by Oliver Balch
Although some locals patronise such outlets, many deride their wares as ‘expensive tat’. Eighteen Rabbit is unlikely to win much custom from the Merry Widows of Clyro, for example. Try as they do to appeal to all-comers, Andrew and Louise’s business model lends towards the tastes – and wallets – of premium-paying outsiders, be they day-visitors, holiday-homers or residents ‘from off’. So too with the Beer Revolution off-licence, which mostly sells individually packaged bottled ales from award-winning brewers. Likewise Derek’s Deli, with its selection of ‘biodynamic’ sparkling wines and black puddings from the Outer Hebrides.
The truth of this came home to me when I once asked Pat if they’d ever consider meeting in Booth’s café for their weekly coffee rather than Isis. ‘It’s not our kind of place,’ she told me, and pushed her nose up with her forefinger to ensure I knew what she meant.
Her perspective saddened me because it seemed less a financial or aesthetic decision than a social one. The fact that social divisions should exist in any community is nothing new, I suppose. The human condition seems eternally bent on differentiating itself. History is, to a certain way of reading, just a catalogue of our schisms, squabbles and splits. A tortured tale of ‘them’ and ‘us’, ‘me’ and the ‘other’, ‘my group’ and ‘their group’. Sometimes the fault lines are visible, sometimes not.
For me, the actual cause of division seems less important than our innate compulsion to divide. To desegregate, to stand apart, to cleave, to define ourselves one against the other: such is the essential impulse of mankind, it seems. We are social beings, but only to a point, only within our circle.
In modern Britain, the tenor of the times is shifting. The circle, we’re told, is widening. Discrimination is most definitely not okay these days. Today, thankfully, we legalise against divisions of race and ethnicity, gender and religion. Our political elite, meanwhile, strives for an everyman kind of equality. It’s all first-names and selfies now for the ruling classes. Helping them along is the widespread habit of toff-teasing, seemingly the last permissible prejudice.
The impression this gives is that ours is a permanent dress-down Friday society, in which everyone is ‘mate’ and no one’s background counts. Of course, this is a bold-faced misinterpretation. Ephemera such as wealth and class matter. They shouldn’t, yet they do, even in an out-of-the-way place like the Marches.
Society needs its divisions to function, political theorists and economists will argue. At a macro level, it would be impossible to expect seven billion people to organise themselves as one. Historically, the nation-state has stepped into the breach, divvying us up by geography and ethnicity into broadly manageable chunks. Rules are set, national myths created and cross-border trade negotiated.
The same rationale sees us split into ever smaller units: provinces, districts, municipalities, parishes, villages, right down to individual neighbourhoods. It’s all about account-ability these days. Everyone getting their voice heard. Which works just fine until certain voices begin to dominate and demand that the dividing lines are redrawn.
Divisions exist at an interpersonal level too. The much-fêted British anthropologist Robin Dunbar has suggested that we have capacity for an optimally sized friendship network. He puts the figure at around 150, now known as ‘Dunbar’s number’. More than that and our brains can’t cope with the cognitive demands that genuine friendship requires.
The theory is often trumpeted as an antidote to the social media compulsion to count our ‘friends’ in the thousands. Twitter gives its users regular ‘engagement’ updates, proposing figures for an individual’s ‘possible reach’ or ‘share of voice’ that run into four, five, even six figures. Beyond the little endorphin rush this offers, such numbers make sense only if you’re marketing a product (or marketing yourself). From a relational standpoint, they are devoid of any material consequence.
If, as human beings, we’re limited by the number of meaningful social interactions we can sustain, then this presupposes that divisions must begin to occur in communities of more than seven score and ten. Interestingly, Dunbar maintains that the average village size at the time of the Domesday Book was 150, give or take a few. Today, Hay is ten times that figure. Clyro, five.
So the critical question for social harmony becomes the grounds upon which these divisions occur. If the criteria are broad and benign, such as having children the same age or attending the same spinning class or, ideally, living on the same block, then the possibility of social circles intersecting and overlapping is ripe. In such communities, individuals find themselves at the epicentre of a mutually reinforcing Venn diagram of diverse relationships.
