The world from my window

It is three days AFTER Christmas and this morning we finally put up all the decorations. That's how behind we are in the Grigg household. However, we are thanking our lucky stars. While Mr Grigg and I have had a lovely Christmas, friends and family have not had it so good. It started with my dear friend Pelly Sheepwash being wiped out by the usual end-of-term bug which saw her issuing instructions from the sofa, Roman empress-style, to her large brood. Then there was calamity and woe in Jamie Lee and Ted Moult's household. After a lovely evening at Mr F Word and Camilla's, at which Mr Grigg disgraced himself by spilling red wine all over the pristine white tablecloth and then broke the glass trying to clear it up, we left very warily in the ice. We dropped off Posh Totty and MDF Man at their house, unaware of the drama going on up the road. The resourceful Jamie Lee, who must have come from the same 'don't walk without carrying' stable as me, decided to use the ...

It's just three days to go and there are boxes of Christmas decorations in our hallway and cards still not delivered. It is freezing cold, it snowed on Sunday and we are running out of heating oil. I have just had a row with Mr Grigg, my credit card statement has come through and yet again one of my clients is having difficulty in paying me. Happy blooming Christmas! But we are, at least, in the festive spirit thanks to Mr and Mrs Champagne-Charlie who had a jolly, booze-filled open house on Sunday, and Mr Loggins and his band of merry mummers, who entertained us all in our village hall on Saturday night. The mummers play is from ages past. It's a simple tale of good and evil, death and rebirth, comedy and magic, hard to explain but great to watch. A clip from an outside performance in My Kind of Town gives you a flavour. The clip doesn't show you the best character, a telepathic pony that excels at hunting out naughty children. A friend of mine from Australia was sitting a...

Scientists spent hundreds of hours working out that octopuses are intelligent . Mr Grigg's brother spent five minutes working out the same thing . Oh to be in a warm climate, now the cold and wet is here. That's about it Love Maddie x

Just a quick post after a very busy village weekend: * a party at the Munchkins at which, consumed by alcohol, I ended up inviting everyone for a long weekend in Las Vegas the year after next * hangover Saturday * Christmas tree erecting in the village square * supper at our house for six with someone else doing the cooking * chief cook and bottle washer at Mrs Bancroft's light bites and nibbles open house yesterday * cooking roast leg of lamb with rosemary and garlic for assorted waifs and strays last night This morning I discover the dogs have fox mange and the Christmas tree lights outside our house have been on the random flashing setting all through the night. Classy. That's about it. Love Maddie x

This morning, as the rooks flew sideways, buffeted against the wind, I reflected on one of those very surreal weekends that seem to happen only in this village. It began in the pub on Friday night where the chrome pole was wedged twixt floor and ceiling, in readiness for a girls' night out involving a group of ladies including Mrs Bobby Packman, Randy Munchkin and Mrs Monty Chocs-Away. But there were no takers and the pole stood gleaming in splendid isolation, although Larry the Landlord was thinking about it, as he unbuttoned his shirt behind the bar and kissed his own shoulder. When the door opened and Posh Totty walked in, I saw Mr Grigg and Nobby Odd-Job's eyes light up. But the moment was fleeting, as she was quickly followed by her daughter Charlotte Whinge-Bucket (pronounced Bouquet ), MDF Man and Sparky Mark. During the course of the evening, Larry was talking to customers at a table near the fire. A young lady, tired of waiting for a drink, walked behind the bar and pu...

Santa is preparing to make an appearance at the village school Christmas fair this Saturday. If he can sort out his transport, that is. The reindeer are obviously resting before the big day, Celebrity Farmer's quad bike is being serviced and the horses are all gearing themselves up for Boxing Day hunt meets. He dismissed a suggestion that he could ride to the fair on the back of one of the village's most attractive women. (No names here, but cast your eyes over my cast list and you can probably work it out). 'There'll be a queue for that, with bloody Celebrity Farmer at the front,' grumbled Santa, as he tried squeezing into his suit, which strangely shrinks every year just before Christmas. So while the transport negotiations went on in the background, I managed to get an exclusive interview with this very busy chap. I have close links to the man himself. I shall say no more. What do you like about the area? I go all over the world but, even for me, there is somethi...

