The world from my window

The excitement is too much.  There are lights on in the pub and a fish and chip van's just pulled up outside the village green. A queue of people has built up in anticipation. The enterprising chippie chap put round a flyer during the afternoon: cod and chips for £4.50. Crikey, they're even doing curry sauce and mushy peas. Shame I already have a baked potato in the oven. And at the pub, our new licensees settle into their new home before throwing open their doors in a few weeks' time. Down the road, someone on the estate-of-bungalows tests out their new searchlight torch, throwing a white beam across the sky and hitting the constellation of Orion like a lightsaber slicing through a storm trooper. A quarter moon promises bigger things to come as February comes into view. The village is on Twitter, it has its own Facebook page and there is soon to be a community website. And the village hall arms opens up on Friday for the penultimate time before our pub sets sail ...

Thirty years ago, when I was twenty, I went with my mum and my young daughter to take a look at Bridport, where I was about to start a new job as a reporter on the local paper. It was only twenty miles from the place I was born, but I didn't know it at all. We walked up to the top of the windswept East Cliff and looked around us, my blonde little girl covering her eyes because she didn't want her photo taken. It was wonderful, and I fell in love with the place immediately. It's a love affair that has continued  ever since. I was privileged through my job to get to know the  place and its people very well. I even wrote a book about it, which became a bestseller, if only in the local area. Even now, living in the hinterland, I get anxiety attacks if I don't have a Bridport fix every now and then. It's My Kind of Town . So I was thrilled to see this film posted on YouTube by a young Twitter friend, who obviously feels the same. Stand up and take a bow, Stephen ...

There's a rat-a-tat-tat coming from the trees across the valley, the sound of a woodpecker doing whatever it is that woodpeckers do. The fluffy clouds are tinged with pink and the outlines of two of Dorset's highest points, Pilsdon and Lewesdon - known by sailors and locals as The Cow and The Calf - are sharp and clear against the morning sky. It is cold and bright and we might have snow. But, spring is tucking its dress in its knickers and is ready to emerge from around the corner. It is beaming like a favourite child splashing through a few puddles before reaching our outstretched arms. The Enchanted Village is turning its own corner towards a brighter future. Next month, we will have new publicans in our village pub, several months after it imploded. Its closure left a hole in the magic pentacle that is our five-road village square, which had already suffered the loss of our shop. We desperately want someone to come and buy the shop. We want the heart of our villag...

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I was a child in a meadow with a woodland circle of beech trees around me. And there was clover growing in the field. Three leaf, four leaf and six leaf. A magical spot. I went back to those woods today, with my Midsummer's Eve grandchild and friend Pelly Sheepwash. And this is what we found. And behind each door, there were little offerings. Pine cones, bits of shell, toy figures, notepad and pen and tinsel. What a lovely idea. That's about it. Love Maddie x

In the summer of 2007 I reinvented myself. I was tired of being pigeon-holed under the name I usually went by. I wanted to break free from the personal straitjacket of a locally high profile job I'd had for five years. So I took the first name of my maternal grandmother and married it to the maiden surname of my maternal grandmother. And so Maddie Grigg was born. I liked her a lot. She was a bit kooky, a wild romantic who lapped up the world around her and with a fine eye for detail, the amusing and the amazing. She was my online self, the real me behind that other, duller person. A rural Bridget Jones and not as fat. The irony is that the Grigg side of me comes from a long line of recluses, three of whom to this day live in separate corners of the same Somerset field. It's as if my assertive granny (Maddie) has kicked my shy granny into action. One of Maddie's poems was shortlisted in the prestigious Bridport Prize competition, her blog was chosen as a Blog of Not...

I'm lost for words. Mr Grigg has only started his own blog . Trouble's a-brewin.

That communal poem did the trick. Within hours of tracking it down (it had been taken home by Mr Prayer's wife to be typed up), news has filtered through from the brewery that new tenants will be moving in during February. So, hurrah, we're getting our pub back. Next mission? Re-opening the village shop. Those energetic ley lines crossing The Enchanted Village square don't stay quiet for long. That's about it. Love Maddie x

As I write, the hunt has just left the village square after its annual meet hosted by Mr and Mrs Champagne-Charlie. Mr Grigg holds a whisky mac while shovelling up horse manure with the other hand and puts it on my roses. The fragrant Mrs Putter and Mrs Bancroft dodge the back ends of horses to take around sausage rolls and dainty sandwiches to the assembled throng. Mostly, the riders are polite, but there are an ill mannered few who seem rather sniffy. The Sheepwashes are notable by their absence and I justify my attendance by recording the event with my camera from the window.  I'm not a hunt fan, despite being a farmer's daughter brought up in south Somerset. Conversely, though, I did not approve of the hunting ban, which was imposed on the countryside by an urban government. Today is a chance for the village to socialise in the open air, watching the horses, riders and hounds and partake in light refreshment.  Since our pub closed in September, we grab any chance...

Bubbling, babbling children at the bus stop, a red sky overhead as they wait for the school bus. Back-to-school children, the young ones tearing up and down and doing aeroplane impressions with coats for wings. Cut to the doctor's waiting room, full of people with coughs and sniffles. 'Hello,' says one. 'How are you?' 'I'm fine,' says another, automatically, before quickly adding, 'well, apart from this stinking cold.' And the receptionists all across the land tighten their lips in sarcastic unison behind their counters. Oh, they've heard it all before, thank you very much. We will sympathise only if you're really ill. And only then if you get down on your hands and knees. We know best, doctor. Oh the joys of January. That's about it. Love Maddie x

The wind roars through the beech trees, buffeting and tossing everything in its path. Those trees, those old, old trees sway like ancient dancers at a primeval feast. In the early morning darkness, only the lights of the housing association houses and a smattering of others - including ours - are on, as I make my way around the field with two dogs and a torch before getting ready for work. Elsewhere, the newly-retired and long-retired slumber in their beds. A solitary figure in a dressing gown tiptoes out of a door, looking left and right before the clattering of bottles put out for the recycling is heard across the street. It is Mrs Bancroft, and she's going back to bed. My two reluctant spaniels perk up when they pick up the scent of a short-sighted badger which snuffles and snorts across the field and bangs into a fence post as it makes its getaway. On the road, there might be trees fallen down and plenty of surface water as white van man and commuters like me make for t...