Visitors to Monty Lit Fest are fortunate to have such a choice of places to eat. At one of them, the Ivy House Cafe & Post Office, you can buy your Lit Fest tickets and post your parcels as well as sit down to a menu of delicious home-cooked food.
In a full-on life in the construction industry, you can understand why Denice Jaunzens dreamt of the comfort of her grandmother’s kitchen. Researching, creating and project managing the implementation of environmental policy in a noisy world seemed a complete contrast to the idea of home baking and a sanctuary for solitude or gentle conversation.
Book-lover Denice recalls her grandparents’ house in Newtown, with its open door – and open biscuit tin. Easy family suppers, tea and cake, laughter and happy chatter. It’s a cheery picture and one Denice decided was a good pattern for the next part of her life; to create a friendly, intimate cafe, where the food is affordable and people can spend time with friends or by themselves. To feel at home.
Making the Ivy House Cafe a reality, and running the town’s Post Office, is hectic in its own way, of course. This is where reading comes in.
“Books are companions” she says. “I see people bring them into the cafe for a quiet moment. For me, during the day, I may only be able to snatch a few moments with them, so I’ll have something I can dip into, something light. Barbara Pym, for example, or Alexander McColl Smith, cozy crime.
“In the evenings though, I can give books more attention. Sometimes I really need to because of how they come into my life:
“I’m a member of a local Welsh-language book club. I still see myself as a learner and some of the choices can be quite challenging both in language and content. They are still voyages of discovery, entries into new worlds and isn’t that a big part of the joy of reading? Because you have to read whatever has been chosen, I find myself reading books I probably wouldn’t have picked up in English.
“It’s the same with book shops. I can just be drawn to quite testing books about psychology, history, religion or social issues. I like to hear others’ viewpoints, even when I might disagree. On the other hand, I don’t spend a huge amount of time on cookery books as customers know what they want and disagreement is meaningless!
“It’s impossible for me to choose a favourite,” she explains. “Like lots of people my age, I read a lot as a child as there were fewer distractions. Like so many, I went from Enid Blyton to Tolkein and Agatha Christie. Now we have a huge range of writing with teens and young adults specifically in mind. As a volunteer with Monty Lit Fest, I hope the Jill Kibble Mini Fest and the National Year of Reading will help children today rediscover reading for pleasure.
“If I had to choose my longest-lived and most-cherished companion though, it would be “Under Milk Wood”. As well as the warmth and poetry of the language, it lets us spend time with a community, alive with its own characters. I can look out of the cafe window, down over Broad Street at the Town Hall and the foot hill of the castle, and see Montgomery in it”.
Monty Lit Fest tickets are available from the Ivy House Cafe during opening hours, 9am – 5pm, Sunday 9am – 2pm.
As ever the Friendly Festival offers its famous feast of cakes at the Town Hall during Festival weekend, 12th – 14th June. For details of street food, pubs, restaurants, shops and other cafes in Montgomery, just click below