Antics at Hay (From Oxford Mail)

Antics at Hay

11:34am Monday 7th June 2010

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I have just returned from my annual pilgrimage to the Golden Valley for the Hay Festival and I'm happy to report that I enjoyed it just as much as last year if not more.

The weather was pretty kind, allowing us to get our eight-man tent up at Hay Outdoor Training, a campsite a stone's throw away from the festival site.

While Mrs Page Turner went with a friend to listen to the wise words of the founder of mumsnet, I sat in on talks by former Sunday Times editor Harold Evans, and controversial columnist Christopher Hitchens.

I also made a number of visits to the onsite Oxfam bookshop where I paid £5.99 for Gyles Brandreth's amusing memoirs Something Sensational to Read on the Train.

There are second-hand bookshops on every corner in the town of Hay itself, and I splashed out £1.50 at Addyman Books on a 1925 pocket edition of Stevenson's Kidnapped, with the obligatory pull-out map attached at the back.

Between the festival site and the town, one resident staged a bric-a-brac sale and I snapped up a paperback copy of Richard Adams' The Plague Dogs for a pound.

If that wasn't enough, during a visit to Ffrench Towers in nearby Hereford, I grabbed a couple of Gerald Seymour novels including Traitor's Kiss.

In one vox pop of Hay festival goers, they were asked what their guilty pleasure was - in other words what they were really reading.

As night fell at the campsite, and the kids finally crashed out, I devoured Michael Connelly's The Scarecrow, featuring bitter LA crime reporter Jack McEvoy.

Back in Oxfordshire, I called in at the village church in Sutton Courtenay where I saw for the first time the unassuming grave of Eric Blair - the novelist George Orwell.

Orwell's grave is decked out with red roses and the peaceful scene has inspired me to seek out a copy of Down and Out in Paris and London.

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