Where communities begin to malfunction is when entry to people’s circles is over-prescriptive or precluded by prejudice. The outcome then inevitably tends towards exclusion. So only whites, or only those with a public school education, or only farmers, and so on. It is the trap of like-mindedness writ large.
Again, the requirements for entry are less important than the very existence of requirements at all. The word ‘only’ contains the crux of the problem. In it lie segregation, mistrust and all the attending baggage on which lonely, atomised communities are built. A society of circles spinning by themselves, insular and apart, always orbiting, never merging, every interaction containing the threat of a collision.
This corner of the Marches that we plucked from the map finds itself – praise God and Uncle Francis – in the non-prescriptive category. There are no ‘gated communities’ here, either physical or figurative. Since arriving in the Welsh borders, I have poked my nose into more pockets of the community than most. Some have embraced me, some have not, but none has closed the door.
Saying that, I know what Pat means by not being ‘their kind of place’. Not about Booth’s, which is exactly my kind of place, what with its paperbacked nooks and hardcover crannies. But about the Catholic Church, for instance, I guess I might say the same. Or the town’s Conservative Club, with its painting of Mrs Thatcher in the hall.
If my short time in the Marches has taught me anything, it’s that a warm welcome generally awaits across such thresholds. Maybe there’s a future friend to be found or, if nothing else, a shared experience to be had. This is how I see communities growing, as well as our own individual lives becoming enriched. I remind myself to ask Pat to join me for a coffee at Booth’s next time I meet her. Perhaps I’ll garner an invite to Tuesday night bingo in return?
Inclusivity requires work, however. Oftentimes, we’re all tempted to retreat into our private comfort zones. From a community perspective, there’s nothing wrong with that, just as long as ‘oftentimes’ doesn’t become ‘all the time’.
The door swings open again, this time silently.
It’s Trish, co-owner of the tapas bar a few doors down. She’s hand-in-hand with Alex, her Uruguayan boyfriend, who’s down visiting from London. They’re heading over to the pub, she says. ‘Just thought we’d call in and wish you well.’ Andrew ushers her inside. It’s his turn for the tour this time. The visitors ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ in all the right places, and, as with Derek and Joanna, they predict great success ahead. ‘Mucha suerte,’ Alex says as they leave five minutes later. Andrew waves them off. ‘Cheers, man.’
A confab follows over the dampness and flatness of the Polyfilla. Andrew would like to sand it down tonight, ideally. Louise reads the instructions on the pot. ‘One to two hours, surface dry.’ They opt to leave it until the morning. Andrew worries it’ll be too bumpy. Louise thinks it’ll be fine. ‘We’ll just call it a Mediterranean cottage look,’ she suggests.
Barely have the last visitors left when Val walks in. Another relatively new arrival in town, Val recently bought the narrow three-storey building between Booth’s Bookshop and the Chinese takeaway. The bottom floor is currently a gift shop. She points to it through the bay window. Andrew and Louise’s Prius hybrid is parked in front, with its ‘HAY’ and ‘I Love Chilaquiles’ stickers in the back window.
&nbs
p; A boxy facade covers the front of Val’s shop. Her plan is to pull it down as soon as the current tenant’s lease is up. Val has a designer’s eye. In a previous life, she used to own an art gallery in Surrey. She now runs occasional sound therapy sessions with gongs. Beneath the facade are some beautiful original tiles, she says.
Val takes a seat on the sill of one of the deep bay windows. She asks questions similar to Joanna’s and Louise patiently offers a similar set of replies. Val knows a good sign-maker if they need one. They thank her sincerely but say they’ve already commissioned someone. What will they do for internet? Val can recommend Mi-Fi. They were thinking of standard Wi-Fi, but thank her again for the suggestion.
The discussion then turns to the colour for the frontage. Andrew describes their preference for a ‘sedate’ look. To add some spice, they’re thinking of painting the door orange. The idea seems to please Val, who says she’s in conversation with Elizabeth at Booth’s Bookshop regarding the Chinese takeaway. It looks a little shabby, she thinks. She hopes her wealthy American neighbour might have a word with the owner about redecorating.
