The world from my window

The mist swirls down from Dorset's highest point as I drive along dark country lanes into town. It is appropriate weather for the Bridport Ghost Walk  just two days before Halloween. Clouds dip and dive around a slip of a crescent moon in a black sky. And there they all are, waiting in Bucky Doo Square for the walk to begin. We'd hoped our guide would be dressed, Ripper-style, in a top hat and cloak. But he makes up for this lack of drama by his detailed knowledge of Bridport and its history. It's a town I know well, really well, but tonight I'm seeing it from a totally different perspective. Who would think, when sitting on a bench in the square enjoying a sandwich in the daytime and listening to the town band, that executions and disembowelling took place here centuries ago? And that women were made to wear terrible  scold's bridle s and pelted with rotten food and human waste. The town has a dark past. Playing a starring role in our ghost walk...

Just close to Halloween, the time of year when the threshold between our world and the next is oh-so- thin, there is a new addition to the Lush Places square. In between the plaque for the children's play area, in memory of two Bernards who were killed in two World Wars, the sign announcing and sponsoring the village fireworks, the notice campaigning for a 20mph limit through the village and a board pointing to the community shop, a circular mirror has appeared. It's been installed to help motorists easing out of the junction, which, at times, can seem like the starting grid for Wacky Races. I swear I've just seen the Creepy Coupe with the Gruesome Twosome just heading the wrong way up the one-way street. Everybody is talking about the new mirror (conversation can be limited in these parts). It's large, it's orange and it's even more clutter in the middle of the village. But it works. You can see what's coming when previously you couldn'...

We slipped out of the hallway, Martha the dog and me, edging past baskets of logs, boxes of things for a village event, a dog crate and musical instruments. We were heading for Bluebell Hill, which was shrouded in mist. A crow sat on a fence post and coughed rather theatrically as we walked past. 'Ahem,' it said. 'You're up bright and early.' Back home, Mr Grigg was rustling up a cooked breakfast for our guest, talented Canadian singer songwriter Ian Sherwood , who spent the night with us after a gig in Lush Places, part of a tour of south west England. He rocked our village hall. Like a male Joni Mitchell, his many-layered songs dipped and dived, entertained and got us all joining in. This man is going places. Today, he's heading for Dartmoor. The sun's shining, it's squelchy underfoot but the sky is a beautiful pale blue. It's been a busy old weekend. A grandchild's fourth birthday, Harvest Festival, the church smelling of app...

They say you should never go back. But I did at the weekend, going back to where my grandfather was born in 1891 and where, in 1979, I began my training as a journalist. Gramp was an adventurer and a spinner of yarns. I imagine him as a small boy gazing out across Plymouth Sound and wondering what lay beyond it. He ended up in Australia where he was a sheep drover and tamer of horses before becoming an ANZAC, fighting at Gallipoli and the Somme. Plymouth's not everyone's cup of tea but I like it very much. Five years ago, my old trainee colleagues had a thirty year reunion, which I wrote about here . There's even a picture of me on that blog post at my New Romantic best. There were fewer of us this time round, with various people bottling out and giving excuses, but it didn't matter, I enjoyed every minute of it, starting with the train journey to Pymouth. And then a feeling of euphoria as I alighted from the train. I checked into the hote...

Nearly two-and-a-half years ago, I wrote a blog about this place. Its future is still uncertain. That's about it. Love Maddie x

It's the annual village outing and we have left the womb-like bay of Woolacombe for a day trip around the headland to Ilfracombe. We're walking past the harbour and then we see her, a striking figure with sword held high. A kind of modern-day Statue of Liberty looking out across the Atlantic from this pretty and quirky seaside town in North Devon. I've been out of the loop for a while, what with living abroad. But when someone said there was a Damien Hirst statue here, I didn't really know what to expect. A giant skull made of crystal , perhaps, or a cow pickled in formaldehyde .  But from here, the statue looks beautiful. It's clear from this angle that she's pregnant, controversial for some perhaps (but not to me, power to the sisterhood and all that) but so far so good. She gets better as we draw closer. The scales of justice are tucked behind her backside and the skin on her right leg is peeling off, so she looks like she's wearing one thi...