The world from my window

The church clock strikes 9 as Mr Grigg ambles across the village square to get the Sunday papers from the shop. His walk holds a distant memory of a Ginsters pasty and an evening of celebrations for Oak Apple Day. He hobbles past the village pump which, while we were looking the other way, has sprouted a cement pot either side planted with bizzy lizzies. The sun streams through our bedroom window as if we are on holiday. Children's voices echo across the green, loud and then not so loud as they go up and down on the swings. A wood pigeon coos and a jackdaw rat-a-tat-tats. Mr Sheepwash flip-flops by with The Observer, the people up the road have their noses stuck in The Sunday Telegraph and a man from the council houses is wrapped up in the News of the World. But this is very much Mail on Sunday territory, as the Tory posters standing proud in gardens and on windows in the lead-up to the county council elections testify. Pelly once inadvertently picked up a note from the shop whic...

Just a quick blog this time. After the episode with the pasty, I haven't been right since. So as the sun beats down outside my window, the bus reverses past my house to turn around, the mobile library is just about to pull up outside my door and four dogs are having a barking match outside the village shop, let me wish you a very merry Oak Apple Day . It is the birthday of King Charles II and was once a public holiday held to mark the restoration of the monarchy. I am no monarchist, believe me, but any excuse for a holiday and having fun is OK by me. Besides, I have a strong affinity with Charlie. Local legend has it that my house was one of the many places in which he stayed on his flight from the Battle of Worcester. Surprisingly, this 6ft 2in Moorish-looking young man went unnoticed in 1651 when England was populated by midgets. Today, though, I can see the curtains of Mrs Bancroft and Night Nurse twitching as they ponder the identity of the dark haired man of similar height com...

Mr Grigg had a bad night last night. He was tossing and turning as if he were on a spit. This morning, at breakfast, he told me he'd been having a nightmare. 'This is going to sound really weird...' he said, as I slurped my tea. 'But I dreamed I had a Cornish pasty stuck up my bottom.' There was an interlude while he mopped up the PG Tips I spat all over him. 'Do you want me to tell you more?' he said. 'Or do you want to finish your Weetabix?' I needed to know what happened next. Once the Weetabix was safely down my gullet, he said: 'Well, I went to the doctor's, and I was in this kind of medical centre common room and there were lots of other doctors there. My doctor saw me and asked me what was wrong. I was really embarrassed and I whispered to him about the pasty. "Oh," the doctor said, in a loud voice, "I've had one of those up my own bottom for the past 18 months". At this point, I was trying to get the jam out of...

Market day morning in my kind of town and the streets are paved with the bourgeois and the bohemian. It is bank holiday Saturday, the toffs are down from town and tourists with all the time in the world shuffle past stalls jam-packed with pretty things you don't need, bijou bollocks and frippery fuckwittery. In the almost 30 years since I have lived here, the town at certain times of the year lives up to its broadsheet moniker 'Notting Hill-on-Sea'. Jerry Hall was spotted on the arm of a local entrepreneur in the audience at a comedy night last week, and writers and artists are two a penny, holed up in the folds of the landscape while young locals struggle to get on the housing ladder. But after two o'clock in my kind of town on a Saturday, everything changes when the underbelly fall out of bed to stalk the streets with their exposed midriffs, gold chains and a choice turn of phrase. Meanwhile, inland, the weekend starts well, with the village square a hive of activity...

I am missing out on village life. While I was feeling claustrophobic in London until I reached the leafy suburbs of my friend's house, Mr Grigg and friends ran a coffee morning in the village hall. Then a hen party complete with woman in bridal veil descended on the pub and ordered the full karaoke and Mr Grigg was invited to dinner at the St John love nest. My only contribution to the coffee morning was buying and labelling the tombola prizes, which I bought at Lidls. This shop is the only reason I ever venture into the war zone of Chard, the birthplace of powered fight. I am reliably informed that Celebrity Farmer has a new (as yet unseen) woman on his arm. A herd of cows trampled a walker from the other side of the county, Tuppence's lawn looks like it has been cut for hay and Masterchef winner Mat Follas's new restaurant is beginning to take shape in a nearby town. We are waiting with bated breath to see CF's new friend, although if she fell for his radio mic and m...

Underneath the clock at Waterloo Station, the gateway to my Western world, weary women in pink leg warmers, trainers and bras over tee-shirts walk by, survivors from the London Moonwalk. I am on my way home from The City Where No-one Ever Speaks To Strangers and the camaraderie and sense of achievement emanating from these women is humbling. I have left my old friend out in the suburbs in a Brief Encounter-like moment on a station platform. Yesterday I did my pitch at the travel writing workshop. I was buoyed up by euphoria after being told by the trainer Dea Birkett that my notes in an exercise about using all the senses sounded like poetry. But when it came to pitching an idea to Dan Linstead, the editor of Wanderlust , my heart was knocking so hard against my chest I thought I might have to let it out and shake hands with everyone round the table. Rather bravely, I went straight in with my first paragraph about the wind turbines in Puglia, encircling me like a sinister army , an...