I take it all back. It was actually quite a big shed after all. When Mr Grigg rang me to tell me the shed was on its way I was in the middle of peeling apples for a nice Dorset apple cake. Fearing I'd miss it, I flung the apples down and went upstairs and waited. And waited. And waited. All to the tune of The Levellers What a Beautiful Day . In the rain outside, the keen photographer who lives opposite spotted me in my window with camera poised and ran back in to fetch his own, fearing he might miss the prizewinning shot to enter in next year's village flower show. A boy racer roared through the Square. Crow Man got out of his Landrover, kicked his tyres, spat on the ground and then went into the shop for some cider and fags and the News of the World . A once spritely young man hobbled by for his Sunday Express , Posh Totty's Discovery towing a horsebox rattled through, the lesser-spotted Mr St John strolled by in shorts to get his Mail on Sunday and free CD, Super Mario ...

A family of seagulls - mother, father and baby - fly in spirals overhead. They are inland, taking shelter from the stormy coast. They cry in unison, a sad call now that winter is here. Up the road, plans are afoot to dismantle the Loggins's house, the love shack, ready for the timber rebuild in the new year. But first, the shed in the garden has to be taken down and moved to the little patch of ground Mr Grigg has on loan from Farmer Mayfield, where it will be used as a log store. So up at the Loggins abode, in a scene reminiscent of Delaney's Donkey , there was Loggins pushing it, shoving it, shooshing it, Sheepwash, Grigg and all the bally crew. The muscles of the mighty, never known to flinch, they couldn't move the shed a quarter of an inch... Exhausted, the boys vowed to leave it for another day. Meanwhile, the wind had other ideas, blew the corrugated iron roof off into the middle of the lane and that hero of heroes, Celebrity Farmer, pitched up while no-one was looki...

After a week of abstemious eating and drinking, I was looking forward to preparing Mr Grigg's supper. As I absent-mindedly chopped the carrots, thoughts wandering to faraway places, the lights went out. 'Bugger,' I said aloud, as Mr Grigg was down in the garage foraging for logs. I groped around for the wind-up torch Mr Grigg had brought back from the conference and then checked the trip switches. All were fine. I opened the front door and the village square was as black as a bag. Bliss. No horrible street lights. Across the road, Mrs Bancroft's house was dark and I could see candles being lit in the pub some 25 yards away. The phone rang. It was Nobby Odd-Job, ringing from the power-cut free zone at the top of the village. 'I'm a bit worried about Mrs Bancroft,' he said. 'She rang me and left a message to say she was sitting in the dark and wondered if I was too. I went down but there was no-one there so I went to the pub. I've just tried to ring he...

The smell of sausage casserole is wafting up the stairs as I type. Mr Grigg is preparing food for the 5,000 for the quiz tomorrow night and the aroma is making me feel hungry. Oh, how at home he looks in a pinny. The damp decaying leaves were squidgy underfoot as I took time out from computer work this afternoon for a walk on The Hill with Pelly and the dogs. The ford was overflowing and we found half a corn cob in the middle of nowhere. Celebrity Farmer, his brother and father were all in a row in the second-from-top field, hedging and fencing. It looked like some kind of rural line-dancing ritual. From the shelter of the trees in their warm coats of green velvet moss, we emerged to look out on to the vale and across the hummocks to the grey sea beyond. By the time we came down from The Hill, there was a sliver of a moon in the sky and the clouds in the west were turning pink. It's been a strange old week. On Tuesday I saw the driver of a car in My Kind of Town with a long white b...

