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So as
this is my first proper blog post I just want to reiterate that the idea of
this blog is that it is a lovely healthy compartmentalising (if
compartmentalising is healthy) mix of things to do either with your
boyfriend/girlfriend/person you would put "it's complicated with" on
facebook if anyone ever did that; your mates and yours truly - yourself.
On top of this concept I
thought everything I was going to include in this blog should be:
1. In London - maybe
some of them should be done anywhere in the world, but for restaurants, plays,
exotic yoga classes etc I wanted to learn and pass on everything new and
exciting I found in this brilliant city through writing Loner. Lover.
Friend.
2. Less than £100 -
on the basis that I don't really want to spend more than £100 per week
socialising, as I would bankrupt myself more than I already have, and it means
more people can enjoy anything I find and recommend.
3. Things that - if people
read this in real time (and in some cases even if they didn't) - anyone
could just walk into and do or book right away. No but wait until next
year, no places it is impossible to get into unless you are a C-list celebrity
or book 9 years in advance, just uncovered gems we could all head on down to or
book today if we felt like it.
So I thought it only makes
sense that my first blog post should focus on the fabulous time I had at Hay
Literary Festival, which by the way is:
1. A tube, 2 not very
regular trains and a bus away from London... right on the English Welsh border.
2. Far less than £100 if
you did not have to pay for a train fare, anywhere to stay when you get there,
food or rehydration; but assuming you have to pay for all of these things, far
far more.
3. Several months ago in
May, and not on again, until next May.
Woops.
But hey ho as Hay Festival
for me is the perfect first blog post for Loner. Lover. Friend, as
it really challenged me to be a better loner, and reminded my how great being
all alone with just your own mind and the stimulating words of someone else
really can be for company. Which after all is one of the proper deep down
purposes of this - that we'll never be the best lovers and friends we can be
until we are good loners.
Sooo Hay. Sorry if you are
someone who has heard of Hay Festival, but if you haven't, it is a Literary
Festival in the little historic book town of Hay-on-Wye in the beautiful Brecon
Hills. For 2 weeks amazing speakers from nobel prize winners to historians to
Benedict Cumberbatch to Mary Berry talk about books they've written, books
they've loved and just general amazing inspirational and fascinating things
they've learnt in life and want to pass on to a small (by
Glastonbury/Lovebox/Wilderness standards) but supremely captive audience.
Although it all started in Hay-on-Wye, today Hay festival is held in 14 others
venues across the globe from Budapest to the Maldives to Nigeria to Mexico. I
went to the original Welsh one though innit.
When I turned 25 I made a
little list of things I wanted to do before I was 30 (which I can waffle about
in more detail later) and one of them was Hay. I guess - to keep with the
pattern of lists of 3 - this was for these reasons:
1. I loved school -
particularly English Literature - and I love a festival, so one that seemed to
combine both these things, the best school lessons, but in a field where you
can also buy local ales and £8 slices of pizza and fudge and local cheddar seemed
like a good plan.
2. Chris Evans talks about
it all the time on BBC radio 2, and I am the biggest fan (and possibly only,
bar my boyfriend who is forced to listen to it against his will) twenty
something daily listener to his breakfast show. He is just so chirpy, really
gets me going for the day. Thus I trust everything he says, like "Hay
festival is bangin'" Nb. don't think he's actually ever said "Hay
Festival is bangin'" but something of that sentiment.
3. Cos I thought it would
be a bit of a challenge to spend that long (2 days) totally alone, somewhere
far away I didn't know, and I wanted to make sure I could do it, and come out
stronger as you do by defying any challenge. Now before you close this window
because you think I am the most small town person ever - suggesting Hay in
Wales is somewhere far and challenging - please let me defend myself. I used to
be a lot better at being alone, without signal or technology in far away lands.
I even got a bit Eat Pray Love-y when I was doing my classic post uni South
East Asia travelling and insisted I stay out by myself afterwards. I have had
many a taxi driver who can't find your hostel at 1am in Vietnam/waking
up to realise you are sharing your sleeper train bunk bed with a whole Indian
family/turning up at your booked hostel to find they have given your room to
someone else sort of problems which I have faced totally alone and
been totally ok. But that was when I was 22, young, single and carefree, but
now I am 25 and settled and in a relationship and I do things like worry about
whether I am too tired to go out for dinner and drinks on Thursday and a night
out on Friday and I make excel spreadsheets of my finances. The appeal of being
alone has lost its glisten, cos hey anything I do alone - have a bath, eat a
whole bar of mint chocolate aero whilst watching TV, lie in bed and listen to
music - are better when he is there. Oh gosh I just threw up on myself, sorry.
