The world from my window

A little while ago, I told you about a film being made around these parts. Loosely based on Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd , the story centres around Tamara Drewe, whose comic strip adventures were told by Posy Simmonds in The Guardian. It's been directed by Stephen Frears and stars Bond Girl Gemma Arterton (pictured below in the TV role of Tess of the D'Urbervilles ): and Mamma Mia eye candy Dominic Cooper (seen here in the role of Willoughby but described by the press as the New Mr Darcy): For some, the film has been the biggest thing since locals tapped into the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall Whisky Galore barrel. Thousands have been made by those switched on enough to let their homes to cast and crew. Others I know have also made a pretty penny, contracted to provide services to the stars. And all of us have seen the vehicles roaring through and the coded signs springing up on lamp-posts here there and everywhere. This is the one three strides away from my house...

The mist has descended on the village this morning like it does, suddenly, all through the year. The top of The Hill is completely obscured by fog and the ground is squelchy and damp underfoot. In the street, the recycling boxes and bags are full of paper, bottles and cans. The Grigg abode is no exception, with an extra bag for bottles after a party to welcome the new neighbours, Mr and Mrs Champagne-Charlie. They were quite taken aback when the doorbell kept ringing. Villager after villager strolled through our front door, clutching wine bottles and cans. 'We didn't expect all these people,' they said. 'Neither did I,'I replied. Some 18 people crammed into the cottage, enjoying Mr Grigg's stuffed rabbit and roasted vegetable tart, my bread and butter pudding made with Lidl's panettone and a pavlova I renamed 'effing mess' after dropping it on the floor. When Ted Moult and Posh Totty drank us out of house and home, Mrs Bancroft was sent across the ro...

The sun rises late in Mu-Mu Land this morning. A seagull which has lost its way caw-caws as it flies in confused circles around The Hill. A startled thrush darts out of the beech hedge and a robin trills a sweet song above the stile. Across the valley, the sad, lonesome voice of Russell's Crow, defiant and desolate, rings out around the village. I fancy he is calling for his lost soul mates, devastated by a fox last week. He cries out, like Macduff: 'What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam, at one fell swoop?' Down the lane, Pelly Sheepwash is keeping watch over her flock and my timeshare hens. We are hoping Mr Sheepwash's thorough digging-in of the chicken-proof fence will deter this blood-hungry animal. Or maybe the fox was caught by the hunt-that-is-not-a-hunt which clattered through the square last weekend, causing me to pull a calf muscle as I turned quickly to get the camera. And this morning, as I hobble along the ridge with the dogs, I can clearly look acros...

I was clearly suffering from the effects of magic mushroom poisoning when I wrote my last post. Pre-exam nerves, I think. My apologies. I am now tired and emotional after my OU level three film history exam. And the omens didn't look good. There was a solitary magpie in pouring rain as I walked the dogs this morning. And as I drove past the examination centre in Exeter this afternoon I realised it was where I went the wrong way down a one-way street on my driving test 30 years ago. When I tried to pay the car park machine, I had no change, it rejected my credit cards and I had to go through a painful process of registering my car with NCP through an automated phone system. I was sorely tempted to mug the Big Issue salesman who was sleeping on the concrete floor around the corner. Inside, I sat at my desk and calmly began to nibble on my chocolate bar, as my tutor had suggested, while I turned over the exam paper and considered the questions. And then the sugar rush. Yes, a question...

What's going on? First, our old next door neighbours bugger off, then our other neighbour, wise old Alf, announces he will be following shortly. Across the Square, the publicans Larry and Mimi hand in their notice and then our shopkeepers reveal they, too, are planning to shut the till drawer permanently just as soon as they get a buyer. Is it something I said? I am beginning to think it's me. For the past few days, I have been re-reading Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone for my Open University children's literature course. And in the same way that when you read health information on the internet you are convinced you are seriously ill, I have suddenly developed the ability to understand a kind of Parseltongue , the language of snakes and other magical creatures. For example, the other day, when I was having licentious thoughts about Mr Grigg when he was spending a night away (because absence makes the heart grow fonder), a huddle of teenage schoolgirls walked b...

