The world from my window

As I write this, a mist descends on the mountains around Metsovo, Epirus. It's been an eventful few days since we landed in Greece on Sunday, as you will see if you visit The World from My Porthol e , an occasional blog following the Grigg odyssey. That's about it. Love Maddie x

Some of you already know I have more than one blog. It's not to reflect my multiple personalities - it's more about the different things I do. I keep meaning to update Manor from Heaven with new pictures, which I hope to do soon. If her Ladyship is reading this, I'd love to know what's going on at Mapperton at the moment. However, for the next fortnight, I will be in another place I love: Greece and the Ionian. I will be motoring around Epirus with Mr Grigg, across to Meteora and then heading south to the Inland Sea and my beloved Ithaca. Just the sound of its name makes my cheekbones tingle. We will be accompanied for part of the journey by Mr and Mrs Champagne-Charlie, which could either make or break this friendship, which is built on laughter, community spirit, good food and a nice G&T. In the meantime at home, there is respite from the builders' dust but not much. My stress was such that when we found an old cigarette packet hidden in the ceiling, I was a...

Now that the vivid yellow of oil seed rape has disappeared from the horizon, and the lingering smell of damp bandages has fled along with it, there is a lovely sheen of blue beginning to appear in the fields. The crop is linseed and it is beautiful. I don't see it in The Enchanted Village, the sight greets me now on my way into work, along with cut hay fields and dusty roads. At home the elderflower is in full cry, the campions are going ragged around the edges and the long, long grasses sway in the breeze while the rigid, rusty docks compete with the nettles for air. In the Grigg household, there is a sheen of dust as the builders up their act. Two velux windows have been installed in our dining room, drowning it in light. Dog and cat hair compete for full coverage of the old carpet. The stain where the youngest spaniel failed miserably in his toilet training suddenly becomes visible, as if it were previously written in invisible ink. A huge spider's web the size of Botswa...

The sound of ladders being extended against stone walls fills the square this morning as the bunting is taken down from The Enchanted Village. It coincides with a lull in the football, a realisation that England will not win the World Cup, no matter how many times Mr Grigg wears his football shirt without washing it in between matches. Last night, my blog characters did a little conga through the night. At a party to celebrate three 55th birthdays and a 65th, the hall was full of people eating, drinking and dancing to a very well thought-out playlist. There was Posh Totty strutting to Uptown Girl , Jamie Lee sashaying to Lady Gaga and Mr Sheepwash sliding around the floor in sandals. I was feeling rather delicate after an excess of wine the night before but got into my stride by the time Mambo Number Five blared through the speakers. All day, I had avoided being sick but that very nearly changed when the nauseating Lady in Red came on at the end. As we sat outside in the balmy...

At the weekend,Mr Grigg was out dog walking when he came so close to a deer they almost kissed. The animal strolled boldly through the long grass, unaware its movements were being tracked . It woke from its dream with a startle and fled before Mr Grigg had the chance to say hello. The next day, he was driving up the hill when a lumbering creature the size of a domestic cat walked in front of the car. He slowed down to see a brown hare ambling tortoise-like across the road. It stopped on the grass verge and glanced up as he passed before it turned round and disappeared into the horse daisies. This evening, heading out for a match with the Mapperton Marauders , Mr Grigg goes up to the attic to find his cap and cricket box. He pulls it out of the bag and finds a mouse has got there first. The cricket box is nibbled neatly around the edges. It could have been worse. The mouse might still have been in it. Ouch. That's about it. Love Maddie x

It's been a busy weekend. Scarecrows, fetes and the football. This one had the right idea - one of many in The Enchanted Village with a flagon of ale in his hand. As the village parade made its way around the one-way system accompanied by morris dancers, Ding Dong Daddy (he of The Imagined Village fame) prepared to serenade the passing procession with his musician friend.  Their tune soared to meet the participants - only for the parade to go down the road instead of past their house, so they ended up playing to the wind. It would never happen at Glastonbury.  We had Richard the Lionheart across the road. Some guy who lost his head down a leafy lane.  A sinister-looking Wicker Man attached to the beacon brazier.  Afternoon tea on the allotments. Juggling in the bungalow gardens.  A beheading on the council estate. The Maid of Rubbish on the railings of the village green.  Dainty Nell, created by the chef Lesley Waters' artistic mum. An...

