Hay Diary 2013

Last year I went to my first Hay Literature Festival, I was stewarding the event for three days and had a great time. There was never any doubt in my mind that, if it was at all possible, I would be back for 2013.

And back I went, for [effectively] six days this time. I did my best to tweet as I went through the festival, but stewarding duties and phone battery drainage frequently conspired to keep my phone out of use. Nonetheless, for the interested, an archive of my Hay twitter experience can be found here: http://storify.com/GR_Morgan/hay-diary-2013.

Home sweet home for six nights

Day 1, Thursday:

Arrived later than planned, having been late leaving Liverpool but also getting stuck behind [seemingly] every tractor, lorry, caravan and overly cautious driver (30 on a straight, good visibility national speed limit road!) between Chester and Welshpool. The sky was threatening rain but held off on the most part, although a brisk wind made putting up my tent all the more difficult. Eventually arrived at the festival site to find that everything had moved around since last year. I have a pretty good memory for maps and places so this completely messed up my orientation, but everyone was in the same boat and a few walks around the site got everything straightened up in my head.

One of the best things about stewarding Hay is eating in the staff canteen tent. A local pub provides the meals and they're always tasty with an unlimited supply of sides, plus drinks. Since I hadn't actually done any work I wasn't expecting to get fed on day one but I was fortunate enough to be given a meal voucher anyway. The whole time I was at the festival I didn't pay for any food (other than an ice cream, but it was worth it), and three large hot meals a day really takes the sting out of the long hours and having to camp.

I was then sent along to the Barclays Pavillion tent, a 1000+ venue to stand by a fire escape and watch Noah and the Whale and their support act Thumpers. Underwhelmed by NotW (!), they were quite stiff and not very exciting. They picked up a bit towards the end, although perhaps that was just because they were playing the older hits which I was familiar with. The crowd seems to agree as they were much more subdued than any of the other gigs I went to over the course of the festival despite being the only sellout event I attended in the Barclays tent. If anything there was a real danger the support act had the better performance.

Just a small slice of the queue to get a signed book from Julia Donaldson

Day 2, Friday:

On site by 9am and the cycle of (at least) 13 hours working days begins. After a full English breakfast I was assigned to the Google Big Tent (capacity c.600) where I would stay for the duration of my time. The people you meet are another great thing about working at Hay and this year proved no exception. Whilst I would meet and chat to many people over the course of my time there (although not in the canteen - I'm terrible at canteens. Head down, eat fast, get out), the team at Google really took me in and were exceptionally friendly and welcoming. Thanks guys!

The Google tent is the third largest of the venues which means we didn't get the biggest of names but nor did we get smaller more cultish figures. Most of the speakers our tent would attract would be academics, journalists, historians, politicians, and the like, with a healthy spread of children's authors.

It was another nearly wet, windy day, and the morning was taken up with Hay Fever events (the Children's festival embedded within Hay festival proper). Seeing Liverpool stalwart Jon Mayhew give a talk to 300 or so kids about Jules Verne, Captain Nemo and his new book was particularly lovely. After that we fell into a more familiar rhythm with some fascinating talks. I'm not going to list everything I saw, if only because my memories of specifics are likely to be hazy, but some highlights included two sessions with Cambridge University professors: the first a great talk by Jonathan Haslam about the history of Russia's Secret Services from the Revolution to the (almost) modern day, and the second a talk on Nanotechnology by Mark Welland who did a great job of explaining and illustrating the complexities of the Nano world as well as its applications.

The Google tent was also right next to the bookshop so I would often catch glimpses of big names I hadn't been able to see as they made their way to their signings, as well as have lovely chats with the bookshop staff (comrades in arms).

Jon Ronson on stage in the Google Big Tent

Days 3-6, Saturday - Tuesday:

Saturday and Sunday we were blessed with glorious sunshine, which contributed to Saturday being the busiest day Hay has ever had. I'm not a hundred percent sure but I think I heard someone say that at peak there were over 10,000 people on site. Looking around at how busy it was even during the slots when most people should have been inside tents at events I could believe that estimate. Hell, there were enough people in the queue to get books signed by Children's Laureate Julia Donaldson to ensure a pretty considerable minimal attendance.

The weather wouldn't hold out though and both Monday and Tuesday it not only rained but as bitterly cold. This does bring the mood down a little and you do get the occasional punter snap at you after you inform them their event has been moved to a different tent (a regular occurrence that most festival goers take in their stride) but generally the public are a friendly and understanding bunch and even some pretty poor environmental conditions don't stop them bantering to you whilst they queue up to enter the venues.

