Under the Tump (24 page)

Andrew has a job list that the couple are working through feverishly, anxious to have the place prepped for painting in the morning. The first two tasks are ticked off already: remove picture-rail, extract protruding nails. Andrew is now turning his attention to the third entry, the removal of the convex security mirror hanging from the ceiling. He scales the stepladder and starts poking a screwdriver at the bolted metal bracket holding it in place.

Louise, meanwhile, has disappeared into a side room armed with a decorating knife and a pot of plaster filler. An open doorway on the right of the main retail space gives access to the moderately sized annexe. Off it runs a cramped storeroom, with a cubicle toilet at the far end. They are still deciding their customer lavatory policy. Louise is keen to keep it off-limits.

‘What was it like, signing on the dotted line?’ I ask Andrew, who is standing crouched under the mirror, struggling to get traction on any of the screws.

‘Yeah, it’s exciting, man,’ he says. And then adds as a qualifier, ‘But daunting at the same time.’

Since setting up Hay’s first-ever fair trade store two years ago, they have been trading on the castle’s cobbled bailey. The space is cheap, although it doesn’t get the same footfall as the high street. This new shop on Lion Street will see them located right in the heart of the town.

It should be better for business, Andrew reckons. The downside is that it leaves them with nowhere to hide. Before, if they had a quiet day trading, they could blame it on the location. ‘If it doesn’t work, then it’s down to us.’

They work well as a pair. Andrew is from Edinburgh, although he sounds almost cockney. Posh cockney, really. So few expletives, but liberal use of the word ‘man’ and the filler ‘yeah, yeah’, which quite often coalesce into ‘yeah, man, yeah’ or ‘yeah yeah, man’. He is outgoing, smart and personable, three qualities that saw Hay’s Chamber of Commerce come knocking at his door when the chairmanship recently became vacant.

Dorset-born Louise is quieter, a little shy perhaps. She’s by no means a pushover, though. If her ‘I think’ about the bell seems to suggest ambivalence, then forget it. The ringer is coming down.

Mid-career professionals, Andrew and Louise are symptomatic of the new wave of incomers to Hay. Entrepreneurial, independent, community-minded, dynamic. They moved down a couple of years ago from London, where they used to run their own agency managing sustainable events. They first met in an indie music club in Brighton that Louise ran. She was a student. He was working at the record store HMV. They both still DJ regularly.

Looking to move out of the capital and start afresh, they
tossed up between relocating to Brighton or heading down to Hay. Louise knew Hay from helping organise events for one of the literary festival’s sponsors. Of the two, Hay struck them as the most ‘extreme’. If they were going to leave London, they figured they might as well ‘go the whole hog and do it properly’, as Louise puts it.

The ring of the bell sounds again. Derek and Joanna walk in with Bertie, their Border terrier, on a lead. Tall and bearded, Derek is from Scotland. He owns the town’s Wholefoods and Deli store, which is located next to the takeaway directly opposite Eighteen Rabbit’s new store. He trained as a landscape architect and worked for a number of years for a specialist firm in Kington, twenty miles to the north. Deciding the job involved too much travel and too much stress, he opted for a career change. He now works from dawn until dusk six days a week, but he does so on his own account and seems infinitely happier for it.

Joanna, a smiley brunette, is from Cork on the south coast of Ireland. She too changed jobs recently, dropping a full-time position with a food hygiene auditor to work on a freelance basis. The switch gives her more control over her diary and travel commitments, which makes living in a remote location such as Hay more manageable.

The two play to national stereotypes; he a little on the taciturn side; she all bubbles and cheer.

‘Hell-oooo,’ Joanna calls out as she steps through the door.

‘Hey guys,’ says Andrew, laying down his screwdriver and climbing down the stepladder. Louise drops her tools too and greets them cheerfully. It feels like a housewarming visit by neighbours, which it is of sorts. Just no cake.

‘Wow-ee,’ Joanna exclaims, clapping her hands and
moving into the middle of the room. ‘This is so much bigger than I thought. It’s huge. This is amazing, guys.’

‘Thanks, man. Yeah, it’s all good. All good,’ says Andrew.

Louise offers to show them round, which doesn’t take long, given that there are only two main rooms and both are empty. They walk across the click-clack laminate floor into the side room, Joanna peppering her with questions. What layout do they have in mind? What colour scheme are they going for? When do they hope to open? Will there be an opening party? It’s giddy-making, but Louise takes it all in her stride.

