Dial-a-Ride Concert

 Thanks to Adrian for reminding me about the Dial-a-Ride concert at St Mary's on Sunday 4th August, at 2pm.

The Surrey Police Band is returning to Hay to perform for Dial-a-Ride, but also for the 80th anniversary of D-Day, so there will be a 1940s theme to the afternoon.  Also performing will be the Vintage Class Singers, professional dancers Sue and Steve Mace and soprano Lauren Elizabeth Williams.

Guests of honour are Chelsea Pensioners, Royal British Legion standard bearers, the 'Queen Mum' and 'Winston Churchill'!

Tickets are £10 and can be purchased on the door.

30 Years of Dial-A-Ride

 I missed the recent Dial-a-Ride tea at Cusop Hall, but there's another celebration coming up soon to mark 30 years of Dial-a-Ride in Hay.

On Saturday 3rd August, at the Conservative Club in Hay, from 6pm,  there is going to be live music from Abba and Elvis (at least, their local impersonators!) and a barbeque.  Cwmbran Pipes and Drums will also be providing music - fancy dress optional!

International Container Reception

 

A new sign has gone up on the window of what used to be Gordon's flower shop - I'm sad to see that the flowers will not be returning there.

This was originally a sign painted on the wooden door round the back of Booths, in the side street where the Cinema now is, in the days when Richard Booth made a big thing of bringing books into Hay from all over the world.

Parking on Lion Street to unload lorries may be more difficult - it's a narrow road (well, the side road is narrow, but it is also used by traffic less).

So I'll keep watching to see what appears inside the shop....

Tuesday Evening Market

 I went up to the coach house of the Castle after work to have a look at the new evening market.  It's open from 4.30pm to 7pm.

Artistraw Cider was there, and the chap who sells organic veg in the Cheese Market on the Thursday market, and a lady selling meat, but there wasn't really any room for any more stalls.

I felt a bit embarrassed, because I hadn't gone up there to buy anything - just to have a quick look, and at that moment I was the only potential customer there.

New Heron Sculpture

 

This is the new heron statue on the Riverside Path.

Meanwhile, the seagull on top of the post box disappeared - but he hasn't been pinched.  He's just at Pugh's shop for a while and will be reunited with his chips soon!

PBFA Book Fair

 The evening before the Book Fair at Hay Castle, Hay Cinema Bookshop invited all the booksellers to a reception in the garden.  The weather was perfect for it, there was wine and delicious nibbles made by the lady from Chapters, and I met some really interesting people.  I ended up discussing South African archaeology with a lovely couple.

The book fair itself didn't feel quite so crowded as last year, but I did go quite early.  There were 18 different booksellers, and the most interesting book I saw was the original novel of The Prisoner, the 1960s TV series starring Patrick McGoohan - whose picture, in the iconic Village blazer, was on the front cover.  It's by Thomas Disch, who was a reasonably well known SF writer from the 1960s onwards.

I had some jobs to do at home that didn't take as long as I thought, so I turned up just in time to get a ticket for the bookbinding talk.  There were about a dozen people there, who all seemed to be very knowledgeable.  It was a fascinating talk by Arthur Green, who is a book binder, book conservator, and also teaches bookbinding and bookbinding history.  He is based near Malvern, and has a website at greensbooks.co.uk

I now know a lot more about how books are put together as physical objects, from the original leather bound books that were stitched and laced together, to the common hardback today which became a common style in the early 19th century, where the boards of the book are printed separately to the interior of the book, and then glued together. He made a passionate case for the second volume of the 1832 set of Byron's Life and Works being the most important book in bookbinding history.  The first volume was made with a flat spine, with the title on a piece of paper stuck to the spine.  The second volume was case-bound - with the boards produced separately and glued on, and so were the other books in the 17 volume set.

 Even though the process became mechanised, though, there was a lot of handwork, often done by women who hand stitched the sections of the book together.  One of the ladies in the audience has done research on the suffragettes, and talked a bit about the numbers of women bookbinders she had come across.