I saw some great events over these days. Jon Ronson was particularly entertaining and Marcus Brigstocke's "Brig Society" gig was a brilliant way to spend an evening. Some of the kids events surprised me, I knew Derek Landy would be an entertaining hour having seen him do a signing at Liverpool, but was pleasantly surprised to find the Beast Quest / Adam Blade (in character as wizard Aduro) event quite amusing, although as Adam Blade is a shared pen name I don't know which author gets to dress up and sign books, or whether the publishers hire an actor, but it was fun nonetheless.

You get the same kind of surprises from adult events too. I had an idea I'd find the debate on "The Future of News" with representatives from Google, the BBC and The Telegraph interesting, but I would have expected a talk about China's economy to be quite dry and jargon based. Instead Linda Yueh gave an entertaining and informative explanation about how China's economy has grown, what this means and what might happen next. She used plenty of jargon but she broke it all down in a clear and easily understood way, showing why she's the BBC Chief Business Correspondent. Similarly, I wouldn't have expected to enjoy Sherard Cowper-Coles talking to Nik Gowing about his time in the Foreign Office but some of the anecdotes he shared about characters like Tony Blair and Robin Cook were both insightful and hilarious. Being in an event you wouldn't have chosen to attend and actually finding it really informative and enjoyable is something I particularly enjoy about stewarding Hay, and that sentiment is common to most stewards I spoke to.

Another thing stewards get their kicks from, other than just attending these events for free, is spotting celebrities in the audience. Given the kinds of events at the Google tent it wasn't uncommon or surprising to see people to vaguely recognise from newspaper editorials and such, as well as the likes of Nick Robinson and George Alagiah sitting in the crowd. But then that's Hay all over, you can be walking back from the loo on a quiet evening to realise the person walking alongside you is Dr. Rowan Williams (he of the crazy eyebrows and former Archbishop of Canterbury), or be standing around trying to organise people into an orderly queue and be asked for directions by Lee Mack, almost knock over Jack Straw, and have a quick word with Carl Bernstein.

Best feel good sensation of the festival has to go to Amadou & Mariam. A blind couple, and their brilliant band, from Mali who had the Wales tent jiving away on Tuesday night. It really warmed my heard to see young kids dancing with their parents, and old people (and I mean really old people) standing up and boogying along. 

Amadou & Mariam bring the Wales Tent to life

Day 7, Wednesday:

I cut my final day a little short in order to head home in good time, and to meet up with my cousin in Hay-on-Wye for an hour, but I was sorry to leave. Despite having been dog tired since day two, I have so much fun at Hay there is no doubt in my mind I'll be trying to head back next year. If I hadn't needed to be back in Liverpool it would have been extremely hard to tear myself away (I missed Jeremy Irons reading Four Quartets!).

When I got back I worked out how much I'd spent on the trip (£30 petrol + £55 camping and parking) - not including the few signed books I bought, versus how much I'd saved if I'd had to pay to see all the events I saw (although without the hindsight I now have, I wouldn't have paid to see all of them, including many which I actually turned out to enjoy) and it turns out I made a net saving of at least £144 and that's not taking into account food and drink (all those free meals vs. the occasional pint in the evening and that gorgeous peanut butter and chocolate ice cream). So, if you've always wanted to go to a festival like Hay, but are intimidated by the price it seems pretty clear that stewarding is the way to go.

But its not just about the money or the events (or, indeed, the food), it's about being part of something big, something special. Something which is genuinely inspirational and which always sends me home wanting to read more, write more, think harder and be better than I am. I'll be there come 2014, will you?

Hay Diary 2012

Last weekend I was down in Hay-on-Wye working as a steward at the world famous literature and the arts festival, now in its 25th year. It has long been an ambition of mine to be in Hay when the festival is on and the opportunity to steward (representing Waterstones in this instance) was too good to pass up, especially as I didn't have to pay for my travel or my camping.

The now iconic central field of the festival site

I wanted to do a detailed diary-style blog post for each of the three days that I was at the festival but the fact I was far too busy to make any sort of notes, coupled with the fact that since I got back I've been too busy to write this blog post, means that I'm working from memory and the few grainy photos I managed to snap on my phone and so I thought it wisest to restrict myself to a single post.

Hay-on-Wye

I arrived in Hay-on-Wye with a fellow Waterstones affiliated steward after a 50 minute bus trip from Hereford, it was my first visit to the town itself, let alone to the festival, and I delighted in the location and layout of the place, every other shop was a bookshop and the streets seemed to resemble more a squiggle than the straight line of a single high street I've so long ago become accustomed, and bored, with. Perhaps it was this euphoria that sent us in completely the wrong direction, back over the bridge, over the river Wye, to the wrong campsite before trooping valiently to the otherside of the small town to our designated lodgings located, confusingly enough, in England. For you see, Hay-on-Wye is such a border town that our campsite managed to be still part of Hay but actually over the border, as was the Co-Op accross the road which meant we could at least get carrier bags for free...

