Nothing but blue skies

It's been raining hard here today. 

But not in my picture library, from which I've pulled these shots of blue skies.

Colleton Crescent, Exeter. 

Terrier racing, Yarcombe, Devon.

 The field above The Enchanted Village.

The Wills Building, Bristol University.

That's about it.

Love Maddie x

A love letter to our local

As regular readers of this blog will know, The Enchanted Village pub has been closed for a fair few months.

And oh, how we've missed it.

If you hop across to Real West Dorset, you'll see the poem penned by villagers when it was closed. Each of us contributed a line or two. I hope you enjoy it. We certainly enjoyed writing it.

That's about it.

Love Maddie x

Happy Valentine's Day

There is a milky sunrise this morning and a heart-shaped hole in the clouds where the sun should be.

Looking out across the horizon to our own twin peaks and Dorset's highest points, I am sure I can see Bluebell Hill blowing kisses to that lofty and normally aloof Flat-Top Pen. It's Valentine's Day and even the landscape is loved up.

Back at home, Mr Grigg looks at me admiringly.

'You look very smart,' he says.

'Not too smart though?' I say, peering down at my White Stuff skirt, Monsoon cardigan from the charity shop and a pair of cut-price, brown suede Clarks boots, complete with high wedges and zipped up to my knees.

'No,' he says. 'And you've got those boots on. I like those boots. They're like the sort of boots you might see naughty ladies wearing.'

I pull the spectacles down from the top of my head and put them on, looking at him in a very stern Grigg way.

'And I just love you in those glasses.'

It's too much. I head for work, thinking about our evening in, with a £20 Marks and Spencer special Valentine's Day meal and then curled up by the fire watching Sleepless in Seattle.

We know how to live.

That's about it.

Love Maddie x

Where did you get that hat?

I proudly show off the new hat Mr Grigg bought me for dog walking. It's pink tweed and lined with grey fake-fur and, more importantly, has the most wonderful ear flaps to keep my lugholes warm.

'That's nothing,' Mr Champage-Charlie says, running to the cupboard under the stairs.

'Oh, Charles,' his wife, Bubble, says. 'Please don't.'

She leans forward, in that conspiratorial Delia-Smith-meets-clear-skinned-pixie way of hers, and explains what Champagne-Charlie is about to model for us. It came from a place in Poland with a name I can't pronounce.

'Wear the fox hat,' Mr Grigg says, as Mr Champage-Charlie comes in with the most hideous fur bonce cover you have ever seen.

'I am,' he says, under a bright red and bushy creation, his nose poking out like a Reynard snout. 'Do you like it?' just as Bubble says: 'I told you where it's from,  it's a town in Poland.'

It could only happen here.

That's about it.

Love Maddie x

Some things are worth fighting for

I am using the blog today as a little bit of propaganda. It's not something I'd usually do, but it's my blog, so I guess I can do what I want.

There is a plan to redevelop an old industrial estate in My Kind of Town into a massive housing development. It's sparked a lot of controversy, not least because of the jobs that will be lost to make way for shiny new homes. It will also mean a newly-emerged artistic and vintage quarter will be wiped out quicker than you can say restoration, restoration, restoration.

This is the gist of the objection I've just submitted. It's an emotional response but I make no apologies for that. My US and Canadian readers might not be interested but, on the other hand, they are people with good hearts so they just might. So here goes:

I've known Bridport for thirty years and St Michael's trading estate has always been a thriving place for creative enterprise. The look of it hasn’t changed much in that time either.

Back then there were auction rooms, car repairers, award winning drag racing cars made as a hobby by Number One Son's father and a salon set up by my hairdresser. It was shabby but it was useful. And some lovely, lovely buildings that are part of the town's industrial heritage.

And still the estate is shabby. But it’s chic. It has a thriving art quarter. The area attracts a huge deal of interest and visitors. It’s become a sort of fingerless glove attached to one of Bridport’s hands.

Developing the so-called ‘south west quadrant’ has been talked about for years and the plans have been a long time coming. And now they’re here.

Bridport is quirky, arty, bohemian and the art quarter fits, alongside small businesses that have been on the estate for years.

