The world from my window

The new girl is settling in at last. But the council offices still feel like the Death Star. I expect to see Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader having a fight over the central staircase at any minute. I keep having these visions of black-suited corporate types turning into stormtroopers. Two things made me smile: One, a male colleague went to the loo and saw a chap rather ungainly drying the crotch of his trousers with the hand drier. A quick explanation apparently followed, but the suspicion is perhaps this is how this man gets his kicks. Two, an illicit mobile phone conversation going on in the loo cubicle next to me. The lady was trying to be all lovey-dovey. And then I pulled the flush and her secret location was revealed. Toilet humour, you can't beat it. Meanwhile, back in the rural idyll, the Aga has gone out again - blown out by the wind - and Mr Grigg has been asked to read a lesson at the carol service. He is highly honoured, although I got in first last year. It all went ...

Last night, the hall was heaving as villagers left their warm homes on a chilly night to take part in the annual quiz. There were about 90 people there and I am pleased to say our team members excelled themselves and came second. I was personally very proud to have remembered that Malawi was once Nyassaland. I don't think I spelled it right, but there were no extra points for spelling, which was good news. The winners were a team who should have been called the Smart Arses. A serious lot from the next village, they won it two years ago. But we had been led to believe they would never be back as a protest against the quality of the wine dished out as prizes. But came they did, bold as brass, and they disputed several answers (they were actually correct on one but the adjudicator wasn't having any of it) and when presented with their bottles, very swiftly took them out of the bags to examine the labels. We should have mugged them really on the way out. We managed to make the food...

A looming tax bill has prompted me to sell my soul to the local council. Yesterday, I started working for the council three days a week, temporarily you understand, and I feel like a battery hen. I always wondered why the caged bird sings and it's probably out of frustration. My own singing is taking the form of cursing loudly every time the word 'engagement' jumps out at me from a document on a computer screen, or, even worse, when I hear it spoken with a straight face. At the moment, I am the new girl but I am beginning to understand why every person with whom I attempt to 'engage' in the kitchen or lavatory is either leaving or has just joined. I do so miss my rural idyll. Simple things like taking the dogs out in the morning light rather than stumbling around fields as I fall over leads before the sun comes up. Chatting to my neighbours, hearing a robin warbling in the tree and making endless cups of tea and reorganising the laundry basket as I put off my next...

As Russell's crow goes cockadoodle-doo across the valley, trying to outdo the one belonging to the Lady with the Bright Red Hair, we are still no nearer to unmasking the bacon thief. Gypsy Rose has not been seen for a while now, and suspicion falls on anyone looking slightly bigger than they did when they last went in the shop. The village is obsessed with eating and food so the thief could be anyone. Next to Russell's crow's pen, where he struts around with his hen and chick friends, is a field full of lambs. These are new ones, we have not got to know them very well, unlike the orphan lambs we grew to love in the summer. We loved them so much that when they were slaughtered, they were cut up and distributed to various freezers in the village. Our neighbour, who lives on her own, shared half a lamb with her townie friends up the road. For weeks these people ran their freezers down, emptying them of things that lurked in the corners without labels. Hoorah, the lamb was comi...

As the sun beats down on this soggy corner of England, the skies looking more Greece than Dorset, the news breaks that we have a thief in our midst. The village shop is always busy, at certain times of the day, located as it is on a square where four roads meet. This is the world from my window, the world I look out on and walk through every day. But this is something I did not see. No-one saw it happen - it just did. One minute the chill cabinet was full of bacon, the next minute, nothing. There were just two customers in the shop at the time: a respectable elderly lady who has lived here all her life apart from her formative years in a hamlet she still hankers after and an old gypsy woman, with carrier bags on her feet and a very large coat over her shoulders. The bacon, it is true, was on special offer. But Buy One Get One Free does not usually mean Steal One Get One Free. Suspicion has naturally fallen on Gypsy Rose Lee, which may appear rather judgmental but, hey, that's life...

On a wet autumn day, Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks plays on my stereo. Which is appropriate really, as we have just celebrated Bonfire Night a few days late with the village fireworks. The composer is the right choice but it really ought to be Handel's Water Music, as the rain it raineth, and raineth all the night. We should have known; the forecasters and village soothsayers were all saying the same, as they waved printouts from the BBC website. Beware the rain. But we live in such a strange place, the weather can be completely different from locations just a few miles away. When the sun is shining on the coast just down the road, up here we're in fog land. However, despite the forecast we decided to go for it because of our wise old neighbour next door. In our house, he is known as Gandalf because we are convinced he is a wizard. He does not come and go out of his front door any more, like the little man and woman who lived in the weather house on my grandparents...

The traffic trundles, albeit slowly, past my window now that the road is open. For the past six weeks or so, it has been pretty quiet here, as workmen have been busy creating a new culvert at the bottom of the street. The work involved digging up the tarmac to the stream underneath and pedestrians have had to walk around the edge on a specially-created path and bridge. The traffic, meanwhile, has had to take a diversion. And that has not pleased everyone. The village has been divided - literally and metaphorically. There are those at the posh, leafy end, where residents have drives and can sing at least two verses of Dallas before reaching their front doors. And there are those, like me, whose houses and cottages are all higgledy-piggledy, cheek by jowl sort of places, where when we put the washing out, our neighbours can just about make out our hip size from the labels on the underwear. Up this end, so to speak, the road closure has been bliss. Children have been gaily cycling in the ...

Maddie's back! After narrowly avoiding clinching a book deal and a column in one of the weekend supplements, The World from my Window re-emerges as a regular look at life from England's rural underbelly. It is November 1 - All Souls Day - and in about an hour's time I have to lock up the church. I really need to check it first for tramps sleeping under pews before I turn the key. I'd best take a torch with me. It is very dark down here. There has been a rush on pumpkins at the local nursery for a Halloween competition in the village hall. The gardens and allotments society, in an attempt to get more people interested, put on the event for its AGM last night. We are not members but a friend is, and to show our support for him, we turned up with our pumpkin lantern to add to the table of entries at the back. My Lidl pumpkin, carved on Wednesday, had become quite soft and its once wide open mouth and crooked teeth had shut after the top lip sank into its chin. The committe...