REFLECTIONS ON HAY

The heavy rain on Sunday had churned the drive into the Hay Festival car park into a rich red mud. By the time we had crossed the field and entered the site a fair bit of it was still attached to our shoes. The Festival was in full swing, this being the bank holiday, the events sold out. Bigger than ever seemed the tent city, complete with those vertical flags that seem to have come from the Mongolian steppes. And everywhere hordes of people. Wherever do they all come from, I hear myself thinking?

I love the Hay Festival for it is an easy, forgiving sort of place where the more eccentrically you dress the more intelligent you are deemed to be. As someone who has never mastered the essential elements of looking smart I am in my element. I am windblown, dressed in a suede coat with mock fur (it was very windy) my shoes covered in mud. Thus I stumble into the administration offices in search of tickets to hear the war correspondent, Patrick Coburn, being interviewed by Rosie Boycott about his Baghdad experiences.

I am loosely attached to some minor UNESCO Committee or other and, rather at my suggestion, I'm afraid, we were supposed to be sponsoring Patrick's talk but somewhere along the line the wires became crossed and we found that we weren't after all. Someone else had got in before us, or after us. Usually sponsorship is so desperately sought after that it is a surprise to find that it has become a species of competitive event. Still, the organisers had apologised and gamely said we could have our ticket allocation. The only trouble was that no one could find these tickets allegedly endorsed for our benefit.

'Never mind, we have briefed the steward' someone said mysteriously.

So under her beady eye, we go and sit in the sponsor's seats, all five of us, wondering who we might have displaced, when who should arrive with another party but Simon Scharma, - the charismatic tele-historian. He of the doom-laden voice. Oh dear, I thought.

But I needn't have worried. The stewards quickly ushered the Scharma party into some casual chairs (perhaps meant for us) set randomly at the side of the auditorium and the show began. Tee-hee, I thought, I shall never be able to look at him again without thinking of the time I pinched his seat.

Patrick Coburn has been travelling the Middle East since 1978. He got into Bagdad just before the invasion and has stayed there, on and off, for much of the time since. He was lucid, incisive and presented a horrifying picture of daily life in Iraq in the years following the invasion. He ground no axes, just told the tale of what he saw and tried to explain some of the tribal, religious and political complexities.

Rosie Boycott adeptly set him talking. (I was relieved to see that she also had decided that the windblown, hedge-backwards look was in vogue at this year's Festival). Much of what he said appears in his book, called simply 'The Occupation,' copies of which he signed in the bookshop after the event.

I'm a sucker for signed copies. Authors usually made a great fuss when doing this, but he signed mine with little more than a grunt of acknowledged thanks when I said that I had enjoyed his talk. Maybe he thought me a sycophant.

But I had wanted to ask him why? Not why he might dread sycophants but why he should choose of his own free will to report from surely the most dangerous place for journalists in the world. What drives him, I wonder, other than a secret and cruel death wish?

When I got home I went for a long walk to reflect. Arriving at the top the old Roman road my path was blocked by a car in which a young couple appeared engaged in vigorous copulating operations. What they thought they were doing in such a public spot on a Bank Holiday I have no idea. They couldn't have been local.

Still I guess we've all been there at some time in our lives so I made an elaborate pretence of looking at the ground and by taking the far path managed to avoid passing the car too closely and instead skirted the copse on the far side.

Partly I was considering how I might save some money from the incessantly increasing household budget, which left to its own devices for the past few months has expanded skywards with enthusiasm. How can I cut back our expenditure? Well, one thing, I suppose, might be to stop buying author-signed books at £15.99 a throw. But then I do so love books. It's always like that isn't it?