Christmas Meal at the Three Tuns

 The Cinema Bookshop had the staff Christmas dinner last night - and very nice it was too.  I went for the more traditional options of Tuscan bean soup, turkey and Christmas pudding.  Other people had the ham hock and pistachio terrine, and the salmon on bread looked very nice.  The other option was goat's cheese and salad.

The turkey was lovely and tender, with pigs in blankets, and stuffing, and parsnip, sprouts and roast potatoes, along with  extra vegetables.  The other options were beef brisket, vegan nut roast and fillet of hake.

As well as Christmas pudding, the options were mulled wine panna cotta (which wibbled on the plate delightfully),  chocolate brownie, amaretto affogato, or sorbets or ice cream.

The wine flowed freely, and we lingered after the meal over Baileys and coffee.

Oh, and this will be remembered as "the night that Brian set his napkin on fire"!  It got too close to a candle - and fortunately it didn't set off the fire alarm! 

Willow Tree

 

I took the first picture before I went away, and the second one yesterday.

It's sad to see old trees felled, but sometimes it is necessary. 

Book Dealers' Party

 It was a perfect evening in the garden of the Cinema Bookshop.  Not so many people came as last year, but that was probably because Gay-on-Wye were holding an event at more or less the same time.  Some people went to both!

I think we probably had the superior nibbles, though - with an Asian theme.  I've never been a fan of tofu, but the little squares with decorative bits on top, served on a little bamboo spoon, were delicious, as was the spicy aubergine - and everybody loved the little Scotch eggs!

The conversation was fascinating, too - I ended up talking about the history of marmalade with a Portuguese lady who lives in London.  And I solved the mystery of the cat who visits my garden, when I had a chat with his owner, who is a close neighbour (and also a bookseller).  Bob used to visit the previous ladies at the almshouses, so I'm very happy to carry on the tradition.  

Book Fair

 On Saturday 12th July, there will be a PBFA Book Fair at the Castle.  This is becoming an annual event in the PBFA calendar - they organise book fairs all over the country.  Also, as is becoming traditional, Hay Cinema Bookshop is hosting a  party for the book dealers on the evening before the Fair.

Entry is free, and the books will mainly be antiquarian and collectable. 

[Edited to add: on the same day, at Tomatitos, there will be a pop up kitchen.  Tomatitos are no longer serving food themselves, but they are hosting other food businesses.  This one is Keralan Karavan from Cardiff, serving Raj Burgers, chicken curry, spicy rolls and fries] 

PBFA Book Fair

 The evening before the Book Fair at Hay Castle, Hay Cinema Bookshop invited all the booksellers to a reception in the garden.  The weather was perfect for it, there was wine and delicious nibbles made by the lady from Chapters, and I met some really interesting people.  I ended up discussing South African archaeology with a lovely couple.

The book fair itself didn't feel quite so crowded as last year, but I did go quite early.  There were 18 different booksellers, and the most interesting book I saw was the original novel of The Prisoner, the 1960s TV series starring Patrick McGoohan - whose picture, in the iconic Village blazer, was on the front cover.  It's by Thomas Disch, who was a reasonably well known SF writer from the 1960s onwards.

I had some jobs to do at home that didn't take as long as I thought, so I turned up just in time to get a ticket for the bookbinding talk.  There were about a dozen people there, who all seemed to be very knowledgeable.  It was a fascinating talk by Arthur Green, who is a book binder, book conservator, and also teaches bookbinding and bookbinding history.  He is based near Malvern, and has a website at greensbooks.co.uk

I now know a lot more about how books are put together as physical objects, from the original leather bound books that were stitched and laced together, to the common hardback today which became a common style in the early 19th century, where the boards of the book are printed separately to the interior of the book, and then glued together. He made a passionate case for the second volume of the 1832 set of Byron's Life and Works being the most important book in bookbinding history.  The first volume was made with a flat spine, with the title on a piece of paper stuck to the spine.  The second volume was case-bound - with the boards produced separately and glued on, and so were the other books in the 17 volume set.

 Even though the process became mechanised, though, there was a lot of handwork, often done by women who hand stitched the sections of the book together.  One of the ladies in the audience has done research on the suffragettes, and talked a bit about the numbers of women bookbinders she had come across.

He also talked about the invention of book cloth, which made it feasable to use cloth rather than leather to bind books.  This is a starched cloth (so that the glue doesn't soak through the fabric) which was mainly produced in Manchester.

