The world from my window

Sea views, paper thin walls. A band of happy, suited and booted Baptists on a weekend away wander through the hotel. Fifty-year-old Mods zoom past on a scooter rally to Woollacombe. Fred Perry shirts, Doc Martens under half-mast Levi's. Long, wistful looks at Lambrettas and Vespas. Those were the days. Mr Loggins and Darling, bodyboarding in wetsuits in between the flags on the acres-long shore of white sand. Mrs Sheepwash going into raptures at a springer spaniel puppy running and laughing along the beach, all the time looking back to make sure mum and dad are still watching. This is The Enchanted Village annual outing. Some 32 people of us are on tour, Lush Places gone large. Out to settle old scores with a team from Trowbridge, Wiltshire. Canteen catering, plenty for seconds. And thirds. Plates piled high. Chips on the seafront, £4.50 for parking. Mr Grigg buys me new shoes because he's left my hiking boots at home. Or so he thinks. A walk up the hill, Manual and M...

As I write, it’s a mad scramble to get things done before heading off on the annual weekend trip to North Devon. In years gone by, there would have been a charabanc pulling up outside my house, filled with cloche-hatted ladies and men with moustaches and a kite-tail trail of freshly-scrubbed children flying (securely attached) in its wake. But today we’ll be heading for the seaside under our own steam, with some taking their time while others - like me - will be rushing. It’s the first time I’ve been to this weekend event, organised by Manuel and Mrs Regal Bird, and I’m not really sure what to expect. We’ve been told to pack our swimming costumes (striped, knitted bathing suits) and hiking boots (hobnails) and be prepared for fun and organised games. Ooer. I’m not much of a participant, more of a watcher, so this could be very interesting. In the meantime, I will leave you with the following titbits that have come to me via the Enchanted Village’s jungle drums. Each of them...

It's fungus foraging time in this part of Dorset, with crocodiles of woodland treasure hunters trudging up to Bluebell Hill armed with baskets, a reliable guidebook and a heart full of hope. They are searching for the penny bun, the name we give to the Cep , that most prized of mushrooms, which lurks on the forest floor beneath ancient beech trees. As country children growing up, my four siblings and I stuck mostly to field mushrooms on the farm, cursing the townies for getting to them before we did. These days, the Sunday and Saturday supplements are bursting with tales of forages and forays, as if everyone's doing it. Last year, I was lucky enough to go with a friend on a fungus foray with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's expert John Wright, who knows a thing or two about mushrooms. He wrote the excellent Mushrooms: River Cottage Handbook No 1 . You can hear about our foray here . John is as delighted with a close-up inspection of a tiny orange toadstool sprouting from a cow...

As I gaze from my window across the square this morning, the white-sand 'beach' installed outside the village shop is blemished. Splatters of scraped-up cow dung stand out like a pimple on a clear-skinned 90-year-old. Mixed in with tyre prints and oil from leaking radiators, the beach installed by the council to denote where cars can park could do with a tidy up. Luckily, today is the day of the Great Dorset Beach Clean. Unluckily, The Enchanted Village is just a bit too far inland. Eight miles too far. This week the council came to paint a 'No Entry' sign on the junction outside the pub. Not to stop the boozers going in but to prevent vehicles driving the wrong way up the one-way street. The traffic lights secured for the occasion had been found in the props department of an Ealing comedy. When they were green, the cars came through from the other direction and when they were red you were expected to proceed with caution. As one female driver waited patiently at the re...

When we got wind that a major film was being made in west Dorset last year, it was the talk of The Enchanted Village. We were to be the epicentre, twixt Yetminster, Salway Ash and Blackdown where many of the scenes for Tamara Drewe were filmed. A house we passed every day suddenly had a new fence. Not just any new fence, but a wibbly-wobbly, rustic-style fence. It looked like something from Babe . ‘Why would anyone put up such a stupid, hideous fence?’ my friend Pelly asked, before we realised this was the location for the ‘writers’ retreat’ run by central characters Beth and Nicholas Hardiment. And then the trailers began to arrive. Cars and vehicles parked under an electricity pylon in the middle of a field. The Tamara Drewe Circus had come to town. There was money to be made, deals to be struck. Celebrities wandered through Beaminster, flash cars drove through our lanes and a catering truck paid to park on the village allotments. There was swooning from period drama fans ...