The wind shifted to London this week as the green cabbage soup-stuffed Mr Grigg went up to The Smoke for a conference. He came back laden with two jamboree bags full of goodies - lots of pens for the village quiz on Saturday, two memory sticks, a stress ball, a mug, a pack of tissues, a hand gel dispenser, a wind-up torch, eight remote controlled light switches, a personal alarm, a triangular highlighter pen with nibs at each corner and a gaggle of gonks. He plunged his hand into one of the bags and pulled out a small thing that looked a bit like a tape measure. 'Now, this is the best thing of all,' he said, like an excited child. I think he was trying to sweeten me up after telling me that drinking until 2.30am in the hotel lounge with two female strangers was called 'networking'. He held one end of the thing and then pulled a long thread out. He looked puzzled. 'Now what was it the chap said this was for?' he said to himself. 'A garroting device?' I su...

Excuse me for using this like a chat room, oh faithful blog readers, but has anyone heard from or about Dave Pie and Mash? I keep clicking on his blog title but computer says no. I'm worried. Especially when the last post I read he was having violent thoughts about the neighbour and anyone else at work who crossed his path... A collective blog hug then, please, for Dagenham Dave, wherever he is. That's about it. Love Maddie x

It's windy in the village today. Roads have been blocked by fallen trees and deep floodwater. Down on the coast a few miles away, the waves have been flying high over the piers. November is well and truly here. After the big booms and flashes of fireworks night and the somber, half muffled tones of the church bells on Remembrance Sunday last weekend, the autumn sunshine makes long, tall shadows. The trees are virtually devoid of leaves, the schoolchildren are wearing gloves and I'm saving on heating oil by wearing my bodywarmer - or 'gilet' as the owner of the rather upmarket shop in the next town remarked to me on Saturday. (I remember her as a lowly bank clerk before her marriage to and divorce from a wealthy gentleman. She doesn't intimidate me. No sir.) You can tell winter is coming because of all the stupid Christmas catalogues coming through the letterbox, the Yellow Pages propped up outside in a plastic bag (does anyone use Yellow Pages any more?), the mud-sp...

Day two of Four Country Bumpkins go to London and we find ourselves all brushing our teeth in the tiny bathroom at the same time and talking gibberish. It is like a cross between the crowded cabin scene from the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera and Marlon Brando in cotton wool mode in The Godfather . From Middlesex Street, we head down past St Paul's to the Tate Modern. The main turbine hall is dominated by a very large shipping container, a great big dark steel box on legs. We sneer as we join the crowds making tentative steps up the tailgate. It is completely black inside, and we are tiny in a great big world. Our hands reach out and we are surprised to touch soft baize walls. We feel more comfortable and head to the back of the box. Elevated, we look back from whence we came, towards the light and the tall shadows made by those entering and exiting. 'Now what was all that about?' I ask Mr Sheepwash afterwards. 'Oh, to me, it represents existential nihilism ...

In a greasy spoon not far from Liverpool Street Station, word reaches us that Clint Eastwood is in town. According to Mrs Bancroft's Daily Mail, the man with no name is taking over several streets around Spitalfields for his latest film. I am sitting opposite Number One Son and Mr Grigg and squeezed on to a bench seat next to Mr Sheepwash. Cue the music for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly . Tumbleweed blows along the pavement, the Eastern European waitress freezes in mid-frame. Mr Grigg lets out a gasp. We look around. From the collective corners of our eyes, we see a sinister reflection in the pub window across the road. The shocking, blood red logo on the side of a delivery lorry moves slowly towards Mr Grigg like the truck in Duel , the shark in Jaws , the alien in Alien . Mr Grigg shudders. He is afraid, very afraid. He shuffles on his seat. 'I think I'll give that pasty a miss,' he says. That's about it Love Maddie x

I'm in the doghouse. Or to be more precise, the chicken coop. Through one of my blog characters, I am guilty of libel. Now, being trained in this sort of thing, I wouldn't normally admit my mistake. However, as the character is question is Russell's Crow, I think I might stand a chance of getting away with it. Although if a cockerel in the past could be prosecuted , then I suppose it is possible for a cockerel to turn the tables and take out a private prosecution. The thing is, you see, poor Russell's Crow is still alone. Yes, his girlfriends were slaughtered by a serial killing fox but, despite my suggestions to the contrary, they have not been replaced. Those white things I saw in the pen were indeed the ghost of hens past, the zombie chickens of yesteryear. So I apologise for the distress I have caused poor Russell's Crow who, I am told, narrowly escaped getting his feet bitten off by the aforementioned fox. He is still crowing each morning, lord of the very litt...