The country mouse is off to town tomorrow. I am booked into a travel writing workshop at the ITV Studios in London under an assumed name. I have been looking forward to this for some time, as it is run by travel writer Rory Maclean , of Magic Bus and Falling for Icarus fame, and the Guardian's Dea Birkett. I heard Rory Maclean give a talk once and his gentle, Canadian tones sent me into another world. I have just found out who the guest editors are and I am working myself up to do a pitch. I am rubbish at selling myself so this afternoon I will be busy dusting off some things I did earlier in an attempt to make my sparkling prose speak for itself. What is filling me with glee, however, is the prospect of staying the night with Curious Girl , my old flatmate I haven't seen for 10 years. We shared a house together when we were training as journalists in Plymouth nearly 30 years ago. Her calmness, fashion sense and individuality always impressed me, a timid sheep who hid under a...

It is strimming season and with it comes the inevitable expletives from the Grigg garage. On lawns and in workshops all over the village, the strimmers suddenly take on lives of their own, like the broomsticks in Harry Potter. They even have names. Mr Sheepwash has three adjectives for his and one noun - bastard - as the starting-up the strimmer process turns into a little dance. The smell of petrol and the sound of swear words fill the air, the engine floods and Pelly Sheepwash sagely shakes her head. 'They don't like stale petrol,' she whispers to me, adding that she told Mr Sheepwash this last summer. This has since been confirmed by the local agricultural engineer who says he is beseiged by bastard strimmers in the spring when the men of the house reach the end of their tethers and can deal with the frustration no more. 'Well, my car starts when I leave it for a few days,' Mr Sheepwash says. Rather snappily for one so usually laid back. 'Yes,' says Pelly...

This is the sight that greeted me on my walk with the dogs today just across the road. Lovely isn't it? This is the stall outside the Grigg hovel this morning just before the crowds arrived, along with Monty Chocs-Away in his open-topped classic car, Celebrity Farmer in his Land Rover with two barking dogs in the back and Posh Totty on her way to Pony Club with Charlotte Whinge-Bucket (pronounced Bouquet ) in the Disco*. Pelly and I were side by side and found ourselves in matching baggy jeans (built for comfort, not speed), purple tops and sparkly flip flops. Pelly did rather better at selling than me. As an example, when asked how much the books were I said '20p, but you can have two for 50p'. Maths was never my strong point. Grade 3 CSE three times, and that was with private coaching from the retired headmaster of the boys' grammar school. I am happy to report the carboy (in the picture above) went and so did the wardrobe. For a song, truth be told, but it was good ...

The world from my window this morning is bright and cheerful. May is absolutely the best month, with the lime green leaves of trees on the village green and the gypsy lace, pink campions, bluebells and yellow dead nettles along the banks of the lanes. The fields are full of buttercups, dandelion clocks, cuckoo flowers and speedwell. There are wallflowers in pots outside my front door, a huge sign on the playground fence advertising a fete tomorrow (complete with snail racing and paintballing) and the remains of some tulips next to the village pump. The latter is due for another twee revamp in the shape of concrete containers filled with bedding plants, courtesy of a villager who thinks it makes the square look nice. Please God don't let her put bizzy lizzies there again. I can't abide them. Begonias make my flesh creep. The tree pollen causes me to sneeze, as does the dust created by Mr Grigg as he puts the finishing touches to our front room, now that the builder (with shirt...

It's been a curate's egg of a bank holiday weekend. First, the bad : The lovely Night Nurse has been very out of sorts. Mrs Sheepwash did her neck in and issued birthday bash orders to assorted Sheepwashlets from her bed. There were seven young doctors in the house and all they could suggest was plenty of gin and tonic. Mr Grigg and I didn't go to Portsmouth for the boat festival on Saturday. This was just as well because it's on over the Whitsun weekend, not May Day. I spoke out of turn at the end of a lovely family gathering and let off a ticking timebomb when I should have kept my mouth shut. But the least said about that the better. The eight-month-old dog is still having bladder problems. The good: I got into a pair of Levis that have been off the radar for some time. Bellows Packman's goat has had babies. The bluebells are out on The Hill. We watched a deer run into the woods as we looked out across the vale and sea. A tramp gave us the thumbs-up when we slowe...

Well, we're off to the Festival of Power and Sail tomorrow at Port Solent, which seems a very long way to go just to look at things we can't afford. The Lyme harbourmaster has given us a year in which to get our act together. Now I doubt the village boat scheme will actually work, but it was a good way of mentioning all my blog characters in one posting. However, we are trying to get a reasonably priced second hand vessel, something Mrs Bancroft describes as a 'day boat'. As soon as she said it, I pictured her in big hat and Audrey Hepburn sunglasses, issuing orders from the cockpit with a G&T in her hand while the shapely Randy Munchkin acts as a figurehead. Mr Grigg is in the bath as I write, while we settle down for an evening in. If Number One Daughter is reading this, just because it is a Friday night does not mean it is steak and sex night. We are having steak but who knows what else is on the menu? Yesterday I heard an American woman (who just so happens to b...