Dragonflies and Damselflies

 Stu Roberts gave a fascinating talk at the Enchanted Hour at the Library yesterday afternoon.

He talked about the differences between dragonflies and damselflies (dragonflies hold their wings out when at rest; damselflies fold their wings along their backs), and he talked about their life cycle.

Dragonflies spend most of their lives as nymphs, which crawl about in the mud at the bottom of ponds.  They can spend up to four years, getting bigger and bigger, until one day they crawl up a reed, and their body splits open at the back so that the adult dragonfly can emerge.  Stu brought some of these cases along to show us, gathered from his own pond.

Dragonflies will live for a whole summer, but damselflies only live for about a week - and August is the best time to see them, along the banks of the Wye and on the Warren.  Mary Anne suggested that he might like to lead a walk in the next week or so, to see if we could find any, and quite a few people were interested, so that might be happening soon.

There will be no Enchanted Hour in September, but in October there will be four talks, one on each Friday afternoon, on the subject of conservation.  Stu will be giving one of those talks. 

Enchanted Hour with Dragons

 

Well, dragonflies, anyway!

The Bevan Family

 I knew already that Archdeacon Bevan had been Vicar of Hay for 56 years during the 19th century, and that he had lived at Hay Castle with his family when I went to the Enchanted Hour talk at the Library, but I learned a lot about the rest of his family.

John Price has done a huge amount of research into the rest of the family, combing through newspaper articles and diary entries, including the diary of Edward Lear, who wrote a poem for one of the daughters of the family.  (In fact, the talk over-ran the time slot, there was so much to pack in!)

Archdeacon Bevan was involved in just about everything that went on in Hay over that 56 years, and he had some remarkable children.  One of them rose to become Bishop of Swansea and Brecon.  His daughter Mary Louisa (later Mrs Dawson) wrote several books and pamphlets about local history, some of which John had brought along to show us.

Then there was Willy.  William Armine Bevan was a successful businessman - he even owned shares in a gold mine!  He organised shows at Olympia in Kensington, and had a keen interest in music.  He knew several leaders of military bands.  He moved in the same circles as people like Noel Coward.  He also enjoyed yachting, from the Weymouth Yacht Club (where his brother the Bishop died unexpectedly while visiting him). Almost nothing is known about him - this was all pieced together from snippets, but a full biography of him would make fascinating reading! 

It was a very interesting talk, and it would probably be possible to do a full talk about each of the Archdeacon's children, who all seemed to have lived full and interesting lives. 

 

Enchanted Hour

 John Price will be the speaker at the Enchanted Hour at the Library on Friday 27th June at 2pm.

He'll be talking about the Bevan family at Hay Castle, with unpublished diary extracts from Kilvert, Mary Bevan, and Edward Lear, with connections to Queen Victoria and Rossini, the story of Painscastle and Glasbury, Kipling, Noel Coward, Christopher Dawson,  Hay Church, the town clock, parish hall and cemetery lych gate.

That's a lot to pack into an hour's talk!

Teas and coffees available, and the talks are free.  

Dancing Hippopotamuses at the Library!

 Or should that be hippopotamii?

Enchanted Hour at the Library on Friday 14th March is a tale of travel - From New Mexico to the North Pole, via at least one dancing hippopotamus.  Stephen Handsaker is the speaker - he's an artist and poet - and the talk starts at 2pm.  Donations welcome.

Enchanted Hour

 I had great fun at the Library yesterday - I was giving the talk for Enchanted Hour.

I trained as an archaeologist, so my chosen subject was the obscure archaeological remains in the local landscape.  The area around Hay is rich in Neolithic and Bronze Age tombs, and there's a Roman fort at Boatside Farm, and several medieval mottes.  A good crowd turned up for the talk, and they asked interesting questions afterwards, and everyone seemed to have a good time.  I even got filmed!  John Price, who films a lot of local events, was there with his camera.  It's the first time I've ever worn a microphone to do a talk.

Mary Anne, who organises the talks, thought it would be a wonderful idea if a group could get together to go to visit the tombs later in the year, and she's a lady who gets things done, so I may end up acting as a tour guide!

This afternoon, at 4pm, the Cusop History Society are meeting at Cusop Village Hall - I hadn't heard about it until someone told me yesterday.  They're going to get an update on work at Cusop Castle, so I'm going to go along to that.

