Got me some culture..........

I know that all of my chums are literary vultures and will be well familiar with the world famous Hay Literary Festival. A few may be less familiar with a parallel event which takes place at HM Prison Parc at Bridgend (check the geotag for where that is - although I didn't take the photo there (Obviously!!!)). Hay-in-the-Parc is organised by a member of staff at the prison and attracts people from the main event who visit the prison to talk about and perform some of their work. The event runs for 10 days and this year started on the 20th May. I was lucky enough, and honoured, to attend the closing session today. Members of staff and prisoners read some of the poems and short stories written by men at the prison. A couple of guys performed songs that they had written and two beautiful pottery sculptures were presented to a representative of the Arts Council by the artist who created them - a smashing bloke who has another year to serve and who hadn't ever tried pottery until he arrived at Parc three or so years ago. Truly wonderful, delicate work by a large, shaven headed bloke with a splendid array of colourful tattoos. A piece of his was shown at the Koestler Trust exhibition last year.

Then I dropped a colleague back at the OU in Wales office in Cardiff before heading back. I usually listen to speech radio while I'm driving but I scanned the channels and found a station playing Queen's "Radio ga-ga" so I ramped that up to 11, one of the things that still works on my car is the Bose sound system, and sang along at the top of my voice as I crawled out towards the motorway. Then the long lope home. Non-stop; or at least I didn't pull into a service station - lots of stops in traffic as I hit the rush hour.

Now I have beer and it's been a wonderfully uplifting day and a reminder of why I do what I do and how much working directly with this group means to me. And how very, very lucky I am.