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Sometimes life becomes so surreal, pinching yourself just won’t bring you back to earth. I had to go to a takeaway to remind myself of normality, amongst the debris of cardboard plates, plastic cups and discarded smiles.
It all started at breakfast - with a beaming smile attached to twinkling eyes and a white beard encircling the round jolly face of the man opposite.
“ G-day’ he said with that unmistakable down under twang “I have been belly dancing on the fringe all night.” Quite an opener when I am staring at a raft of English breakfast on the plate in front of me, trying to decide which saturated fat felon to cast away. I love first conversations - they always lead to new places and people and lives.
“You belly danced?” I ask.
His roar shakes the room, and his twinkling glances off the silver cutlery. He’s all llight and merriment and sharp observation and joy - this breakfast companion from the other side of the world. There is something other-worldy about him too. He looks as if he could have stepped out of Lord of the Rings.
“No, no. I merely observed. It was the welsh women. They belly danced. And can they belly dance. My…” He is all appreciate chuckles as he spoons his muesli.
I ought to explain that I am in Wales for the Guardian Hay Festival 2007. As Director of The Arvon Foundation, I am chairing four writers’ events: Esther Freud and Rupert Thomson talking about their novels Love Falls and Death of a Murderer; Charles Leadbeater about his wiki work We Think; a discussion about the Myth and History of the Second World War with Owen Sheers, Justin Cartwright and Ben McIntyre; and then a conversation between the quirky american film maker and performance artist Miranda July and Marina ‘Tractors’ Lewycka. It’s pure joy to read their books.
There. So perhaps you get an idea of why I am here, in this beautiful Georgian house, with this wise gnome-like man eating breakfast and laughing.
But you only have part of the picture.
Another man comes in. Long and langurous with his beautiful wife. They sit down too.
“Ariane and I would like your royalties Sandy!’ roars the Lord of the Rings down under. ‘All of them. Make no mistake.”
The new breakfast companions have the same love of laughter too. And two new people join us with the same belly aching senses of humour. By now the breakfast table is rocking. The room is aglow with words and ideas.
Breakfast at 7am will never be the same again. In your wildest dreams, breakfast with Thomas Keneally and Alexander McCall Smith and James Naughtie never happens. But this is Hay, and as Thomas K gnomically says later in the day, “at Hay dreams come true.”
The Festival is now bigger than ever. There’s a new site, which is sophisticated with wide white marquees, duckboard walkways which have canopies over them to protect you from the inevtiable Hay storms of wind and rain. But wellies and walking boots are still needed. This is Hay at 20 years old - sassy, smart, committed, sparkling, intense and bigger. Writers are the superstars and the venues are packed with people eager to meet the writers, ask questions, jostle with ideas and just be together to appreciate literature. It’s the herd instinct gone wild - and it’s literature which has rounded about100,000 people together over 10 days from all parts of the country and the world. Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian writer who is one of Arvon’s patrons gives a key lecture called Writing on the Wall of Silence - about freedom of expression. The American writer Dave Eggers talks with Valentino Achak Deng about the book they have written together inspired by Valentino’s experiences in Sudan and Ethiopia to a packed audience of 1200 plus people. Superstar art historian Simon Schama bounces and cavorts his way through his presentation on why television and art are natural partners.
It’s showtime with substance - and people buying, holding and reading books.
Who said the book is dead when there can be so much life in them-there hills? Hay rocks. 20 years old and Hay rocks on and on.
Ariane is reading
Justin Cartwright - The Sing Before it is Sung
Esther Freud - Love Falls
Miranda July - No One Belongs Here More Than You
Charles Leadbeater - We Think
Marina Lewkcya - Two Caravans
Ben McIntyre - The Zig Zag Agent
Owen Sheers - Resistance
Rupert Thomson - Death of a Murderer
Ariane is listening to
Seth Lakeman - Freedom Fields - again and again and again!
need to get the new Rufus Wainwright soon too…
Ariane is watching
Jan Svankmeyer - Lunacy
Ariane is looking at
Anthony Gormley at the Hayward Gallery
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