In her final dispatch from Blaenavon, South Wales's booktown,
Maev Kennedy finds its residents cheerful despite the rain and
the year's mixed fortunes Blaenavon booktown anniversary parade
Reasons to be cheerful: celebrating booktown's first birthday.
Photo: Jeff Morgan  Jo Wyborn, in raspberry pink velvet frock
coat, looked balefully out the window of Chatterton's bookshop
at the rain sloshing down the road. "Never a dull day, never a
good night's sleep". Booktown's inhabitants were assembling for
the their anniversary and World Heritage Day parade, and looking
back over a year of mixed fortunes.  It was a year to the day
since Blaenavon, the small coal and iron town in South Wales,
launched an audacious experiment - to build a new prosperity
based on second-hand books in a post-industrial graveyard of
dead jobs.  The town's steep main street is a hill of dreams.
The new booksellers have put behind them stalled lives, broken
marriages, stifling jobs, and invested not just money but
passionate hope. Mair Davi