Outdoor Theatre at the Castle

 The Three Inch Fools will be performing tomorrow (Sunday), with an essential guide to how to keep your head in a Tudor Court!

The Secret Diary of Henry VIII follows young Henry through fighting the French, re-writing religion, and marrying all those wives!

It's an outdoor performance, so the audience has to bring their own seats - and picnics are welcome from 6pm, with the performance starting at 7pm.

Tickets are around £20, with children half price, but they are offering a 10% discount.  Tickets are available through the Hay Castle website.

Hay Music Festival

 The box office is open for the ninth Hay Music Festival - a weekend of concerts, films and discussions from Friday September 13th to Sunday September 15th.

There's even a whole Festival ticket, costing £105, to cover all the events apart from the Hay Remembers guided walk and the two films, which are paid for separately.

One of the films, Testimony, is a life of Shostakovich starring Ben Kingsley, and the other is The Death of Stalin, Armando Iannucci's dark comedy, so there's a definite Russian theme to the festival this year.  Music by Shostakovich is included in most of the concerts and there's also a lecture/discussion about the composer.

The concerts include the Fitzwilliam String Quartet and Sinfonia Cymru string quartet at St Mary's Church as well as a piano and cello concert.

Meanwhile at the Castle there's an experimental composer performing The Inside-Out Piano.

All the details and ticket prices are on the Hay Music Trust website.

h.Art in Hay

 It's time for the h.Art brochure to appear again.  I picked up mine in Hereford this morning.

The h.Art week starts on Saturday 7th September, and happens at venues right across the county.  All sorts of art is included, and artists open their studios to the public as well as putting on exhibitions.

Just across the river from Hay we have Cabalva Farm Gallery at Whitney-on-Wye, showing paintings and sculptures from five artists, including Sally Matthews, and at Cabalva House there is a working pottery studio, with work from eight different potters, and the offer of tea and cake in the walled garden.

Larchwood Studio on Racquety Farm, on the road into Hay, has an exhibition of Maureen Richardson's work - she is a renowned paper maker, and there are also paintings in oils, up-cycling, ceramics, Japanese woodblock print making, blown glass sculpture, floral art and stained glass.  They also have a licenced cafe/restaurant.

In Hay itself there's Oil and Oak on the end of Castle Street, with a variety of local artists. 

Tucked away near the Clock Tower at 15 Broad Street there's an exhibition by Elena Underhill of watercolours and sketches.  She has several pictures of the River Wye, and said that if she sells any of them a percentage of the profits will go to Friends of the River Wye to buy testing kits for the citizen scientists.  At the moment she is one of the three artists who have a sketching exhibition at The Chair, but that is closing soon.

Hay Dragon

 I was told this lunch time that there was a new statue at the top of the car park, so this evening I went down to have a look:

It seems that Hay has a new dragon!  The sculptor is Danny Thomas the chainsaw man.

While I was in the area, I went up to the Castle Stables to the Tuesday evening market and picked up some potatoes and eggs.

I also had to inform a visitor that they had missed the last bus back to Hereford - so I'm not sure what they're going to do now....

Sketching at The Chair

 The Chair gallery has a new exhibition of local sketches by three different artists, some pen and ink and some watercolours. 

They also have a competition - they are giving out postcard sized pieces of paper for members of the public to sketch on, and the winner will have their sketch made into a postcard.  There are several entries to the competition hung up in the gallery already, and it looks like a fun thing to do.

Writing With Light

 I haven't been keeping up to date with events at the Castle, partly because I was away earlier in the month, but here's something that sounds exciting.

This weekend is Writing With Light.

It starts on Friday 23rd August, with a talk by Owen Sheer at 6pm followed by an indoor showing of his film Resistance at 7.15pm.

On Saturday there's a workshop on creating your own Booktok at 2pm with Elle Adams and Toni Cook. Then at 6pm Elle Adams presents Bookflicks.

At 8.30pm there's an outdoor screening of The Princess Bride!  Swordfights!  Pirates!  True love!  (I love this movie!).

On Sunday at 3.30pm there's a talk on writing music for film and TV, and at 8.30pm there's an outdoor showing of the film Jaws.

Bring your own seating to the outdoor showings - snacks and popcorn will be available, and the film will go ahead whatever the weather!

