The world from my window

You get to a certain age when the man in your life stops looking at younger women and gazes longingly at fallen trees. 'If I had a chainsaw, I'd be in there right now,' he says, as you ask him to keep his bloody eyes on the road to prevent him driving into a ditch. He becomes obsessed with wood, even though you don't yet have a fire to burn it on. 'Do you know how much a load of logs cost?' he says. As if you care. And then it begins. Talks with the listed building officer, planning applications, work on a new chimney for the old fireplace, you can't use old bricks as they're not fire proof... On and on and on until the fire is built and your man gets a hernia lifting a second-hand wood burning stove into the back of his car. And then the badgering begins. 'I'd really like a chainsaw,' he says, pressuring and persuading you. But you're not convinced, having read stories of people slitting their own throats through the careless use of...

Christmas came and went, too many parties to mention all over the village, and everyone suffering from coughs and colds, replicated all over the country. Could this be germ warfare? What a great way to disable the population! On New Year's Eve, the Square comes alive with people in fancy dress pouring out of the pub and nearby houses. Pirates rub shoulders with nurses, a Legionnaire is caught embracing a Roman emperor and several men in kilts do cartwheels across the road. Up in the church tower, the die-hard ringers wait with anticipation, ready to ring the bells when the clock strikes 12. There is a clatter up the steps as a woman in a nun's outfit, whose stockings and suspenders are visible as she hitches up her skirt, and a man dressed as a Roman Catholic priest, complete with small whisky bottle in his top pocket, get there just in time to take their places to ring in 2008. I greet New Year's Day with a sneeze and the sound of bells, as a group of morris dancers fr...