YouTube: Bridport Video

What doesn’t fit is a massive housing development, the tidying up and gentrification of Bridport which will lead to an influx of people who will gaze at the Looking Back page of the local newspaper in years to come and say ‘oh, so that’s what it used to be like’.

As a former editor of that paper, I have seen how Bridport has changed over the years. Not necessarily all for the better, but what is evident now is there is a new vibrancy, a new creative energy, that has emerged in recent years. You can see it in the independent shops, you can see it in the arts centre, the Electric Palace and the newly-revamped town hall. It’s the Spirit of Bridport shining through and so typified by the St Michael’s artistic quarter. It’s Bridport’s Monmartre!

Detail from the Spirit of Bridport: Bridport Town Council

Fra Newbery was one of the town’s best known artists who painted the beautiful Spirit of Bridport. He strove ‘to make art more readily available to a wider public, attempting to relate it to their daily lives and to celebrate the traditions of the specific localities in which the works were sited’. (And, ironically, on the day I write this, the Fra Newbery website is just about to be taken down for a lack of funding).

Heritage is worth saving. It really is.

But is it a planning consideration? As well as loss of employment, impact on local amenity and infrastructure, traffic and access, inappropriate development, I think the planners should look at the effect this new housing estate will have on Bridport as a whole. You can’t just look it as bricks and mortar. It goes wider, deeper than the aesthetics of the new properties.

And, as bricks and mortar go, do we really need all these new houses? There is a chronic shortage of affordable housing in Bridport. This is what we should be focusing on, in areas where it can work around the town. We need more shared ownership homes for young people to get a foot on the ladder, more homes for social rent. And not just tagged on to the grotty end of a swanky development.

As councillors elected by us, the people, to make decisions on our behalf, they should do the right thing. It’s not just a bunch of arty farty people who live on trustafarian handouts from rich relatives and the sale of the occasional painting. All sorts of people in the town and beyond are very unhappy about this application which will strip Bridport of much of her spirit.

Please help us to save what we have left. Especially when it’s doing so well.

If you want to have your say before tomorrow's deadline, click here to make your comment. If you want to know more, take a look at the campaign group's Facebook page.

That's about it.

Love Maddie x

The square shows signs of life

The excitement is too much.  There are lights on in the pub and a fish and chip van's just pulled up outside the village green.

A queue of people has built up in anticipation. The enterprising chippie chap put round a flyer during the afternoon: cod and chips for £4.50. Crikey, they're even doing curry sauce and mushy peas. Shame I already have a baked potato in the oven.

And at the pub, our new licensees settle into their new home before throwing open their doors in a few weeks' time.

Down the road, someone on the estate-of-bungalows tests out their new searchlight torch, throwing a white beam across the sky and hitting the constellation of Orion like a lightsaber slicing through a storm trooper.

A quarter moon promises bigger things to come as February comes into view. The village is on Twitter, it has its own Facebook page and there is soon to be a community website.

And the village hall arms opens up on Friday for the penultimate time before our pub sets sail on a new journey, with the Enchanted Villagers as crew and mine hosts at the helm.

The village is coming out of hibernation. Baby it's cold outside. But who cares, the Enchanted Village is coming back to life.

That's about it.

Love Maddie x

Bridport by Night

Thirty years ago, when I was twenty, I went with my mum and my young daughter to take a look at Bridport, where I was about to start a new job as a reporter on the local paper. It was only twenty miles from the place I was born, but I didn't know it at all.

We walked up to the top of the windswept East Cliff and looked around us, my blonde little girl covering her eyes because she didn't want her photo taken. It was wonderful, and I fell in love with the place immediately.

It's a love affair that has continued  ever since. I was privileged through my job to get to know the  place and its people very well. I even wrote a book about it, which became a bestseller, if only in the local area.

Even now, living in the hinterland, I get anxiety attacks if I don't have a Bridport fix every now and then. It's My Kind of Town.

So I was thrilled to see this film posted on YouTube by a young Twitter friend, who obviously feels the same. Stand up and take a bow, Stephen Banks, you've captured the magical spirit of Bridport beautifully.

It's taken the local Twitter and Facebook world by storm. So I thought I'd share it with you.

That's about it.

Love Maddie x