connections

We left our small world behind today and took a road trip. First stop  Cheltenham. A gobsmackingly beautiful place with some very fine regency architecture and some dangerous shops full of nice stuff, which we succumbed to, buying bowls and plates. We like buying everyday stuff on our travels. Reminds us of … well, our travels. There is also an exceptionally nice whole food supermarket there where we bought some very nice bits including a bottle of pumpkin ketchup, which sounds like something straight out of the Hogwarts staff canteen. Then on to Hay-on-Wye …

We always look to the Hay Festival to enlarge our world, and although it wasn’t physically taking place this year we drove down there today anyway, just to connect. As usual it didn’t disappoint. There is something about the place which just blows you away. Bill Clinton called it “The Woodstock of the Mind” which infers a psychedelic element rather than the mere bookishness of a literary festival, and it is true that the place itself has a slightly magical quality to it. If you put the entire population of Middle Earth on non-prescription drugs and got them to run a small Welsh town and a literary festival at the same time, you might just touch on the folksy hallucinogenic atmosphere of the place.

We spent the first half our of our visit trying to get out of the car park. It wasn’t busy, we just couldn’t pay for our stay as the machines were reluctant to accept our phones or payment cards. We even phoned the helpline number on the board only to be told rather touchingly that they didn’t work bank holidays and could we call tomorrow? We decided not to risk it as Welsh traffic wardens are descended from dragons and will burn the rubber off your tyres and leave you a parking ticket as well. 

Eventually we found an old five pound note down the back of a car seat which I took to the local Spa for change. I opened the shop door and a woman yelled “you can’t come in! Wait outside!”. Apparently they only allowed five people in the shop at a time, which I totally understand, although the vehemence of her response shocked me somewhat. Five minutes later, after sixteen people and a Welsh Choir had left clutching packets of crisps and cigarettes, I was allowed in and bought a bottle of overpriced diet coke and duly collected my change. The ticket machine back at the car park had no problem with my coins (I expected them to be rejected) and we hit the town just as most things were closing.

The Old Electric Shop was however open so we bought coffee and flapjacks and got into conversation with some dog owners. There are a lot of dogs in Hay, most of them with people attached. The Girl Racer FaceTimed from Canada as we were talking so we took her on a tour of the town then sat on a bench, which is where I was when I took this photograph. The folk from the festival office were doing a promo shoot in one of the bookshop doorways, so we got chatting to them and it turned out that one of them (name of Gareth) was someone TSM had been emailing with over book purchases. Cue a long conversation about the festival and an invitation to drop by the office any time this week.

Then we went to the Three Tuns for a drink and got chatting to a couple from Somerset (and their dog) and of course one of them worked in the NHS so we had a long chat about how exhausting the last year has been. Then the dog got grumpy as he was late for his supper so they went off and we went back to the car. TSM stopped in the Spa to buy a bottle of vodka and said that the woman who worked in there was a grumpy old so-and-so (surprise) then we went back to the car. 

I had been having a WhatsApp conversation with several of my brothers all afternoon about the fact that I was in Wales (two of them live in Wales) which inevitably sank into chaos as we are incapable of talking to each other without resorting to badinage as if it were an extreme sport supercharged with expletives. We haven’t seen each other for a long time, in fact I can’t remember the last time all five of us were in the same room, something I hope to correct this year.

The drive back to our cottage is a steep one, about fifteen minutes and there were a number of sheep in the road. There are a lot of sheep around here and they seem to have the run of the place, despite cattle grids.

We thought our socialising was over as the cottage is quite isolated but it was one of those days when fate was determine to introduce you to people, whatever your designs.  It all started when I went to wash my hands and the tap came off as I turned it, leaving a constant flow of gushing hot water. If I put the tap back the water stopped but as soon as I took my hand away it blew off again. I rigged up some straps using some very thick rubber bands found in a cupboard, then the landlady sent not one but two people to fix it (about ten minutes apart). So we got to meet yet more people and learned something about isolation valves and stopcocks. Then the guy next door knocked on the door and asked if we could move our car and I realised I had met him two years ago when we were last here so we ended up chatting for ages about how they had been since lockdown etc etc. 

We ended up in the local pub after supper where we had a beer / vodka and orange to round off the day. There is no mobile signal up this particular Welsh hillside and at one point the pub phone rang and the barman handed it to one of the locals as it was for her rather than them. It’s that sort of a place.

Our final act of the day was to watch a Hay Festival event online called The Impossible Office - not a supernatural thriller but the name of a book reviewing all fifty five British Prime Minsters and how the best and worst of them had handled it. Excellent event, really thought provoking, although the academic and author presenting seemed to be giving his talk from his elderly mother’s bedroom. Things like that can be a bit distracting. Anyway the jury is out on Boris Johnson. I think the analysis was that he is a complete arse but has a tendency to get lucky so might yet earn his place in history. Sounds like a good description of the man to me. 

It’s now approaching midnight and my blogging juices have run dry. But it is so nice to be here again, and I am fairly certain that this week will be refreshing for both of us … it certainly has been today …