  They will be singing a wide range of carols from around Europe, a mix of medieval and modern (one of the modern ones is the Shepherd's Pipe Carol by John Rutter, which I learned at school), familiar and unfamiliar (Ding, Dong, Merrily on High to O Magnum Mysterium).  It looks as if it's going to be a really good evening.

Before that, on Saturday 2nd December from 10.30am, Father Richard will be giving an organ recital with a retiring collection in aid of the church.  Tea and coffee will be available. 

Later that afternoon, at 3.30pm, Hay Forum will have a talk about the Camino de Santiago, the great pilgrim route across Spain, with music from Terry and Christina Watson, Catherine Hughes, Father Richard and Lucy Green Ford, ranging from Polish carols with guitar accompaniment to a Bach organ solo, a Welsh carol and a piece from the Messiah.  Tickets are £5 on the door and there will be mince pies and sherry.

On Sunday the 3rd December at the Globe, the Hay Shantymen will be singing from 6.30pm.  Tickets are £10 online and from Flow on Castle Street.

On Saturday 9th December at 7.30pm, the Hay Community Choir are doing the Messiah at St. Mary's (part one, the bit with the Halleluiah Chorus) along with Clyro School Voices and children from Hay School.  Tickets are £10 from Hay Deli and on the door, and there will be a licensed bar.

Also in St. Mary's, on Saturday 16th December from 3.30 to 4.30pm, Hay Madrigals will be performing a mixture of Christmas and non-Christmas songs, beginning with an organ recital by Father Richard.  Tickets are £10 on the door, and there will be tea, coffee, wine and cakes afterwards.

Jo Lord at North Books

 Jo Lord will be selling her pottery at North Books this weekend - on Friday from 5pm to 7pm and on Saturday from 10am to 6pm.  She isn't making her mugs, jugs and bowls to sell any more, so this is a Last Chance to own some of her lovely pottery.

Lunch at the Felinfach Griffin

 I thought this weekend was going to be uneventful, until a friend invited me out for lunch at the Felinfach Griffin.

It's easy to get to by bus, which is one advantage, so we got there in plenty of time for our booking at 1pm, with the next bus due back to Hay at 16.09, which gave us plenty of time for a leisurely lunch and a short walk around the village afterwards.  Felinfach is not far outside Brecon.

We have both been members of CAMRA over the years, so it was important to find out what real ales were served.  Neither of us had noticed anything on their website, but we found Butty Bach on pump, along with Monty's MPA (a pale ale) and Monty's Navigation, which is apparently the official beer of the Shropshire Union Canal Society!  We tried both the Montys, and preferred the Navigation, which is also pale, but not quite so pale as the MPA.

The wine list looked interesting - one of the titles on it was something like "Wines We Think You Should Know About".

There were also two lunch menus - a main one with starters at around £9.50 and main courses at around £20 (the duck looked interesting), and a Lunch For Less menu with two courses for £20 and three courses for £25, and two choices in each category.

We went for the main course and sweet from the Lunch For Less menu - squash risotto and lemon posset.  Both were delicious, and the lemon posset had ginger crumbs and a raspberry cream and a bit of honeycomb on top as well.

We followed that up with a pot of filter coffee.

The dining room was busier when we arrived!

View of the pub from the bus stop - the bus turns off the main road here, and turns round to go out to the main road again at the bus stop.  This is the old main road which used to carry on up the hill, but was blocked off when the new road was built.

There's also a little veg stall outside the pub - they grow a lot of their own produce.  I got some sprouts.

The pub also sells some of Adele Nozedar's foraging books, from a dresser by the front door.

There were some postcards too, of the other pubs in the group of three that the Griffin belongs to - the other two are both in Cornwall.

We went for a little walk up the hill, past Felinfach's other pub, the Plough and Harrow, until we had a good view of the Black Mountains.

Back at the bus stop, the first bus that pulled in was going to Brecon.  This was followed by a T4 that was going to Builth Wells, and finally the Hay bus arrived.  A red kite flew over quite low while we were waiting.

It was a really lovely afternoon out, and I'm very grateful to my friend for suggesting it!

Linen Basket

 When I moved house, the one thing that the removal men broke was my plastic linen basket - which was old and brittle anyway so it didn't matter.  Everything else about the job they did was absolutely brilliant.  So I got a temporary Big Laundry Bag from Country Supplies until I could find something better.

In the last week or so, I started looking for a wicker linen basket to fit in the small space in the bathroom by the sink.  The prices at Jones' were a bit of an eye-opener, but they were too rigid for my purposes.  There was nothing quite the right size in Country Supplies.  

So on Thursday I went to the lady who sells baskets and sheepskins on the market, and she had just the thing.  Not too rigid, and with sturdy leather handles.  It's not wicker exactly, more a sort of woven grass, I think, and it fits the space perfectly!

Remembrance

 

A very clever post box topper saying "Lest We Forget", at the gold post box opposite the Blue Boar.  I love the way the wool matches the post box so well, while also looking like a First World War uniform.

And poppies seen around the Castle a few days ago.

I think the stall selling poppies is still there outside the Castle.

Cult Cinema - Spaghetti Westerns

 The first Cult Cinema evening (Horror for Hallowe'en, featuring the Evil Dead) was such a success that they're doing it again.  This time the theme is Spaghetti Westerns, on November 25th from 6pm at the Parish Hall.  Tickets are £5 and I hear that the popcorn is awesome!

I had thought that I could go, and wear my Wild West costume - but it's the same evening as the Winter Festival event I've already got a ticket for, in St Mary's. 

Repair Cafe

 The Repair Cafe will have a stall in the Buttermarket on Thursday (must remember to take my kitchen knife down to be sharpened!).

Winter Coat

 The elderly Barbour that I picked up in Oxfam some years ago for £10 finally became too scruffy (and no longer waterproof) for me to wear, so I was in need of a new waterproof winter coat.

My first thought was to splash out on a brand new coat - but then I saw the prices in Rohan, and the vintage coats in Bain & Murrin suddenly became a lot more affordable!

So now I am the proud possessor of an Austin Reed waxed jacket, from the men's rack, for just under £100.  It'll last me for years, though, and it even has a hood hidden underneath the collar.

And while I was there I spotted a pair of blue Converse canvas shoes, with white paint splashes as decoration - they go very well with my denim skirt.

Baaadflockers

 I forgot to count the 'a's, but there are a lot of them!  New sheep themed tshirt shop (and socks and other stuff) on Castle Street next to the Flaming Lady.

(and it's three 'a's!)

Rainbow

 

There are some advantages to living high up - this is one of them!  I took this last week, in the aftermath of Storm Babet.

Saturday Job

 Hay Cinema Bookshop is recruiting!  (which means, after 15 years, I won't be the New Girl any more!).

They need a Saturday receptionist, to work from 9am to 6pm.

For further details, please ring Deb Clark on 01497 820071.