On the afternoon walk, there are shiny conkers on the ground, disinterested sheep in the field and shots being fired across the valley. The dog limbos under the gate to greet three walkers by growling and barking at them. This is unusual, because Bertie is usually quite polite. Then I recognise the rabbit-in-the-headlights look of one of the trio and realise the last time we met he was canvassing for my vote in the General Election. It is Oliver Letwin, closely followed by a tall friend down for the weekend, who is trying desperately to get his phone to work. 'Fat chance, mate,' I say in my head. 'The Enchanted Village is a signal-free zone, as any fule kno.' I then realise the very tall man is no fule, he is Charles Moore, one-time editor of The Sunday Torygraph, The Daily Torygraph and The Spectator. I smile because I am more civil than my dog, which jumps in the stream and then comes out shaking water all over them. Just up the lane, I spy Pelly Sheepwash...

I am turning into a girly-girl. This is worrying, because for as long as I can remember I have been an ardent feminist. I used to get very indignant as a child when the rag doll Looby Loo secretly cleared up after Teddy and Andy Pandy had retired, knackered, for a sleep in the picnic basket. Why would she even think of doing that? A few years later in the 1960s, however, I was a real Miss World fan. In our tiny primary school, we used to play Miss World in the playground. I was always a Scandinavian contestant who, although blonde and beautiful, disgraced herself by tripping over. I thought it added a bit more character, a bit more interest, to the role. I didn’t think the two viewpoints were mutually exclusive. You could have beauty as well as brains and I always went for the underdog. Girl power. What I didn’t like was the traditional perception that a woman’s place was in the home where she looked after the children and did the housework. And nothing else. That independent s...

This evening, I tear in from work, take the dogs for a tour around the maize field, stop off to give Pelly Sheepwash a cashmere scarf of turquoise blue, then ring Mrs Putter (a new face on the blog) about a book club she and I are going to run this autumn. Both book lovers, but nothing too heavy ( War and Peace brought me the onset of early labour resulting in Number One Son 21 years ago), we've decided to experiment with the circle of six. The rest of the club consists of dear Mrs Bancroft (I love her), Pelly (of course), Darling Loggins (who scares me, just a little bit) and Mrs Champagne-Charlie (who, I hope, will be in charge of liquid refreshments). So Book Club begins next month but not before Mrs Putter and I get together to discuss ground rules later this week. It is our idea, after all, so what we say goes. Anyway tonight, Mr Grigg comes home from work, accompanied by Mr Loggins whom he has found loitering outside. I have no time for chit chat, there is a pan of bro...

From my window, you can see the village square. It isn't typically English in the traditional sense - there is no market cross in the middle. But we have a village pump that people gossip around, a shop, a pub, a red telephone box and a village green behind a picket fence. The square is bounded by old cottages, mostly dating back to Victorian times but, in the case of the Grigg hovel, the crick frame inside indicates its 16th century origins. There is a plaque on a cottage wall commemorating the visit in 1651 of a king on the run from the Roundheads. It is an interesting square, a focal point, and many of the buildings are listed. You have to jump through various hoops in triplicate before you are allowed to carry out alterations. And quite right too. However, if you are the county council, you can do what you like. In recent years we have had modern street lights that look like the monsters from the War of the Worlds movie. The lamp posts start in the square and then march down t...

As the swallows preen themselves, making last minute preparations for their flight south, the water gurgles and burbles down the street. A burst main, ignored by the water board. Across the road, the new water feature behind the gated gravelled drive of Monty Chocs-Away echoes in frustration on its endless, tinkling cycle. It yearns to be free like the youthful tributary in the road. I walk through the hayfield and pick up the last hay of the season, freshly turned. I put it to my nose, breathe in deeply and smell the last days of summer and the early days of my childhood. In the next field, the maize is as high as an elephant's eye and the path through it is unfamiliar, sinister, until you see the light at the end of the tunnel, the gateway down from Bluebell Hill and beyond. Every which way but loose. It is a like a scene from Hitchcock's North by Northwest. Any minute, I expect a crop dusting plane to appear from nowhere as Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint burst through the m...