Winner takes it all

Mr Grigg has gone out with that chainsaw man Mr Loggins again. We were meant to be clearing out rooms, tidying up before we do a bit of DIY . And then Mr Loggins asked if Mr Grigg could come out to play. Well, what could I say? We are in dire need of some seasoned wood. The wood burning stove coughs and spits like an old man. The house is desperately cold so I have put on the heating and a pair of Steptoe gloves as I type.

The picture, above, shows Mr Loggins, Mr Sheepwash and Mr Grigg earlier this year. Scary eh? I call it Boyz in the Wood.

Three rooms in the house now have books, files, boxes, stray furniture all over the floor. We're never going to get it tidied up by the end of the weekend. The cats are getting into laptop cases, the dogs are sniffing everything and I am looking at things I last looked at when we had a similar tidy up and thought I ought to keep them because they might come in handy. They didn't. But they still might.

I have no more to report on Mr St John or his new Lady Friend, although I saw her moving into the mansion yesterday. Wearing sensible boots. No Russell and Bromley skyscrapers to be seen. It is a stunning house, both inside and out. But she has no driveway so you would only be able to get out the first few bars of the Dallas theme tune before you reach the front door.

Celebrity Farmer has been keeping a low profile since my last post. He would love to get on Big Brother or the X Factor. As far as the latter is concerned, all he can do is 100 Miles by The Proclaimers. However, he was once on a reality show on satellite TV, in which he and six other men were chained to a woman for a week. He came second to a very handsome black man, with whom he has just been to Ibiza. He borrowed my tape recorder and interviewed lots of pretty girls and So Solid Crew, apparently, but as Number One Son tells me there are so many of them, it might have just been the horn section.

I can hear the bellows of Packman outside my window. He is a retired policeman who was unable to quell the New Year's Eve uprising when he tried to placate the toothless gatekeepers. He and Nobby, another ex-copper, also failed to smell a rat when they were looking after our plants a while back. Packman's voice travels across the valley, competing with Russell's Crow for attention. In a previous life, he probably lived in the Alps and used his voice to communicate with relatives on the next mountain.

We tried out the pub in the neighbouring village last night. Not much atmosphere - bit like sitting in your great aunt's front room when you can hear the clock tick-tock-ticking on the mantelpiece. They even had a bookcase full of paperbacks. The food was cheap, mind, and Mr and Mrs Sheepwash are always good company. They are bound for Washington next week for the inaguration. Lucky devils. Anyway, as we were leaving the pub, All Right Now came on and Mrs Sheepwash said 'Ooh, I like a bit of free.' How apt her words were. We'd actually got three steps out of the front door and realised not only was the meal cheap, we'd forgotten to pay for it. Oops. So it was back in again, quick. The last time that happened we had a takeway worth £80 that the Indian restaurant forgot to charge us for. I was all for going back and paying, but Mr Grigg was having none of it. The minus side is that only I can go back in there now. His face is known. Although if he really looked he does in the photo above, they would probably pay him to stay away, otherwise he might scare the customers.

There are now up to four teams from the village going down the hill tonight for a wine and wisdom evening. We have a good chance of taking the spoils. Winner Takes it All, as Abba would say.

That's about it
Love Maddie x