When Arthur Miller asked if Hay-On-Wye was some kind of sandwich, the man was definitely right. Hay-On-Wye is the best sandwich for the mind I have tasted.
It just struck me while queueing for Shephered's Icecream that since I have been involved with this festival I have met remarkably wonderful people and well informed individuals for that matter on various subjects I may not have bothered to learn or may just have been ignorant.
Austin J Stevens, the intrepid snake man from South Africa, introduced his new autobiographical book, The Last Snake Man. It was mostly the young children in the audience who had snake questions. It was Stevens' comment on snakes shedding skin that made it for me. Fact: Snakes shed their skins four/five times a year. Afterthought: wouldn't it be nice to save a few years if human beings could shed the skin on their faces.
It was with a sense of trepidation that I followed my colleague Andy Fryers to listen to the debate on something to do with organic/non-organic food. You see, I have only been privy to these debates since I came to the UK and I always reluctantly take them in. The panelists were so divided creating a 'theatre of words' that engagingly absorbed the audience. There was no winner at the end. Reliable sustainability triumphed.
This time, I was curious, so I attended. Peter Florence was leading the inquiry into the "assassination of George Bush" in a mocumentary released late last year, Death of a President, while I was part of the jury in the auditorium. The two suspects, Simon Finch and Gabriel Range, pleaded not guilty to the critical charges of creating an "...evil, ...absolutely outrageous ...and shockingly disgusting" mockery of the President of America. Range, no it was probably the other fellow Finch who explained that their creative mission was rather to produce a metaphor for the post 9/11 period. So when the session was adjorned after an hour of interrogation and debate, the jury left the proceedings divided.
