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.