 Françoise, from the Cabinet of Curiosities, had an interesting snippet of information to add, too.  The early Beatrix Potter books were bound in calico from the Potter family business.  When we left at the end of the talk, through the book fair, it was quite exciting to find a pretty Beatrix Potter board game on one of the stalls, Paths and Burrows, with four adorable little model rabbits as playing pieces.

Bear!

 

I wasn't expecting to meet a bear when I went to work today!

This is one of Danny Thomas's chainsaw carvings.

Book Fair at the Castle

 I went straight from tea and scones at the Swan, after my trip out to Arthur's Stone, to change from my jeans into a skirt for the booksellers' reception at the Cinema Bookshop.  

The weather was just about good enough for us to hold it outside, and there was a mix of booksellers who had travelled to Hay for the book fair, and local booksellers - most of whom knew each other to some degree.  I ended up talking to some very interesting people.  One chap had come down from York, where he's renovating a historic building to be a bookshop (while running his business from another shop, so he can take the time to do the job properly).  A lady, the partner of another bookseller, was about to fly off to Bangladesh to look round factories for a clothing business.  There was a lot of checking of phones to see what the latest cricket scores were at Old Trafford, and quite a bit of discussion about the inner workings of the book fairs - with everyone in the group regretting the loss of the Bristol Book Fair because the building they held it in had been sold.

Greg, the manager, had got two of his grandchildren, and two other young teenagers who I assume were their friends, to act as waiters, in white shirts and black trousers or skirts, to take the trays of canapes around.  The snacks were being assembled at a table in the garage, by a couple who are chefs locally, and they were delicious!  Derek Addyman, one of our local booksellers, is a vegan, so they put together a special little tray just for him.

The wine flowed freely.

The following morning the Book Fair opened at 10am, so the booksellers had been there early to set up.  There were 18 of them, with the thought that, if the fair went well, they might come back and book enough space for 30 stalls.  Some of the big book fairs, like York, are in enormous halls, with 200 or so exhibitors.  

I went up there with Mary Fellowes, from Broad Street Books.  I'd thought that this was the first time a PBFA book fair had been to Hay, but she remembered the one in 1974*!  Derek Addyman had been to that one, too, as well as Greg from the Cinema and a couple of other people who are still around in Hay.

[*Edited to add: Should be 1984 - I saw Mary Fellowes, and she told me she had mis-remembered the date]

We chatted to the chap from Green Ink Books, who was one of the organisers, and he was very enthusiastic.  There were some lovely books on display, including one by April Ashley (signed!), and several others of local interest, including one by WET Morgan, who was once the vicar of Llanigon, and an active member of the Woolhope Club.

Christmas Party

 The Cinema Bookshop Christmas party was held this year in the upper room of the Three Tuns, which automatically made it better than last year, when we all sat in the big office at the Cinema as far away from each other as possible, and ate takeaway deep fried turkey from Chapters!

There was a slight mix-up in the organisation, when the menu that was downloaded for us to pre-order turned out to be for the Three Tuns in Lichfield, not the Three Tuns in Hay!  (it was a very interesting menu, too - but a bit far to go just for a meal!).  However,  the mistake was discovered in time for us to pre-order from the right menu, which was also very good - I had the turkey, and everyone who had the brisket said how delicious it was.

As we were upstairs, we only saw the staff all evening, so we felt pretty safe as far as Covid precautions were concerned.  There was another, bigger party, downstairs at the back, and drinkers in the front bar.  One of my colleagues had been pinged on her phone, so was self-isolating, and another doesn't do eating out, so there were only enough of us to sit round one table.  When I first joined the Cinema and we had our Christmas party, with Leon Morelli presiding at the top table, we filled that same room at the Three Tuns.

First Day of the Replacement Post Office Service

 The Post Office are sending a van to the car park of the Cinema Bookshop, starting this morning at 9.30am to 11.30am.

It won't be there every day - the dates and times are as follows:

Friday 18th June 9.30 - 11.30

Tuesday 22nd June 3.45 - 5pm

Friday 25th June 9.30 - 11am

Then a temporary Post Office will be opening in a location to be announced on 28th June, and at some point after that a new permanent location will be announced.

In other Cinema Bookshop car park news, the Nat West van will also be returning.  It will be coming every other week, starting on Monday 21st June from noon to 12.45.

So the second visit will be on 5th July.

Bean Box at the Cinema Bookshop

At last the Cinema Bookshop has a cafe!
The Bean Box has parked their horsebox stall outside the front of the building, and people can relax in the garden while drinking their coffee, or browse the outdoor bookshelves.
The Bean Box also sells coffee from the garden by Hay Bridge, which is a very pleasant place to sit and relax.