Mary Anne is going back to South Africa in February, so the next Enchanted Hour will be in March, a talk about a journey that involves a dancing hippoptamus!

American Children's Books at Enchanted Hour

 Caryn Schafer is an American children's book illustrator who now lives locally - and she has a new book of her own out, about Christmas, which is available in several shops around Hay.

She was talking about some of the picture books that she'd grown up with in the States - mostly, the popular authors there are unknown here, and vice versa, so it was interesting to see her selection.  Her choices were also informed by her Christian faith - there was a lot about the characters in the books discovering their talents, or their creativity, and she said a lot of good things about how to encourage our own creativity - by the end of the talk I was itching to get my art supplies out again.  She was emphasising how creativity should be for our own enjoyment - even if it's only a dot on a page, like one of the stories she read to us.  One of the books, Math Curse, was about finding creativity in maths!

One of the books that she did share in common with British children was Voyage of the Dawn Treader, part of the Narnia series by CS Lewis - she loved the idea that Aslan could be found in this world as well as Narnia (as Jesus, of course).

She also recommended a couple of adult books: Your Inner Critic is a Big Jerk, and Big Magic: creative living beyond fear.  Basically, the message is - if you're too self critical, you'll never do anything you enjoy.

The next Enchanted Hour is on Friday 10th January, and the subject is obscure local archaeology.  It's called A Tomb With A View, and I'm going to be the speaker.  And because there were some problems with modern technology at the start of Caryn's talk, I'm going to try to make my talk technology-proof!

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.

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.

Biodiversity in Your Back Garden

 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.

Heritage Apples at the Library

 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'!

Enchanted Hour - Apples

 The next Enchanted Hour at the Library will be on Friday 11th October at 2pm.  

Ainsleigh Rice will be talking about Heritage Apples.

No More Hay Forum

 Back in February Hay Forum, which met at St Mary's Church, went into a haitus because the organiser had a lot of family troubles to deal with.  The idea was that the Forum would return in October - but that will not be happening now.  

The surplus money from the entrance fee to the Forum (after the hire of the church) was being used to help local elderly people, and provide locally sourced gifts for the speakers, as well as bouquets for Helen the librarian and another lady who has gone through major surgery.  The surplus money is being donated to the toddler group at the library, so they can buy some more instruments for their Monday morning sessions.

Mary-Anne has some plans for smaller projects around Hay in the future.

Second Saturday of the Festival

 I booked an event for 5.30pm, but the rest of the day I had at leisure.

The Saturday Market was in the square and the Buttermarket and Cheese Market, with the usual range of really nice stalls with good quality produce.  Tucked into a corner was the Jump4Timbuktu stall, fund raising.  The biggest problem for Timbuktu at the moment is the influx of refugees from surrounding conflicts, and our local group tries to send them about £500 a month to help.

At lunchtime, I headed up to the Festival site, at about the same time as the Free Palestine protesters, who were walking along the road with banners flying and a police escort.

I wanted to try the momo dumplings from the Tastes of Tibet stall in the food tent, and they were delicious.

Later, I met Mike Eccles outside the Oxfam stall.  He's been networking like mad recently.  He said: "I don't believe in coincidences, but...."

He's been wanting to meet Jane Davidson - she's the Pro-Vice Chancellor Emeritus at the University of Wales Trinity St David, and she has been a minister for education and the environment in the Welsh government.  Mike talked to her briefly on a Zoom meeting, and sent her details of what is happening with self-sufficiency and resilience in Hay (based on the big meeting he organised in January), and the following week he found himself sharing a platform with her at a meeting, where he was able to talk about what is happening in Hay and chat with her further.

He also met the Commissioner for Future Generations for the Welsh Government, and the Deputy Commissioner for Future Generations in charge of Health at another meeting, and they are both very interested in what people in Hay want to do, especially the Mental Well-Being Initiative.

He also decided to get to the Festival site by horse-drawn (grass-powered!) taxi, and the lady driving the cart said that she would let him ride for half-price if he promised to go and give a talk to the sustainability group that she's involved in!

Meanwhile, with his HOWLs hat on, he has been organising a fund raising gig for the library in September, with a group called The Breaks.

