The world from my window

This is the piece I read out on World Book Night for the new book Dorset Voices : Let me take you now to Lush Places, an enchanted village where the luvvies seldom venture, where the mist swirls around and around the top of Bluebell Hill like a maelstrom. Just down the road is that well-heeled, genteel little Dorset town whose name all non-locals mispronounce. ‘We love Bee -minster,’ they say, their unintentional mistake instantly revealing that they are not of this county. They don’t see the bored youngsters on a Saturday night, the sad, drug-taking loser in a dirty flat, the lonely old lady living on her own, and the couple yelling at each other in front of their children and a blaring television. ‘And we just love Bridport,’ the incomers say. It’s so arty, so Bohemian, so cosmopolitan .’ And as they venture through the artists’ quarter, picking up pieces of distressed furniture for next to nothing but making a tidy profit for their owners who bought it ...

I stood at the side of the stage. A woman in a gown a bit like mine and a very cheery face whispered: 'Don't worry, you'll be fine.' And then my name was read out, there was applause and I walked out across to the pro-vice chancellor of The Open University. He congratulated me as he shook my hand. 'Was it an enjoyable experience?' he said. 'Fantastic,' I said. 'What next?' 'I think I'm going to cry.' 'Ah, best not,' he said, as he squeezed my shoulder and sent me on my way. There, in the audience, was my sister, my brother-in-law, my parents, my friend Pelly and Number One Son. And there in the aisle to greet me, camera in hand, was Mr Grigg. 'I'm so proud of you,' he said. 'Well done.' And that nearly set me off again. The audience fanned themselves with the OU programme, which gave details of the honorary degrees being conferred this year. Among the recipients are physicist, tel...

Once upon a time we were newcomers to The Enchanted Village.  The Queen celebrated her golden jubilee and Mr Grigg made a name for himself. The computer screen swirls as I take you back in time to June 2002.  The village square is packed for a massive street party. There is standing room only in the pub, where the bar is three punters deep. I am sitting on a high stool next to a woman from the wrong end of the village. We are both a little worse for wear, weary after high tea, high jinks and line dancing in the street to the theme from The High Chaparral (or was it Telstar ? ) Out in the square, the disco is building into a frenzy. We've had Hi-Ho Silver Lining , Oops Upside Your Head , the Macarena and Mambo Number Five ('a little bit of Rita's all I need'). And then the Tom Jones version of You Can Leave Your Hat On echoes across the ley lines, hits the grassy slopes of Bluebell Hill, ricochets off the church tower and sends a fleet-of-foot messenger scurr...

It'll be World Book Night in a week's time and I'm getting excited because I've just been notified my books are ready for collection. Twenty four copies of Stephen King's Misery will be winging their way to the unsuspecting. The book features just two characters but is one of the most powerful stories I've ever read. It's tense, intense, chilling and thrilling. It's electrifying. King's prose is crystal clear, stripped bare and straight to the point. None of that cockadoodee nonsense for me. No siree. Hell, I'm his Number One Fan. I'm giving it away to some of the snobbier members of my book club, who dismiss Stephen King as 'that horror writer', and via the mobile office of an organisation whose customers might well have seen the film but never read the book. World Book Night will also be a bit of a celebration for me. I've had a piece of work chosen for Dorset Voices , a new collection of prose, poetry and photogra...

My old art teacher died last week. He was kind, intelligent, sensitive and a real inspiration. And I am so glad that, three years ago, I decided to write to him to tell him so. So, in memory of a lovely man, I am reprinting part of the blog I wrote at the time. God bless you, sir. Have you had a teacher who has really inspired you? I'm sure we've all had someone in our school lives who has made a real difference to how we turned out. Me, I went to the school of hard knocks in the town otherwise known as the Birthplace of Powered Fight. It was not until the sixth form that my teachers took any interest in me. I am from the great Comprehensive-experiment era, the youngest of five whose siblings all went to grammar school. I passed the 11-plus in the early 1970s. But I declared to my parents I would run away if I was sent to the grammar school or boarding school threatened by my mother. I wanted to be at the same school as my classmates. So I spent five miserable years in ...

It's Good Friday, a day to be sombre before Easter Sunday jumps out at us in all its glory. We're in the Enchanted Village hall, selling hot cross buns and coffee to raise fund for our jubilee celebrations in June. In come the church choir, fresh from a church service, processing slowly and with sadness on their faces. It had to happen. We'd gotten away with it for far too long. Thieves have just stripped the lead off the church roof. That's about it. Love Maddie x

It seemed like a good idea at the time. As Mrs Bubbles Champagne-Charlie sank her teeth into a rum baba at an Edinburgh restaurant, she made the most dreadful face. 'This,' she said, in between grimacing, looking like Delia Smith with constipation, 'is not what a rum baba should taste like.' So as we toured around the Scottish capital in an open-topped bus with the Putters, the Champagne-Charlies and Mrs Bancroft, the Enchanted Village Rum Baba Contest was duly launched. And here we are now, at Mrs Bancroft's, with a raft of rum babas to test. I haven't entered the competition because my competitiveness is such that I won't enter anything I don't stand a chance of winning. So I've done pears in cider instead. At our blind tasting, the fragrant Mrs Putter's rum babas stand head and shoulders above the rest, as far as looks go. We have a nibble on Pelly Sheepwash's entry and then try the ones made by Bubbles. And then Mr Grigg...