The world from my window

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 ...