Hay Festival 2005 #1

Wednesday evening. I was pacing in the kitchen in my student digs on my mobile phone. (Reminds me how much I wish the university hadn't forgotten to send out the application form to have the landline activated in the house. Although only able to receive incoming calls it would have been a convenience.)

Mother - "We're going to Hay on Friday."
Me - "Can I come with you?"

There was already plans to meet my grandparents in the morning. Nan and Trev were in Bournemouth on one of those OAP bus trip thingies... I have just been informed that it wasn't an OAP bus trip, it was a dance club trip, just most of the people on it were OAPs as far as I could see. OAP = OLD AGE PENSIONER BY THE WAY.

Cider is good.

and anyway I digress, I arrived at Hay and it was beautiful, the swans were singing, cows were laughing, and the pigs were croaking, what a lovely day.
mmmm car exhaust!!!

Back to my point. Arrangement was then made that after meeting Nan and Trev in Bournemouth that I would just stay in the town and catch the train home. It made more sense to go home on Thursday and go up to Hay in the car with Mum and Pete than catch the train all the way to Hereford

NOTE: He had no help spelling Hereford.

on Friday and Mum and Pete coming to pick me up from Hay.
So it was half ten that I left the house Thursday morning to catch a bus, something that I still don't have the hang of. I am terrified of catching buses. I believe the timetables are unduly complex and that rather than listing actual place names they list monkey faces.
I believe!!
We are standing around all our lives waiting for things to happen and along comes Wells, wayhey party animal!! NOT
the bus drivers' own nickname for places, leaving me incapable of working out where a bus is supposed to be going. If they listed them with sensible descriptions such as "On the street with Electronics Boutique and Toys 'R' Us" then I would understand.
and then we went to where the swans lived and fed them.
I don't trust the bus drivers, maybe this has something to do with the fact that my father used to be a bus driver.
People keep telling me to just ask the bus driver where it's going. I refuse to do this because last time I tried it the bus driver thought me such a fool that he punched me in the face and sent me rolling off the bus, nose bleeding. O.K. That's not what really happened, it may have for all the psychological prohibition it put on me. In actual fact the bus driver just replied "No! This is the 'place name' bus" and gave me a look that said "You're a pathetic little shit and I hate you for wasting my time asking such stupid questions."
So I don't like catching the bus. The train I can handle, I have learnt how to read their timetables and they depart from nice solid brick structures that have probably been there for a quarter of a century or more. It was fine catching the train from Barry to Cardiff at any time because I knew that every train that passed through Barry station would stop at Cardiff. Every train! Admittedly they were often late or absent but being fixed to parallel iron bars they would go to the destination I expected them to each and every time, little room for deviation is left.
I've just realised I haven't really been writing much about Hay, making presumptions made about this piece caused by the title will probably lead most to disappointment.
To continue with my path to Hay; I met Nan and Trev in Bournemouth where we spent some time with squirrels that were just too tame. Someone suggested feeding them biscuits. Nan didn't have any biscuits but she did have some Liquorice Allsorts, so the squirrels were fed on those. Somehow this led to my grandmother making a wisecrack about free bowel treatment that the elderlies found most amusing. I think she was quite proud of her funny because she kept reminding me and Trevor of it for the rest of our meeting.



My train journey home was mostly uneventful. I noticed a woman pointing to something out the window to her small child saying "Look at those neigh neighs", presumably horses. I thought this too abstract for a child I then though about how I would possible "Look at those equine creatures." to my own potential child in an attempt to expand its vocabulary at an early age.
I really think I should read a lot more I have a child so that I can constantly use unnecessarily large words in their presence during their development.
I was home in between the hours of 5 and 6, Pete gave me a lift from the station with Mum as he usually picks her up from work around he time I got into Cardiff. Thursday night I spent in my sleeping bag because there were not enough bed clothes in the house, this was due to Mum and Pete making me take them to uni, presumably their assumption was that the more bed clothes I have the more likely I am to change them.
Friday morningish we then left for Hay. We haven't gone anywhere in Hay other than the beer tent on the campsite we are staying and as I finish writing this I am still fairly drunk and quite tired.