Tim Minchin on stage

All the Waterstones stewards eventually converged on the festival site, on the opposite side of the town to our campsite (but still only a 15 minutes walk - it's not a big place), and I instantly fell in love with the occasion. The Hay festival site is a series of temporary event venues (to call them tents is like calling a cathedral a church, not wrong but inaccurate) ranging from the small seminar room sized Hay-on-Earth to the massive 1600 capacity Barclay's Pavilion connected by a warren of white cellophane canopied walkways along which the book lovers scurry from event to bookshop to cafe. After some brief orientation we were left to our own devices and told to report back later for our first piece of stewarding duty: helping to staff the pavilion for a Tim Minchin gig that evening.

From my perspective at least the gig went off without a hitch and so began my time stewarding Hay. Given that we were only going to be on site for Saturday and Sunday I aimed to see and do as much as I could in that time, to get as full a taste of the festival as I could within the constraints of my responsibilities as a steward and within the time limit allocated to me by the limited time I could be away from Liverpool. On the Saturday, feeling wide awake despite the heavy snorer five feet from my head in the next tent, I attended numerous events from historical fiction author Philippa Gregory talking about her new book The Changeling, to poet Simon Armitage talking about walking the Pennine Way the wrong way and without any money (detailed in Walking Home). Some of the event suprised me, I had no idea I would find John Thompson's talk "Merchants of Culture" so interesting, but then given that it revolved around the book industry and the future of publishing I suppose I was predisposed to be fascinated. Similarly the environmental discussion over at Hay-on-Earth "Should be Leave the Oil in the Ground?" was an enlightening dalliance into the world of eco-politics. In the evening, just after the rain had started to fall (and would not stop until some time early on Monday morning) I was sent over to the music festival part of Hay, located at a different site at Hay Castle, "Sound Castle". There I was treated to an electronica/jazz fusion drumming performance by Munich-born drummer Christian Prommer that I had no right to enjoy and yet truly did.

Christan Prommer

Harry Belafonte

The next day was more of the same, which was no bad thing. It started with a business talk at 9am by amongst others the CEO of Waterstones, James Daunt, "Business Breakfast: The Future of Books". I was then sent, in the persistant drizzle, to accompany some members of the RSPB as they led some children on a photography walk. Later I got to sit in on the filming of Mariella Frostrup's The Book Show for Sky Arts where she interviewed poet Lemn Sissay, critic Stephanie Merritt (aka author SJ Parris), plus singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte. One of the highlights of not only my day but also my time at the fesitval was the massively entertaining session I enjoyed watching Oliver Jeffers use an iPad to illustrate chapters from his life and books as he entertained a venue full of children, not long later in the same venue I was then able to see none other than Salman Rushdie with film maker Deepa Mehta talking about the upcoming film adaptation of Midnight's Children, it was then back off to Sound Castle to see Ghostpoet, a hip-hop style act kind of in the vein of The Streets and another completely unexpected pleasure.

Ghostpoet

I think that's what I loved the most about Hay, the unexpected pleasures. I went in fully expecting to see some top quality authors and commentators and be both entertained and inspired by their work and the way in which they delivered it. I got that. But it was the unexpected pleasures of working alongside some genuinely friendly and welcoming people from the guys who took us to a local pub on the first night to Tim at Sound Castle and his terrifying tale of potholing, and everyone in between. It was the food (oh God! The food!) which was amazing, it was the good nature of the punters who [largely] smiled and nodded and chatted with you as they queued in the rain or as you directed them to the other side of the site because of one of the all too frequent venue changes. It was trying to celebrity spot even though you don't know what half the famous authors look like (I'm fairly sure Ian McEwan walked past me at least twice, and I'm 100% sure I showed A. C. Grayling to his seat, and that I nearly knocked over former Welsh First Minister Rhodri Morgan in the gift shop as he was announcing to his wife that he needed a wee).

I had an absolutely amazing time at Hay, not event tainted by the atrocious journey back to Liverpool - complicated not just by a Bank Holiday but by a train breaking down further down the track in Abergavenny. I would heartily recommend that anyone with a love of people and books attend it at any opportunity they can, I know I certainly intend to book off a week of holiday next year and head South again to work as a steward, this time under my own steam. My only regret would be that I had to leave when I did, and not just because I missed personal idols like Stephen Fry and Terry Pratchett (although - no lies: that's a big part of it) but also because I felt so amazingly invigorated by environment and am already itching to go back.