Isobelle has hit the ground running as a member of the Town Council, as she is now the Co-ordinator for the Green Transport Action Plan. She has already set up a lift/car share group on Facebook at www.facebook.com/groups/238557719890177/ Pontynys Mill is not far from the Crown Inn in Longtown, and is a corn mill currently undergoing restoration. The situation was complicated, though, because on the one hand the Church was limiting knowledge to what was acceptable, and what fitted with the Bible (even if it was contradicted by actual experience), and on the other hand the Church had saved knowledge from the Classical world such as Plato and Aristotle (who was a "rubbish scientist", but whose works were copied for 1500 years).

And another person asked if they would consider putting the play on for the Ledbury Poetry Festival. Honesty Bookshop – there will be a canvas canopy for shelter, but as it’s December please wear warm clothing. The October issue started with a description of life at Upper Pentre farm, Painscastle. The Young Farmers were talking about Painscastle Fete and Kington Show, and a tractor run, including a trophy for the best turned out tractor. There was a report on the Gladestry Summer Fair, which had the theme Gladestry in Wonderland. The Mad Hatter opened the fair, assisted by the Queen of Hearts and the White Queen and there was, of course, a Mad Hatter's Tea Party. The Parish Hall was set out with tables, with candles burning, and so many people turned up that they had to bring more chairs out. Which was very gratifying for the lady introducing the evening, who had been out earlier in the Market Square shouting "Free Madrigals" to drum up custom! They have a whole menu of different gins on a board on the wall, but I think that's something to sample on a different occasion. They also have a good selection of wines, so we were sharing bottles. I enjoyed the prosecco, and the Malbec (Las Pampas?) was a smooth and tasty red wine which went very well with the beef.It started as an April Fool. Richard George William Pitt Booth (1938) opened a secondhand bookshop in the town in the sixties. Then he started another, and another. Soon people who worked for him began opening their own shops, and Hay's reputation as a treasure trove for bibliophiles began to grow. As we went around town in a big loop, we stopped at intervals so that Oliver could read passages from the diary and talk about them. We also had a member of the Historical Society along to tell us about the history of the castle. Oliver also said that he had promised not to talk about the history of Hay, so as not to overlap with the History Walk later in the day.

Now a decision has been made about what to do with the plaque, which will not be returned to its original position. Instead, it will be donated to Y Gaer museum by Brecon Town Council, where it will be part of a new exhibit giving more details about the voyage and the slave trade Captain Phillips was involved in. Their other beers, named for a mountain theme, are Skirrid Bitter, Sugarloaf Bitter and (not a mountain) Tudor IPA.I adored this section which is wonderfully curated and features some seriously impressive works by expert letterpress printers. These titles are very expensive but would make for lovely gifts if you’ve got the budget. Owen Sheers said that the play was intended as a kind of haunting, so that Keith Douglas would be remembered, even though his published work fell into obscurity after the war. If he had lived, he could have been one of England's foremost poets of his generation. In the evening, there's a talk at the Swan, with speakers talking about walking in the Brecon Beacons, Wainwright's Coast to Coast Walk, and The Shropshire Six - six hills on a 40 mile route which is traditionally completed in one day! There’s something so romantic about vintage poetry editions because it adds that extra layer of history to them and I loved browsing these shelves. The latest timetable I've seen, shared on Facebook, shows buses leaving Hay for Hereford at 7.24am, 10.24am, 12.24pm and 16.34, with buses coming from Hereford to Hay at 8.35am, 11.35am and 13.35. The service appears to be split between the T14 and the 914, which runs from Hay to Hereford at 7.27am and from Hereford to Hay at 16.33 and 17.40.

This will be a day of remembering and celebrating Alastair, bringing the people and things he loved together… The jugglers weren't the only buskers - up at the top of the Pavement was a chap with an electric guitar who has become a regular fixture, playing something mellow. Another questioner asked if there really would be Christmas lights on Oxford Street in the middle of the war, as mentioned in the play, but Owen Sheers said that was a quotation from Keith Douglas's own letters, so it must have been true. The girls who are in the bursary project have also been doing well, and are all moving on to the next grade. This is to provide extra support in the form of school materials which parents would usually have to buy, and to give extra training in areas like sexual health. As well as the bus, they have drivers who use their own cars, and they've also started running day trips. Now that Hay has no bank branches, they also run a regular Bank Bus so people can visit their bank branch in Brecon.The roof is still being worked on, and when that is finished it will be possible to do more work on the interior of the building. I was greeted with tea and fruit cake - and the lone man in the room asking plaintively: "Is it only women who want to save the world?"

There were presentations, too - Mary Fellowes got a special certificate, which they'd managed to keep secret from her, and Dial-a-Ride was presented with a Dementia Friendly sign. The lady presenting it said she thought that Hay was the first community bus service to get such an award, and it was all thanks to the enthusiasm of the office secretary, Lesley Moore. And all the volunteers got a little scroll. The service has also been awarded a Community Transport Association Quality Mark, and several awards (from PAVO and others) for Volunteers of the Year. My attention has been drawn to an auction of land just outside Hay. It's not something I would normally pay any attention to, but there seems to be something odd about this particular sale. After a fairly general session last week, this meeting was more focussed on the up-coming climate action on October 7th and the weeks following that. The authentic fabrics for the period are wool, linen and (just coming in, all the way from China) silk. Cotton was another luxury fabric of the period. Patterned cloth was unknown, and so were buttons and (of course) zips! Fortunately 13thC fashion was mostly of the loose, pull-it-on-over-your-head variety.It starts on Thursday 28th November and goes on until Sunday 1st December, and is the more intimate, smaller version of the main, summer Hay Festival. Venues are a 500 seater tent on the Cattle Market (the Baillie Gifford tent), St Mary's Church and the School Hall. On Sunday, though, I had the chance to join the Kilvert Walk led by Oliver Balch, as part of the Hay Independence celebrations. I was sad to hear yesterday of the death of Lucy Powell, legendary landlady of the Three Tuns before the renovations, which were done after the fire which ended Lucy's time there. I love Latin America, everything about it: the people, the landscapes, the literature, the politics. Newly married, I moved to Argentina in my late twenties, feverish for adventure and all things new. The country didn't disappoint. From glaciers in the south to salt plains in the north, we travelled the length and breadth of this charmed land. We only meant to go for a year, but ended up staying seven. And then, very naturally, it felt time to come home. We never lost our affection for Argentina. Something just changed. Our cold, damp, crowded, wonderful little isle was calling us homeward. Someone asked if this was the right time to hold climate protests, considering the present political climate in the UK. The considered answer was that all the problems over Brexit seemed like a petty squabble compared with the importance of saving the planet. Whatever people's politics are, we all need a habitable planet to live on. In one way, this is a perfect time to protest about climate change, both because of the short time we have to make a difference according to the IPCC report and the volatile nature of British politics at the moment - there may be a General Election soon, and the situation seems to be changing all the time. It was seen as a positive sign that Jane Dodds, the new MP for Brecon and Radnorshire, came to the Brecon protest last week, and was talking about holding a Citizen's Assembly to talk about what can be done in the local area to mitigate climate change.