As the queue moves forward, I eyeball the lunch board. Lasagne, chicken casserole plus thing, veggie thing, various colourful salads – it all sounds good, looks good. The queue moves again, we all shuffle along. I say hi to one of the people working the staff canteen and point at the chicken casserole bain marie. That one please, looks great. Sure, they reply and ladle it out onto a plate. Hundreds of staff are fed here, at the festival. I heard rumours of the previous years, you know – the standard of the food. Chips and beans ad infinitum. Not against it to be honest, far from it, but for ten days in a row, could get challenging for even the best of my #backbritishcuisine fellow travellers. This year is certainly not that, the food in front of me is creative, tasty, fresh-produce-heavy. We’re served high quality food at each feeding interval – all I need to do is lazily show up, then eat. The energy generated within the canteen pronounces the general warmth and sense of comradery between all the staff, and how they made myself and the other resident writers here feel welcome and part of the Hay Festo team. The canteen tent grows into a space for social cohesion, bonding, chatter, promise of satiation – a place to get to know one another, simply, but at times also a place to take a moment's respite whether by yourself staring into the depths of a yorkshire pudding somewhere in the corner of the hall, or as a group (as we resident writers often did) scoffing down our food in the five minutes we had between events. The staff here, serving the food, are all upbeat, kind, generous. How’s your day been? the one who passes me my plate, now filled, asks. Oh tough, I say, yeah really tough – I’m knackered. I put my plate down for a moment. She takes another, for the person beside me in the queue. Oh, they say, what have you been doing? I look back along the queue, now maybe twenty plus people long. Well, yeah I had a lot on today in the Writer’s at Work tent, but, yeah, how about you? I ask. She looks at me, now handing yet another full plate of food to another person in the queue. I made food for four hundred people, multiple that by three – breakfast, lunch, dinner – carried the heavy trays of piping hot food back and forth from the kitchen to here, she points at the industrial scale canteen serving deck, and now I’m serving this to you lot for the next three hours. She wipes the sweat from her brow. I look at my fingernails, study them for a moment. Well, I say, I had to write a poem in a pre-lunch writer’s workshop so, I suppose, same?... She looks at me. Erm, she replies, guess so.
I take a seat next to three people concentrating on their casserole. One younger, shorter man, next to him an older, taller man sitting underneath a straw summer hat, and opposite them both, a bespectacled, middle-aged woman. Hi-vis vests and festival lanyards over ACDC t-shirts, knitted sweaters, lumberjack shirts. Mind if I sit here? I ask. They shake their heads, smile. How’s it going? one asks. Good, I reply. You guys alright? Two nod, the third, the older man, says yep and pats his stomach. So, where are you working then? he asks, think I’ve seen you walking back and forth here a few times this week. Oh yeah, I’m not working here, well I mean, in a way - sort of. I’m a resident writer here on a programme called Writer’s at Work, so I suppose that’s the work I’m doing. They nod, smile, continue lunch. Sounds fun, the younger guy says. Yeah it is, been great. Although, I’m pretty knackered from it all. Oh really, what have they been making you do? I think about that poetry workshop again and pause, deciding whether to go down this route again. Oh, you know, lots of mentally, erm, mentally tasking things, so– Like what? the older man asks, we’re doing the doors tonight. Richard Dawkins – can’t wait. I put my cutlery down. To be honest, I’m realising how ridiculous I sound. I’m tired because I wrote a poem, or I had to write it, sort of– Big poem? the younger man interjects. Depends what you use to write it, the bespectacled woman says, turning to the other two, stabbing a fork, miming the carving out of a word, into her plate. They laugh, I smile. Chiselled into stone and longer than a tax return, I reply. The older man has a wry grin on his face. Sounds tough, he says. Oh yeah – very. Highlights so far? the bespectacled woman asks. Hmm, I say, you know – we’ve had a lot of interesting events in our Writers at Work tent. I chew on a piece of chicken, think I notice cumin hanging around there. So, Suzie Miller – novelist, playwright – said she was googling whether she could write a novel in a week. Turns out it's debatable. Natalie Haynes – comedian, historian – was talking to us about the adrenaline of performing in what felt like an improved stand up set just for us. Rachel Joyce – serial novelist – described the act of acquiring time, somehow, amid all of life’s demands (just got to do it) and a method of speaking out loud the words, to hear the inconsistencies, the pacing, the beats and so on. What else? I say aloud, ah yeah, Andrew Miller – another serial novelist – mused on the meaning of language, the purpose of writing. Someone, I forget who, cautioned us on the dangers of wanting to be a writer, instead of actually writing, you know, doing it – the writing. One the performance, the other the act. I put another fork-load in my mouth. Sounds interesting, the older man under the straw summer hat says. Mhm yeah, I say, mid chew. Me and the hi-vis crew chat for a while, share a lunch together, before they leave, plates clean, and heading to ticket their tent. After a little while longer, I finish the casserole and head to the green room for more caffeine. Coffee here is like oxygen, in that it is free and I have had a lot of it. Another flat white oat milk no sugar in-breath, please. I’m already thinking about dinner. At dinner, you also get cake.
Tom Cardew is one of the Hay Festival 2025 Writers at Work, a creative development programme for emerging Welsh talent at Hay Festival Hay-on-Wye with the support of Literature Wales and Folding Rock, funded by Arts Council of Wales.
His writing has been published in several journals and Material Disturbances, an anthology of his prose poetry, was shortlisted for publication with Cheerio Publishing, Write Bloody UK, and Prototype Publishing in 2024. He was Fluxus Arts Projects laureate at Frac Bretagne and Domaine de Kerguéhennec in 2024 and won the Golden Aesop Grand Prix at the 24th Biennial of Humour and Satire in Art in 2019.