Now I shout it from the highest hills

In the Enchanted Village this morning, there is a broken pint glass on the pavement where the children walk to school. I clear it up at 6.45am. It is nothing to do with me but I would feel pretty bad if a child cut their foot on it. The dog seizes my newly-planted nicotianas and spreads them all over the patio and then my hairdryer packs up just before I am about to go to work.

At the new office job, the head honcho writes all over my work in big red pen and it is emailed back to me without even a 'thank you' or 'kind regards'. Another director delivers my work to his team and then comes out, smiling, rips up the paper and says: 'Well, here's what they thought of that.'

I am tempted to pick up the pieces of paper and shove it into his smiling mouth. But I don't, because I am actually enjoying the job and, if I really get paid at the end of the month, the money will be handy too.

After a hard day at the office, it is good to go with Mr Grigg to the pub for supper. Every now and then a bit of what you fancy does you good. Or so he tells me.

So now we are back in the hovel after being surrounded in the pub by a group of short-arsed sorry, short-mat, bowlers. They have finished their stint in the village hall and are now waddling back home after a few drinks in the pub.

Brushing our teeth, we can hear everything they are saying because the bathroom has plastic sheeting for a roof. As you know, the builders are creating a new bedroom and bathroom in what we now call the west wing.

Earlier, when I came home from work, I was sitting on the lavatory, inwardly bemoaning the fact I have still not been picked up by Pan Macmillan as their discovery of the decade. I suddenly heard an extremely loud mooing sound from above, like a cow about to jump on my head. I naturally assumed the brace-brace-brace position, thinking a heifer was about to crash through the joists. When it did not happen, I quickly pulled up my new 'office' trousers and rushed to the front door, only to see a cattle lorry trundling by with a poor, bellowing cow inside.

The arrangement with the extension, you see, is like living in a tent. Everything is amplified. I can hear the most in-depth conversations as people wait outside the village shop thirty yards from our house. I can hear people having one-way conversations into mobile phones. I can hear people discussing the 20-20 cricket result and I even picked up a person whistling the tune to 'Secret Lover', although I don't know who it was. What is more disturbing is hearing a different person yelling out the refrain: 'Now I shout it from the highest hills...'

But I know that in the morning, as the spaniels skip through the dandelion clocks, teh buttercups and the rusting docks, what will worry me most is the sound people on the outside can hear from the inside. Mr Grigg will be on the lavatory and, as the mist descends as it usually does in this village when every other bugger in Dorset is bathed in sunshine, I will hear a kind of foghorn noise. The Grigg anthem spreads far and wide. There will be no secrets in this house. And none in the rest of the village either.

That's about it.

Love Maddie x