This month's Enchanted Hour at the Library is entitled Biodiversity in Your Back Garden, and it is presented by Stewart Roberts. He posts photographs of local nature regularly on Facebook, along with information about the birds, or fungi, or what ever it might be, and the names in Welsh.
In his introduction to his talk, he says: "You have to know what is there to love it. If you love something, you want to protect it".
Enchanted Hour is on Friday 8th November at 2pm, and is free.
I've just seen on Facebook that local author Phil Rickman has died. I think he'd been ill, but it was still unexpected.
Phil wrote the Merrily Watkins series of mysteries, set around Herefordshire, including The Magus of Hay, with one body turning up in Cusop Dingle. Merrily Watkins was the Herefordshire Deliverance Minister - or exorcist, and a lot of local folklore was included in the books. There's even a tie-in book called Merrily's Border, which explores all the real local places mentioned in the books.
He also appeared several times at Hay Festival, and at smaller local events, sometimes with our other local author Barbara Erskine. One of his book launches was at Hay Castle, with Rob Soldat dressed as a Knight Templar, which was great fun. (I'm pretty sure that was the book that was set around Garway).
His other books include the Dr John Dee series and the Marco series for children, set around Glastonbury, and stand alone novels like The Man in the Moss. He had another mystery series with a Welsh shaman/trans character called Cindy Mars-Lewis, which also included local settings. In fact, I was reading Mean Spirit, which is partly set around Malvern, only last week.
He lived in Urishay.
Hay Comics are organising another movie night at the Parish Hall, on 1st November, and of course the theme is horror. They're putting two films on, and you only find out what they are on the night. Tickets are £4 from EventBrite in advance or £5 on the door and the doors open (with an ominous creaking sound) at 6.30pm. They're promising cult with emerging modern classic horror. For the full movie night experience, they are also providing Boiled Bobskis hotdogs and novelty popcorn, and soft drinks. If anyone wants alcoholic refreshment, they have to bring their own - and costumes are welcome.
There's a rather good exhibition on at the Castle this week - the national exhibition of the Association of Guilds of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers. This year's theme is Battles, Borders, Books, which makes it perfect for Hay Castle. It includes practical clothing, wall hangings, and a wide variety of techniques of using yarn.
The exhibition closes on October 27th. (just in time for the Castle to get Spooky in time for Hallowe'en!).
Jayson Gillham has been to Hay before. He's a concert pianist, and for this upcoming concert he will be playing Beethoven, Chopin and Fauré.
The concert will be at St Mary's Church, on Saturday 26th October, starting at 7pm. Tickets are £20, and for under-25s £10. There will also be a small number of free tickets for under-25s, on a first come, first served basis. There will also be a bar.
Then on Friday 15th November, also at St Mary's Church, Ben Tarlton will be playing cello and Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux will be playing violin. These performers are new to Hay, and will be playing pieces by Mozart, Ravel and Bartok among others - I'm pretty sure that duets for cello and violin are quite unusual, so that should be an interesting concert. Tickets for this one are £17.50, with under-25 tickets at £8.
I ran into Father David this morning outside the Cozy Cafe, and he told me about a short film that he's hosting at St Mary's Church on Thursday 31st October at 7.30pm.
It's only half an hour long, and it's about the problems with phosphates which are used as fertiliser on farmers' fields and then washed into the rivers, causing pollution.
Most of the film is about the Somerset Levels, but they also mention Our Lady of the Waters and the pilgrimage begun by Father Richard. As well as the footage of the first pilgrimage, they have contributions from scientists, farmers, businesses, and concerned individuals.
This isn't just a problem in the UK, of course - it's global, because of modern farming techniques, and until those techniques are changed, the problem will only get worse.
Entry is free, refreshments will be available, and there will be a Q&A session after the film.
I'm thinking of sending out a raven to search for signs of dry land!
Today children were sent home from school early - and Peterchurch School is rumoured to have flooded! Michaelchurch Escley and Clifford schools have also been closed.
Meanwhile bus routes across Herefordshire were shut down because of the amount of water on the roads, and top soil from fields is washing into the river at a worrying rate.
And it's still raining.
About a dozen people gathered for Ainsleigh Rice's talk on Heritage Apples, which turned out to be a fascinating look at the detective work that researchers have to do to correctly identify the different varieties.
These days, it's possible to get a DNA fingerprint of the apple variety, and the National Fruit Collection has a huge collection of these - but it's still possible to find something that has never been seen by the NFC, and it's also true that mistakes happen, and apples are mis-named or renamed. One of the four apple varieties Ainsleigh talked about, Brithmawr, turned out to have been renamed by a rival plant nursery as Pride of the Orchard, and the original grower even had a note printed in his catalogues warning of this unethical practice.
The first apple to be featured was Gabalva - which comes from Cardiff (not related to Cabalva across the river from Hay). The variety was discovered at Aberglasney Hall, and Cardiff Castle is about to replant some trees; the original breeder was the head gardener for the Marquis of Bute, and worked at Cardiff Castle.
Then there was Hitchin's Pippin, or Hedge Apple, Brithmawr and finally the much more complicated story of Egglestone Styre, which presently has two rival claimants for the name, one by way of Tasmania! After seeing the painstaking way that the evidence was put together for the previous three apples (including tracing a link from Rutland to Crickhowell by way of a Victorian wedding) I'd tend to side with the non-Tasmanian option, which actually has paper records to support it. The Bulmers sales records had a sale listed to an orchard on the other side of Herefordshire of 52 trees in 1934 - the orchard still exists, and they still have their records which show that they bought 52 trees, and where they planted them. Unfortunately, they didn't like Egglestone Styre as a cider apple, so they cut off the tops of those trees, and grafted new varieties onto the root stock.
Apple trees are wierd like that. It's impossible to grow a variety from seed - just about anything apple shaped would come up - so keeping the variety going is done by grafting scions of the original tree onto root stock.
Fortunately for the investigators, in this case the orchard workers missed some of the original fruiting branches, so the trees that now exist carry fruit of both varieties! Since one is yellow and the others (one of them was Dabinett) are red, they were easy to tell apart!
All the apples mentioned in the talk were there on the table in front of Ainsleigh. When I went in to the talk, the apples were just apples. By the end of the talk, I was amazed that I hadn't noticed all of those Really Obvious Differences between them!
Now is probably a good moment to mention the Marcher Apple Network, which does a lot of good apple related work locally, and only costs £20 a year to join.
Also, Ainsleigh is hosting a walk around his own orchard in Cusop next Sunday, weather permitting, time to be arranged.
This was the first Enchanted Hour that Mary Anne arranged, since the librarian who started it can no longer carry on. I hope it's the first of many under the 'new management'!
The next Enchanted Hour at the Library will be on Friday 11th October at 2pm.
Ainsleigh Rice will be talking about Heritage Apples.
