The world from my window

It has been more than a week since my last blog. When someone dies unexpectedly and leaves very sad and confused people behind, blogging - or my kind of blogging - just seems so very trite. But community life here in England's rural underbelly goes on. As I open the bedroom windows just before nine this morning, Celebrity Farmer's dad rolls up in his Landrover Defender, eases himself out of the driver's seat and shouts: 'Tis time you got up, Maddie.' I have, in fact, been up for a while but obviously not as long as Celeb's dad. He is a farmer, after all. Nobby Odd-Job, carrying a lavatory flush for no apparent reason, walks by and stops for a chat with MDF Man. A two-trailer cattle lorry jacknifes in the Square and there is pandemonium. My stint at the council Death Star finally came to an end yesterday. I bought a load of sweets, cakes and biscuits to say goodbye. The Stormtroopers turned out to be a nice bunch but public sector bureaucracy does my head in. I

Forgive me if I don't blog for a while. We have had a tragedy in the village. A person here died very unexpectedly yesterday. And although I was not close to that person, this is such a tight-knit community we are all in various states of shock. Such a needless waste of life. So very sad. That's about it Love Maddie x

It is overcast here today in the village. Little pockets of sunshine occasionally break through the clouds. The trees gently rustle in memory of the great winds that blew through them over the weekend. A cow wails like a whale along the ridge above the allotments. Despite a distinctly unpromising start, there has been plenty going on. Given the choice between a barn dance open to all and sundry at the Boden ranch and an invitation-only chilly, chilli barbecue at the Logginses, Mr Grigg and I plumped for the latter. Up at the Loggins abode the conversation inevitably turned to logs. Mr Grigg has come up with the ingenious idea of following the power cables to scoop up the spoils left by the electricity board tree fellers. A veil of boredom suddenly fell over the women's faces. A sleepy Sheepwashlet face nearly landed in the semifreddo . Mrs Darling Loggins glared at her husband. 'Can we talk about something else other than bloody logs? When we go to bed at night you even read

The wind is howling. Children leaving primary school for the very last time are howling. Mrs Bancroft's hanging basket has come crashing down, along with the clematis on the wall. Posh Totty and MDF Man have got a fire going and it's still only six o'clock. Crow Man has given up trying to change his flat tyre on his Land Rover Discovery outside my front door and called in reinforcements in the shape of the farmer who wears a deerstalker and long sideburns and sends tractors to the Third World. The police have just paid a visit to the pub after another break-in. Not long after, the landlord's daughter arrives home from London after falling 20ft from a window on to concrete below and lives to tell the tale. Ding Dong Daddy marches down the road for a swift pint as if keeping to the beat of an integral iPod playing jazz inside his polished head. The Union Jack outside the shop has wrapped itself around so many times it looks like a patriotic barber's pole. Nobby Odd-Jo

I am feeling uninspired about village life at the moment, what with the rain falling down in sheets and my jaw aching from sinusitis. So I am going to bore you a bit more about Flat Stanley , who is currently waving at me as I type. I created him for our village scarecrow competition and he is based on the title character of a 1964 children's book by Jeff Brown. Stanley Lambchop's adventures begin when a big board hanging on his bedroom wall flattens him in his sleep. But he survives and soon he is sliding under locked doors and letting his younger brother use him as a kite. Stanley even helps catch some art thieves by pretenting to be a painting on the wall. He visits his friends by being posted in an envelope. Eventually his little brother, jealous of all the attention Stanley is getting, reverts him to his proper shape by blowing him up with an air pump. During my research for the scarecrow, I came across the Flat Stanley Project , which was started in 1995 by a teacher in

The village square has been quiet up until the bellringing practice started. This has changed considerably from the days when Mr Grigg and I did our bit for the community by pulling on the ropes and making some sort of tune. Frankly, the bellringers tonight sound a whole lot better. We never intended to be bellringers in the first place. But beware drunkenly telling a passer-by when the bells are ringing in the new year that you've always fancied taking up campanology. Cue a deputation of ringers on your doorstep the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that until you give in and then say 'oh, all right then, if you're desperate'. And then you realise it was Number One Son they were really after but he's far too cool to get involved, thank you very much, and then you're lumbered. This evening, Mr Grigg and Mr Sheepwash are in their whites complaining about dirty gloves on the cricket pitch in a pathetic attempt to put off the opposition before hea

When the most exciting thing to happen in the village this week is a car going the wrong way up the one-way street, a Gold Party at Lady Friend's is a must. It is circled in red on the calendar. Lady Friend, she of the Jimmy Choos in the recycling bin and stacks of champagne in the fridge, has asked us to take along any old bits of jewellery we no longer want. A gold expert will weigh it and then offer us a fair price. We can enjoy a glass of wine, nibbles, a natter and buy costume jewellery made by a very talented young lady from Axminster. I don't get invited to things like this very often. Never been a girlie girl, never been a lady who lunches, always too busy working. So I ransack the bedroom to find very little gold, apart from a Jersey milk bottle top, a pair of Monsoon bikini bottoms and an old bracelet from Argos. The doorbell rings and I leave a grumbling Mr Grigg at home (how hard can it be to warm up last night's risotto?) to be accompanied by Ladies in Linen

We arrive home to a display of flowers at the front of the house far better than I could have tended these few hot weeks. Our dear neighbour Mrs Bancroft has been diligently watering and dead heading my nicotianas, nasturtiums, the tall spikes of yellow loosestrife, the passion flowers and snapdragons and tomatoes facing up to the bizzy-lizzies and red pelargoniums in the concrete pots next to the village pump on the other side of the Square. Pelly and Mr Sheepwash have wandered up to the patch of ground we borrow from a nearby farmer and watered the courgettes in Mr Grigg's polytunnel. And Mr Loggins was drafted in when all our little helpers found themselves (not together) in London for a hot weekend. Nobby Odd-Job spent almost the entire fortnight stuck inside our house. His duties were to water the plants in the back yard. But Mr Grigg gave him the duff key and Nobby locked himself in. After nearly an hour trying to devise his escape he hit upon the idea of ringing Mrs Bancroft

Just returned from the Ionian - latest instalment on The world from my porthole Plus a celebration at Westcountry Miscellany of the life of my very talented uncle, who died while I was away. Photos and a description of the homecoming soon... That's about it Love Maddie x

We pick up a couple of hitchikers who are not all that they seem. Visit my other blog http://worldfrommyporthole.blogspot.com for the full story. x