Hay Festival
31/05/04
Hay-on-Wye is a small town of second-hand bookshops, which were mainly founded by an Oxford graduate called Richard Booth. Hay festival focusing on 'books' is held by the newspaper company 'the Guardian' in May or June every year. There were many shows. We were going to see three originally today; unfortunately we were late for the first one, so we were not allowed to go in. However, we did see two other shows…
Kevin Crossley-Holland
Well, his show today was mainly made out of questions and also a bit of reading from his books. It was a bit boring I must admit, but at least I know roughly what Kevin Crossley-Holland and the other guy was talking about. My brother, well he didn’t have a clue!
I don't really know why, but I've made an observation: the teachers and the writers are very good at reading stories, even though it's not their profession. Anyway, I discovered that Kevin Crossley-Holland was a really excellent storyteller. He read some pages of the King of the Middle March out to us. He even gave all the characters a special voice. It was just great!
At the end, we went to the bookshop to get our book signed-or should I say my book-we had to queue for ages. Actually I queued for ages and my brother only pushed in at the last moment, I mean, how unfair was that? I did all the hard work, while my brother got to have the pleasure of getting his name written down first. He didn't even listen to the show properly, he kept looking around. Plus, it's my book and- in my opinion- my author. He didn't even read the books.
Well enough of my rattling on lets move on. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have the pleasure of introducing the funniest ever comedian:
James Campbell
I was right, telling you that he is the funniest ever comedian, because he is! He kept rattling on about… well I don't know, all sorts of stuff. I liked the bit when he talked about milking cows because he said normal cows gave normal milk, dwarf cows gave semi-skimmed milk and microscopic cows gave skimmed milk. He even gave different pitches of sounds. It really made me laugh and I nearly fell out of my seat. Another thing I liked was when he sang songs; I liked the one when he sang about anti-nit shampoo. I liked that song because the rhymes and the words were funnies. He also made a fuss of people of going to the toilets, which made us laugh even more.
As the show ended, I couldn't help thinking: what if Miss Painter was like James Campbell. I know she makes us laugh sometimes, but her jokes were about as funny as a plastic fork compared to James Campbell's jokes. So would you like to have James Campbell as your teacher?
爸爸的註解：
號稱世界最大二手書店所在的威爾斯小鎮Hay-on-Wye，每年都由英國衛報主辦書節，邀請世界各地（主要為英語系國家，特別是美、英）名作家與讀者分享寫作經驗和人生歷練，並加入少部份演藝活動，我們過去就一直想前往一探究竟，但都因故未能成行，今年很早就做好計畫，早早就訂了票，總算能夠在座落於山坡綿延的小鎮中，直接體會愛書人的狂熱。
書節中作家演說和座談都只有一個小時，大部份都收費約台幣二、三百元，最大的場所可容納一千二百人，作家名氣雖大，而且受邀者大部份口若懸河，但若未曾閱讀其著作，可能也會覺得無聊，因此最受歡迎的場次，都是著作較為暢銷的作家，其中又以童書作者最有競爭力，許多父母（像我們）不遠千里而去，就是為了滿足家中小寶貝的小願望，順便激勵他們多看一點書。
Jenny和Mick很幸運，大部份受邀童書作家的作品，他們都有看過，尤其是Jenny，幾乎是如數家珍的向我介紹，Kevin Crossley-Holland是歷史童話作家的佼佼者，他的亞瑟王三部曲中文版，即將在台灣出版。
James Campbell是著名的喜劇演員，當初訂他的票，是擔心連續幾天作家演講的轟炸，會讓Jenny 和Mick心生厭煩，後來雖然證明過慮，不過他們二人顯然都很推崇James Campbell，也算沒有白訂了票。
Miss Painter是Jenny目前的級任導師。
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