Events over Festival Weekend

 Hay Winter Festival is coming up soon, (next weekend, in fact) and there are lots of things going on around town that are not in the official programme.

Wobbly Owl is the new cider shop opposite the Blue Boar.  They are paired with an Owl Sanctuary in Ebbw Vale - they even sell cuddly owls to raise funds.  On 29th November, they will have some owls from the sanctuary in the shop.

Down at the Poetry Bookshop on 30th November, there will be a day of poetry.  From 10am to 3pm, on the hour, they will have two poets performing their poetry - a different two poets each time.  They are partnered with Parthian Books for the event, which is free.  There are actually thirteen poets - there will be three performing at 1pm.

Also on 30th November, and also partnered with Parthian Books, North Books will be hosting an event at 4pm.  The event is called Birds of the Imagination, and features three writers talking about how birds and the natural world thread through our lives and our imagination and into our words and writing.  Tickets are £5 from the bookshop - please book in advance.

Also at North Books, in the evening, there's live music.  Julie Brominicks will be reading extracts from her travelogue The Edge of Cymru, published by Seren Books, with music from Rowan Bartram's EP Outta Borders.  The email I have doesn't mention ticket prices, but the doors open at 7.30pm for the performance to start at 8pm.  Drinks will be available.

Violin and Cello at St Mary's

 The concert last night at St Mary's, organised by Hay Music, was absolutely wonderful.

The performers were Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux on violin, and Ben Tarlton on cello, and they spent the morning in local schools doing music workshops with the children.

The music they played was mostly unfamiliar to me - which is the main reason I go to concerts.  I want to discover something new.  

The first half was heavily Eastern European, and early 20th century, music from Reinhold Gliere, Bela Bartok and Erwinn Schulhoff.  I'd heard of Bartok, of course, but I didn't know about his work collecting folk music around Hungary.  The music played was a selection from his duos for two violins, arranged for violin and cello, and written as a series of lessons for violin, from easiest to most difficult.

The other two composers were new to me.  Gliere was a Soviet composer, though the piece that was played came from before the Soviet Union, in 1909 - and my problem here is that I don't know how to describe music.  I can only say that it was beautiful and I'll be looking out for recordings by the composer in future.

Schulhoff was Czech (that's been a bit of a theme this week!), and is described in the concert notes as a virtuosic tour de force, which seems accurate.  They played fast; they played slow; they plucked the strings - it was incredible to watch.  Another composer I'll be looking out for in future.

The second half was made up of two pieces, one by Mozart and one by Ravel - so I was familiar with the composers, but not these particular pieces.  Charlotte explained that they had chosen the Ravel piece to end the concert because of the relationships between it and the Schulhoff piece - so another virtuosic tour de force, which was recieved with rapturous applause.

As an encore, they played a short tango, which was lovely.

The next Hay Music concert will be part of Hay Winter Festival, and after that there is the Christmas Concert by the Choir of King's College London on Saturday 14th December at 7pm.

Library Fundraiser

 Hay Library still needs help.  

So, to raise some more money to keep the library open, there will be a fundraising gig at the Globe on Thursday 28th November, at 8pm.  Tickets are £10, and the group performing is The Breaks, who apparently play jazz-infused hip hop and funk.  If anyone wants to hear what they're like ahead of time, there are a couple of YouTube videos on the Globe website.  They've played as a support band for performers like Courtney Pine, and are offering their services free to keep the library open.

Also performing will be the Hay Climate Choir.

Bike Sale

 Drover Holidays are holding a bike sale on Saturday 23rd November, from 9am.

It's a good chance to buy good quality secondhand bikes, and accessories.

They even have a little cafe up there at their shop on Forest Road.

Poetry and Music at North Books

 The shop was packed, but there was just space for a keyboard and the viola player, and Simon the Poet.

Sadly, Omar Majeed couldn't make it, but Simon had put together a very good programme of nature poetry even though he admitted that he hadn't given much thought to climate change or climate activism up until now.  Rod and Steven provided musical interludes.

