Hay-On-Wye

B had one place that she definitely wanted to visit while she was here and that was Hay-on-Wye, a village in Wales just over the English border. Due to H's school schedule it turned out that Tuesday would be the best day to go and it had to be a day trip. I was originally going to suggest we be on the road by 7 but we decided on 8 and actually hit 8:20. Moments like this make me wonder as I believe I have said here before if our home will be more harmonious once A is of the age that I can hand her a cup of coffee in the morning. She is not a morning person and she gets that directly from me. I can hold it together just a sliver better once I’m caffeinated. Tuesday morning she was at her finest. She couldn't find a book she wanted to pack for the drive and she was having a meltdown. So basically my teeth were clenched as I pulled out of our road let alone in unchartered motorways. There’s no way to take public transport to get there so driving it was.

The drive was beautiful and both H and I wondered how much more beautiful it would be if it wasn't winter and it wasn't one of those oh so common UK gray days. I had read up just a little about Hay-on-Wye before we went. It is a village full of bookshops. I was excited to see this, hoping I would find something that interested me enough to read from cover to cover. On the drive I was thinking about the last book that I read in its entirety and was embarrassed to admit it had been a book I finished on our train journey to Edinburgh in November. I go through periods where there is just nothing that interests me enough and this is definitely one of them. Funny though, as I was faced with shelves and shelves of secondhand books, I was searching my brain to remember something I had wanted to read. I picked up a copy of David Sedaris’ Naked just to read one of my favorite funny parts to H. I should have purchased it.

We spent a few hours there before we headed back to our neck of the woods. I would have enjoyed the trip a lot more if I wouldn’t have been driving so much in one day, about six hours. Driving here is not my cup of tea.