He also talked about the invention of book cloth, which made it feasable to use cloth rather than leather to bind books.  This is a starched cloth (so that the glue doesn't soak through the fabric) which was mainly produced in Manchester.

 Françoise, from the Cabinet of Curiosities, had an interesting snippet of information to add, too.  The early Beatrix Potter books were bound in calico from the Potter family business.  When we left at the end of the talk, through the book fair, it was quite exciting to find a pretty Beatrix Potter board game on one of the stalls, Paths and Burrows, with four adorable little model rabbits as playing pieces.

"Do Not Swim!"

 

Here are the signs that have just been put up on the Warren.  

With the news that the Warren had been granted bathing status came the requirement that the water was tested by the local authority - and they have immediately discovered that there is bacteria in the water which makes it unsafe for bathing.

Hopefully, they will now do something about it, by which I mean finding the source of the bacteria and stopping it from coming into the river, not just putting signs up.

Some people have been continuing to swim anyway, but it is at their own risk, now that they know the dangers.  Just off this picture to the left were some people sunbathing on the beach, and a couple of people paddling - and I passed a very wet dog on the path on the way down.

There were two pairs of swans on the river too, which is more than I've seen for a long time.

Browniebasket Honesty Stall

 

This new Honesty stall is open on Thursdays and Fridays - the delicious cakes are £2.50 each, and there's a little cash box on top of the cool box.  It's round the back of the house opposite the dentists, on Oxford Road.

And when I was walking back down to Broad Street, a procession of motorbikes went past, from the bridge up past the Clock Tower - there must have been about 50 of them!

PBFA Book Fair

 The second PBFA Book Fair to be held at Hay Castle is this Saturday from 10am to 5pm.

Entry to the book fair is free.

As well as the booksellers, there will be two talks.

At 12 noon Arthur Green will be talking about the use of cloth in English bookbinding in the early nineteenth century.  He is a book conservator and book binder, and a bookbinding historian, based in Malvern.  The cost of the talk is £8.

At 2.30pm, Jeff Towns is giving a talk called The Wilder Shores of Dylan Thomas.  He used to run the Dylan Thomas Mobile Bookbus, and spent fifty years at Dylan's Bookstore in Swansea.  He will be bringing out a book of essays on Dylan Thomas shortly.  This talk is also £8.

Both talks will take place in the Clore Learning Space, upstairs in the Castle, and tickets are available from Hay Castle Trust.

Hay Cinema Bookshop is holding a reception for the visiting booksellers on Friday evening between 6pm and 8pm, outside in the garden if fine!

New Honesty Bookshop

 One of the small shops next to Booth Books has just re-opened as an Honesty Bookshop - there's a box on the wall to put money in, and all books are £1.

The flower shop next door is still empty.

When I went inside, I saw that the wall to the left of the picture has been stripped back to the bricks and timber framing - and there are very clear carpenters' marks on the wood.  This was done so it was easy to slot the pieces of timber together - just like medieval IKEA!

These two small shops were built between two older buildings, so the wall with the carpenters' marks was originally an outdoor wall:

as you can see here.

Beer on the Wye

 I went into Hereford on the bus on Saturday afternoon for Beer on the Wye.

I'd read that the marquee was going to be at 90 degrees to previous years, to fit on the site this year, but in fact it was the same layout as it's always been.

Usually, I try to pick a beer from each of the different categories (bitter, IPA, porter, mild etc.) but this year I saw several old favourites on the list, and went straight for them.

Here's my first half of Woodforde's Wherry, from Norfolk, with the Festival programme on my folding stool.  It was very useful - there are never enough seats!

Then I went for Jaipur from Thornbridge, a strong IPA which I think I first tried at a previous Beer on the Wye.

This was followed by a very fine vegan Cornish pasty from Loafers, one of the food vans on site.