The first poem was from Cressida Gethin, the girl from Dorstone who is now in prison for helping to arrange a Zoom call to organise the blocking of the M25 motorway as a protest.

This was followed by a poem about hiking in the Rockies by Gary Snyder and a Czech poem called Prayer for Water.  Simon has been translating Czech poems into English, and Rod at the piano actually lived in Czechoslovakia from 1968 for a time.  Rod said that everyone in Czechoslovakia knows this poem, and it has great meaning for them.  When Simon had recited the English version, he repeated the last verse in Czech, and followed that up with part of his own Moravian Suite - Moravia was the part of Czechoslovakia that Jan Scakel the poet came from, and where he lived just down the road.

Then we got part of Wordsworth's poem about Tintern and the Wye Valley, and a poem by Gerald Manley Hopkins.

Simon read one of his own poems, about living with sheep just above Hay, and followed it up with Wendell Berry and Mary Oliver.

All of these poets are worth seeking out, by the way.  Their work is wonderful.

We finished with a Welsh lullaby, sung by Ros, who was sitting in the audience - so it was a trilingual evening, with English, Czech and Welsh.  Rod said that, when he brings musicians together to play jazz, the group is called Blue Haddock, and Ros lives in Tenby and is a mermaid - so the title for the evening was Blue Haddock and the Tenby Mermaid.

It was a wonderful evening, and a lot of money was raised for the Prison Phoenix Trust, which is a charity that organises yoga and meditation sessions in prisons.

Cabinet of Curiosities

 Saturday was the last open day of the Cabinet of Curiosities before  the renovations of the building start.  As ever, there were new things to see, like the writing boards from Mali which Françoise and Pierre picked up at the Book Fair at Hay Castle earlier this year.

On Sunday, I was chatting to two chaps who were visitors to Hay as they were buying some books from the Cinema Bookshop.  They had tried to find the Cabinet of Curiosities, and got lost, partly because they had forgotten the name.  "I kept thinking it was the House of Trembling Madness, but I knew that wasn't right," he said.  "That's a pub in York!"  

Then they asked what sort of a museum it was anyway - antiques?  fine arts?

I explained about the focus on botany and the health of the planet, as well as the collaborations with local young artists (I'm sure there were some new mannequins around the house this time, for instance, or at least, ones that I haven't noticed before).

So they said they'd be very interested to come back to Hay when it re-opens.

Rambling Rosa

 

A new florist's shop has opened, where The Flaming Lady used to be.  Flaming Lady has moved into Hay Distillery, where they will be holding an event on 28th November, from 8pm, to celebrate the life of Athene English, who died recently.

Meanwhile Gordon, who had the florist's shop on Lion Street, is working out of the garage of the big white house on the corner of Broad Street and Chancery Lane, at the other end from Hay Distillery.

Enchanted Hour Wildlife

 The talk by Stewart Roberts at the Library yesterday was very well attended - extra chairs had to be brought out.  He had a great many slides to show, of a wide variety of birds, insects and small animals that could be found in his garden, and also of local fungi and other plants.

As an organic gardener, he has a bird feeder which attracts a variety of small birds which also eat insect pests in the garden - and the presence of the small birds also attracts birds of prey like sparrowhawks, which eat the small birds.  There was a good picture of a female sparrowhawk which was feasting on a pigeon she had just killed, outside the Doctors' Surgery.  "The pigeon was beyond medical help."

He also has a pond, where dragonflies and damsel flies breed.  He also had pictures of toads, frogs and newts, though not all of them came from his own garden.

He even had a picture from the Begwns of the damage badgers can cause to a lawn when they're digging for worms and other insects.

I've seen slowworms in various places around Hay (which are neither slow, nor worms - they're a type of legless lizard).  He talked about trying to encourage a local grave digger not to kill them, and it was all going well until the slowworm panicked and shed its tail in a bid to escape!  He has also seen grass snakes, though he hasn't seen the other native British snake, the adder, locally.

There are birds and butterflies that are summer migrants to the UK - swallows for instance coming all the way from Africa - and some slightly less welcome visitors like Asian hornets, which have not been seen locally yet, but are spreading across the UK because of the milder weather we have now.

