The world from my window

I stagger across the square with a laundry basket on my hip. The washing machine has busted, a month after its first birthday and year's warranty. I am grateful Mrs Bancroft is on the Grand Tour because I can sneak in and use her very sleek and silent washing machine while she is away. It purrs like a very quiet cat, unlike my Hoover which made so much bloody noise the other night when it was spinning Mr Grigg's boxers I thought it was the Hadron Collider. An imprint on the outside suggested a very solid alien inside desperately attempting to escape. I checked to make sure the pets were all accounted for and then rang the Hoover man. This morning, he inspects the machine and tells me a large bolt has sheered off inside. I now have to wait another week for it to be fixed. I wander across the road in the rain with my washing basket, looking out for stray Porsches. If it's a deliciously-sounding throaty engine, it'll be Mrs Chocs-Away. Or it could be a local builder whose ...

The demolition men are hard at it again up at the Love Shack. Mr Grigg, Nobby Odd-Job, Mr Loggins and Mr Sheepwash are in dismantling mode as they tear apart the old bungalow high on the hill. Mr Sheepwash narrowly misses impaling himself on a rusty nail and Mr Loggins puts his back out. Mr Grigg comes home in a flap, desperate to use the lavatory but unable to get his overalls off in a hurry. I fear he might follow through. Here in the Grigg household, spring has arrived, which means my twice-yearly sort-out of the bedroom drawers and wardrobe. The winter clothes are going away, which probably means we'll have snow next week. There have been numerous developments since my last post. The sheep and lambs have been moved into the pasture near Pelly Sheepwash's house and the spring bulbs are coming out just in time for Mrs Bancroft's homecoming after five months away. Contrary to local gossip, she has not been detained at Her Majesty's pleasure but is on a round-the-world ...

I take it all back. Peter Rabbit's the best. The essay is finished and, with a mercurial switch, the bunny's been recast as a hero from Homer. Now just a short essay - 1,000 words on French history - by Thursday and then I can get back to Porsche-spotting from my window. Three new (to them) ones in the village. Celebrity Farmer has just roared past with his gran in the passenger seat. Babe magnet. That's about it Love Maddie x

I have fallen out of love with one of the most delightful characters in children's literature. A week or so ago, Peter Rabbit, that naughty but lovable blue-jacketed bunny, waltzed right into my house and got completely inside my head. A couple of days later, he's done my head in completely and managed to get right up my nose. I was studying hard on Saturday, trying to pad out a 2,000-word Open University essay on why children's picturebooks appeal equally to adults. I was using Peter Rabbit to illustrate my points. Two thousand bloody words, I ask you. There is only so much you can say. But I really shouldn't take it out on Peter Rabbit for my mistake in studying a level three degree course in children's literature. I realise now, for me, all that analysis and intellectual argument takes the magic away. I just think: 'What a load of absolute bollocks.' So when Pelly Sheepwash instant messaged me across my laptop and asked if I fancied helping her to look fo...

I've been up half the night stroking my new baby. After a very delicate procedure, the island unit was safely delivered in the kitchen, thanks to Mr Grigg, Mr Sheepwash and Nobby Odd-Job, in a scene that could well have starred Bernard Cribbins and Eric Sykes. I have been unable to stop looking at it, touching it and admiring it. It's far too good to use. In the meantime, if you hop across to my new blog Manor from Heaven , you'll see I haven't been totally idle. Here in The Enchanted Village, the circle of life continues. It's that time of year again. It reminds me that what goes around, comes around, as the street I parked next to in Bristol shows. That's about it Love Maddie x

My new kitchen island unit has just arrived. Island? It's more like a small continent. I'm half expecting to find Dr Livingstone in the middle drawer with a large tribe of pygmies in the bottom and Thomas Cook selling tour tickets at the top. I always get the size wrong. A few years ago, seduced by the DFS adverts, I went out looking for a sofa and came back with two huge settees and a large armchair. In the showroom, they looked in proportion. And besides, there was a sale on (is there ever a time when there isn't a sale on at DFS?). Two delivery men and much huffing and puffing, shunting and shoving later, the sofas were sitting opposite each other in my long living room. 'It looks like a railway carriage now,' Mr Grigg said, looking across at me. 'Yes,' I shouted, on the edge of the seat and my feet swinging, not touching the ground. 'And we're The Borrowers.' The only time I had a double wardrobe was for five minutes until the man who made i...

