By Rhys Davies and Joe Westhorpe

Friday 3 June 2005

"8, 9, SNAP!"

As we write this a game of Snap is being executed. Yeah, game. Here, game is relative. This, is, WAR.

"2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,Jack, Queen, King, Ace, SNAP! GOT IT!"

Cards are wielded with nuclear brutality as declarations of hostilities ring out across the battleground...table. Above us the roof is shaking. The absent are in the girl's bedroom, stuffing chocolates, reading books and arguing over Terry Pratchet. "Which witch is coolest, who could beat Death in a fight, is Hex better than a Pentium 4?"

It's the last night of the Beacons Project, and we're going out with a bang.

However we cannot begin to recount the events of today without a word for the hilarious Bill Bailey, who performed last night in the Coppella Marque and had the whole house laughing from start to finish, and a German techno version of the hokey-cokey had us all laughing till breakfast.

The first event on our iternery today was Anne Fine, today speaking on her adult fiction, a term she confesses sounds 'dodgy.' Over the course of an hour she read extracts from her latest text, 'Raking the Ashes', and giving us a extremely pleasant stand-up repartee of jokes, anecdotes and reasons why agreeing to a contract for your books is like selling your soul to the Devil.

On the subject of her work, 'Raking the Ashes' is a quasi-romantic story chronicling the clash of spouse on spouse, man with woman, strong wills with the weak. At the risk of sounding controversial, I preferred the male character in the extract, as opposed to the opinionated, feminist protagonist, Tilly.

David and Ben Crystal constituted our next hour, their show combining facts about their recent book and quaint light hearted comic banter between father and son, making for an easy, friendly, homelike atmosphere and a relaxed breath of fresh air from the intellectual talk we were all expecting.

Jools Holland...amazing. There is no other word. How can you convey the experience of being assaulted with five saxophones, four trombones, three trumpets, two guitars and pianos and a tamborine. The band (orchestra), came together wonderfully and played a rhythm 'n' blues sequence that had people dancing in the aisles and rapping chair back bongo-drums like some 'Back to the Future' montage.

And of course this hormon-addled, adrenaline-driven orgy of raving can be laid at the door of the Beacons Project. The first to leap up and set arms and legs aflutter were our own Rosie, Sian, Kylie and Karla, who even received salutes from the great Holland himself as they led the audience into action.

And so for the final event on the final evening, we all sat sweating from Jools Holland in the Film Four cinema - struggling our way hopelessly through a seemingly impossible film trivia quiz and thoroughly crushing the film buff in all of us. Back to Glasbury house for cards and tea and on the last night, everyone was pretty much in bed by around one.

The opportunities in Hay are great, and in my personal opinion that is the core of the Beacons Project as a social experiment. While we still make an effort in our work and discipline ourselves in our activities, we participants are granted remarkable levels of independence and freedom of choice. Reflecting on this heightens the bitterness of tomorrow's inevitable parting, because while joyous with family reunions, it also marks the loss of this liberty and the resuming doom of the rat-race, worsened by looming AS and A-Level exams.

The Beacons Project has been a fantastic experience, giving us the inspiration to write and the opportunity to make friends with other young people interested in writing and the arts."

By Rhys Davies and Joe Westhorpe from the Beacons Project.