It's raining...it's the Hay Book Festival

It's raining, and very cold. First task is to go to the vintage tent and buy a second hand very thick woolly jumper.
Thankfully we packed umbrellas .We pass fields full of tents and are grateful we are not in one.

But hey! This is the Hay Book Festival....

We share breakfast this morning with Amanda, PR for the American writer Rebecca Miller (daughter of Arthur Miller). That's one of the charms of Hay, you don't know who you are going to be sharing a table with.

We haven't been for a few years and already we notice the changes. Not all for the better. There is less focus; it seems to be trying to appeal to everyone.

Start the day at 10am with a talk by comedian and writer Ruby Wax on depression. Yes, she's written a book about it and yes she did a degree in neuroscience at Oxford.
Is depression, from which one in four of us suffer from, nature or nurture?
Nobody knows she says.
She would like to see something equivalent to the AA support group for folk with mental illness and certainly her coming out so openly about her own problems will have helped the cause.

Once the church provided that support network. Not anymore.

In the afternoon we attend a conversation between the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams and Neil McGregor director of the British Museum on images and faith. This was a bit disappointing though clearly erudite.
Both speakers are a pleasure to listen to and one would have hoped they might have had something to say about society today.


Notice that the popular Welsh restaurant specialising in Welsh produce has been re-branded. It's now known as Graze.