Bog Myrtle & Peat

I think of Hay on Wye as a kind of paradise. It’s the world’s oldest “book town”, and the shops groan with the weight of their interesting titles. When a friend recommended a novel to me by email, I simply walked across the street and bought it, knowing that I would be able to find it there and in a dozen other places within a stone’s throw. Where I would usually expect to find my areas of interest represented by single shelves or a sheltered alcove, at Hay there are entire bookshops devoted to niche subjects which cover the full span of a random curiosity. 

In less than an hour, I had discovered an entire floor-to-ceiling case of RS Thomas where I might usually find little more than a lonely, dog-eared copy of Mass for Hard Times. Elsewhere I found several huge displays of poetry by Ted Hughes – including prints depicting his verse and imagery, some of which had stubby, pencil-made signatures by the man himself. And between the astonishing surfeit of choice, there were antiques shops offering tools and lifestyle items “for the home”; kitchenware shops selling antique earthenware from France for prices greater than I would usually expect to spend on a car. Olives drooled in their bowls at the delicatessen, waiting to be doled into recyclable punnets with hand-carved spoons; artisan ciders winked in their elegant bottles, and a display of fine cheeses ran for the width of a cattle shed. I don’t necessarily want this stuff, but it’s flattering to have it offered in such abundance.

You would not survive for long as a restaurant in Hay without an eye on quality, and every chalked-up menu seemed to offer something more exciting and extravagant than the last. Powering this glut of lavish variety, money walked through the streets in the pockets of old men in red trousers with Panama hats; in the purses of women clogged with chunks of jewellery and their hair cut in challenging angles. Kooks and hipsters blurred with the downright rich, and I can hardly help sounding cynical in the face of such prosperity. The least I can do is be honest and say that I’m jealous of a place like Hay. So much of my life is lived in a kind of silence which lies evenly from the hilltops to the heart of the struggling town. My baseline is nobody, and the choice of “This or bugger all”; the onrush of leaves falling in quiet streets and the realisation that you missed the chance to buy milk at 6pm. So it’s shocking to find standing-room only in shops, and a waitress explaining that “we’re all booked up”. I told her that I thought that Hay was amazing, but immediately felt like she took it as a complaint.

I love it at Hay, even if at times it feels strangely dislocated from the landscape around it. At the butchers’ shop, a golden side of beef hung gleaming from a hook, but there was no trace of blood or drag-marks on the pavement to suggest that it had come from somewhere local. That would be messy, and this is a pasteurised expression of rurality to meet external expectation. The facade is exciting – I was ready to plunge into it, despite myself – and to be sure, they make you pay to be part of it. Even the smallest trader with his bench of antique wickerwork is set up to accept contactless payment at one hundred pounds a turn. I spent a small fortune, but coming from home and heading back in that direction soon, I finally understand why English visitors to Galloway are so impressed by the clean and silent gravity of the place. They’re used to having the world at their fingertips, and it must be a relief to find time away from the endless pressure of choice. For my part, I can only echo the astonishment of Thomas Hardy’s Granfer Cantle, who looked on modernity and sighed, saying “Tis amazing what a polish the world have been brought to”. 

I’ll soon be home with a car full of books that I’ll never have time to read, feeling guilty for having enjoyed myself and telling bold stories of all that I’ve seen and done. But I’m also aware that paradise is only wonderful in passing, and it would do you harm to take such things for granted, believing that puppets can dance without strings.