Stuff Is Happening

 Well, I thought I'd be back to normal this week, but Stuff Is Happening.  On the surface I am serene like a swan, while paddling furiously under the water!  So I'm somewhat distracted just now, and it will be a little while before I can make anything public.

 Meanwhile, I'm loving my new laptop, which does all the things my old laptop did, but wizzier and with a few things in different positions.

And I'm pleased to see that Wye Fret, the guitar shop, is doing well enough that they need bigger premises, so they're moving next door to the current shop on Castle Street, into what used to be Number Two.

Also, I popped into Oil and Oak on Castle Street a few days ago, to find that the room upstairs has been transformed into a Pagan sanctuary.  It's got a Pagan altar, and a Wheel of the Year on the wall, and some very good artwork from The Moon and the Furrow.  Sadly, I came to it rather late, and the exhibition is being taken down this week to make way for a new one.

There's a new exhibition at the Chair, too - when I passed by this evening they were having their opening reception, which seemed very well attended.  I didn't have time to find out who the artist is.

New Laptop

 I've spent the afternoon with Tim Pugh, who was setting up my brand new laptop for me, and transferring everything over from the old one.  I was sad to see it go, but I had hammered the keyboard into a state of chronic disrepair, and the Windows upgrade coming soon meant that the version on the old laptop would no longer be supported, so it was time to take the plunge with a new machine.

A few things are in different places, but I'm figuring it out.

Wellbeing Forum

 Well, I'm physically and mentally back in Hay now, and this morning was market day.  I was getting all my usual treats - grapes for tomorrow morning when I watch Star Trek with a friend (we're just about to start season 2 of Star Trek Deep Space Nine), delicious cakes (pear and red berry) from Bernie, bread from Alex Gooch.

There were leaflets about the Well Being Assembly at the Swan on the Primrose Farm stall and the stall next to it, which was for a fasting retreat in Craswell.  The lady at that stall said she wanted to meet the locals in Hay, and the best way to do that was to come to the market - but Craswell is a bit too close to Hay for anyone living here to want to go there for a holiday!

I also saw Mike, the organiser of the Well Being Assembly, going round with leaflets (I already have my ticket).  He's at the nervous stage of wondering whether anyone will turn up, though the previous two Assemblies were packed out.

Help make Mike less nervous by booking a free ticket now!   

https://hayresilience.org/ is the website to go to.  The Assembly takes place on Saturday 10th May at the Swan from 1.30pm (to start at 2pm) until 5pm, and the tickets are free.  (Tickets are needed in case there are more people interested in going than there are seats in the function room).

Physically in Hay, Virtually in Belfast!

 I've had a comment worrying about me because I haven't been posting very much recently.

The reason is that I normally go to EasterCon, the big science fiction convention which is held over the Easter weekend.  This year, however, it is being held in Belfast, which I felt was a bit too far to go, so I bought a supporting membership which entitles me to watch the discussion panels and lectures, and take part in conversations on the Discord server over the weekend.

I'm posting this in the half hour break between a panel about religion in fantasy and one about Arthurian myth.

So my body is in Hay, but my mind is in Belfast!  (It's a very good convention so far - I'm just sorry I can't have the complete experience of chatting to people in the bar as well as attending the events).

Normal service will be resumed sometime next week.

New Bus Stop

 I was told that a new bus stop had appeared at the top of the car park, so this morning I went along and had a look:

 At first I thought they had forgotten the roof, but apparently the roof is coming later - it's going to be a green roof, with plants, hence all the slogans in English and Welsh on the bus shelter about reducing CO2 and being greener.

It's smaller than the old shelter, but it faces the road this time, and it does have a little bench (there is a more comfortable bench nearby, but it's not under shelter).

And hopefully, when the new bus timetable is finalised, there will be up to date information about the bus times at the bus stop too.

This side of the road is the responsibility of Powys County Council.  The other side of the road is the responsibility of the Town Council, who repaired the bench recently.

One good idea that came up while discussing the bus shelters was that they should be marked with the destination.  Some visitors get confused and don't know which side of the road to stand for Hereford or Brecon.

Well Being Assembly

 This is the third of the meetings to discuss the Hay Community Resilience Initiative.  Previous meetings have been focussed on local food and local energy production - now it's the turn of Mental Health.

The keynote speaker at the meeting will be the Deputy Commissioner for Future Generations for Wales, Marie Broussau-Navarro.

Part of the discussion will be about defining what we mean by mental health and well-being, and then trying to work out what we can do as a community to improve people's mental health and well being.

Questions that the Assembly will be asking include how we, as a community, can catch people suffering from anxiety or mild depression before they need medical help, and how can we build a supportive community?

Tickets are free, but limited by the size of the room at the Swan, and the meeting will be held on Saturday 10th May from 2pm to 5pm.

The Food Assembly was held last year, and the ideas put forward then have evolved - now the Hay group is working closely with Bwyd Powys Food, which is developing a South Powys Food Loop, inspired by a scheme that is already running in the South East of England.  So Hay would have a Hub linked to that Loop of local food producers, to get the food to local consumers.