The rain is coming down in sheets here on All Souls Day. The empty square is a contrast to last night when the village was buzzing with skeletons, witches, Frankenstein monsters and some children as just plain hoodies. Trick or Treat in this village is quite a civilised, good natured affair. The children are accompanied by parents or older siblings and call only at those houses where they know they will be welcomed. Up in the village hall, the garden club was holding its AGM, along with a carved pumpkin competition. We resisted the urge to go this year, thinking nothing could top our outing 12 months ago. If you missed it, go back in time , it's a good 'un. Meanwhile, back at the Grigg hovel, Mr Grigg had his own ideas about tricking or treating. When the young visitors knocked on our door, he would ask what trick they'd like. Tiring of the fact they didn't seem to get the joke, he went one step further, ready for the next lot. 'What are you doing?' I asked, as ...

A little while ago, I told you about a film being made around these parts. Loosely based on Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd , the story centres around Tamara Drewe, whose comic strip adventures were told by Posy Simmonds in The Guardian. It's been directed by Stephen Frears and stars Bond Girl Gemma Arterton (pictured below in the TV role of Tess of the D'Urbervilles ): and Mamma Mia eye candy Dominic Cooper (seen here in the role of Willoughby but described by the press as the New Mr Darcy): For some, the film has been the biggest thing since locals tapped into the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall Whisky Galore barrel. Thousands have been made by those switched on enough to let their homes to cast and crew. Others I know have also made a pretty penny, contracted to provide services to the stars. And all of us have seen the vehicles roaring through and the coded signs springing up on lamp-posts here there and everywhere. This is the one three strides away from my house...

The mist has descended on the village this morning like it does, suddenly, all through the year. The top of The Hill is completely obscured by fog and the ground is squelchy and damp underfoot. In the street, the recycling boxes and bags are full of paper, bottles and cans. The Grigg abode is no exception, with an extra bag for bottles after a party to welcome the new neighbours, Mr and Mrs Champagne-Charlie. They were quite taken aback when the doorbell kept ringing. Villager after villager strolled through our front door, clutching wine bottles and cans. 'We didn't expect all these people,' they said. 'Neither did I,'I replied. Some 18 people crammed into the cottage, enjoying Mr Grigg's stuffed rabbit and roasted vegetable tart, my bread and butter pudding made with Lidl's panettone and a pavlova I renamed 'effing mess' after dropping it on the floor. When Ted Moult and Posh Totty drank us out of house and home, Mrs Bancroft was sent across the ro...

The sun rises late in Mu-Mu Land this morning. A seagull which has lost its way caw-caws as it flies in confused circles around The Hill. A startled thrush darts out of the beech hedge and a robin trills a sweet song above the stile. Across the valley, the sad, lonesome voice of Russell's Crow, defiant and desolate, rings out around the village. I fancy he is calling for his lost soul mates, devastated by a fox last week. He cries out, like Macduff: 'What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam, at one fell swoop?' Down the lane, Pelly Sheepwash is keeping watch over her flock and my timeshare hens. We are hoping Mr Sheepwash's thorough digging-in of the chicken-proof fence will deter this blood-hungry animal. Or maybe the fox was caught by the hunt-that-is-not-a-hunt which clattered through the square last weekend, causing me to pull a calf muscle as I turned quickly to get the camera. And this morning, as I hobble along the ridge with the dogs, I can clearly look acros...

