The world from my window

We wait in the car as the rain pours down outside. There's a shelter opposite and a few people in there are enjoying a hot drink. We put the windscreen wipers on and we see steam coming from the cups. We make a dash for it and squeeze into the shed as more people arrive. The hot drink is mulled apple juice and it's very fine indeed. Our names are ticked off by a lady with a clipboard, and then the tractor and covered trailer arrives and we're squashed inside it next to complete strangers and they're all animated in their excitement. River Cottage celebrates its 20th birthday this month. We've seen Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's baby from the very beginning and watched it grow. Mr Grigg is in one of the early episodes of the television series, captaining the peasants' cricket team against the toffs. It's become part of what West Dorset (and East Devon more recently) is known for. Most people here this evening are from away and are staying locall...

'And they're off!' the race commentator announces, as eight assorted terriers tear up the field after a stuffed thing on a piece of string. Junior wins by default, as Mullet, Holly, Rascal and Rivet get two feet past the starting line and decide to have a fight. We're at the terrier races, an event that's been going for 37 years and just up from the road where I was born.  Now I've completed my OU studies, I have time on my hands so I suggest to Mr Grigg we head for the hills to find out what it's all about. Amazingly, this is the one event not to be featured in any Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall programme. And in amongst the plate smashing, the hoopla and tombola, and a commentator who is wearing a red jacket, top hat and a new pair of teeth for the occasion, I see glimpses of my past. People who were at school with me stroll around with cobweb tattoos on their elbows, baseball caps at jaunty angles and gobble up fat hot dogs washed down with a ...

It's fungus foraging time in this part of Dorset, with crocodiles of woodland treasure hunters trudging up to Bluebell Hill armed with baskets, a reliable guidebook and a heart full of hope. They are searching for the penny bun, the name we give to the Cep , that most prized of mushrooms, which lurks on the forest floor beneath ancient beech trees. As country children growing up, my four siblings and I stuck mostly to field mushrooms on the farm, cursing the townies for getting to them before we did. These days, the Sunday and Saturday supplements are bursting with tales of forages and forays, as if everyone's doing it. Last year, I was lucky enough to go with a friend on a fungus foray with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's expert John Wright, who knows a thing or two about mushrooms. He wrote the excellent Mushrooms: River Cottage Handbook No 1 . You can hear about our foray here . John is as delighted with a close-up inspection of a tiny orange toadstool sprouting from a cow...

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...

It feels like the first morning of spring. The sky is clear and blue, the sun is glinting on the golden stone walls of the garden and the church bells are ringing. But this is Griggsville, where the man on number three bell is like Jonesy from Dad's Army and always several beats behind everyone else. Clive Dunn as Corporal Jones in Dads Army This morning, Mr Grigg threw the bedroom window open to let the day in. The songbirds were going full pelt, the jackdaws were cawing as they prepared themselves for bedding down in a suitable chimney when the time comes to nest. A dove cooed from the rooftops as the village folk ambled to the shop across the Square for the Sunday papers. A motorycle chugged by, with that reassuring, low bubbling throaty sound only British bikes make. In the distance we could hear the faint sound of drum and bass from a boy racer's car going around the one-way system. I looked at the map of the south west yesterday, on the wall of Hugh Fearlessly-Eats-It-All...