Then I went for Batemans XB, another East coast beer, followed by Uley Pig's Ear, a pale ale which isn't often seen outside the small area around the brewery in Gloucestershire.

Number five was Elgood's Black Dog Mild - I do like a good mild, and I finished off the session with something I hadn't tried before - 8 Sail's Victorian porter, which was very tasty.

And that hit my limit, with two and two thirds pints.

There were 138 cask beers on offer, including 23 from local brewers, and 148 ciders and perries on the cider bar, 100 of those being from Herefordshire producers!  Hereford Beer House provided a variety of world beers, and there were a couple of low alcohol beers and ciders as well.  They even had a listing of gluten-free and vegan beers!

Towards the end of my afternoon, the live music was just starting on the stage with The Barcodes, three blokes in hats, with guitar, bass and electric drum kit, playing a variety of songs from the sixties onward.  I rather enjoyed them.

The charity this year was Hope Support Services.

Over the weekend, 130 volunteers served nearly 20,000 pints of beer, cider and perry to over 5,000 people.

The Champion Beer of the festival was Three Tuns Best from Three Tuns Brewery in Bishop's Castle.  They've been brewing since 1642, and their beer is now brewed in a miniature Victorian tower, which means the process starts at the top and moves by gravity down to the finished product at the bottom.

Herefordshire Beer of the Year was Rock the Hops from Ledbury Real Ales, and the West Midlands Champion Cider was also from Ledbury - Wilce's Dry Cider.

Leigh Day Legal Action

 Adverts have been appearing on Facebook for a while now publicising the legal action that Leigh Day, the law firm, want to take against the chicken farms causing pollution on the River Wye.

They were also at Hay Festival talking to people about it, and I had a good chat with them there.

On Friday evening they held a meeting in the Globe in Hay, one of a series of local meetings they'd been holding all week across Herefordshire.

Doors opened at 5pm, but the speakers didn't start until 6.30pm, so I had a good chat with Françoise and Carolyn, and some very nice cake that had been laid on for the meeting.

Leigh Day is a firm that specialises in environmental legal cases, and they have been doing this since the 1980s.  They believe that the law is a tool that can be used for positive social change.

One of their big cases was against Shell in the Niger Delta, where they helped the local community to bring an action against Shell for pollution, and took them back to court when they failed to clean up the local water supply when the judgement had been that they should do that.  Another case they worked on was against a Zambian copper mine, but in this case the copper mine cleaned up their act as soon as liability was proved against them.

In recent years they've shifted their focus to the UK, and in particular the water companies, and the consistant failure by the regulators and government to hold them to account for the sewage and pollution in our rivers.  A recent court success was that planning applications now have to include a climate impact assessment.

The way it works is that the firm organises a group litigation, on a no win - no fee basis.  If the case is won, then Leigh Day take a proportion of the damages to cover their costs.  If they lose, they will have taken out insurance which will cover the cost - and the fact that the insurance company is willing to take out a policy means that they think the case has a good chance of success.  Each person who signs up to be a part of the case is represented individually, but all the cases are heard together.  When damages are awarded, this is a deterrent to the companies - if they have to make a big pay out because of their actions, they should be less likely to do it again.  

In this case Cargill, one of the companies involved, have been shown to have done the same thing on the Oklahoma River in the USA that they are now doing on the River Wye, so there is a body of evidence already in existance to support the River Wye claim.  Cargill is an equal shareholder in Avara in the UK.  Someone said that the Cargill family are the richest people in the world, which isn't quite true, but they're certainly up there with the top billionaires.  So they can afford to clean up after themselves.

The representatives of Leigh Day invited a couple of local speakers.  One was Oliver Bullough, who talked about the plan he's been involved with to gain bathing status for the Warren.  Testing the water has now started, and the Welsh government has to publish the findings.  The Friends of the River Wye (including the Friends of the River Lugg) are considering the possibilities of extending bathing status to Glasbury and Rhayader, too.

