Imagining the World: A Hay Festival Special

Considering the fact that we have been to a literary festival for the last seven days, I find it very hard to put into words the gloriously sublime and truly illuminating experience we have had.

Who can really describe what it is like to witness Julia Donaldson, dressed up as Madame Dragon from Zog, singing Happy Birthday to the Gruffalo (it's his 20th birthday this year), to be in utter hysterics at Michael Rosen's funny stories about how he went to school in the Stone Age, or to create leafy pictures in a foraged art session?

Foraged art

How can we convey Ferdy's glee at meeting Andy Stanton; nearly falling off his chair laughing at how Andy described his experience of getting kicked out of Oxford University, and his joy at realising that the young Andy coveted many of the books that Ferdy currently loves (The Beano, The Dandy, Just William, Roald Dahl)?

Waiting to see Andy Stanton

Is it really possible to communicate the delighted expression on Ferdy's face when his hand shot up and stayed up for Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet (of Supertato fame) who asked: 'put your hand up if you have picked your nose today?', 'put your hand up if you ate it?' and 'put your hand up if you don't like putting your hand up'...?

Waiting for Sue Hendra

It would also be insufficient not to mention the awesomeness (Ferdy's word) of the black sicklebill's mating display, the dismay we felt at walruses in Greenland fighting for space on land (there is no longer enough ice for them to live on) and the overbearing sense of guilt we adults endured seeing far too much glacier crashing into the sea (twice as much as a decade ago), as shown by the directors of Our Planet.

And one of the absolute highlights was on the penultimate day, when we attended an evening performance of Spell Songs, a musical interpretation of a book we own called The Lost Words. This book centres around the concerning removal of various words like bluebell, otter and raven from the Oxford Junior English Dictionary, and subsequently from the language of the next generation. Each folk song, sung by a band of award winning folk artists focussed on one of the words in the book and our favourites were the one about the heron, and Ferdy's the barn owl.

All of these talks and shows were punctuated with frequent visits to the make and take tent, (Ferdy's heaven on earth), lots and lots of cake and chips (and beer for Mum and Dad), building dens with new friends, marshmallow toasting at the campsite (well actually it was morelike a glampsite, as electric blankets on real beds with a log burner can't really be called camping), reading books, jumping on trampolines with more new buddies, making dog buddies, playing frisbee, jumping in the hay barn, having arguments with new buddies, reading more books, herding geese and sheep, listening to How to Train your Dragon, reading even more books. And a tiny bit of boring sleeping.

tl clockwise to middle: in the make and take tent; playing with friends; eating doughnuts; on a literary giant;
boring sleeping in a bed with an electric blanket; on the trampoline; cafe games; in the make and take tent x2

We have come back with a ton of books, a load of inspiration, a bit smelly and with fat, cake-filled tummies. I asked Ferdy how he'd sum up his experience and he said: 'it was great, awesome and best buddyish'. Perhaps we had better work harder on introducing a few more adjectives to his vocabulary. Or perhaps, he too finds it difficult to embody our experience in words.