The two women are good friends. In fact, they spent the whole day together yesterday as part of Hay’s delegation to the International Fair Trade Towns Conference in Bristol. As well as trumpeting the cause of ethical commerce, Louise works part-time for the Wales Green Party. She also volunteers with a local charity that supports people in Hay’s twin town of Timbuktu. She is, to use the political jargon, an ‘engaged’ citizen.

Andrew is no less so. Before the last national elections, he organised hustings events at the Globe for the parliamentary hopefuls. He is also the driving force behind the town’s nascent Totally Locally initiative, a national ‘shop local movement’ that encourages independent retailers to work together. The idea is gaining traction, but it’s slow, he admits. The problem is Hay’s shopkeepers: they are all too independent.

The women’s conversation moves from the shop on to the events of yesterday. They discuss the highlights: the charismatic mayor of Bristol, the coffee farmer from Nicaragua, the interfaith groups from Lebanon. ‘I actually cried, telling Derek about it, I was so emotional,’ Joanna admits.

I move back into the main room, where Andrew and Derek are talking lights. At present, three lighting tracks run the width of the ceiling. Eight shadeless pendant light fittings dangle above the bay windows at the front. Two bulbs are missing. Another doesn’t appear to be working. It’s a good idea to flood the back wall as much as possible, Derek thinks. ‘Draws people in.’ Andrew nods.

And rabbits, Derek want to know: will there be rabbits? Andrew laughs. There may be some ‘rabbit elements’, he admits. They have someone working on the sign for outside right now. ‘Painted or vinyl?’ Derek asks. Vinyl, Andrew says. His fellow shopkeeper approves. ‘Good choice.’

‘So, guys, it’s all going to be great,’ says Joanna, bouncing back into the room. ‘It’s so exc-iii-ting.’

Derek wishes them well, assures them everything is going to be a huge success and says to call by if they need anything. Louise jokes that the proximity of the Deli isn’t going to help Andrew with his sausage-roll habit. I suggest they establish a barter system. Andrew likes the idea and proposes two sausage rolls in exchange for a pair of origami birds. Derek says he’ll give it some thought. The couple leave, Bertie trotting after them.

Andrew and Louise return to their respective workstations. A minute later, Louise comes back into the main room. ‘Look what I’ve found,’ she says, brandishing a mini electric drill. The metal bell is summarily dislodged. With a look of satisfaction, she places it on a shelf.

I follow her back through to the other room. As she sets back to work scraping the wall, I ask her how they came up with the name for the business. Eighteen Rabbit was a Mayan king, she informs me. ‘A real supporter of the arts and creativity.’ Andrew and Louise lived in Mexico for a
while and had learned about his story there. When they came up with the idea for a fair-trade store, it struck them as an apt name, although continually having to explain its derivation can become a touch tiresome. ‘I wonder if we shouldn’t just have called ourselves, Hay’s Fair Trade Shop,’ she admits.

The store focuses mostly on craft and clothing from fairtrade designers and co-operatives in the global South, she continues. T-shirts, dresses, hats, gloves, bags, wallets, candles, toys, bowls, jewellery, skincare, homeware. ‘Traditional techniques, with a modern twist’ is their general goal. Which is why she can’t stand the bell. It reminds her of all ‘jingly jangly things’ you find in ethnic shops. They are keen to avoid a ‘hippy’ vibe.

‘We don’t want people buying our stuff out of sympathy,’ she adds, looking up briefly as she prises the lid off the Multi Purpose Polyfilla. ‘We want to be selling products that people genuinely want to buy because they’re cool and stylish. We like popular culture, I guess, although neither of us are, like, massively fashionable …’

‘Speak for yourself,’ says Andrew, who, having succeeded in unscrewing the mirror, has wandered across to help.

‘Okay, you’re quite fashionable,’ she replies, a patient smile on her face.

She looks across to her husband who is wearing Adidas Original Superstar trainers, a pair of dark skinny Nudie jeans and a short-sleeve, cobalt-blue summer shirt. The jeans are made from organic cotton. ‘Swedish,’ he tells me. Above it, he has a casual, slim-fit blazer.

Louise, whose blonde hair and fair skin contrast strikingly with Andrew’s darker, almost Latino appearance, has a similar pared-down metro aesthetic. She eschews dresses
and skirts in favour of branded jeans, Ethletic Fairtrade pumps and stylish cotton T-shirts or blouses.