The other speaker is the owner of Black Mountain View caravan park, near Lower House Farm close to Hay.  Which used to be a nice place to stay until the chicken shed was erected.  Now they have to deal with the smell of the chicken manure and flies, and the fans in the chicken sheds making a noise constantly.  They are also worried about the streams that feed into the River Wye, where there are white clawed crayfish and newts, which are supposed to be protected species.

They have fishing rights along a stretch of the River Wye, and this used to be quite busy, but now only a handful of fishermen come, and they say they never catch anything, and there's been at least one case of a dog getting sick after it had been in the river.  

The speaker (Dave? I think) had all the facts and figures about the failures of the planning process with Powys County Council over a number of years.

 Later in the evening, a member of the audience spoke as well.  He turned out to be the Labour candidate who stood against Jesse Norman in the general election - he's also a teacher.  He ran the length of the river to raise awareness of the pollution, and was surprised to find how many people have no idea that there is a problem.

In the Question and Answer session, they explained who could join the claim.  It's people like the owner of Black Mountain View caravan park, of course, and any other businesses that have suffered damage because of the pollution, but also anyone who uses the river for recreation - or who used to go swimming or kayaking or fishing, but no longer do.  

Even before the claim has been brought, the Avara management has been talking about their management of manure from the chicken sheds, presumably in an effort to appear to be doing the right thing.

Someone asked about why the focus was on chicken farms, and they explained that the population of Herefordshire has remained fairly constant over the last few years, and the amount of agricultural run-off has likewise been fairly constant - so what's changed to pollute the river?  And the answer is an explosion of chicken farms, which have been given planning permission without any thought as to the cumulative effect of so many of them.  They also need to make clear that it isn't the farmers they are taking action against - it's the big companies that the farmers are working for.

Civil law does not require the same amount of proof as scientific proof (the citizen scientists were mentioned for the good work they are doing in testing the water regularly and building up a body of evidence on the phosphate levels).  In court they only need to prove something on the balance of probability, so that it is likely that chicken farms are the main culprit without having to trace the pollution back directly to their door.  And even if Avara say they are complying with all the regulations, the problem still exists, and it is something that they should have to do something about.

A judgement against Avara would include damages for past loss, but also injunctions to prevent future loss - so they would have to work to clean up the mess they have made, and make sure that they don't cause a mess in future.

One recent development that may be helpful is that people can now sue the water companies for discharging sewage into the rivers, which only happened about two weeks ago.

The meeting ended with a short film called Fish Boy, by Rivers that Dance, about a theatrical presentation for schools about a boy who is friends with a fish, and when the fish disappears, he goes on a journey to find out why, and finds out all about the pollution of the river.

So Leigh Day needs as many people as possible to come forward to be part of the claim.  The leaflet I picked up only has a QR code to contact them, which I can't reproduce here, but I found their website at: 

https://www.leighday.co.uk/forms/river-wye-join-the-claim/

Inside the Cabinet of Curiosities

 I went along to Henallt House quite early, but Françoise told me later that they had been busy all evening, up until 10pm (I was chatting to her before the talk about the legal action to save the River Wye, which I will talk about in a later post).

The exhibits in the house are beautifully laid out.  There seems at first to be only a small display - but they all go into such detail!  I was very impressed with the display of cords made from different plants - Cordage by Sarah Putt - with all sorts of plants from banana to wheat.

Each room is dedicated to a different author or other famous person.  So The Pencil of Nature, with the cordage and the botanical illustrations, is dedicated to Henry Fox Talbot the early photographer, and across the hall is Richard Booth's Kingdom of Books, with a lovely Beatrix Potter display in one corner - she is being recognised as a serious illustrator of nature now, rather than just a writer of children's books.

