Photographic Exhibitions

A new exhibition opens at Thru the Lens with a private viewing at 6pm today.
Men Open Up is a collection of photos collected together by Billie Charity, on the theme of men's mental health. It's in support of a charity called CALM, Campaign Against Living Miserably. The men in the photos are local, and Billie has also made use of the notes of Hereford-based psychotherapist and photographer Clive Oxford, who supplied notes about some of his clients, carefully made anonymous.
Also in the exhibition are the photos of Abergavenny-based photographer Glenn Dene, which are self-portraits he took while recovering from a breakdown.
London-based photographer Darren Russell has also provided pictures from a touring exhibition called "My Mate", which was motivated by the story of Billie Charity's brother Stan. Sadly, Stan took his own life three years ago, after living with mental illness.
So the exhibition has been put together in the hope that it will encourage men to talk about their mental health and seek therapy if they need it.

Meanwhile in Brecon, Richard Greatrex is also putting on an exhibition. This one begins on 29th January with a private viewing from 6.30pm, at Found Gallery on the Bulwark. The title of the exhibition is Cuba Noticed, and it is a part of the gallery's main exhibition Vibrant Finds in Winter. Richard Greatrex was a cinematographer for many years, with an impressive CV, and he uses that experience in his photography now.

Herefordshire Life Through a Lens

Cusop History Group are having their first meeting of the year tomorrow evening (Friday) at 7pm, at Cusop Village Hall. They'll be showing the film Carousel, from Herefordshire Life Through a Lens. Cost is £3 for members, £5 for non-members. It's based on the Derek Evans photographic archive from the 1950s to 1970s - he took photos of all sorts of local events around Herefordshire.

Woodland Management on the Riverside Path

Recently I saw a letter (to the B&R? Or was it Hereford Times?) saying what a pity it was that a tree had been cut down to make a base for one of the new wooden sculptures that have been put in along the Riverside Path.
Just before that, Hay Town Council and the Hay Community Woodland Group put out a joint statement, available via the Hay Town Council website.
Having read the statement, I'm happy to report that no trees were cut down just in order to put a sculpture up. The sculptures are sited on the bases of trees that were already going to be cut down because they were either dead or diseased.
Some of the trees have a blue X marked on the trunk - these marks were put there by an arborist called Huw Morris in 2017, to identify which trees needed to be removed. A / in blue denotes trees that require some pruning. So far, none of the trees marked have been felled, but some have been pruned.
The trees are mostly growing on quite a steep bank, and they are monitored regularly - if they are at an angle, they may be at risk of uprooting in high winds (such as we've been having for the last couple of days).
The trees with orange marks have Dutch Elm disease, and are dead - and there's one case of Ash Die-back as well.
When trees are felled, a good length of trunk is always left in situ, to help maintain the stability of the bank. The larger logs are taken away to be used as firewood, while smaller logs and brushwood are used to provide habitat for wildlife.
The Community Woodland Group do a lot of good work along the riverbank. Volunteers meet on the second Sunday of each month, and can be contacted on haycwg1@gmail.com

New Website for Library Supporters

We're still waiting to hear what the budget will be for Powys County Council this year - but the chances are that libraries will once again be threatened with closure or shorter hours or fewer staff.
Because of the constant uncertainty, it was agreed at a HOWLS meeting last year to set up a CIC - a Community Interest Company, to safeguard the future of Hay Library as much as it is possible to do.
The website is now live, and can be found at HayPublicLibrary.org
The first objectives of the CIC are to negotiate a binding five year contract with Powys County Council and obtain security of tenure for Hay Library for those five years, up to 2025.
The County Council has already scheduled meetings for those negotiations to take place, and have said that they are seeking to forge partnerships, so this is a good start, but it has to happen this month, before the new budget comes out in February.
There is a new Facebook page called Hay Public Library CIC as well, and the organisers are urging everyone who is interested in continuing to have a library in Hay to sign up to their mailing list (yes, there was a mailing list for HOWLS, but they have to start from scratch - they can't just move people over from one list to the new one).

Mae Mari Lwyd Yma!

I wasn't really sure what to expect when I turned up at the Clock Tower just before 6pm on a wet and windy evening - but soon the musicians started to appear. Thomasin and the Speedgums were there, and someone with a violin, and a clarinet, and a chap with a stringed instrument I couldn't identify - not a guitar, and I don't think it was a mandolin? Justin had wrapped his guitar in a plastic bag, and found that he could play through the bag!
And along came Mari Lwyd, snapping the jaws of the horse's skull, wrapped in a white sheet.
We were given song sheets. There I am in the background, singing in Welsh! Catherine Kramer took the photo:

