Izzy’s journey with 500 words!

On Friday the 30th of May my family and me went to the Hay Festival, the reason why: I had got into the final of Radio 2’s 500 words competition (very unexpectedly). We were invited to attend the outside broadcast at the Hay Festival of the Chris Evans breakfast show where they announce the top 3 winners in each category. You could read my story on the 500 words website, if you want to…it’s under the top 50, 10 to 13 year olds. The night before the final we stayed in a hotel, we didn’t have much sleep that night because me, Mummy , Daddy and Daisy were very excited, not to mention Daisy accidently setting her alarm off at 2.15am! We had a very early start and were up and out quickly to drive from the hotel to a very muddy hay Festival.

When we arrived we had a 5 minute news bulletin to get in our seats. The excitement was building, my photo was on the big screen, the winners were announced… but sadly I didn’t win (but it was an amazing experience). Chris Evans was genius, it was amazing how he managed to engage with the audience, listen in his earpiece, remember when to cut back to London for the news, and keep an eye on the time all at once.

After it was over, I got to meet the superstar readers including Barney Harwood , Paloma Faith , Dick and Dom , Benedict Cumberbatch , Matthew Lewis , Hugh Bonneville and Alex Jones. Mummy also got her photo taken with High Bonneville, about which she got a bit over excited (but it was her birthday!)
After we had finished casually hanging out with celebrities, had a bacon butty and collected our certificates it was time to explore the rest of the festival and Hay town
It was an amazing day, I went to a seminar by Michael Morpurgo, my favourite author. I also met Lucy Cooke the author of The power of sloth. We spent the afternoon exploring the town. When we were eating lunch we saw Benedict Cumberbatch which was very exciting! The town was made up mostly of bookshops and we spent a particularly long time in one that was an old cinema. It was cool.
Before we started the 4 hour journey home, we watched the live broadcast of The One show from the festival, you may have seen us, we were just behind Chris Evans head! So many people were impressed. Even the local newspaper wrote about Izzy’s 500 word story glory. I had a great experience and really enjoyed myself and all because of the Giraffe who never gave up!
Posted by Izzy (10)