Upstairs two of the rooms are dedicated to Tristan Gooley (How to Read Water) and Robert Macfarlane (Underland) - two recent books that are best sellers.  In the Brent Elliot/Flora room I learned that there are 30 plants with 'Angel' in their name, and in the Claire Wilcox/Patchwork room I learned that French linen used to be sent to Haiti to be bleached, to give it a fashionable blue-white tint.

Upstairs again is a room dedicated to the night sky, named for Jun'ichiro Tanazaki, and one dedicated to the French author Colette.  Jun'ichiro Tanazaki was a Japanese novelist who wrote an essay called In Praise of Shadows, and at the end of Colette's life a publisher called Mermod, from Lausanne, sent bouquets to her regularly, which she wrote about in Pour un herbier, a book of twenty two short essays.

There's also an exhibit of the Earth drowning in plastic.  There are small notices all around the exhibition giving extra information, and many of these are reproduced in the copy of the Cabbage Leaf that was being handed out to visitors as they came into the house.  The notice for this exhibit had the title "5.25 trillion pieces", which is the estimated number of pieces of plastic in the ocean right now.

Signs in the Patchwork room talked about the impact of the fashion industry on the natural world, from the amount of water needed to produce one pair of jeans (3,780 litres) to carbon emissions (8 - 10% of all carbon emissions and rising) and micro plastics (2.2 million tonnes of microfibres from clothes entering the oceans every year).

In the How to Read Water room, along with the display of pottery and clay pipes found by mudlarks on the River Thames, there was information about the 500 poultry farms in Shropshire, Herefordshire and Powys, and their impact on the River Wye, polluted rivers across the UK, and ice caps melting at a rate of 420 billion tonnes per year, leading to rising sea levels.

The little display of butterflies on the landing (dedicated to Charles Darwin) noted that the numbers of Monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico has fallen by 59% because of pesticide use and climate change, while in the UK the numbers of common butterfly species on farmland has fallen by 58% due to modern agricultural practices.

Also scattered about the house are a series of wooden puppets, each with a different costume created by Maizie Hardy.  There's a Welsh woman in a costume made from scraps of Welsh blankets, a Georgian dress covered in wild flowers called Lady of the Meadows, and The Queen of the Night in black velvet and silver sparkles.  The puppet in the Gardening alcove has a smocked top (that area is dedicated to Frances Hodgson Burnett and her book The Secret Garden).  There's also a Welsh miner, and a swimmer and a reader, and others.

All this, and I haven't even mentioned the kitchen, or the beautiful back garden, or the Rachel Carson area under the stairs - and there is far more!

Françoise and Pierre have plans for the house - I really hope they manage to achieve them!

Boozy Weekend

 Two alcohol-related events are on this weekend.

The big one is Beer on the Wye at the Rowing Club in Hereford.  It starts this afternoon (Friday) at 2pm and runs until Sunday afternoon.  On offer are 135 real ales, 130 ciders and a variety of world beers.  Food is available on site, and there is live music on Saturday and Sunday - Sunday is also the family friendly day.

It was thought that last year would be the last Beer on the Wye, because Hereford Rowing Club were planning changes to the field where the marquee is pitched, but the Rowing Club and the local CAMRA group got together and worked out a solution so that Beer on the Wye can continue - with the marquee moved at 90 degrees to its previous position.  The organisers think that this might actually be an improvement, and it means the beer festival is safe for years to come.

More locally, Artistraw Cider are having a Midsummer celebration on Saturday 13th July, at their orchard on Priory Lane in Clifford.  The event runs from 3pm to 11pm, and as well as the cider, Lucky 7 beer and Black Mountains Vineyard wine will be available, and gin and tonic from Hay Distillery, plus a variety of non-alcoholic options.  The Origin Pizza van will be there as well.  Parking is limited, so car sharing is encouraged - or even walking!  The Wye Valley Walk runs close to the orchard.

Music Everywhere!