I was clearly suffering from the effects of magic mushroom poisoning when I wrote my last post. Pre-exam nerves, I think. My apologies. I am now tired and emotional after my OU level three film history exam. And the omens didn't look good. There was a solitary magpie in pouring rain as I walked the dogs this morning. And as I drove past the examination centre in Exeter this afternoon I realised it was where I went the wrong way down a one-way street on my driving test 30 years ago. When I tried to pay the car park machine, I had no change, it rejected my credit cards and I had to go through a painful process of registering my car with NCP through an automated phone system. I was sorely tempted to mug the Big Issue salesman who was sleeping on the concrete floor around the corner. Inside, I sat at my desk and calmly began to nibble on my chocolate bar, as my tutor had suggested, while I turned over the exam paper and considered the questions. And then the sugar rush. Yes, a question...

What's going on? First, our old next door neighbours bugger off, then our other neighbour, wise old Alf, announces he will be following shortly. Across the Square, the publicans Larry and Mimi hand in their notice and then our shopkeepers reveal they, too, are planning to shut the till drawer permanently just as soon as they get a buyer. Is it something I said? I am beginning to think it's me. For the past few days, I have been re-reading Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone for my Open University children's literature course. And in the same way that when you read health information on the internet you are convinced you are seriously ill, I have suddenly developed the ability to understand a kind of Parseltongue , the language of snakes and other magical creatures. For example, the other day, when I was having licentious thoughts about Mr Grigg when he was spending a night away (because absence makes the heart grow fonder), a huddle of teenage schoolgirls walked b...

Great excitement in the village square today as the bus breaks down, just at the point where the driver is doing a three-point turn. The result is even more chaos than usual, as motorists work out which way to negotiate this temporary roundabout. Initially I thought there was a fight going on because I glimpsed an angry young man with a mohican haircut and a grumpy old lady on a zimmer frame loitering around the bus door. Then I realised they were disgruntled passengers wondering how they were going to reach their destinations. Other news I have just heard is the addition of a pole inside the pub, brought in especially for Sunday regulars. I am not privy to what went on but have visions of Dudley, General Custer and all the drinkers from Compost Corner gyrating around the said pole while Larry the landlord gives it welly on the karaoke machine. I hope we will see more of this pole before our publicans depart in the new year. However, it could be that the brewery is converting the pub i...

There is an advert on Westcountry Television at the moment, advertising the latest attraction to the Plymouth Pavilions this coming Sunday. It's getting me down. Big time. You know you're getting old when the pop star whose poster graced your teenage bedroom and looked like this: now looks like this: No offence, but every time the advert comes on I think it's my brother-in-law. The one who looks like Bill Oddie. Rock On. That's about it Love Maddie x

After a flurry of emails, photos posted on Facebook and virtual hugs through the ether, this column by an old friend sums up what actually happened at our reunion. That's about it Love Maddie x

This morning, as I walk the spaniels around the field, I hear Russell's Crow shrieking in the hen coop across the valley. The sun comes up over the beech wood on The Hill. The summit of its flat-topped sibling across the way grows in silhouette. The secondary school children saunter down to the school bus, singing some inappropriate pop song as they pass The Extremely Pleasant Company, a stationery business run from the old telephone exchange. I think of my old journalist classmates, getting on their bikes or tubes or whatever mode of transport they use for travelling across The Smoke. My quietly ambitious friend, Curious Girl, roaring off in her company BMW to a high-powered business meeting. It is quiet here in Mu-Mu Land but it's been a busy weekend. The applause is still ringing in my ears after the harvest supper. And the chitter-chatter of old colleagues at my reunion is whooshing around my head. Mrs Bancroft and the Parson's Daughter can congratulate themselves on a ...

