The world from my window

In through the gateway we go, along a path and down past the hurdle fence. We're out in a little terrace, a real sun trap, in front of a cottage. There are swathes of blue love in a mist flowers to the left of us. 'Follow the arrows,' our hostess says. 'There's tea and home made cake at the bottom of the garden.' We're in the heart of Beaminster. It's a little cottage tucked behind an ordinary terrace. But the grounds are a dream. They're full of wild flowers and informal planting, a real joy for a country child like me. There are wooden seats here and there, and a bit of statuary. There are also some few people ambling around, lured in by the red balloon on the gate. We make our way down through foxgloves, ox-eye daisies, spurge, lavender and valerian, along a springy grass and clover path the width of a lawnmower. 'You're going to love this bit,' my friend says. She's been here before and she also knows me very well. ...

The longer I spend in Lush Places, my enchanted village home in Dorset, the more I realise that there is some kind of magic at work here. Serendipitous things seem to happen all the time and the latest one has unearthed something of a local treasure – A CD featuring fourteen comedy songs by traditional singers and recorded in the village in the mid-1980s. The Wooden Leg’d Parson was rediscovered by folk legend Martin Carthy, who passed it on to record producer Simon Emmerson from The Imagined Village, who lives here in Lush Places. Now, Simon has a box of them to sell, at £10 a time. If you know him, get in touch with him. If you don’t, get in touch with me and I’ll send you one. Doug and Sam Phillips Listening to the laughs in the pub as Doug and Sam Phillips entertained the locals with comedy songs, it feels like you’re right there with them. Those Dorset dialects are magnificent. Some delightful times and tunes with people no longer with us. There’s the lovely, w...

We've only been home in Dorset a week and my feet haven't touched the ground. There's been the surprise party, a midweek grouse or two, a book club meeting, a village fete meeting, a big band spectacular, afternoon tea and a re-run of the harvest supper video, trips into Bridport, Beaminster and Sherborne - three lovely Dorset towns - and a meeting of The Bridport Press to discuss an exciting new venture. There have been haircuts and dental appointments, a car to service and a falling out with and then a falling back in with a village stalwart when she and I realised we were talking at crossed purposes. There has been freelance work to do, two business meetings and an outrageous, laugh-a-minute Sunday lunch with two old friends. There have been family and friends to catch up with, children to hug and animals to stroke. There have been waves and smiles and kisses. There has been a fantastic local reaction to   A Year in Lush Places , the novella based on the Dorse...

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 ...