 Hay Music is going for percussion tomorrow night with the Ensemble Bash Quartet in Hay Castle at 7.30pm.  Tickets are £17.50 or £8.75 for under 25s.  Their programme includes traditional drumming from Senegal.

The following day, at the Globe, there will be an interactive Samba drumming session starting at 11am.  It's for adults, but can include any age from 12 upwards.

Meanwhile at St. Mary's Church, Hay Madrigals and the Ystradivarius Ensemble are having a concert at 3.30pm on Saturday 13th.  Tickets are £10 on the door, with tea, coffee, wine and cakes afterwards.

Guest Author at Gay-on-Wye

AJ West will be in conversation with local bookseller Dale from Clocktower Books tomorrow evening at about 6.30pm, talking about his new book The Betrayal of Thomas True.  It's a historical thriller set around the molly houses of Georgian London, and it's getting rave reviews.

Tickets are £5, and they've already had to move the venue from the Gay-on-Wye shop to the larger space of Hay Distillery round the corner.  

AJ West also wrote The Spirit Engineer (and I think this is my push to try a new author, because both books look fascinating).

I'll be at the Cabinet of Curiosities, and I think I can only cope with one event per night, though some people are planning to do both.  There's just so much good stuff happening around Hay at the moment that it's hard to keep up!

Roadshow for the River Wye

 The law firm Leigh Day are staging talks around Herefordshire all this week.  They have plans to bring a law suit to clean up the pollution in the River Wye, and they want to know what local people think about it, and how the state of the river affects them and their businesses.

The roadshow will be visiting the Globe in Hay on Friday 12th July.  Doors open at 5pm, and the talk itself gets going at 6.30pm.

Yesterday they were in Dingestow Village Hall.

This evening they're at the Left Bank Village in Hereford.

Tomorrow evening they're at Goodrich Village Hall

On Thursday, starting from 5.30pm, they're at Grange Court, Leominster, and on Friday they're here in Hay.

Finally, on Sunday, they'll be at Penybont and District Community Centre from 12 noon to 4pm.

Cabinet of Curiosities

 Henallt House on Oxford Road will be open on the evening of Thursday 11th July, from 5pm to 10pm.

The exhibits throughout the house are all related to nature and botany - the latest issue of the Cabbage Leaf has more details of what is in each room.  Some rooms are dedicated to books or authors, such as My Kingdom of Books and Richard Booth in one of the ground floor rooms, Oliver Sacks, Frances Hodgeson Burnett's Secret Garden, Arnold Wesker in the kitchen, Rachel Carson, Ronald Macfarlane, Tristan Gooley and more.

Building work will be starting soon to renovate the house, and the hope is to set up a space dedicated to botanical illustration, with a specialised library, and possibly offering residencies to young scientists, botanical illustrators or apprentices involved in the natural world.

Damp Pride

 The weather wasn't brilliant, but people still seemed to have a good time!

It was a busy day in Hay, with the Saturday Market in the square, and the Craft and Well-Being Fair in the garden of the Globe, as well as Hay Pride at the Castle.

I had a quick look round the Well-Being Fair while I was waiting for the Pride parade to start.  There were three Tarot readers there - the going rate seems to be £30 for 30 minutes.  There were some people with therapy beds, too, and I had a good chat with one of the craftspeople.  She had some rather sweet stick mermaids, with woven tails, and called herself The Hag Under the Hill Spirit Dolls.  Billie Charity was there as the official photographer, and Amelie Williams as the official artist - she designed the new tote bags and tshirt logo.

I am actually in this picture, in a red coat off to the right hand side, just behind the samba band (picture taken by Malk Williams and shared on Facebook).

I think the Pride parade was even bigger than last year, and because the Saturday market was filling the square, the parade continued down Castle Street and round to the other Castle entrance on Oxford Road.  There was a samba band leading the procession, and the dancers in the enormous Welsh hats were back.

