AA Gill in a pinny. Photograph: Helen Walmsley-Johnson
For a while back there yesterday, it looked we'd see the festivalgoers marching two-by-two before the day was out, but happily this morning it seems that the biblical weather has abated, at least for now. Peering with some trepidation out of the window this morning, I was delighted to see that there was, in the words of my grandmother, enough blue in the sky to make a sailor a pair of trousers. Sailors were what we would've needed, if it had kept raining.
Moving beyond the weather for a moment (and believe me, to do so is a Herculean effort), yesterday was also a day of poetry, from Simon Armitage in the morning via a tour of the poetry bookshop with Gillian Clarke to the spectacle of the Poetry Gala in the last night. Poetry's profile at the festival has risen over recent years, and the gala is fast becoming one of the staples of the programme. Hearing the likes of John Fuller, Amir Or and Wole Soyinka reading on the same stage within moments of one another was an experience I won't forget in a hurry.
A combination of bank holiday high spirits and the pressing need to find warm, dry places to shelter triggered a collective descent on Hay's watering holes last night, leading to quite a few hangovers in and around the site this morning. The site, as a consequence, feels spacious and serene. Doubtless, though, this is merely the calm before the storm - fingers crossed that the storm is literal rather than metaphorical today.
I'm heading back down to London this afternoon to attend to operations on the mother ship, so will be passing the diary baton on to the estimable Richard Lea. Seasoned as he is in all matters literary, Richard was, until yesterday, a Hay virgin, so please treat him gently. I'm back up on Friday, but until then, thanks for listening!
Spotted
AA Gill, in a pinny, serving almond tart at the River Cafe event.
Dara O'Brian picking up where AC Grayling left off, on the dance floor at the Sky party.
A teenager picking her way through the mud, muttering, "This is worse than Glastonbury."
Overheard
"That's got to be our record so far this year. But nothing compared to Jacqueline Wilson, she managed five and a half hours" - weary bookshop assistant after Dave Eggers's nigh-on two hour book signing.
"This reminds me of the first world war," Henry Jeffreys, head of publicity at Sceptre (and obviously older than he looks), wading through the quagmire that was the car park.
"You've been going out for five years? What are you waiting for?" Environmental demi-god Dick Strawbridge, offering relationship advice to a member of the Guardian team.
"They're so boring they deserve to be arrested" - audience member after the James Bond writers' session.