They make an attractive pair. And while they may not be über-fashionistas by London standards, they are considerably more hip than the average Hay resident. That said, the local fashion bar is not a high one. Well-worn jeans and an unironed shirt is the basic look around town. In winter, a fleece jacket or oversized jumper is added.

‘And how’s it going?’ I enquire. ‘The business, I mean.’

Some of the older crowd find it all a bit disorientating, Louise says. They come in looking for Fairtrade-certified tea and greetings cards made from recycled materials. Instead, they find repurposed leather bags and hand-knitted alpaca beanies. ‘It’s not like Traidcraft, is it?’ marks a refrain the London couple has had to get used to. They bite their tongues.

By and large, however, most folk who come into the shop seem to ‘get’ what they are trying to achieve, according to Louise. They’ve enjoyed some press coverage too. A national newspaper gave them a short write-up a little while back, which helped drive traffic to their website. And
Conde Nast
recently described them as ‘the coolest fair-trade shop ever’.

As part of their marketing strategy, they both Tweet and Facebook extensively, which is building them up a steady following on social media. ‘So, yeah, I think there’s a buzz beginning to grow around the brand,’ she says.

Andrew and Louise have arrived just as Hay’s iconic second-hand book trade is beginning to totter. The instinct of modern book-buyers is first to look online if they want an old title, not to search through the disorderly shelves of a physical store. There’s a last-ditch effort to stem the tide. Addyman Books has a banner outside its Castle Street store
declaring Hay to be a ‘Kindle Free Town’. Yet you sense the writing is on the wall. All the town’s booksellers are busy cataloguing their inventory for AbeBooks and Amazon, Addyman included.

None is modernising faster than Booth’s Bookshop, the most iconic of Hay’s second-hand bookstores. Ownership of the once rambling, musty book emporium recently passed into the hands of Elizabeth Haycox, a wealthy American incomer whose initial connection to the town also came via the festival.

Bolstered by a background in high-street retail (she used to work in San Francisco for The Limited, a US women’s clothing chain) and a husband with deep pockets, she is dragging the store into the twenty-first century.

So new books have appeared on the shelves and oak varnish on the floors. A calendar of regular events now runs week-to-week, ranging from book launches and concerts to kids’ trails and evening talks. Soft-cushioned sofas grace a sunlit corner on the first floor. Next to them, an artfully decorated space is given over to ornate hardback editions of literary classics published by the Folio Society. Downstairs, there is an airy restaurant with sliding glass doors and a sun-trap patio. Built on to the back, meanwhile, is a swanky forty-seven-seat cinema, the first in town for half a century. Booth’s Bookshop is also available for weddings.

A few recalcitrants regret the sprucing up of the iconic store, but it’s either that or see it disappear. Incomer retailers all have to innovate to survive. Unlike local shopkeepers, the majority of new arrivals don’t have the privilege of selling what people actually
need
. So the butchers, the hardware store, the post office, the newsagent’s, the pharmacy, the mobile phone shop, the farming supplies outlet, the hairdresser’s,
the beautician’s – all were snaffled up by long-term residents years ago.

Hence, the town’s new breed of retailers tend to concentrate on the sale of what marketeers refer to as ‘non-essentials’. For decades, that basically meant used books. With demand for second-hand titles now in abeyance, incomers like Andrew and Louise are having to look elsewhere. The result is a sudden flurry of pop-ups, vintage clothes stores and niche gift shops on the high street. Hay’s most recent addition is a lingerie boutique, called UnderWhere?

Although some locals patronise such outlets, many deride their wares as ‘expensive tat’. Eighteen Rabbit is unlikely to win much custom from the Merry Widows of Clyro, for example. Try as they do to appeal to all-comers, Andrew and Louise’s business model lends towards the tastes – and wallets – of premium-paying outsiders, be they day-visitors, holiday-homers or residents ‘from off’. So too with the Beer Revolution off-licence, which mostly sells individually packaged bottled ales from award-winning brewers. Likewise Derek’s Deli, with its selection of ‘biodynamic’ sparkling wines and black puddings from the Outer Hebrides.

The truth of this came home to me when I once asked Pat if they’d ever consider meeting in Booth’s café for their weekly coffee rather than Isis. ‘It’s not our kind of place,’ she told me, and pushed her nose up with her forefinger to ensure I knew what she meant.