Now I understand what people meant when they said: the actual festival starts on the first Saturday. Most events of the day are sold out. The site is swarming with people. I walk around. The sky is overcast.
I am assigned to look after Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka before and after his lecture, already sold out. I introduce myself to him and we talk. He is friendly and pats me on the back. I am tongue tied. What do you say to a man like Wole Soyinka? There is a kind of radiance in the man, just his presence, and of course his peculiar fluffy white hair. His lecture delays with 10 minutes. A cast of young and old people drag each other to listen to him.There is a sense that while the festival has been growing so too has been its staff and audience. People recognise each other from 10 years ago at a Hay event. I am impressed. Old friends meet and catch up. They talk about families and career changes. And then there are new friendships born through chance encounters in the Green Room, sharing moments on the stage, in coffee shops, in ticket queues.
The heavens poured in a torrent. People ran for cover in the onsite coffee shops and restaurants. Some escaped the rain by queueing their way into this or that event. They tell me, Hay Festival is not complete without mud and puddles. Rain, rain!
From John Major to Gordon Brown, Hay hosts them all. While Major spoke cricket, Brown spoke courage. People turned up in large numbers nevermind the soul drenching weather.
Even in Hay, Zimbabwe still made the headlines. Peter Godwin gave a brilliant introspection of Mugabe's Zimbabwe, a country with a government at war with its own people. I didn't shed a tear, only my heart bled.