Craft Centre Toilets

 When I went up to use the cash machine yesterday, I was pleased to see that the public toilets in the Craft Centre have re-opened.

I hope they don't get vandalised this time.

Pulp Fiction Exhibition

 I went up to the Buttermarket this morning to see the new Cabinet of Curiosities exhibition, which is all about paper, from the making of paper in a traditional French mill to the many uses of paper.  There was a lovely little paper theatre, for example, and some weaving of linen and paper by a local student.

Below are the Malian writing boards, part of the collection of the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Below that is an installation called Needle in a Haystack, inspired by a work by Nigel Kerry (no books were harmed in the making of this artwork - the books were actually borrowed from Hay Cinema Bookshop).

 

 The last picture is some information about the pollution problems that paper use causes.  Other information posters were placed around the exhibition.  For instance, 2.5 billion paper coffee cups are used in Britain every year, and only 1 in 400 is recycled, and 42% of the global wood harvest is used to make paper, the majority of which is used for packaging - and with the growth of companies like Amazon, packaging is big business these days.

Meanwhile in the Moulin du Verger near Angouleme, a master papermaker still makes high quality paper out of rags in the traditional way - there was a short film, in French, about the process.

 The exhibition is also on tomorrow, and is free.

Hay Castle Open Show

 https://www.instagram.com/reel/DIQwSlIt9af/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

 I've never tried to do this before - but this is the Hay Castle Trust video of the Open Show that they posted on Instagram (hope it works!)

Small Business Saturday

 

The Rohan clothes shop has moved across the road into bigger premises.

The people who ran the Isis cafe retired, and Rohan needed more space - they've been working very hard to get it ready, and the new shop opened today.

How The Light Gets In

 I don't usually take much notice of the Festival At The Other End of Town, partly because of their pricing strategy - during Hay Festival week I need to be able to go in and out of the venue, to maybe see one event and then cover a shift at work, and How The Light Gets In does it by selling a ticket for the weekend that allows access to the events, or with day tickets, which range from £38 to £88 for different days.

However, the brochures were available at the Co-op, so I've been having a look, and they do have some very good guests.  Rowan Williams (previous Archbishop of Canterbury) will be there, as well as Jeremy Corbyn, Nicola Sturgeon, Malcolm Rifkind, Yanis Varoufakis, historian David Starkey, veteran performer Tom Robinson and many more, including the Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe Michelle Terry, mathematician Timothy Nguyen, philosophers, scientists and economists.

Plus music, the funfair, and interesting food on site.

How the Light Gets in will be running from 23rd to 26th May, which is also the first weekend of Hay Festival.

Events at the Castle

 There's a lot going on at the Castle at the moment.

I completely missed the Weekend of Mistakes (too busy thinking about my holidays), and by the time I'd thought of buying a ticket for the Hay Music harp recital they'd sold out - but April is a busy month too. 

For the whole of this month there's an art and sculpture show in the gallery at the top of the castle.  I went up this morning, and there is some exceptionally good work there - landscapes, portraits, paintings in oils, pastels, fabric and mixed media, an exploding glitterball (!), glass, porcelain, wood and more.  I think my favourite picture was the Hay-on-Wye Rapid Transit Network by Jasper Fforde, a London Underground style map with all sorts of local places of interest as the stations, and several different routes, including the April Ashley Line and the Eugene Fisk Loop.  Other artist names I recognised were Sally Matthews (a sleeping cat) and Barbara Shaw (the fabric pictures).

Another new venture is the composting hub, which opens this month.  According to the Hereford Times, Hay Regenerative Soils CIC will run the site along with Hay Castle and Brecon Beacons Local Nature Partnership.  They will be transforming food waste from the Castle and local community into good quality compost, reducing the local carbon footprint, keeping food waste out of landfill and providing compost to members.  They are also offering workshops on soil health - a seven week course has already started on Soil Food Web Essentials.  It's on Tuesday evenings from 5.30pm to 7pm and it's free.

The hub will provide a weekly food waste drop off point for individuals and small households, and a pick up service for local businesses and events.

 

New Post Box Topper

 

Postman Pat and his black and white cat adorning the post box this time.  Childrens books and the Post Office all in one!

It wasn't as easy to get to the post box as usual, because Welsh Water are doing works around the Blue Boar corner again, and closed off the road and some of the pavement.  There's been quite a bit of complaining on the Hay Community Facebook page, but I'd rather have scheduled maintenance than a catastrophic burst pipe at some random time.

Pulp Fiction Posters

 There's always a way to get a picture if you really want to!

Pulp Fiction

 I tried to copy the poster across, but the computer won't let me do it.

However, the Cabinet of Curiosities and Botany and Other Stories are putting an exhibition on in the Buttermarket on Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th April.  It will celebrate paper in all its forms (especially books) and the links between paper and the natural world.  The title is Pulp Fiction.

The exhibition is free, and there will also be an opportunity to become a Friend of Botany and Other Stories, to find out the plans for 2025, and for young people to join the Budding Botanical Artists Club.