I hope you managed to keep your vomit in, but either way you get the point. Why
be alone when you don't need privacy? It is nice to have someone around to get
that second bar of minty aero from the fridge when you can't be arsed but you
know you really want it.
So if you are still reading
let me tell you a little more about all things Hay, and how I really did find a
little bit of that "sure I have accidentally found myself in a brawl in
the women only queue at this weird train station in this Indian town I don't
even know the name of, and sure that Indian woman is using her big beautiful gold
bangles to try and hit me on the head, and sure the police are now coming, but
dya know what I'm ok" attitude.
If I was to talk about
everything that was great about Hay, and all the wise things I learnt (like
they make black pudding pizza in Wales) you would be here even longer than
you've been here already so I am going to keep it to 5. Ok 6, sorry, I am a
waffler, I'll get better.
1. Toni Morrison
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| Toni chatting away at Hay |
Oh Toni. Toni Morrison was
definitely my main reason for getting my act together and going to Hay this
year. The nobel prize winner in 1997, I studied her novel Beloved for my A-Level English
Literature coursework, and found it one of those "now I've read this I'll
never be the same novels." (I mean not wildly different, like I'll still
like cocktails and shoes with wedges, but something in me has got a little
wiser). Beloved is based loosely on a true story of a enslaved
black woman during the times of the slave trade, who took the life of some of
her children, and attempted to take the life of the others, to save them from a
fate she believed far worse than death: growing up a slave. Toni Morrison, a
New Yorker, a mother, a descendant of slaves was suprisingly unintimidating. She started by making jokes about how she'd used
sweetcorn as sexual innuendos in her very serious novel. Hearing someone as
incredible as Toni Morrison speak about their work was amazing, a few rows back
is probably the closest I will ever get to a brain so big and clever. I could
start my own Toni Morrison at Hay spin off blog, but in the name of
succinctness, I'll touch on just one thing she said, which was about the ending
of her book, where one character Paul D reminds Sethe that "you your best
thing Sethe. You are". Luckily we don't have to overcome the
incomprehensible struggles and choices slaves endured and made in
America for hundreds of
years, and many people in the world still have to overcome today. But however
easy our life is in comparison, I think that is a lovely thing to take with us
and remember, whatever our worry or hurdle, we're our best thing.
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| Graffiti of Toni in Vitoria, Spain |
2. The clean and shiny
porta loos.
And on a way more shallow
note: the porta loos were quite frankly, incredible. No dropshots, no poo piled
high above the seat, no sick on the floor, not even a skidmark. We are talking
toilets that flushed, toilet paper galore, porcelain freaking sinks with
running water. Turns out the reason portaloos are gross at all the music
festivals isn't just because portaloos are gross full stop. It all us twenty
somethings who consume 8 pints of beer, a dodgy burger, 3 double vodka and
cokes and then block the portaloos with 4 packs of baby wipes. Woops. Live and
learn. But for a nice loo, head to Hay. I wish I had taken a picture to add
below, but frankly I don't think I could capture them more beautifully than
they were in the flesh.
3. Only having to pay for
the talks you actually go to
Imagine if at festivals you
only had to pay to see the bands you actually wanted to, and not for all the
weird electro ones on the programme that all your friends want to see but it is
hard to sing along to? At Hay, you only have to pay for the talks you are going
to, which means you always get to see what you want properly without crippling
your boyfriend by climbing on his shoulders (as you book in advance) and it is
kinder to your bank balance. All Hay talks cost from free to £15, with most
sitting around £7 and most sessions lasting an hour and a half.