Book Art

Book art at the Cinema Bookshop - the theme is Shakespeare.
Next week, we're getting a new display for the Festival, on the theme of Dylan Thomas.

Enid Blyton's Signature

There's a story in the Hereford Times this week about a lady who was browsing the outdoor bins outside the Cinema Bookshop, and found a copy of Silas Marner, which she bought for £1. When she looked more closely, it had a note glued inside it. The note was congratulating someone called Mary for winning a competition, and was signed Enid Blyton!
There's been a bit of interest in this from the media - my boss Greg has been talking to BBC Hereford and Worcester about it.
We, of course, had no idea the note was there. The outside bins are the "last chance saloon" for books which have previously been on the shelves indoors at a higher price.
Finding Enid Blyton's signature is probably not quite as exciting as the student some years ago who bought a copy of TS Eliot's poems to read on the beach from a second hand bookshop for 20p - and discovered he was holding a first edition, but it's still very interesting, even though the note is probably a generic one which Enid Blyton sent to all the winners of competitions - she edited a magazine called Sunny Stories - with the winner's name added in.
Enid Blyton died in 1968, and back then it was highly unusual for authors to do signing sessions. Now it's a common part of publicising an author's work - the readers get to meet the author, who signs their copy of the book. There's a joke that the unsigned copies of Terry Pratchett's books are more valuable than the signed ones, because he did so many! And Neil Gaiman signs books in bulk, in advance of appearances - he's given himself repetitive strain injury as a result.

Comparing Christmas Dinners

It's that time of year for Christmas dinners and this year I've been to two (eating out again!)
Earlier in the month, the ladies of Stitch and Bitch went to the Three Tuns for a Christmas lunch - that's where we meet on the First Thursday of every month, and sometimes in between (gentlemen are welcome, but at the moment it just happens to be all ladies).

We had a long table at the back, fourteen of us. I wore my scarlet Superheroine skirt that I made over a couple of sessions, and Sharon brought her neck wrap. She's been knitting it for three years, and it's finally finished! It is now an honorary member of the group in its own right! Chrissy, a new member this year, was quite excited as she'd got a stall on the Thursday market selling wool. I saw her out there - of course, the weather was atrocious for her first attempt, but she had plenty of room as a neighbouring stall holder didn't turn up and she was told to spread out.
The food was great, of course, the traditional turkey main course, with several different options, and loads of vegetables. I had the game casserole, and slightly regretted it when I saw the parsnips served with the turkey. The waitress was asked what would happen to the vegetables we didn't eat, and when she said they would go in the bin, several ladies asked for carry out boxes to take the left overs home. We didn't want good food to go to waste. There were even mince pies at the end, by which time most of us were so stuffed that we couldn't eat another thing, so we took those home with us too (I took two, to share with the Young Man when he arrived the following day).
And this week it was the Works Do, in the evening, this time at the Black Lion. There were eight of us in the area near the door, with a much bigger party round the corner from the Vets. Again, the food was excellent - the mutton melted in my mouth, it was so tender. One of us went for the vegetarian option, and he said it was excellent (he's not generally vegetarian - it was just what he fancied from the menu). We had plenty of time to pace ourselves through the meal, but we were still very full when we walked home. And there was Morlands beer, which I haven't seen for a long while, so I stuck to that while everyone else enjoyed the wine and prosecco.

Would You Buy a Used Book from these People?

The anti-austerity march didn't make it into this week's Brecon and Radnor, but there is a very nice article about the Cinema Bookshop. Charles and Camilla visiting Talgarth Mill have bumped us off the front page, but here's the link: http://www.brecon-radnor.co.uk/search.cfm?sectionIs=search

And mid-morning on Wednesday, a French couple who live locally brought us two bottles of proscecco to celebrate, because they'd seen it in the paper and thought it was such good news!

Blind Students Visit Hay Bookshops

A Book A Day In Hay has been giving work experience to two students from the Royal National College for the Blind in Hereford this week - they have been guest hosting the website, and on Wednesday they came to Hay for a guided tour.
I met them in the morning at the Cinema Bookshop, and we spent about half an hour together. Ellie could see quite well - she mentions the gold stars on the dark blue ceiling, from the days when the Cinema Bookshop was actually a cinema - but Danielle needed a helper to get around. Both of them were very enthusiastic, though, and it was a pleasure to take them round. They've written about their experiences over at A Book A Day In Hay.
In the afternoon, they went to Addymans' Bookshop, and from the photos it seems that they had a great time there as well.