HOWLS AGM at the Library

 I would have advertised the date of this meeting on the blog - but there was a mix-up with emails.  I knew that the AGM was coming up, but I hadn't got the email telling me the date.  

Then I met Janet, the Chair of HOWLS (Hay-on-Wye Library Supporters) in the Deli on Thursday morning, and she told me it was that evening.

The first thing to report is that there is such a lot happening in the Library now. Siân Platten, from Powys Library Services, gave a run down of all the different clubs and activities that go on in the Library.

Storytime is very popular, especially with small children.  This involves singing, and the Library has some instruments they can hand out, but they need more, and instruments that are more suitable for small hands (and robust!).  This would be things like shaker eggs and other percussion instruments.  HOWLS has some money in the bank account, and it was agreed that someone would look into buying new instruments.  The other thing that would make Storytime better would be finger or glove puppets, and that's being looked into, too.

Lego Club is also popular, mostly for unstructured play, and there is a small Craft Group for adults that they are hoping will grow - that's on Monday evenings.  

Before all the disruptions of lockdown, the Library had a session called Enchanted Hour, which usually had a speaker, often a local author.  They are hoping to revisit the format - but have no budget to pay speakers.  They would also like to expand the format from local authors talking about their work to green issues, which overlaps nicely with the work the Library CIC is doing in promoting local resilience.  

The CIC was responsible for organising the Citizens' Assembly at the Swan in January, discussing local food production, and the results of that meeting are being collated now.  At the meeting, survey forms were filled in to give an idea of what skills people could offer, and it is hoped that those people will be able to get together and carry the project forward.  A film of the meeting is being edited too, which is the sort of thing that could be shown at Enchanted Hour.  

There will be a Climate Week in June, and Mike Eccles, who has been working very hard on all this, is hoping to be able to plan an event to discuss local energy production for Hay.

The Library also runs a Library of Things - the loan of ipads has been very popular, especially for children who need to do homework online, or people doing online courses.  Where the loans have been long term, the county's digital librarian, Tilly, has been able to obtain some reconditioned laptops to be given to those families that need them.

The Library of Things also loans out balance bikes for children who are starting to learn to cycle.

They have a range of bags to borrow, containing sports equipment, games and activities to promote development for children (with information to help parents to use them), and memory boxes for people with dementia.  These are picnic hampers containing objects on a theme, like Gardening, or On the Beach - some of the local residential homes have expressed an interest in them.  They also loan out blood pressure monitors.

Then there are collections of books that can be loaned out on various subjects - for people with dementia and their carers and families, or for people with particular health problems or mental health problems.  There is also a collection on cancer support from Macmillan Cancer Care, and one for children on bereavement.

There is a popular Welsh conversation group.  At the moment the people taking part are mostly fluent Welsh speakers, so there is some thought being taken to start another group for beginners in Welsh.

Some families spend time in the library after school, and the school is keen to work on projects with the Library.

From all of this, it is clear that the Library is not just a place for borrowing books - it is a vital community resource.  The comment at the meeting was "We need a bigger library!"

It will only be possible to keep the library we have if the contract between the CIC and Powys County Council remains in force.  A five year contract was signed, and it has some time to run, but negotiations for a new contract have to start eighteen months before the old one ends.  This would ensure the continuation of provision of library staff, and the present opening hours.  The CIC has contracted to provide £5,000 a year to pay towards the upkeep of the library, which costs about £25,000 a year to run.  If they can't pay that, then the contract is broken.  Around the country, councils are having to make hard decisions about funding, which usually means cutting funding to the arts and services like libraries, so it's very important that we protect Hay Library.

Mike Eccles has been working very hard to get local people or businesses to support the Library by means of standing orders - anything from £500 a year down to £50 a year, and about £3,000 is being raised by this method.  Hay Festival used to provide a grant to the Library, but over the last few years the management team has changed, and the consequences of lockdown have meant that they have had to rethink their financial priorities.  Other big employers in Hay are the Pill Factory, Huws Grey, and Hay and Brecon Farmers.  The Pill Factory chooses a different charity to support every year, so cannot be a source of continuous funding for the library.

So the Library desperately needs new supporters, and Mike had a stack of standing order forms with him.

