Hay30#

 This year Hay Festival celebrates it 30th anniversary and this sculpture is always popular with children.
It was there there that I saw a boy celebrating his 13th birthday doing amazing back flips. See this link.

We queue to have our bags searched by security on arrival and after the initial shock of seeing armed police patrolling the site this soon gives way to a quiet acceptance.
 
Thus we have adjusted to our new world.
 
Its ben a day of challenging topics starting with the way the immune system influences our brain and behaviour (Professor Alasdair Coles, Cambridge).
One of the most entertaining though was the flamboyant Italian Professor of Ethics and philosophy Luciano Floridi from Oxford University speaking on the Fourth Revolution how the infosphere is reshaping human reality. He already advises Google and other tech giants and he is still waiting for  call from Amazon...
 
 
A big change  is that the sponsor is the BBC, not the Daily Telegraph and this has resulted,  I suspect, with  a change of emphasis with a higher standard of intellectual debate.
 
And the struggling Fringe festival has disappeared.