At the Castle, the taiko drummers were on the stage, and there was a flash mob dancing to songs like Queen's I Want to Break Free.  Boo La Croux sang Come to the Cabaret, and there was a short speech from the other two organisers of the event.  They pointed out that Pride is always political, and pledged their support for our trans brothers and sisters, and also for the people suffering in Palestine.  

Hay Pride couldn't have happened without grant funding, but they have also been fund raising, and said that the money they raised will go to future Hay Prides, but also to a Palestinian children's charity.

There were stalls on the Castle lawn, split about 50/50 between merchandise and health and charities.  The lady at the HIV stall, Fast Track Cymru, reckoned they had the best free swag - I got a nice bright red tote bag from them.  They were also providing information for sexual health, including home testing kits for sexually transmitted diseases, and a leaflet on trans and non-binary sexual health from the Terance Higgins Trust.  They can be found at www.fasttrack.wales

I met a couple of people from Squirrel Friends, too - they provide support for trans people, and can be found at squirrelfriends.org.uk  I have no idea what squirrels have to do with it!

PAVO were also there, and West Mercia Women's Aid, which supports people affected by domestic abuse.  They can be found at www.westmerciawomensaid.org

There was also a leaflet from Fighting with Pride, a charity for LGBT+ military veterans.  Their website is at www.fightingwithpride.org.uk

Then there was the fun stuff - Otherworldz, Gay-on-Wye and Lauren's comic stall were there selling a variety of rainbow themed stuff and books and comics.  Hay Pride was selling tshirts and tote bags, and I went a bit mad at the badge stall.  Inside the Castle there were more stalls with crafts and stickers and so on.

Later there was a dog show and there were also food stalls.

In the evening there was a cabaret at the Globe.

It was all great fun, and I met lots of friends there!  And everyone admired my rainbow coloured long cap, that I knitted myself.

Latest Post Box Topper

 

Even the chips are knitted!

Election Results

 Congratulations to David Chadwick, the new Liberal Democrat MP for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe.

Congratulations also go to Ellie Chowns, who won for the Greens in North Herefordshire.  I'm very happy that I was a tiny part of helping her campaign!

And goodbye to Fay Jones and Bill Wiggin, the Conservatives who lost those seats.

Helping out for the Election

 I was phoned up a few days ago by a lovely lady from the Green Party who asked if I'd like to volunteer to help on election day.  They think Ellie Chowns has a good chance of winning in North Herefordshire, so they were asking people from surrounding constituencies to go there, to concentrate their efforts.

I said I would help if I could get there - buses are always a problem - but they found someone else from the Brecon and Radnor constituency who was going to help, and I was able to get a lift with him and his wife.  We were sent to Weobley, where bundles of leaflets were waiting for us.  They even gave out wooden spatulas to poke the leaflets through difficult letter boxes.  I was a bit dubious about that at first, but it turned out to be really useful!

The husband and wife team went out around the rural area, since the instructions said that it should be done in pairs, and I went off to Dilwyn with a chap from Wrexham.  We each did half the village.  I've never seen so many Green posters on display before!

I met some lovely people on the doorstep, and only one lady refused a leaflet.  "I'm neutral," she said.  "I'm a Jehovah's Witness.  I'm waiting for God's Kingdom."

Back at the hub in Weobley I waited for my lift to return, and chatted with another couple of people who had come down from Chester.  It was all very well organised, and by the time I left leafletting had been replaced by the volunteers who were going round knocking on doors to see if people had voted yet.  The couple who were hosting the hub provided teas, coffees and a snack lunch, and they were also baking biscuits for an allotment event on Saturday.

They arrived with an injured hedgehog that they'd rescued from the side of the road, so our journey home was diverted to Kington vets, so they could drop it off there.  Somehow it seemed like a stereotypically Green thing to do!

After that, I went to cast my own vote, and saw quite a few familiar faces in the queue to the polling station.  The chap who was telling outside the polling station admired my suffragette badges (I always wear them on election days) and said what a pity it was that some women he knew wouldn't vote, after all the trouble the suffragettes went to.