Noting the time and guessing that the new tenants are keen to get on, Val levers herself off the sill and moves towards the door. ‘Well, I’ll love you and leave you, then. Good luck.’
Andrew thanks her for popping in and says he’s looking forward to being ‘neighbourinhos’. They will be moving their stock across in the coming days, so he apologises ahead of time for any disturbance. ‘Give us a week or so and we’ll be up and running.’ Val smiles and waves goodnight.
Louise turns to her husband. First thing in the morning, they are blacking out the windows. Andrew agrees. He’s ‘on it’.
7
The Snail Chase
I knelt and prayed for charity, unity, and brotherly love, and the union of Christendom. Surely a Protestant may pray in a Catholic Church and be none the worse.
Kilvert’s Diary, 7 September 1875
Hay has a king. His name is Richard. Richard III.
Dressed in a threadbare woollen jumper with flecks of brilliant pink, his white hair ruffled as usual, he is sat with a merry band of courtiers in the back room of the Swan hotel. His red and white polka-dot walking-stick is lying flat across the table in front of him, an unconventional sceptre for a most unconventional king.
It is early evening and the drink is flowing in the Heorot of Hay. Richard III sips from his pint of beer. He has himself an audience around him and is, as a direct consequence, in ebullient mood.
As I enter, he is recounting his days as the official tourist attraction of Wales in the mid-1970s. ‘Now where was I? Yes, the American ambassador …’ An extended anecdote then follows about an afternoon tea party he put on with the Welsh Tourist Board. At the time, the king was living in Hay Castle and was still in favour with the authorities in Cardiff (he’d later denounce the Tourist Board in an excoriating pamphlet as a bunch of corrupt and lily-livered nitwits).
In honour of the US ambassador and his wife, the party’s star guests, they flew flags at full mast, piled pyramids of Ferrero Rocher on side-tables and left the cellar door off the latch. In no time, the king’s retinue was royally inebriated.
‘You remember, don’t you, Jerry?’ he says, looking over to a balding, mild-looking gentleman on the opposite side of the table. The king breaks off from his tale to explain that Jerry is his head of secret intelligence, an announcement that earns a fierce scowl from the Director of C.I.Hay.
Anyway, the ambassador’s wife was dressed in a fabulous red dress, the king continues, oblivious to his security breach. And Jerry here was tottering across the room with some tea for her. ‘Weren’t you, Jerry?’ The not-so-covert operative raises his eyebrows in grimaced assent.
‘At that time I had Marianne Faithfull staying with me,’ the septuagenarian sovereign adds, a reference to one of the more famous Swinging Londoners who fraternised his court during the heyday of his reign. ‘Some apparatchik from Welsh Tourist Board tried to steer off Jerry from approaching the ambassador and his wife. But Marianne told the little sod in no uncertain terms to bugger off …’
The room breaks into giggles.
The king continues in this vein, ambling from oft-repeated anecdotes and slanderous asides, to his familiar hobby horses of mass media domination and his desire to relocate the capital of Wales to the riverine hamlet of Erwood (a move rationalised by its location on a ‘strategic line of communication’ beside the Wye and the A470, which, in the king’s opinion, comprise the country’s most important river and road respectively).
Born Richard George William Pitt Booth to a military family on 12 September 1938 in Hay, the town’s monarch reputedly pronounced himself regent in the pub. The proclamation, it is said, was inspired by the presence of two journalists and the prospect of some cheap publicity. The story may or may not be true, but it’s the version that local people like best and thus the one that has stuck.
The ruse worked. After appointing his horse as prime minister and issuing his own passports, the eccentric new sovereign won his fifteen minutes of fame, with accounts of his coronation appearing everywhere from The New York Times to El País and the Kingdom of Hay duly finding its place on the map.
In the tradition of all good self-appointed rulers, the king got busy establishing his own fighting force. A friend with a biplane became head of the Royal Hay Air Force, another friend with a rowing boat became Admiral of the Fleet, while all able-bodied townsmen were put on standby in the event that the realm ever needed defending.