The sun is shining as I take the spaniels out for their morning walk across the fields. They spring through the long grass and buttercups and plantain, flicking up the dew as they pass. Down on the school allotment, there is a curious structure with what looks like a stuffed body in long trousers and braces. In kitchens and front rooms, the scarecrows are finally taking shape, ready to be placed outside the house at 10 o'clock. Mr Grigg is up at the village hall, ovens at the ready, preparing for the village Big Breakfast. He will be in charge of a kitchen full of lovelies, doing his best Gordon Ramsay impression while I sit out front and take the money. Maths is not my forte, but I'd rather be overcharging impatient customers that than be anywhere near Mr Grigg in a busy kitchen. He will bark and yell and the ladies will love him, as will the male helpers but not in a homoerotic way, you understand. In our hallway, the floor is covered in cardboard to ease the passage of the ...

  In cosy cottages and council houses in The Enchanted Village, in mansions and farms, there are bits of bodies everywhere. The odd head here, a limb there. A ginger wig, lots of stuffing and chicken wire. In the Grigg household there is a headless mannequin, standing in the shadows waiting for something to happen. Cunning plans are taking shape. It's the village scarecrow festival. Over the years, we've had politics (Maggie Thatcher), football (an England football fan surrounded by lager cans), events in history (Nell Gwynne), flights of fancy (The Red Baron) and characters from children's books and TV (The BFG and Homer and Bart Simpson lounging on the sofa, but not all three at once. Now that would be ridiculous). The annual event taxes brains, ingenuity, artistic ability and lateral thinking. If the best way to make a head is doing papier mache around a balloon, how do you make the neck and then secure it to the torso? And can you be bothered to make hands ...

It is Bunting Day in the Enchanted Village, a Saturday in early June when our menfolk crowd around the bottom of a ladder with copious cups of coffee while one brave soul climbs to the top and puts the flags out. The annual village fete will soon be upon us and so will the football. Oh yes, the football. In the Grigg household, rather like during the election, we will sit on opposite sides of the fence. Mr Grigg is passionate about the game. Me? I neither understand the offside rule nor do I care. But I do like the house and the street being decorated, which it is every year whether the football is on or not. Six men turn out this morning to put the bunting up while my neighbour flits in and out of her front door with a tray of coffee and biscuits. A short man stands on the phone box while a taller man balances precariously on the litter bin next to the village green in an attempt to tie a string of bunting on to a signpost. Mr Grigg is up a ladder in fake Crocs and Mr Sheepwash swings...

Outside the house of the suspected doggers, there is a discarded rubber glove and bits of of old tissue. Just down the road, the bronze nymph statue glints in the morning sun. Next door at Mr and Mrs Champagne-Charlie's, the house martins are in and out, in and out, feeding their squealing young. Up in the the field, curious young heifers and steers creep up behind dog walkers and shout: 'Moo!' All through the night, the tractors and trailers have been hard at work, trundling through the village with heavy loads of silage. They have been harvesting like ants, bringing in the silage before the rains come. A faint hum on the hillside - both in noise and smell - and lights like alien spaceships landing on Bluebell Hill. The maize begins to shoot on its long journey to becoming higher than an elephant's eye. Oh what a beautiful morning. That's about it. Love Maddie x

Well, the village wedding has been and gone and we all have the warm glow that follows a lovely bank holiday weekend. My friend Pelly's Number One Daughter was married to her soulmate in the wonderful setting of Forde Abbey, which nestles inside the Dorset border, with just a nod to neighbouring Somerset for its postal address. There were gasps when the bride walked in with her father to a score composed by the Cinematic Orchestra , as the huge log fire blazed in the great hall. A Jane Austen heroine, she took the arm of her husband-to-be, who in the film would have been played by a young Hugh Grant or maybe Dominic Cooper. There was even a distinguished wedding guest in a kilt. And the assembled throng sniggered when the registrar asked the bridegroom to repeat the words: 'I Timothy St John Dauphinois Sutherland...' The guests gathered below the abbot's lodgings and tower (built by the last abbot, Thomas Chard, in the early 1500s) for a group photo as the female photog...