Hay Festival – on plastic, the harm of conspiracies, lost words, lost quietness and being driven.

I live about an hour away from Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye – a lovely 10 day long book festival. I was there Saturday and Sunday, and here are some of the random things I learnt.

From Jeevan Vasagar (Plastic Inc: Are We Stuck With Plastic?) – the American equivalent of Keep Britain Tidy is perhaps not all what it seems. Big consumer litter creators like Coca-Cola were founding members, and her take was that it was largely to push responsibility onto the problem they were creating with so much disposable product onto the consumer. And it’s made me rethink the value of recycling plastic as a solution – basically, unlike, say, metal, the recycled product is inferior, so used for things like garden benches, roads, fleeces etc. Things that don’t need to be made of plastic, so it’s just pushing the problem down the line a bit.

From Marianna Spring (Marianna in Conspiracyland). The BBC had a programme of free podcast recording and they were a real treat and challenge. Gabriel Shemirani shared the heartbreaking story of how his conspiracy theorist mum Kate had effectively caused his sister to die, by indoctrinating her with beliefs that stopped her getting treatment for treatable cancer. What did I learn? I’m not sure really. Some things are so extreme and challenging I think it’s best just to admire the bravery.

From Susie Dent (Words For Life: Fascinating Facts about Words and Expressions) – so much as always! The h in Ghost was added by a Flemish typesetter. The s in island was because it was mistakenly thought to have a particular Latin root. The k in knight and knitting wasn’t always silent (I actually remember this from reading Chaucer at school). We’ve lost a lot of positives – e.g. feckfull (the opposite of feckless), ruthfull (the opposite of ruthless) etc. Let’s bring them back. Always a joy to listen to!

From Melissa Auf der Maur (Even the Good Girls Will Cry: My 90s Rock Memoir) and Skin (Blood, Sweat and Tears in the 1990s Rock Scene)? Melissa Auf der Maur was former bassist of rock bands Hole and the Smashing Pumpkins, and Skin is Skunk Anansie’s lead singer. A really joyful conversation – Skin was clearly a big fan of Melissa. The reflection that 90s nostalgia is partly because it was the last era before we were drowned in so much noise – driven by social media, 24hr news etc. – really resonated. So much space to find our own way, which has been lost. See my iPod posts for a small part of me looking for this again.

And from Baroness Casey? This was a podcast for Newscast – now online, so I won’t repeat the content. But two things stayed with me. She was nervous, and didn’t mind saying so – she didn’t really like doing these sorts of things. Given she’s a force of nature, that was unexpected. And the drive to make things better – wow, seriously inspiring. For those that don’t know her work, she’s had a huge amount of impact across a wide range of issues: homelessness, domestic violence, the Rotherham grooming scandal, and so much more.

Oh, and it was very, very hot! Thanks for the trees!