I said to her later that this was the Welshest thing I'd ever done in Hay!*

There was a song for when the Mari Lwyd arrives at the door of a house - or pub - demanding beer. There was Calon Lan and Sospan Fach, and a couple of hymns (the words Iesu and Calvari were a dead give away, and I also recognised some of the tunes).
We sang at the Clock Tower first, then headed for the Three Tuns, where we sang three songs, took a break for drinks, and then gathered round the piano to sing some of the hymns.
Then it was onwards to Tomatitos, but first we stopped outside the Bookshop Cinema, where Haydn was working behind the bar, so he could come out and listen to us sing (and join in!). Haydn is running Welsh classes at the Three Tuns, and he has about thirty people interested so far. I'd like to learn Welsh properly, but at the moment it would take more time and effort than I am able to commit to.
We sang three songs at Tomatitos, and then headed to Kilverts - where there was only one person in the bar! We soon filled it, and sang, and bought beer - the Wadworths Swordfish is infused with rum, so perfect for a wet and windy night (the name refers to the biplane, not an actual fish). There was much conversation in Welsh, some of which I understood, and I found myself explaining the Mari Lwyd tradition to a visitor from London, who had come with a lady from Abergavenny (I think it was). There was also a lady there who wanted to join a choir - she'd recently moved to Hay, and wanted something to take her out of the house in the evenings, so I pointed her in the direction of Catherine Kramer.
The whole evening was brilliant fun, and I hope they do it again next year - I'll take my tambourine along! Catherine also said something about organising some singing for St David's Day, but she wasn't sure about a venue for it.

*It's not the Welshest thing I've ever done - that would be a trip to Corwen in North Wales with the Welsh chapel from Rhosllanerchrugog that my gran belonged to (she didn't speak Welsh, but loved the singing). It was the first time I'd been to an event which was entirely in Welsh, and I knew that I was privileged to be there, because it was something that most English people in the 1970s would never have experienced.

Immigration in Hay

At the Baskie last Wednesday, I got into a discussion with a chap at the bar before the music began. He was very worried about "all these foreign immigrants" (is there another kind?). He worried about the rise in homelessness and the overcrowding in NHS hospitals, and thought it was because foreign immigrants were coming to the UK, when the country was already full up.
I have to say I was a bit sharp with him, because the rise in homelessness and the overcrowding in NHS hospitals has nothing to do with foreign immigrants coming to this country, and everything to do with Tory spending cuts.
Poor chap was really quite bemused by it all, and when I was leaving the bar I heard him ask a couple of other musicians if they thought there were too many immigrants in the country - to which they replied: "Nah!"
The acoustic session at the Baskie is actually a brilliant example to show how immigrants benefit the group they join. Ellie started coming along quite recently, and she has enhanced the group immensely, singing duets with Bob and introducing us to music we would otherwise never have come across, like the children's song in a strong Afrikaans accent - Ellie is South African.

Then I got to thinking about foreign immigrants who have come to Hay - and every one of them has enhanced the life of the town.
Norman Florence, who had the original idea for Hay Festival (now run by his son Peter), came from South Africa. Hay would have been very different if he had decided to live somewhere else.
Kitty is from Ireland, a journalist who has worked for the Festival, and interviewed guests on stage.
Sean is also from Ireland, and is a leading light in the Hay, Brecon and Talgarth Sanctuary for Refugees group and the Re-wilding, Biodiversity and Sustaining the Countryside group.
Marva is Canadian, and has organised arts events, and runs g-riots arts. Her daughter is a talented writer.
Mr Lee and his family have been in Hay longer than I have, running the Chinese takeaway. When his daughter Bic was a little girl, she used to walk my dog for me.
Mr Nagshbandi is a dentist - and we were in dire need of more dentists locally when he arrived in Hay.
Eklim is from Birmingham, but some of his staff at Red Indigo restaurant are from India and Bangladesh. How far would we have to go to find Indian food if they weren't here?
On the subject of food, there are also Gurkhas locally who have retired from the British Army and now make amazing Nepalese food.
There used to be a couple of young men from Thailand who cooked at the Blue Boar.
There was a French chef at the Globe for a while.
Françoise and Pierre are French, and Françoise has done a lot of work with local schoolchildren with art to appreciate nature. They have also put on cultural events in Hay.
Antoine and Juliette are also French - Antoine does something clever with computers and Juliette is a translator.
There was a Brazilian young man who was the boyfriend of a local girl, and did something connected to a puppet theatre.
There was a Dutchman who was involved in the book trade - Ivo?
And Elizabeth who now owns Booths Books and is very much involved in the renovation of the Castle, is American.

I'm sure there are more people who have come to Hay from other countries, that I'm not aware of (or have forgotten - this list is off the top of my head, and not definitive!).
My belief is that immigrants enhance the place they come to, and are a positive asset, and I think this is borne out by the evidence. Years ago Michael Portillo, himself the son of Spanish immigrants, made the same point in a Radio 4 series that looked at every group of immigrants that have come to the UK over a thousand years. Every single group brought positive benefits to this country.

Mari Llwyd in Hay

Or so it appears from the posters!
There will be a procession tomorrow evening (Saturday), starting from the Clock Tower at 6pm and visiting The Three Tuns, Tomatitos and finally Kilverts.
There will be Welsh songs!