Events

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The Waterstones Hereford Julia Donaldson Signing 27th September 2012

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It’s been three years since Hereford Watertsones bookshop had the Queen of Picture Books grace her presence in this most quiet and small city. Three years ago I was the multi-tasking account sales manager, event-planning bookseller running the children’s department. I also had the privilege of hosting my first ever book-signing for the one and only Julia Donaldson.

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It was a chaotic time, it was back to school season and a lot was going on. I had newly taken on the kids department and was learning the ropes. It was all perfect timing!100_0438A  100_0439A

The day after I got confirmation that Donaldson could come to Hereford we had a visit from both a Divisional and Regional Manager and you can imagine how impressive it was to hear that not I been with the company for almost half a decade, but in less than three months into my new Kids Bookseller role I had a Top-Selling Children’s Author come to our store for a signing. It was nothing short of Catherine Vaughan’s Magic & Manifesting + Talent….

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It was a lot of hard work but I learned a lot on the go and it was an experience to encapsulate what I do best: organization and magic! People wander how someone with no event-planning experience can accomplish such a huge task. I just respond saying I learned everything I needed to know about events management from reality television. And it’s true! Thank you Kimora Lee Simmon’s: Life in The Fab Lane TV show.100_0444A  100_0445A  100_0447A      100_0451A

This is me in the Kid’s department.

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The 1st customer who queued up was a Super Fan! She had nail art of The Gruffalo character’s on her hands- Wow!    100_0457A        This is Julia signing my hardback copy of “Superworm.”100_0467A

Here is my specially dedicated copy of “Superworm.” I was so delighted that Julia was happy with the running of the event!

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Hey Hay! On my way….

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Tomorrow I shall be seeing Tim Marlow Art Historian extraordinaire interviewing Steve McCurry the award-winning Magnum photographer.

Tim Marlow is a wonderful broadcaster and journalist every once in a while I’ll catch an old episode of his Great Artists series on Sky Arts. I could hear him speak for hours. 🙂

And we all know Steve McCurry’s magnificent, iconic photographs. For more see @steve mccurryofficial

Another event I am attending is “Memory and mental time travel” which sounds incredibly fascinating and is a talk by a scientist and artist! 🙂 Jpeg

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💔 🎸🎤 John Mayer was my 1st… 🎤🎸 💔

Ever Musician I got concert tickets for!!!

It was literally the most exciting thing at the time. I was living in Cardiff studying Law & Politics at Uni there and when Mayer announced extra tour dates in Cardiff I was so happy. 🙂 This was back in 2010. I had been a fan of John Mayer since I was 14! It was well worth the 6 year long wait to see him. Prior to that Mayer was little-known in the UK. He was NEVER on Top of The Pops-ha! My local Virgin Megastore at the time and stores in the West Midlands did not even stock his music a decade ago.

Coincidentally his supporting act was Ellie Goulding who is from my Hometown Hereford and she was two years above me at the Sixth Form college.

I must confess I had such high hopes of watching his show that I was sorely disappointed when he arrived on stage in a red severely creased shirt! It was a little underwhelming purely because he looked scruffy and his hair was not on point-it was at that messy, awkward short-yet growing it out phase. He was also a bit of an A$$h*le and essentially criticised the crowd for shouting happy cheers like “We love you John” etc he was saying how weird it was and how people would never do it in real life. Just a fucking pointless and annoying comment really considering the fact that he was essentially a nobody in the UK. The Gobshite! I don’t ‘like’ John Mayer, I just like his music.

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Hay Festival 2014: Travel Tips (Part 1)

Hay-On-Wye is a magical and whimsical little market town on the English/Welsh borders-near my hometown. Plenty of charming bookshops, cafés and gift shops. And once a year there is an inflow of literary and artistic minds gathered to educate, entertain and inspire.

Ironically for the past 5 years I had not attended an event because I was too busy working in a bookshop or always seemed to book my annual vacation in Malta on the exact same week!

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I was fortunate to get a Monday afternoon off and scoured the pages for events to attend. Of course nobody around me gives a damn about reading, the arts so I knew I would be riding solo yet again.

I was very nearly going to attend Mr Hook of Sotheby’s talk on the Art World and his book but then there was a picture book panel with three illustrators/creative extraordinaire’s so being as ridiculously frugal as I am I figured it’d be a three for one which would be a more efficient use of my time.

JpegJpegAs you can see the festival like many other literary ones are a series of connected maze-like tents. The entrance to the festival can get very muddy and you would not be out of place to wear wellies particularly as our British Summer may decide to drizzle on us or worse! My Clarke ballet flats fortunately got over the very unbearable though brief exposure to wet mud.  JpegIt does understandably get very busy and jam-packed as you walk around the tent but it is not that gigantic, you will not get lost and the loos are onsite and easy to get to though the queues for them can be enormous. JpegFor some reason I did not eat a thing that whole afternoon so have no idea what the onsite cafés and food stalls are like. There is plenty of seating area in some open café areas.

A note on travel:

Because I live nearby I simply hopped onto my local 39 Hereford to Hay-on-Wye bus. It is an hour ride possibly £9 return ticket if my memory serves. I did notice that the special Festival Bus link last year were late. From what I heard from other festival goers the Festival bus was an hour late and it’s route were delayed (on the Monday I went.) So a lot of people that previously purchased festival bus tickets paid again to use the local 39 Yeomans bus. This Yeomans bus is not in service during the late evening. Anyhoo the drive/ride from Hereford to Hay is beautiful, scenic and quintessentially British. Once you arrive at Hay there are buses going back and forth regularly to the festival site and it’s £1 return to and from Hay and the site. It’s a very quick journey 10 mins max. I hope that helps!