The world from my window

How’s your World Cup going? I’m not even a football fan. For years I thought Baddiel and Skinner were singing about  Three Lines . But I got well and truly sucked into it last night. The England games are being shown on a big screen in the village hall, thanks to my soccer-mad husband, who took no persuading in setting it up after learning that the pub was going to be a footie-free zone during the tournament. Last night, the chip van in the village square was doing a roaring trade. “But it’s funny,” said the young woman in between battering cod and haddock. “I’ve never seen so many ladies queuing up. Obviously the men have something better to do.” Up at the hall, the smell of testosterone on a warm, sunny night hit me as I walked in at half-time with our supper. “Just in time,” said my husband behind the makeshift bar, before he was inundated with requests for ice-cold pints of Thatchers and Branscombe beer straight from the barrel. “You couldn’t...

  In cosy cottages and council houses in The Enchanted Village, in mansions and farms, there are bits of bodies everywhere. The odd head here, a limb there. A ginger wig, lots of stuffing and chicken wire. In the Grigg household there is a headless mannequin, standing in the shadows waiting for something to happen. Cunning plans are taking shape. It's the village scarecrow festival. Over the years, we've had politics (Maggie Thatcher), football (an England football fan surrounded by lager cans), events in history (Nell Gwynne), flights of fancy (The Red Baron) and characters from children's books and TV (The BFG and Homer and Bart Simpson lounging on the sofa, but not all three at once. Now that would be ridiculous). The annual event taxes brains, ingenuity, artistic ability and lateral thinking. If the best way to make a head is doing papier mache around a balloon, how do you make the neck and then secure it to the torso? And can you be bothered to make hands ...