4. Chris and Christine
One of my big things I was
nervous about when going away by my lonesome was meeting Chris/Christine (I
didn't know it was 2 people yet), the B&B Hay Festival "find me a
room" service had found me whilst warning they had not vetted the
B&Bs. Probs didn't help I was meeting them "outside the clock
tower" at 11pm. Just sounds like the beginning of a horror movie. But as
it turns out Chris and his wife Christine (2 of them) are some of the nicest
people and best chefs I've met, with a very comfy bed and very friendly
chocolate labradors. If you want to sample a night in one of their amazing
beds, wake up to this view from your bedroom and eat one of these maple syrup,
walnut, banana and creme fraiche bagels for breakfast, look on their website
here: http://www.thesmithy.webeden.co.uk/
5. Ruby Wax
I can never decide whether
I find Ruby Wax that funny, or just a bit weird and I am not sure if Hay
settled things one way or the other. But she knows her shiz when it comes to
all mental health surrounding depression, stress and anxiety, having recently
got her master's at Cambridge! At Hay she talked about things that could get
scientific, boring and depressing in an interesting and amusing way so that was
good. I liked her chat about Dopamine. That is the hormone which makes us want
to study for our exams, write a blog after our full working day, bother to go
to 2 different friend's birthday dinners in one night, and all round make us want to make the most
of our lives. However, in too higher dose dopamine can also be the thing that
makes you freak the hell out when you get to the underground platform and there
is not another tube for a whole 4 bleeding minutes and you are running late
anyway because you decided to squeeze your beach holiday ASOS order, painting
your nails and checking your instagram in your spare 10 minutes that day.
Constant amounts of dopamine make us way more likely to get anxiety problems
(looking at me here) but if we keep on like this high levels of dopamine have
been linked to cancer, schizophrenia and loads of nasty things. I often dip in
and out of practicing mindfulness and general relaxation bits to keep my mind
of my worries, but one that Ruby taught me really works. Basically your brain
can't be panicking when one of your senses - smelling, hearing, seeing,
touching is really working hard - your brain just can't be in two places at
once. So next time you're panicking look really hard at something - really
taking in the colours, the glint, the depth of what your are looking at. Or
smell really hard - concentrate on how the rooms smells right now and how it
changes. You'll feel your brain jumping in again and pulling you back to your
worries, but if you keep at it, it works really well.
6. And finally - Hay-on-Wye
itself.
Festival or no festival,
Hay-on- Wye is certainly worth a visit, for its cobbled lanes, beautiful
Brecons views, independent delis and cafes, retro cinema, award winning pubs
and restaurants and it's burnt out castle which now houses a street food
market, fortune teller and antiques shop. And of course its book shops, because
Hay is not just book crazy for the last week of May and first week of June, but
all year round. I loved it so much, I even googled the house market prices
round there, as I could see myself spending my Saturday eating fresh fettucine
in the street market, walking it off in the Brecon's and slobbing in front of
an old movie in the cinema that night. And for the price of a 2 bed flat in
Peckham you could own a 4 bedroom detached cottage overlooking your massive garden.
Commute on a Monday morning would be a bitch though.
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| Hay Castle no longer homes any Welsh kings and queens, but a restaurant, street food market and a fortune teller amongst other things. |
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| Totally chose the book with the good covers at Booth's bookshop (pictured below) |
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| Booth's Bookshop claims to be the largest second hand bookshop in the world, it was started by Richard Booth who proclaimed himself King of Hay (honestly) and helped turn it into the internationally renowned book town it is today |
Hay 2015 isn't available to
book yet, but will be by the end of 2014/beginning of 2015 and you can do so here.
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Here are some other
literary festivals I fancy going to this year, next year one day, which are not
quite as far a field:
Like Hay you just buy
tickets for the events you go to, so that is nice. My highlight speakers
include Caitlin Moran, Margaret Atwood and Judi Dench.
Just down the road, cheap
as chips (lots of free talks), sponsored by Brew Dog, and I have seen loads of
people who went last year hanging around with a fabulous canvas tote. All round excellent stuff.
So this is quite a new one,
which happened last year in Hyde Park I believe, with lots of modern fiction
authors. However, I can see nothing about it on their website, so maybe they
are not planning for one next year? If no, they are doing writing and creative
group trips to Italy, so if there is no literary festival in Hyde Park next
year, we can console ourselves with a writing trip to Tuscany next September.
So if you fancy a 2 day
trip to Hay next year, how much will it cost you?
Not propestorous I guess for something which is essentially a mini break, but cutting out the bed and train and heading to something a bit more local would make it cheaper!
Vicky x
Top photo copyright - Harper's Bazaar
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