It was a fascinating talk, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was filled with enthusiasm to get out more and see what wildlife I could find.  For those on Facebook, he posts his pictures regularly on the Hay Community page.

The next Enchanted Hour will be a talk by an author from New York who now lives locally, about Christmas children's books.  She's hoping to introduce a local audience to some American classics.

Poetry and Music at North Books

 On Tuesday 12th November, at 7pm, there will be an evening of poetry and music at North Books.  

Music will be provided by Steven Broom on viola and Rod Paton on piano (not sure where they're going to fit a piano in!  Maybe it'll be a keyboard).

Simon Pettifar and Omar Majeed will provide the poetry.

The evening is to raise funds for the Prison Phoenix Trust, which teaches yoga and meditation in prisons, and is in support of Cressida Gethin, from Dorstone, who was one of the Just Stop Oil climate activists who was sentenced to four years in prison recently for causing serious disruption on the M25.

The event is free, though donations to the charity are welcome, and drinks are available.

Lest We Forget

 

The post box toppers have come full circle with the Remembrance topper.  Last year it was a head with a helmet, and that was the start of all the creative and imaginative designs through the year.

Cabinet of Curiosities

 Henallt House, the Cabinet of Curiosities, will be having an open day on Saturday 9th November, from 11am to 7pm.  

This will be the last time it is open in its current form, as renovations will start soon.  As the house is a listed building, everything has to be done very carefully to fit in with the historic fabric of the building - I'm sure they'll do a wonderful job.

Phosphates: Too Much of a Good Thing?

 I went to St Mary's to watch the film about phosphates the other night.  About 20 or so people were there.  

The people who made the film had originally made a film about COP26, the climate summit in Glasgow, and on the strength of this West Country Voices in Somerset asked them to make a film about their main environmental concern - the build up of phosphates in the Somerset Levels.

They did a lot of investigation.  They visited a sewage treatment works in Wincanton, which is now removing phosphates from the water - previously the phosphates just went straight through to the river.  There was an organic farm that produces biogas - they use the waste products from livestock, and also buy in stuff like scrap bread from supermarkets.  Apparently 50% of bread in this country goes to waste, which is a whole other problem in itself.

They talked about the back up in the planning system, since applications have to show that they can deal with the extra phosphates from human waste when they are building new houses.

And they had some good footage of Our Lady of the Wye being paddled down the river on the pilgrimage that Father Richard organised.

The question and answer session after the film was very interesting too - there were several people in the room who knew a lot about the subject.  One chap said that the discharge of phosphates into the Wye used to be about 50/50 from sewage and agriculture.  Now all the sewage plants along the Wye have phosphate strippers, so the balance has gone to 17% sewage and 83% agriculture, but the total level of phosphates has risen because of people like Cargill not dealing with their waste products.

The point was also made that phosphates are a valuable resource that is being wasted by being washed into the rivers and out to sea.  There are places where more phosphates are needed to grow crops - and the stuff being wasted, and polluting the rivers, could have a use in agriculture instead.

Meanwhile in government, a few years ago, a rule was made that there had to be a balance of nutrients going into farms compared to the output of the farms, so the farmers didn't use more than was needed to grow the crop.  However, Therese Coffey, the government minister in charge at the time, decided that this would place an unfair burden on farmers, so the Environment Agency didn't have to enforce it.

Someone said that it would be a very good thing if people started writing to their MPs to get that ruling enforced.

So there are lots of solutions to the problem, if the will is there to make the investments, and to enforce the regulations that already exist.

Athene English

 More sad news - Athene English, of The Great English Outdoors on Castle Street, has died after a short illness.  She ran the shop, full of leather goods and blankets, for over thirty years.

There will be a small, family funeral (her son Louis has made the announcement on Facebook), followed by a celebration of her life at Penpont Estate on Saturday 9th November from 2pm.

In lieu of flowers, the family have asked for donations to a charity close to Athene's heart - Action for Conservation - with a link in their announcement.

The Great English Outdoors will continue to trade for the forseeable future.