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Oooh. Tim Reid and I really rattled the Quo fans with our last posting.

Seems we are not big enough fans to "get" Francis Rossi's humour.

Watched it twice and still don't get it myself - and my mum always taught me it was rude to speak with a mouth full of sandwich!

The piece was meant to be light-hearted.

I spent four years enduring the work of Robert Burns at Glasgow University - I still prefer his predecessor Robert Fergusson;- and I certainly wasn't knocking Status Quo's lack of love for the Bard.

What I do question, is a festival with a very specific raison d'etre, choosing a headline act which had absolutely no connection with Robert Burns.

And if you saw the TV news report, you might also question the director's criteria "what would Robert Burns have chosen?" Surely that means anything goes?

Anyway, I wasn't at the gig on Saturday at Ayr Racecourse but I was in my old stomping ground in Wales where I hoped my old Western Mail colleagues might line up some suitable cultural activity.

Since I left Cardiff a decade ago, they've acquired the Millennium Centre, the Millennium stadium, and a host of new arty ventures.

So where did I find myself Saturday? Parked in front of the telly watching the Eurovision song contest.

Thanks to Mike and Derek - who not only threw the very entertaining party around the telly, but helped numb the pain with large amounts of alcohol.

And thanks to Allan Little, whose theory about voting patterns mapping the spread of modern immigration across Europe meant we could pretend we were engaged in important political discussion, rather than watching euro pap on the telly.

Fortunately, our cultural activity moved up a gear on Bank Holiday Monday - with a visit to the Hay Festival.

It is the first time I've been back in 11 years - and it's changed dramatically.

Now celebrating its 21st birthday, it's at least five times the size of the festival I last attended, with umpteen shops and stalls as well as the main performance tents.

They have a great lineup - former US President Jimmy Carter, Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Jamie Oliver, John Irving, Jeremy Clarkson and Jools Holland among them - but it is hard not to pine for the intimacy of the earlier Hay festivals where the site was small enough to bump into writers, either on site or in any of the bookshops in town (the new site is now so far from Hay itself, you have to take a shuttle bus).

As well as the author events, I remember a party in the local primary school with the Liverpool poets - to which most of Hay were invited; trying on a hat in a local shop and having Edwina Currie suddenly offer fashion advice (like her tips on eggs, taken with a pinch of salt), phoning through copy to the local newspaper from the pub payphone, embarassed because Ian Hyslop was eavesdropping and it included a diary item about him.

The highlight was always the events - but spotting the authors around town always added to the experience - and I'm not sure that happens so often now Hay has grown up.

That said, no one was hanging around yesterday. The place was a mudbath, torrential rain was pouring through any gaps in the tents and the handpainted deckchairs where abandoned on the lawn.

Mid Wales fire brigade had been out the day before, although a non plussed President Jimmy Carter refused to cancel his event, commenting only that he hoped it was similarly wet back in his farm in Georgia.

Equally at home was the gardening expert Monty Don, in his first public appearance since he stepped down as presenter of Gardeners' World.

Asked about his health, he said he expected to make a full recovery and wouldn't miss the burden of TV's long hours.

Instead, he planned to spend some time "just pottering around". Good luck with the pottering, Monty. And hopefully the weather will get better in Hay before the week is out.