Latest River Test Results

 The latest news I've had on test results for pollution in the River Wye is that the Warren is safe for swimming at the moment.

 https://www.facebook.com/share/v/UX99tHiJDY4Be2Ba/

I hope the link works - this is a short video of the procession from St Mary's Church to the River Wye canoe landing stage to launch the statue of Our Lady of the Waters on the first stage of her trip down the Wye.

(I'm afraid it's a copy and paste job after all - sorry)

 

The morning started with Mass in the church, followed by the procession.  There was a brief moment of confusion when one of the bearers for the statue forgot to turn up (!) but a substitute was quickly found.  

Catherine Kramer sang a hymn under the bridge, and then the statue was securely lashed to two canoes, and launched into the river, with a small support boat that had the words Save the Wye on the sail. 

I have to say that some of the comments under the Facebook post are quite ignorant.  The statue is not "more junk ending up in the ocean".  It will be taken back to St Mary's to be used again at the end of the pilgrimage.  I don't see how another commenter could say that St Mary's was not a family church any more when they later said they never go near it - how do they know what it is like if they never go?

Also, not all the people in the procession are committed Christians, but some people were there because they are concerned about the pollution of the River Wye, which this pilgrimage is designed to highlight.  I was with a friend, and I was explaining the service to her as we went, because she is not a church goer.

Just a final word on the hymn that we were singing - the chorus was fine.  We all got "Ave Maria".  But some of the verses neither rhymed nor scanned, so they were quite difficult to sing!

What I did on my Holidays

 Here are the costumes I wore for WorldCon:

Starfleet officer, Star Trek the Next Generation

kilt in the Convention tartan

UNIT sergeant from 1970s Doctor Who

and the Demon Crowley from Good Omens.

I went to lots of interesting panel discussions, met lots of lovely people, went to a concert with full orchestra playing SF and Scottish music, attended the Hugo Awards, which are the Oscars of the SF world, and generally had a really great time!

I'm recovering now!

Launching Our Lady of the Waters Again

 I'm back from Glasgow WorldCon.  I had a brilliant time and since several people have asked me to share photos, they will be coming just as soon as I can sort them out.

The first person I bumped into when I got back to Hay was Elena.  I'd literally stepped off the last bus home, dumped my bags and gone up to Spar to get milk.  She told me that St Mary's is holding a big event on Thursday morning.

Our Lady of the Waters, the wooden statue that was the focus of a pilgrimage down the River Wye, is being launched again.  She is being taken from Hay via Bredwardine and Moccas to Hereford, in a call to action against the pollution of the River Wye.  Thursday has been chosen because it is the Feast of the Assumption, an important day in the Marian calendar (when the Virgin Mary was taken up bodily to Heaven).

The timetable is as follows: 

8.30am    Mass at St Mary's

9am        procession from St Mary's to Hay Bridge

9.30am    launch at Hay Bridge

4pm        arrival at Bredwardine (with musicians playing Bridge over Troubled Waters)

5 - 6pm    tea at Moccas village hall (£10 prior booking required - tickets from Rachel Jenkins on 01981                 500726)

6.30 - 7.30pm    Gregorian chant by the monks of Belmont Abbey at Moccas Church

The following day, the statue sets off again from Bredwardine to Hereford starting at 9am, arriving at Hereford Cathedral in time for 5.30pm Evensong in the Lady Chapel.

On August 17th, the statue will be taken in procession to All Saints Church for coffee and cake between 10 and 11am, after which the statue will continue down the river to Hoarwithy Church for Evensong at 5.30pm.

Brief Hiatus

 I shall not be posting for a week or so.

See you on the other side of the World Science Fiction Convention!

Shoplifters in Hay

 On Saturday I stopped by Gay-on-Wye, as I finally got round to picking up a copy of the book they've been promoting - The Betrayal of Thomas True by AJ West, a Georgian era gay love story and murder mystery.  

Tom had been getting in touch with other booksellers to spread the news that there were shoplifters in town - they took some clothes from Otherworldz at the craft centre in the morning and were caught on CCTV.  He hadn't got round to the Cinema Bookshop yet, so I went up to let them know.  Fortunately they had already heard through another part of the grapevine.

The good news is that the stolen clothes have been returned to Otherworldz!

They say they are going to give them a good wash, and donate them to a local homeless charity.

Sighting of Churchill

 It's not every day you lock up the shop and look up to see Winston Churchill strolling past!  He was with another chap in a 1940s suit, and two ladies.  They must have been coming from the afternoon concert at St Mary's Church.

Welcoming the Chelsea Pensioners

 

It's the latest post box topper!