The idea of turning Hay into a town of books all began with King Richard too. He set up his first second-hand bookshop on Castle Street as a young man and soon established several more. He likes to say he was born with one fortune, made two and lost four. The crippling running costs of the castle eventually obliged him to move back to his family home (‘the Royal Palace’, as he calls it) in Cusop Dingle, a leafy hamlet attached to Hay.
The Royal University of Cusop Dingle is Richard III’s latest harebrained venture. I heard about it first when an invitation to the inaugural lecture fell through my door a few months ago. Accompanying the note was a request to choose our own professorship. For inspiration, the ‘Uri Gagarin Chair of Space Poetics’ was cited as an example.
Tim the Gardener, a self-taught classicist who lives in a caravan up on Boatside, entertained us with his unique interpretation of the Iliad. ‘Was Homer taking the piss?’ his chosen lecture title ran.
Next up came Eugene, a much-loved local artist and ex-member of a Catholic order, who is now in his eighties and who, in the spirit of Jenny Joseph’s poem ‘Warning’ (about dressing in purple and a red hat), enjoys wearing patterned neckerchiefs and bright coloured trousers.
Eugene spoke passionately on the ‘Creative Life’, lamenting society’s subjugation to the utilitarian and urging us to re-embrace the imaginative wonder of our childhood selves. The lecture attracted a wide gathering from Hay’s substantial bohemian crowd, as well as sparking a brief monologue from the king about the acclaimed artist Sidney Nolan, who lived nearby in Presteigne and who sold him a couple of paintings for a song. The event ended with the promise of a royal exhibition at the Palace in honour of the king’s ‘old pal, Sidney’.
This evening is the third in the university’s lecture series, with none other than Richard III himself presiding. His subject is typically non-specific: ‘You Cannot Make a Silk Purse from a Sow’s Ear.’ I sit waiting for the event to officially begin as His Majesty continues with his episodic warm-up routine.
After a short yet fervent digression about the Dark Lords of the Welsh Assembly, he brandishes a copy of today’s Western Mail and begins a fresh assailment against media collusion with the establishment. The newspaper has a full-page spread concerning Hay, all of which is complete poppycock, according to the king. One whole hour he spent talking to the journalist on the phone and the cretin has got everything ‘arse over tit’. He spies a conspiracy at play.
&nbs
p; I catch the eye of the gentleman sitting next to the maddened monarch, whom I’ve arbitrarily decided must be the dean on account of his august set of eyebrows. I indicate that I’d be interested to see the newspaper and he pushes it across the table towards me. The offending piece runs over thirty short paragraphs and is dominated by a large image of Hay’s sovereign. He is pictured dressed in a crushed-velvet cloak and copper crown, sunlight bathing his regal frame as he looks pensively out of his study window. Shelves thick with books fill the foreground. He looks resplendent.
I skim through the article and spot little to justify the king’s annoyance. The journalist dutifully recalls his 1977 coronation as well as his early benevolence (the Kingdom’s new subjects, it’s reported, received free money in the form of edible rice-paper banknotes). There’s even a plug for the king’s website, where dukedoms (priced £55), earldoms (£50), baronetcies (£40), and knighthoods (£30) are available for purchase.
A second, closer reading reveals what a thin-skinned soul might see as sideswipes or slights. All are comparatively minor, the most obvious being the use of the common-law ‘Mr Booth’ rather than the king’s royal honorific. At one point, the adjective ‘eccentric’ is used to describe his royal personage, although I suspect that it might be the one word in the whole piece of which the king thoroughly approves.
It then dawns on me that the king’s displeasure lies not in how he is portrayed but how much he is portrayed. For although his royal visage adorns the page, his name does not appear in the title and the paragraphs are only tangentially about him. The real star of the piece is a Mr Derek Addyman of Hay, aged 59, whom the journalist describes as ‘Prince’, ‘Royal’ and, most presumptuously of all, ‘King Richard’s spiritual heir’.