To find out more about the different activities at the Library, or to pick up a standing order form (or to borrow a book!) visit the Library:

Monday 10.30am to 12.30pm and 1.30pm to 6pm

Thursday 10.30am to 12.30pm and 1.30pm to 6pm

Friday 1.30pm to 6pm

Saturday 10am to 12.30pm

And visit the Powys County Council website and StoriPowys for information about all the services the Library provides.

HADSCAL consultation

 

HADSCAL is holding a public consultation at Hay Library on Wednesday 10th January, between 1.30pm and 7pm, to find out what facilities local people would like to see developed in Hay.  They have plans, and want to know what people think of them.

They also have a Facebook page, for anyone who can't get to the Library on that date.

Crafts at the Library - Cornel Grefft

 There's now a Crafts Corner at the Library on Monday afternoons from 4.45pm to 5.45pm.  The first session is on Monday 23rd October.  The idea is for people to take their own craft projects along to be crafty in company.  For the first session, the organiser will have some knitting and crochet patterns for poppies for Remembrance - any extra ones will be passed on to the British Legion for their fundraising.  The session is free, but donations are appreciated.

Talk at the Library

 As part of the regular series of talks at the Library, on the first Friday of the month, this month the speaker will be Françoise Verger.  She will be talking about a picture by Albrecht Dürer, the Great Piece of Turf, and asking if it is a botanical illustration or a work of art.

The talk begins at 2pm on Friday 6th October, and is free.

The Latest from Hay Library

 HOWLS, the Hay-on-Wye Library Supporters, have just put out a new leaflet about all the things you can do for free at Hay Library.

There are books, of course - you can borrow up to twenty books at a time!  There are also books to help to learn Welsh (or English), and 400 books in Ukranian will be arriving soon.  There are also eMagazines in English, Ukranian , Russian and Arabic.  There are apps for borrowing books, or ebooks, and eMagazines.

As well as books, there is computer use and internet access, and you can borrow an iPad for up to 4 weeks.  The library also offers printing and photocopying, and IT support.  In November they are launching a Computer and Web Literacy Course.

Then there are the free events:

Lego Club and Storytime

The Enchanted Hour - adults discussing books

Films and Talks by local authors

Welsh Conversation

Summer Reading Challenge for school children

Borrow a football

Science Boxes for 8 - 11 year olds

Boromi Bags for 0 - 5 year olds with toys and activities

Balance Bikes for 2 - 6 year olds, including helmets (as someone who needed stabilisers on my bike until I was 11, I think this is a great idea!)

Numeracy and Literacy support

And they're planning to start an Art Gallery!

The Library is open on Monday, Thursday, Friday afternoon and Saturday morning.

HOWLS created a CIC (Community Interest Company) - Hay Public Library.org.CIC - to negotiate a five-year contract with Powys County Council to keep the Library open, and as part of the agreement they need to raise £5,000 a year, so all donations are welcome.  Not only does this money go towards keeping the library open, but to providing all the extra things that the Library can offer.  For more information visit haypubliclibrary.org

The CIC has also launched The Hay Community Resilience Initiative, which is backed by the UN, Welsh Government and Bannau Brycheiniog.  The purpose of this initiative is to find ways to feed the entire town locally, to own our own entire renewable energy supply, and to support mental wellbeing in the face of climate change.

Advice Surgery at Hay Library

 Gareth Ratcliffe will be holding an advice surgery, as Hay's County Councillor, at Hay Library on Saturday 2nd September from 10am to 11am.  

Since the time is limited, appointments are first come, first served, for anyone who's got concerns about local issues, or need help with personal challenges.

Gareth is happy to arrange meetings at other times for anyone who can't attend on Saturday, and he can be reached on 07974353121 or email cllr.gareth.ratcliffe@powys/gov.uk 

Recently, Gareth tabled a debate on water pollution at the County Council meeting, and the result of this was a decision to call upon the Welsh Government to set up a monitoring framework to assess the phosphate levels in our rivers.  They also want to see more funding from National Government so that bodies like the NRW can do their jobs properly, and they want Welsh Water to upgrade their sewage systems so that they no longer release sewage into the rivers, as well as upgrading the current pipeline system.

So far they have recieved a reply from Welsh Water, which says that they are working on upgrading the system.  The full letter can be read on Gareth's Facebook page Cllr Gareth Ratcliffe News and Updates.