The world from my window

Oh my giddy aunt. I feel like I'm on a cloud, floating high above my hovel, looking down on the scaffolding-encrusted west wing and down through the conservatory roof where I can see myself frantically typing on a tiny netbook. Mr Grigg is down on Tom Tiddler's Ground, rearranging bits of wood with Mr Loggins. Oh, those boys and logs. I don't understand the appeal, personally, but it's better than ogling at girls. They go into raptures over the log store, they really do. If they were crafty, they would postion a few logs at jaunty angles and put the whole lot in for the Turner Prize. And talking of prizes, yes, more about that great big fluffy cloud on which I am sitting. The World from My Window was chosen as yesterday's Blog of Note - 'interesting and noteworthy Blogger-powered blogs, compiled by the Blogger Team'. And I wouldn't have known if my follower list hadn't suddenly shot up to 150. And to think I was going to pack in blogging for good a...

In a greasy spoon not far from Liverpool Street Station, word reaches us that Clint Eastwood is in town. According to Mrs Bancroft's Daily Mail, the man with no name is taking over several streets around Spitalfields for his latest film. I am sitting opposite Number One Son and Mr Grigg and squeezed on to a bench seat next to Mr Sheepwash. Cue the music for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly . Tumbleweed blows along the pavement, the Eastern European waitress freezes in mid-frame. Mr Grigg lets out a gasp. We look around. From the collective corners of our eyes, we see a sinister reflection in the pub window across the road. The shocking, blood red logo on the side of a delivery lorry moves slowly towards Mr Grigg like the truck in Duel , the shark in Jaws , the alien in Alien . Mr Grigg shudders. He is afraid, very afraid. He shuffles on his seat. 'I think I'll give that pasty a miss,' he says. That's about it Love Maddie x

I am feeling uninspired about village life at the moment, what with the rain falling down in sheets and my jaw aching from sinusitis. So I am going to bore you a bit more about Flat Stanley , who is currently waving at me as I type. I created him for our village scarecrow competition and he is based on the title character of a 1964 children's book by Jeff Brown. Stanley Lambchop's adventures begin when a big board hanging on his bedroom wall flattens him in his sleep. But he survives and soon he is sliding under locked doors and letting his younger brother use him as a kite. Stanley even helps catch some art thieves by pretenting to be a painting on the wall. He visits his friends by being posted in an envelope. Eventually his little brother, jealous of all the attention Stanley is getting, reverts him to his proper shape by blowing him up with an air pump. During my research for the scarecrow, I came across the Flat Stanley Project , which was started in 1995 by a teacher in ...