I don't do festivals any more. I used to, for many years, years ago (when music was my priority instead of higher education). There is one festival, however, which I would very much like to attend: Hay on Wye in Wales. I am not actually that enthused by many of the speakers at this year's event (I have only seen the programme for the first week so far - the week I am most likely to get off at work), but I suppose that were I a novelist, I would find these writers of some interest. In any case, it would be enough to take a backpack filled with a tent, and return without the tent (probably give it to a homeless person - someone that needs it) but with a backpack filled with books. I am unsure if I can afford to attend this festival (because I have ordered a bunch of extremely rare books which I need to pay for, and also pay for the artwork for my play Boadicea, and indeed there are other things due which I must cover), but I was extremely depressed yesterday, and could use cheering up. I absolutely loathe my job. It is not a life. It is slavery. Yet one must do what one can, given the circumstances. One cannot expect to hold a master's degree in Classical Latin and end up in a good job in Dark Age Britain. I would like, in fact, to have a book stall in Hay, filled with books that I have translated and written, but that is for next year. (I figure getting a pitch would not be that difficult, and sourcing a collapsable plastic table, a tarpaulin and a little fishing stool is not mission impossible).
I would have liked to take my daughter, but that is unlikely. Like me, she is poor. This year I think I will take a little classical guitar and one book only (the Biblia Sacra). The company of other intellectuals will be enough. The guy that did the artwork on my first book (a translation of Ficino's De Potestate et Sapientia Dei), his mother - a family friend - lives in Wales and has said she will go with me. I am hoping to rope Sean Walsh (a local writer, political commentator and former lecturer in philosophy at Liverpool University) into coming along. I should imagine that her and Mrs. Richter will have as much in common as they will in disagreement. They are both at the same end of the political spectrum, and indeed share very similar religious views (Christians, like myself) but have very different views on the current Executive. I doubt Sean will come, as he's met a woman recently (as a dear late friend [Dave Latham] once said to me, "When love rears its ugly head, friends go out of the window."). Mrs. Richter's company will be enough. I'm not actually a specialist art historian or theologian, being a die hard classicist, so I should imagine we'll have a lot to talk about. I actually don't care about the speakers at the festival, so much as the books in the town of Hay, or indeed other writers and thinkers that are in attendance.
Max.
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