For Bookworms

HAY, HAY, WRITTEN BY MONKEYS?

Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters and they will produce the works of Shakespeare.  But would they ever manage to produce the works of Hay on Wye?  (And by now wouldn't they be demanding laptops anyway?)

We've been to Hay before. I can’t recall the exact year, but it was probably around '97.  So about fifteen years ago.  Much has changed in that time, not least ourselves.

On our first trip we turned up looking for somewhere to stay and found a B&B with the help of the tourist office.  And what a cracker it was.  I've never forgotten Annie Day and the best cooked breakfast we've ever had.  We can also remember the fun to be had in a town that appeared to be some accommodation built around a load of secondhand bookshops. Not that it had always been thus of course, and my understanding is that the book business took off in the sixties, rapidly building a reputation as the secondhand book capital of the world.  When we went I think there were thirty six distinct bibliophile targets, scattered about this small and ancient town.

I recall arriving in pouring rain, finding our place to stay, eating out in a pub, then spending the next day going round shop after shop, poking about, discovering gems, with no specific agenda.  I doubt we fully realised what we were coming to, the sheer scale of what was on offer.  One shop, The Hay Cinema Bookshop, isn't named as such because it sells movie-related items, but due to its being housed in an old cinema.  It is vast, and one could easily spend a day in there alone.

The other memorable establishment, albeit one that offered nothing we wanted to buy, was a specialist in jigsaws and teddy bears.  I remember standing alongside several of the latter, as tall as myself and twice as wide.  Surreal.

I can't say exactly how many books we came away with, but assuredly it was a substantial haul.  Or what would have been the point?

Since then I've been back to the town once, before last week.  That was for work when I went to the Register Office and fiddled about with their PCs.  No time for book shopping, sadly.  That must have been in 1999 or 2000, and since then the opportunity didn’t arise again.

So we were looking for somewhere to go to celebrate our sixteenth wedding anniversary and up popped a Groupon offer for a hotel just a mile outside of Hay.  A good deal and somewhere we'd always promised ourselves we'd return to.  Why not?

The drive down took about four and a half hours, including a stop for lunch just outside Leominster. Slowish traffic made us take our time, but there's some great scenery on those roads. We parked in Hay and had time to take in a few of the shops on offer.  Well, almost.  The first couple were promising, and I made notes of books I might want to purchase, rather than just buying the first things I saw.  Then we set off to look for Murder and Mayhem, a specialist in crime and detective fiction.  In a small town this should have been a simple matter.  But.

The rain began.  And got heavier, and heavier.  Checking the map became tricky, as it threatened to disintegrate each time I took it out for consultation.  In the end we gave up and made our way to the Cinema Bookshop, somewhere easy to find, close to where the car was parked, and big enough to occupy us for as long as we wished.  Having again noted several possible purchases we got back into the car and headed for the hotel, relaxation and dinner.

By then it was already obvious that Hay had changed considerably since that last visit more than a decade ago. The monkeys still might struggle, but they'd fancy their chances a bit more.  In the mid nineties there were around three dozen bookshops in and around Hay. Now that number has been reduced by about a third (and the weird and wonderful jigsaw and bear emporium has shut down too). There are more 'ordinary' antique shops, and plenty of the ubiquitous charity shops.

On our return the following day something else became more obvious too.  The number of owners has dropped even more dramatically than the number of actual locations.  A lot of the shops seem to belong to little groups.  So Murder and Mayhem was, in effect, the crime department of the shop across the road, which also had an annex in another street.  Nothing wrong with that if it means that the place survives with its reputation intact.  But also somewhat sad that much of the previous anarchy and independence appears to have been throttled out by the demands of capitalism.  Such is life.  At least there isn't a Tesco Books!

In the end we visited about eight of the two dozen available to us, and came away with more than twenty volumes.  Some presents, but mostly for us (well, me) to read.  I did particularly well in the aforementioned crime shop finding ten in there alone (and it could easily have been double that number, but some restraint was required!).  I'd gone armed with a list of new authors I wanted to try out, and of books by those I already enjoyed.  In the end I came away with few of the former, quite a number of the latter, and a sprinkling of writers who are totally new to me, but seemed to provide interesting subjects.  There are novels set in Italy, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chile and Albania. Oh, and Leith. Although around half are crime related there are many more diverse topics including women's rights, and the perils of resistance in a dictatorship.

The Hay shops provide the widest possible scope for every type of reader.  There are shops specialising in Natural History and Transport.  Poetry has its own home, as does Dickens.  Almost matching the vast Cinema shop there is another of near comparable size where you can poke about in the cellar or stroll through high ceiling upper floors. The geography and architecture and ambiance of the place are almost as interesting as the items for sale.

If you love books, go to Hay at least once in your life. I hope it won't be fifteen years before I'm there again.