Great excitement in the village square today as the bus breaks down, just at the point where the driver is doing a three-point turn. The result is even more chaos than usual, as motorists work out which way to negotiate this temporary roundabout. Initially I thought there was a fight going on because I glimpsed an angry young man with a mohican haircut and a grumpy old lady on a zimmer frame loitering around the bus door. Then I realised they were disgruntled passengers wondering how they were going to reach their destinations. Other news I have just heard is the addition of a pole inside the pub, brought in especially for Sunday regulars. I am not privy to what went on but have visions of Dudley, General Custer and all the drinkers from Compost Corner gyrating around the said pole while Larry the landlord gives it welly on the karaoke machine. I hope we will see more of this pole before our publicans depart in the new year. However, it could be that the brewery is converting the pub i...

There is an advert on Westcountry Television at the moment, advertising the latest attraction to the Plymouth Pavilions this coming Sunday. It's getting me down. Big time. You know you're getting old when the pop star whose poster graced your teenage bedroom and looked like this: now looks like this: No offence, but every time the advert comes on I think it's my brother-in-law. The one who looks like Bill Oddie. Rock On. That's about it Love Maddie x

After a flurry of emails, photos posted on Facebook and virtual hugs through the ether, this column by an old friend sums up what actually happened at our reunion. That's about it Love Maddie x

This morning, as I walk the spaniels around the field, I hear Russell's Crow shrieking in the hen coop across the valley. The sun comes up over the beech wood on The Hill. The summit of its flat-topped sibling across the way grows in silhouette. The secondary school children saunter down to the school bus, singing some inappropriate pop song as they pass The Extremely Pleasant Company, a stationery business run from the old telephone exchange. I think of my old journalist classmates, getting on their bikes or tubes or whatever mode of transport they use for travelling across The Smoke. My quietly ambitious friend, Curious Girl, roaring off in her company BMW to a high-powered business meeting. It is quiet here in Mu-Mu Land but it's been a busy weekend. The applause is still ringing in my ears after the harvest supper. And the chitter-chatter of old colleagues at my reunion is whooshing around my head. Mrs Bancroft and the Parson's Daughter can congratulate themselves on a ...

It's a big weekend, with two major events coming up. A reunion with people I trained with as a journalist three decades ago and the village highlight of the year. When I was asked if I wanted to join the 1979 gang on Friday night as well as the Saturday, I could hear guffaws and giggles through cyberspace when I replied: 'I'm sorry, but it's the village harvest supper and I'm part of the entertainment.' I never was going to amount to very much, I can hear them thinking, even in 1979. But I only ever wanted to be a big fish in a small pond, never a tiddler in a wide open ocean. I'd wanted to be a local newspaper journalist from the age of about nine, after quickly abandoning my first choice of being a zoo keeper on Animal Magic . However, my careers adviser at big school suggested I should try being a librarian. 'Journalism is far too competitive, dear,' she said. But I was determined, even when a major calamity hit in my fifth year at comprehensive. ...

Strictly's Jo Wood - more of her later. After throwing my toys out the pram and threatening to give up blogging altogether, inspiration comes along in the shape of supper at Ted Moult's and Jamie Lee's. This involves a tour of their monster motor home, the best Beef Wellington I have ever tasted and Posh Totty peeling off her jeans to show Mr Grigg a bruise on her thigh caused by an excited horse. During the course of the evening, I am dazzled by headlights as a car I assume to be driven by Ted and Jamie Lee's occasional neighbour Mr St John goes up and down the drive trying to throw light on the identity of the dinner guests. By the time we leave, Ted's shirt is up over his chest, showing off his toned torso after losing four stone following a health scare, Jamie Lee, like her A Fish Called Wanda namesake, is weak at the knees by the way Mr Grigg says Deportivo La Coruna and Camilla generously gives me her necklace after I remark for the third time how pretty it...

After being downhearted yesterday, oh how your comments have cheered me. Mr Grigg has talked me out of dumping the blog habit and I received this award today from fuelmyblog.com for Westcountry Miscellany . I will put my blogging feet up for a bit. But I think I will be back. When I have something to say. But before I go, and to make me feel better, I want to publicly thank Dave Pie & Mash for this lovely award I picked up a while ago: Dave kindly gave me the choice of several but this one seemed particularly genteel. And besides, I couldn't possibly accept the one with the f-word on it because I think my mother reads this blog. And this, from Maternal Tales from the South Coast : She says: "The blogger who receives this award believes in the Tao of the zombie chicken – excellence, grace and persistence in all situations, even in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. These amazing bloggers regularly produce content so remarkable that their readers would brave a raving pack of...