It's a big weekend, with two major events coming up. A reunion with people I trained with as a journalist three decades ago and the village highlight of the year. When I was asked if I wanted to join the 1979 gang on Friday night as well as the Saturday, I could hear guffaws and giggles through cyberspace when I replied: 'I'm sorry, but it's the village harvest supper and I'm part of the entertainment.' I never was going to amount to very much, I can hear them thinking, even in 1979. But I only ever wanted to be a big fish in a small pond, never a tiddler in a wide open ocean. I'd wanted to be a local newspaper journalist from the age of about nine, after quickly abandoning my first choice of being a zoo keeper on Animal Magic . However, my careers adviser at big school suggested I should try being a librarian. 'Journalism is far too competitive, dear,' she said. But I was determined, even when a major calamity hit in my fifth year at comprehensive. ...

Strictly's Jo Wood - more of her later. After throwing my toys out the pram and threatening to give up blogging altogether, inspiration comes along in the shape of supper at Ted Moult's and Jamie Lee's. This involves a tour of their monster motor home, the best Beef Wellington I have ever tasted and Posh Totty peeling off her jeans to show Mr Grigg a bruise on her thigh caused by an excited horse. During the course of the evening, I am dazzled by headlights as a car I assume to be driven by Ted and Jamie Lee's occasional neighbour Mr St John goes up and down the drive trying to throw light on the identity of the dinner guests. By the time we leave, Ted's shirt is up over his chest, showing off his toned torso after losing four stone following a health scare, Jamie Lee, like her A Fish Called Wanda namesake, is weak at the knees by the way Mr Grigg says Deportivo La Coruna and Camilla generously gives me her necklace after I remark for the third time how pretty it...

After being downhearted yesterday, oh how your comments have cheered me. Mr Grigg has talked me out of dumping the blog habit and I received this award today from fuelmyblog.com for Westcountry Miscellany . I will put my blogging feet up for a bit. But I think I will be back. When I have something to say. But before I go, and to make me feel better, I want to publicly thank Dave Pie & Mash for this lovely award I picked up a while ago: Dave kindly gave me the choice of several but this one seemed particularly genteel. And besides, I couldn't possibly accept the one with the f-word on it because I think my mother reads this blog. And this, from Maternal Tales from the South Coast : She says: "The blogger who receives this award believes in the Tao of the zombie chicken – excellence, grace and persistence in all situations, even in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. These amazing bloggers regularly produce content so remarkable that their readers would brave a raving pack of...

I'm thinking of calling it a blogging day. I was planning to tell you about all the vinegary and fruity smells coming from the cottages as the vast majority of villagers knuckle down to chutney and jam making. I was planning to tell you about the talent show rehearsals for our harvest supper, where Celebrity Farmer is topping the bill. I was planning to show you the wedding photos that have still not materialised. I was planning to tell you about a fungus foray, a girls' night out and the reunion Curious Girl and I are organising with our fellow Mirror Group trainees from 30 years ago. But I am tired, unsure of my direction as I juggle so many balls in the air. And I am not too happy about writing to please the local populace rather than myself. So forgive me if I wind down a little bit. And besides, I have a level 3 Open University exam in three weeks' time and haven't a clue what the course was about. That's about it Love Maddie x

The sunny square has not changed very much while we were away in the Ionian. Our return is marked by colourful patchwork blankets hanging from makeshift washing lines and hedgerows. Mr Grigg thinks the gypsies have set up camp on the village green. But we discover the display is part of a quilt exhibition. At least it is not like a few years ago when we discovered on return from holiday a new extension had been added to our house. Before leaving, Mr Grigg had put a couple of doors outside, hoping someone might pinch them as he had run out of time to take them to the dump. We came back to find that Nobby Odd-Job and Manual had made us a new porch, complete with a council planning enforcement notice signed by a Mr R. Sole. A sign proclaimed the work had been carried out by a firm called Bodgit and Scarper. This time, the homecoming is more genteel. Bellows and his family walk by with four black goats on red leads, Super Mario heads for the cricket pitch for a spot of maintenance and Mr S...

