First Weekend of the Festival

 

Here's one of Danny Thomas's chainsaw sculptures.  There are lots more around the Festival site.

I went up there yesterday - Friday is secondary school day, so the site was full of young teenagers in school uniforms.  

There are some good stalls this year - I stopped to chat to Bonnie Helen Hawkins, who does the most marvellous detailed pencil drawings.  She has an obsession with Under Milk Wood, and a book of the poem illustrated with her work is due out soon.  I bought a notebook with a portrait of Michael Sheen on the front - he was on stage doing Under Milk Wood a year or so ago.  Bonnie's work can be found at www.bhhawkins.com  She also does oil paintings in a sort of Turner style, and illustrates books by Joanne Harris.

I also had an interesting conversation with a lady from Leigh Day, a law firm that wants to start legal action against Avara and other polluters of the River Wye to make them clean up the river.  I told her about some of the local initiatives that have been going on for several years now, and recommended that she contact people like Friends of the Upper Wye so they are not duplicating effort un-necessarily.

Meanwhile, the Poetry Bookshop has a Festival window display themed for Peace, around a new picture by Jackie Morris:

Today, there's music at Fair in the Square, and the Mad Hatter craft fair is in the Buttermarket.  There are also more stalls in the Cheese Market and around the edge of the square, plus food stalls.

Also up in the square was a small protest group with banners in support of Palestine.  They were handing out leaflets giving information on what ordinary people can do to help.  The suggestions include writing to your MP, boycotting the large firms like Macdonalds, Starbucks and Coca-Cola, Disney, Puma and Hewlett Packard, who are supporting the Israeli government, and donating to a variety of charities which are trying to help, including UNWRA Islamic Relief and the Red Crescent.

The main sponsor of Hay Festival this year was Baillie Gifford, the investment management firm.  However, Hay Festival has now dropped this sponsor, as several of the speakers at the Festival threatened to pull out if they were involved, because of their links to Israel.  The speakers included Charlotte Church, Nish Kumar, the Labour peer Shami Chakrabati and the MP Dawn Butler.  Baillie Gifford have been sponsoring the Festival since 2016.  

A group called Fossil Free Books was also objecting to Baillie Gifford's involvement in the Festival because of the firm's involvement in fossil fuels.  Baillie Gifford also sponsors the Edinburgh international book festival and the Cheltenham book festival, and run the Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction.

There are only three food stalls in the Honesty Bookshop this year.  I had lunch from the vegan Indian curry stall - the dhal was very nice.  Other food there was Caribbean and Churros.

I also went down to the Secret Wine Bar for some local organic wine.  Just for the name, I chose the white wine Shouting At Weather! which was delicious.  The two vineyards are Whinyard Rocks in New Radnor (I was served by Susan), and Black Mountain Vineyard and Winery.  They have websites at www.whinyardrocks.com and www.blackmountainwinery.co.uk