This evening I shall be sitting down with a glass of wine and the radio into the night to see what the results are.  It should be an interesting night.

Vintage Cars

 

I saw this lovely vintage Ford a few days ago, and I've also seen several Morgan sports cars around Hay - each time when I didn't have a camera with me!

Pagan Picnic

 A Facebook page started recently for pagans who are local to the Herefordshire and Worcestershire area.  

Normally, I can't go to meetings, or moots as pagans call them, because they're in the evening and there are no buses (and my broomstick can't fly all the way to Hereford!).  However, the Facebook people organised a picnic on Saturday on Castle Green in Hereford, so I thought I'd like to go along to that.

Little did I know that the picnic was cancelled at the last minute because of the dodgy weather - I was already on the bus.

Going through Herefordshire was interesting, in the run up to the general election.  I saw about 5 Labour posters, and one for Reform on the bus route.

Dorstone was having a Heritage Skills Day, and as the bus drew up by the Pandy, two ladies were setting up a wicker weaving area on the little green.

I didn't go straight to Castle Green when I got into Hereford, either.  It seemed like a good opportunity to find the EE shop and renew my phone contract, since there is no longer an EE shop in Hay (it's now St Michael's Hospice shop).  The young lady I spoke to was very helpful, and even got a slightly cheaper deal for me.

Some pagans (and a couple of cute dogs) had turned up at Castle Green, despite the weather, and it didn't actually rain while we were there.  I'd brought food to share, and we chatted about local history, and archaeology, and pagan meetings and rituals, and it was lovely.  It's a pity more people didn't turn up anyway.  

I also discovered that there is a labyrinth elsewhere on Castle Green, and I think I'd like to go back soon and walk it.

Hustings - Other Questions

The meeting was supposed to finish at 8pm, but there were lots more questions on the list, and the consensus from the audience was that they should carry on - the Globe allowed the meeting to continue until 8.30pm, when they really did have to kick everyone out!

 One question came from a seventeen year old girl called Daisy, who was probably the youngest person in the room.  She pointed out that she had lived under a Tory government for fourteen of her seventeen years, and wanted to know if her future looked brighter?

Fay Jones said something about educational standards (and was heckled with "She's lying!").  Matthew Dorrance said that the system was broken, and the last Labour government had been better, and Ammi Kaur-Dhaliwal, who works with secondary school children, said that kids today are much more aware of the issues, and they need empowerment.  Later, she mentioned being in favour of young people voting from the age of sixteen.  David Chadwick quipped that asset prices are better.

The candidates were also asked what their priorities would be as an MP.

Ammi Kaur-Dhaliwal said it would be dealing with issues for constituents.

David Chadwick said there were different responsibilities between the Welsh government and Westminster, and who controls what, and that funding was important.

Fay Jones talked about better broadband for rural areas.

Matthew Dorrance talked about stopping younger people from needing to move away from the area, and international development.

And at one point there was uproar as David Chadwick went completely off the topic of the question to attack Vaughan Gething, the Labour First Minister of Wales and his funding scandal.  Despite shouting from the audience and the efforts of the moderator , he would not stop.  Roger Williams, the previous Liberal Democrat MP for Brecon and Radnor, was in the audience, and he actually stood up to remonstrate with him.  It took some time for order to be restored.  Matthew Dorrance also mentioned that he was a friend of Vaughan Gething.

Up until that point, David Chadwick was looking like quite a reasonable candidate, but he did himself no favours with that outburst.  Matthew Dorrance has a lot of local experience, and he was getting on quite well with Fay Jones, chatting quietly between questions.  After all, they have been working together locally.  Ammi Kaur-Dhaliwal impressed me too.  I'm afraid that, whatever her personal qualities, Fay Jones is part of the Conservative government that has got the country into the state that it is now in, so I can't bring myself to recommend her as a candidate.