The world from my window

Bloated. Fat. Muffin top. All these words relate to me today after a three-course meal on Saturday night followed by scrumptious Sunday lunch yesterday and then a spicy supper. I blame Mrs Bancroft. She's the one who has always taught me never to turn down an invitation. I am doubled up with wind, the belt on my jeans is digging in to my stomach and making an interesting imprint. I will need a crane to lift me out of this chair. Beware anyone who comes too close behind me when I walk the dogs later on. I feel like the woman on the Nimble bread advert but for all the wrong reasons. She flew like a bird in the sky, light as anything, floating in her hot air balloon. I, too, will be shooting across the field. But in the way a balloon filled with helium does when it is let down. With my iPod on, I will be oblivious as the whole village crumbles in my wake. That's about all I can manage Love Maddie x

The strawberry blond lead of Morris: A Life with Bells On could have been Celebrity Farmer. Or at least how Celeb used to look. I have just seen him on his way to charm the London city girls and he has reinvented himself. Designer shades and a new haircut. What is going on? Who knows, but there is plenty going on this weekend. Mr St John and Lady Friend moved in together yesterday and the plethora of removal lorries filled the street. Mimi and Larry have returned from the sun and are back behind the bar. The builder (with shirt on) is hard at work in our front room. Morris played to a full house at the village hall last night. Lots of chuckles and guffaws, especially at the 'local' jokes such as a scene at 'Dorchester Airport'. Dorchester has no airport, nor are there plans to create one. Unless the producers of the film have heard this is intended by Prince Charles as part of his toytown kingdom of Poundbury. Royal idyll: HRH and Poundbury Village, Dorchester I was pa...

Mrs Bancroft led a village outing to the suburbs of Yeovil last night. Ten of us went to see the The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. I knew what to expect, having done my homework and looked them up on YouTube. But Mr Grigg, the Logginses and Night Nurse were expecting a stage jam-packed full of ukuleles. So they were somewhat disappointed to see just six chairs centre stage. The lights dimmed and five men of varying ages, all in dinner jackets and bow ties, and a woman in smart black evening wear entered stage left, armed with ukuleles of various sizes. From the moment they started at 7.30 right through (minus the interval) until 9.30, toes were tapping and knees were shaking all through the auditorium. It was English eccentricity at its best. Let me describe our musicians. On the left we had a long, blond Baldrick, then came Kirsty MacColl, then Jim-Broadbent-meets-Timothy-Spall, then our local town council leader, then David Tennant and finally John Simm on bass. Ladies and gent...

As I write this, Nobby Odd-Job, Mrs Bancroft and Mr Grigg are sitting around my table. I nearly typed Mr Frigg there. Freudian slip, sorry... We have just had a meeting about our annual fete in June. I'm part of a small group that has been behind the fete every year since the Queen's Golden Jubilee in 2002. We had a street party then and everyone had so much fun we've been doing something ever since. We have events during the year to pay for the fete and then any profits are split between village causes. This may all seem very noble but the best bit is meeting in other people's homes, sharing good food and wine as we plan our activities. But I am not blogging about village stuff. Not tonight. No, I am in a kind of serious mode this evening. Have you had a teacher who has really inspired you? I'm sure we've all had someone in our school lives who has made a real difference to how we turned out. Me, I went to the school of hard knocks in the town otherwise known a...

I am reeling with shock. Somehow, our scratch quiz team romped to victory at the village hall on Friday night. Armed with plenty of wine, glasses and pencils (in that order) Mr Grigg and I were joined by Mrs Bancroft and Number One Son. But there were no Bible questions for Mrs B or complicated physics equations for the boy. So how did we do it? We're still not sure. We thought we were pretty rubbish. But I guess the 80 or so others in the hall must have been more rubbish than we were. Something that became apparent, though, is that the Number One Son, Golden Balls, Angel Child, has become very knowledgeable about playing cards since going to university. Did you know, for example, that the King of Hearts is called the Suicide King because he has a dagger in his hand? The boy did. He also guessed, correctly, that the spring flower whose name in Turkish means 'turban' is tulip. So I can't blame that last answer on evenings spent playing poker when he should be studying. T...

You know your day is not going well when halfway through the morning, you're at work and you discover your knickers are inside out. What makes it worse is they're the Bridget Jones big kind and the waistband is higher than the one on your trousers. So the world and his wife knows officially how big your arse is. My day at the Death Star started like this yesterday and then got worse. I broke my mug when someone walked through a door in front of me. I was startled, the mug I was carrying became like a juggling ball with an in-built electric shock system and it flew out of my hands. The handle smashed all over the floor. Then, as I filled up my excuse for a mug with hot water from the dispenser, I turned away to get milk out of the fridge. I know how long I usually have to do this because the pipe is furred up and the water takes ages to come through. However, some bastard had fixed it, hadn't they? Scalding hot water went everywhere. So I was looking forward to an evening la...

I have been at the Death Star again today. Refurbishment is going on in one of the wings and there were tapping noises coming from the radiators. Probably local government workers trapped in the system, trying to escape. Charles 'The Tunnel King' Brosnan worked for the local council I shall be heading down the escape tunnel myself at the end of the month. I have been editing web copy for three days a week for the past five months. It was a temporary job that was meant to be for six weeks. I feel a mixture of relief and anxiety at the prospect of seeing the light again. Relief because I shall at last be escaping my silo for the big wide world. But also anxiety because there will be very little money in the family purse for a while. But there are at least two things I have gained from working at the Death Star, apart from the boost to funds: An insight into web content management An insight into prog rock, Massive Attack and Stanley Holloway monologues, courtesy of a c...