Family Reunion

A group of fairly elderly people had gathered in the foyer of the Cinema. One of the party had gone upstairs to look at the military books, and the others were waiting for him.
Just as they were all standing there, the lady from the butcher's in Broad Street came in, to ask if she could park her car in the Cinema car park for a while.
She turned out to be a long-lost cousin!
One of the ladies told me that her gran used to be a cleaner at the Cinema (before it was a bookshop). "There were eleven of us," she said, "in a two bedroom house in Chancery Lane - all the girls in one bedroom and all the boys in the other - and gran and grandad in the bay window downstairs!" Most of the brothers and sisters had gone off to live in Hereford. She said she had 36 cousins.
Another of the ladies told me about her life of crime! When she was about twelve, she came to the Cinema while a film was on, and let down the tires of all the bicycles that were parked there! She was seen by the local policeman, who made her pump them all up again!

Modern Technology

Lovely when it works - a real pain when it doesn't!
The Cinema has been in darkness for a day and a half, with no lights, no computers, no till or credit card machine, or heating. Something vital had melted in the fuse box - which could have been quite serious! We were wandering round with emergency torches, which led the boss to ruminate that the lighting effects were so attractive in the antiquarian section that we could hire it out as a Chapel of Rest!
All is back to normal now, but it does make you think how dependent we all are on elec-trickery.

More interesting people

Over the last couple of weeks, I've had interesting chats with several customers:
There was the man who makes cannons, who was researching ships' cannons in the 18thC.
There was the lady whose daughter used to work at Bloomsbury publishers - and part of her job was to answer all the letters that children sent in addressed to Harry Potter!
There was the chap who was evacuated to Clyro in 1944 - who had just been round Clyro Church and was delighted to find a brass plaque commemorating the headmaster he remembered from his time there. He was looking for more information, so I suggested that he tried Brecon Library, which has a very good local history section.
There was the lady who was on a bell ringing tour of Herefordshire - the team weren't told where they would be ringing until the night before, and then they all got in a minibus and went off after breakfast each day. She took the free map of Herefordshire churches that we have on display, so she had some idea of where she'd been!
And there was a chap from Swansea, who rang up to ask if we had a particular Biblical commentary. He said that he had visited the shop some time ago and, while browsing, came across a book called The Hidden Fire, by Brother Ramon. Brother Ramon is a Franciscan, and mildly famous as a mystic. Leafing through the book, my caller had found an account of teenaged experiences in Swansea which he recognised! Brother Ramon turned out to be a childhood friend and because of the book, they managed to get together again after a gap of 42 years!

Interesting Customers

Some days are just more interesting than others, especially when there's time to chat to some of the customers.
These lovely gentlemen all came in on the same day:
Our first gentleman was researching lichens in churchyards, and trying to find lichens in the wild that corresponded to them. (He was buying Natural History books, of course). He was very disappointed by the Radnorshire habit of whitewashing the outsides of churches - before he'd managed to look at the church walls!
Our second chap was setting up a small blacksmith's forge in his garden shed, and was looking for books that gave details of blacksmithing tools. I chatted to him about some of the people I'd met in re-enactment circles that made their own armour, and our local Tools For Self Reliance, that sends blacksmithing kits out to Tanzania from Crickhowell.
Our third gentleman came from Bradford, but was fascinated by all things Welsh. He belongs to the Bradford St David's Society. Over there in Bradford, he is able to take regular Welsh lessons, and spend evenings practicing Welsh conversation with local Welsh people. On St David's Day, the Lord Mayor of Bradford holds a reception for them, and they have dinner (Welsh lamb, of course) at one of the best hotels, and they also have a Noson Lawen (which is a musical evening).
Finally, it was a bit rotten of me, but I had to giggle. A gentleman came in towards the end of the day; he was on a walking holiday, and he'd packed his Kindle to bring with him. So why was he buying books?
It broke.

Ignorance is Bliss?

I'm used to explaining the Sunday Trading Laws to people, every Sunday. The Cinema has to abide by restricted opening hours because of its size, so we open for viewing only before we can sell books to anyone. A lot of people just don't notice trading restrictions in their daily lives, and only come across shops that have to abide by those laws when they're on holiday.
I was surprised yesterday though. I explained to a lady about the new charges for plastic bags, and she was amazed that shops have to pay for the bags they give out! I don't know where she thought the shops got them from, printed up with their own company names and everything, but she'd obviously never given it a moment's thought. She was also amazed when I told her that plastic comes from oil!
Later, we could hear the bidding going on over at the pony sales. I explained about the auctions to another customer, and she said: "I didn't know such things existed!"