Mr Grigg is accosted by a naked German in the showers just before unsuspecting Mormons do the rounds on the boats in Corfu marina. Hop, skip and jump across to the final installment of The World from my Porthole . That's about it. Love Maddie x

Sandwiched between yachts full of Germans in the Ionian. Can Mr Grigg's brother cope? Hop across to next installment of The world from my porthole . That's about it Love Maddie x

' Low tide at Cancale and the beach stretches far to the Britanny horizon. The sun has resigned, washed out by the early evening grey. A niggling wind is blowing, rippling the water in the little oyster basins that clutter the beach like a system of crude sewage tanks. Concrete tanks that trap the receding tides are filled with sacks of oysters. Stumps, clustered with mussels, stand like rotten gibbets way down to the muddy sea. These are the opening words to that seminal (to me at least) cookery book Floyd on Fish . Much has been written about the flamboyant TV chef Keith Floyd since he died in Bridport, Dorset, a week ago. I heard about it in Greece and was desperate to blog about it but my internet connection wasn't working. Now that it is, it almost feels too late to add my four pennyworth. But I'm going to anyway. Have to. I met him a few times decades ago when he was filming in Bridport, cooking scallops at The George or when he was visiting old friends. He was debon...

Hop across to The World from My Porthole to find out what happened when Mr Grigg met an octopus. That's about it Love Maddie x

Hi there, skip across to The World from My Porthole for the latest goings-on in the Ionian. Sorry not to have blogged for a while or left comments for anyone else but I've been sunning myself where the internet does not always shine. Hence why I can't get the link to work in the usual way... That's about it Love Maddie x

It is morning here in Mu Mu Land. The church clock strikes eight and then a reversing bus goes 'peep...peep...peep' as it does a three-point turn in the Square. This has been its manoeuvre ever since a gung-ho driver thought he could get round the corner of the one-way system and shaved several stones off the pub wall in the process. A blind terrier called Titch yap-yap-yaps at nothing in particular as he scuttles along to the village shop with his elderly owner, Effie. She and Titch have been away from the village for months after Effie hurt herself in a fall. Many of us thought they might never come back. Titch's incessant yapping became a thing of the past and poor old Effie was forgotten. Then, out of the blue, Effie turns up at the village flower show, looking younger and more spritely than she has ever done in the past 10 years. Titch is still blind and still yapping. But those of us in the know feel things are now back as they should be. Justified, and ancient, and...

The wedding of the year has been and gone. And all is well. This was despite dropping the plug from the iron on my big toe as I was pressing the lapel on my linen coat, finding live nits in the flaxen curls of the four-year-old bridesmaid (Number One Grand-daughter), the dressmaker leaving a stitch where she shouldn't have in the wedding dress (discovered with minutes to spare) , Number One Daughter whipping the wrong wedding speech from her cleavage and then having to ad lib her way out of it and the Best Man joking that 'nothing sucks like an Electrolux, apart from the bride'. It was the only time I've been glad my elderly mother is hard of hearing. Number One Son looked the part as he led his big sister up the aisle, preceded by the fairy grand-daughter. I was proud of them but managed not to cry. Composure is my middle name. I got through the bit in my speech when I thanked the two substitute fathers in my daughter's life but welled up when I turned the spotligh...

While thinking today about my speech for Number One Daughter's wedding on Saturday, and in between times when I should have been working on my freelance stuff and a 4,000-word critical analysis on soap operas, I've been looking out the window at the mobile library. I though our publicans were in for some luck after seeing the end of the rainbow going down their chimney. And then I started playing around with Google. Bloody fatal. Far From The Madding Crowd was on my mind, because as you know, the rumour is that it is about to be remade in these parts. From there, I got to Jonathan Firth, who starred in a TV remake of the 1967 John Schlesinger film classic. Jonathan is Colin's brother. (I know which one I prefer). Then I wondered if Peter Firth was their cousin. I say cousin because to look at him he could never be their brother. Oh all right, maybe the wrong side of the blanket then. Peter Firth played Scooper in the 1970s television series Here Comes the Double Deckers ...