On a small hill above The Enchanted Village, Mr Loggins is busy dismantling the Love Shack. He and Darling have lived here for two years, in wind and rain, in cold and cold with only their dream of opening a sustainable B&B keeping them alive. Although it is sunny in village, the bronze nymph is still wearing the poncho. Imagine how cold Mr Loggins must be up on that roof. Now they have planning permission to build a new home, Mr Loggins is pulling the Love Shack apart. It is made of wood and corrugated iron. A hobbit hole in The Shire would have been more comfortable. Meanwhile, in news from the other side of the village, the doggers have been exposed. A local couple have been filming themselves cavorting in the woods on The Hill. If Mr Loggins got his binoculars out and panned around from the delightful view from what used to be his back door, he might catch them out. Somebody, though, already has. I asked my informant who it was and if the naked cavorting had anything to do with...

Like the little boy who cried wolf, I have been threatening to throw my toys out of the pram and give up this blog. A month away Down Under and I realised I couldn't turn my back on life here in my corner of Dorset. So not only have I given the kiss of life to The World from My Window, I've also started another blog, following my trials and tribulations in a part-time job at a stately home. Hop across to Manor from heaven and be among my first followers. With a bit of luck, her ladyship might put my wages up. That's about it Love Maddie

I've just been for a walk around the village. It is May, the gypsy lace is in flower, there are wallflowers outside my house, Mrs Regal Bird is rubbing down a piece of furniture outside her garage, Night Nurse has a female visitor on her doorstep and the man down the road is walking his Lassie dog past our neighbours-to-be, Mr and Mrs Champagne-Charlie's,although they haven't moved in to their house yet. A van is parked where it shouldn't be while someone has a crafty fag and Nobby Odd-Job's neighbours have BT Open Reach in. MDF Man has parked in the field at the back of his house, the pub is shut and two people are getting out of their cars outside the village hall, which is bedecked with bunting. I can see Mr Grigg's Freeloader with a bag of garden rubbish in the back. Luckily for him the car is parked outside the right house - ours. I know it is May because there are signs on the village green fence advertising coming events. Am I mad? Have I gone back in tim...

Back in The Enchanted Village, the social whirl stops long enough for us to just hop back on it. Delicious canapes at Monty Chocs-Away's, then a bus ride for 24 villagers as we set off for a charity ball stuffed full of farmers (apologies to my father but I know he won't be reading this) and quick-stepping blue rinsers. The live music becomes too much for a youthful Randy Munchkin (more used to disco and hip-hop) whose pain threshold forces her to consider disembowelling herself with a fork. Mr Grigg becomes hoarse after shouting more than usual just trying to make himself heard. Champagne Charlie's eyes are out on stalks at the décolletage on display all around him. If he had a gun, he would probably shoot it. I am pleased for Posh Totty's sake she has chosen a demure Audrey Hepburn-style dress, otherwise she would be forever known as something quite similar but at the same time quite different. From a nearby table, Darling Loggins swans over in a dress from e-Bay with...

Now back in Blighty, I am thinking twice about reviving my blog. The village has new publicans which means all the previously banned people are back, Ding Dong Daddy has recorded The Imagined Village 's latest album here, Mr St John is on the look-out out for a Porsche for Celebrity Farmer, MDF Man became Superman when Celeb's water bed sprung a leak, the demolition of the Loggins' love shack is well underway and there has been an unconfirmed sighting of local 'doggers' whose identity everyone is keen to discover. Can I turn my back on this and let it go unreported? My teeming brain and restless fingers say no. I cannot keep my pen behind my ear for much longer. As we return home, from adventures, sunshine, beauty, history, with the taste of travel still sweet in the air, we are jolted back to life by a National Express coach driver with sloping shoulders whose customer service skills are non-existent. We miss two trains home because of an unexplained delay with the...

My great-uncle's last resting place is in a cemetery on the outskirts of Casino, the beef capital of Australia. Mr Grigg and I walked through the rows and rows of headstones in the baking New South Wales heat. A shout went up from the left. 'Here it is,' Mr Grigg said. We had finally found it. 'In loving memory of James Walter Hull, died 13.12.73 aged 76. Always remembered.' I pondered for a while and thought of the adventures Uncle Jim must have had since landing in Australia in 1925. Driving the post coach and horses, seeing and buying the 4,000-plus acre farm at Rappville and then setting up home there with his young cousin Percy, who was to die a few years later in a flu epidemic. Mr Grigg and I sat and drank beer in the Commercial Inn, built in 1911 and still stuck in place between the pioneering days and the 1960s. We were told the town had been used as the set for 'that Pommy show Heartbeat ', which is being broadcast on Australian TV in the autumn. T...