It feels like the first morning of spring. The sky is clear and blue, the sun is glinting on the golden stone walls of the garden and the church bells are ringing. But this is Griggsville, where the man on number three bell is like Jonesy from Dad's Army and always several beats behind everyone else. Clive Dunn as Corporal Jones in Dads Army This morning, Mr Grigg threw the bedroom window open to let the day in. The songbirds were going full pelt, the jackdaws were cawing as they prepared themselves for bedding down in a suitable chimney when the time comes to nest. A dove cooed from the rooftops as the village folk ambled to the shop across the Square for the Sunday papers. A motorycle chugged by, with that reassuring, low bubbling throaty sound only British bikes make. In the distance we could hear the faint sound of drum and bass from a boy racer's car going around the one-way system. I looked at the map of the south west yesterday, on the wall of Hugh Fearlessly-Eats-It-All...

Stop press: Mr Grigg looked out of our bedroom window last night wondering what was going on after we'd left the pub (see yesterday's posting). It was around midnight, the lights were on but the curtains were closed. 'Phone up and find out,' I said. So he did. He put on a silly accent, like the policeman in Allo Allo, and spoke to Mrs Super Mario, who hooted with laughter, having guessed the mystery caller's identity straight away. No flies on her. Good moaning , it's a lock-in Did we miss a lock-in? Then we realised, lock-ins went out with the relaxation of the licensing laws. Perhaps someone should tell Super Mario. But you should say zis only vunce. That's about it Love Maddie x

We are very lucky in this village to have a pub right at the heart of everything, along with a shop, church, village hall and school. We also have a well balanced population, socio-economically speaking at least. This week our publicans, Mimi and Larry, have gone on a much-needed holiday to the Canary Islands, handing the keys over to our painter and decorator, Super Mario, and his wife. Late this afternoon, not long after Mrs Regal-Bird put the finishing touches to the border at the front of her house (which usually prompts an outing for the hot-blooded males of the village to marvel at her bottom), Mr St John emerged from people's distant memories with MDF Man for an early evening pint. So early that our temporary mine hosts hadn't even officially opened up. Sometime later Mr Grigg and I, Pelly and Mr Sheepwash walked across the Square to our local hostelry. Mr Grigg was looking forward to seeing Super Mario behind the bar. He rather unkindly added a rider to that statement ...

Television and radio star Chris Evans was in my neck of the woods today, launching the new Wellworths store in Dorchester. There was a celebratory feel and chaos at the pick' n' mix as the shop opened in a blaze of publicity. Wellworths is where the old Woolworths store used to be. And it opened thanks to the bravery of former Woolworths manager Claire Robertson, who has taken over the shop and is running it with her old colleagues, who would otherwise be out of a job. Long after Chris Evans left, heading for London to do his drivetime radio show, the shop and indeed the town was heaving. Tills were ringing, there were smiling faces among the stressed ones and, in true Woolworths-style, the Easter eggs were on the shelf next to gardening products. Actually, what was on the shelves seemed very Woolworths-like. But Claire says she'll stock whatever the public wants to buy. And she is keen to keep things local if she can. Particularly impressive was the massive amount of open...

The snow has melted, the sun is out and I have seen Titanic! The latter is all down to my good friend, Pelly, who practically forced me to sit down and watch it with her, Mr Sheepwash and Mr Grigg. She said it was for my own good and my OU film history studies could depend on it. It wasn't half as bad as I remembered, although Leonardo DiCaprio did look like he'd just started middle school. Sadly, the only bits of dialogue I can recall are 'this is bad,' when DiCaprio's character realised what was happening to the ship (or maybe the plot) and Kate Winslet breathlessly saying: 'Touch me Jack.' I've heard it called a Jemima before or even a front bottom but never a Jack. Kate 'keep-your-hand-off-me-h''apenny' Winslet and a small boy do the sober or drunk test. The end of the film prompted some debate. Mr Grigg was adamant the old lady dropped the diamond into the icy waters by accident. Pelly and I were sure she'd planned it. Why else w...

I woke up this morning, leapt out of bed, peeped through the curtains and, guess what? Yep, snowed in again! Farmers with snow plough attachments on their tractors are doing their best to clear the roads but there are abandoned cars all over the village. The dog walk that usually takes 20 minutes took an hour because the snow was so deep. I had snow inside my boots and the older spaniel picked up snowballs on his chest and back legs and ended up looking like a poodle. My five lovely wind-sculpted beeches stood out like sentinels over the village. The doorbell has just rung. It is Mr Loggins, back from a skiing holiday and behaving like an excited child with all this snow on his own doorstep, while Darling Loggins looks at him lovingly. They have called to tell us we have been invited to a communal soup lunch at the Sheepwashes. Yum yum. A few days ago it was spring. I know this because I had a different coat on, I wore shoes for the first time in months, Nobby Odd-Job returned from D...

It has been a busy weekend. However, we managed to find time to go into the pub yesterday afternoon for a spot of drinking and driving in the form of Scalextrix Sunday. This is a new event in which fully grown men and women get to play around with electric cars. Children are, in the main, banned from taking part. This is probably because one of the best racers was a young lad of about 10 or 11 whose focus and determination was worthy of Jackie Stewart. Middle aged men were quaking in their trainers. I was somewhat bemused when Dudley came in and requested a pint of water rather than his usual distinctive tipple He looked rather dashing in a Toulouse Lautrec-style beret and cane. At least, I think he had a cane, but perhaps I imagined that. It transpired the beret was not just for effect - it was hiding five stitches. Suddenly, Super Mario's comment on my last posting made sense. On Saturday, a little worse for wear, Dudley went outside for a smoke, leaned over to put his fag out in...