The world from my window

Well, the village wedding has been and gone and we all have the warm glow that follows a lovely bank holiday weekend. My friend Pelly's Number One Daughter was married to her soulmate in the wonderful setting of Forde Abbey, which nestles inside the Dorset border, with just a nod to neighbouring Somerset for its postal address. There were gasps when the bride walked in with her father to a score composed by the Cinematic Orchestra , as the huge log fire blazed in the great hall. A Jane Austen heroine, she took the arm of her husband-to-be, who in the film would have been played by a young Hugh Grant or maybe Dominic Cooper. There was even a distinguished wedding guest in a kilt. And the assembled throng sniggered when the registrar asked the bridegroom to repeat the words: 'I Timothy St John Dauphinois Sutherland...' The guests gathered below the abbot's lodgings and tower (built by the last abbot, Thomas Chard, in the early 1500s) for a group photo as the female photog...

Tonight, a big old Dyad Moon is suspended low in the sky. It is a deep rusty orange, with wisps of clouds like chiffon around its neck. It is nearly midnight in The Enchanted Village and there is a constant, low hum - the sound of British motorbikes trundling through on a late night Whitsun bank holiday rally. Down the road, the lane to Bluebill Hill is strewn with homemade patchwork bunting, hung between the lilac trees, May blossom hedges and Narnia lamp posts. Tomorrow, there is to be a village wedding and a sneak preview of the marriage venue promises something akin to when Jane Austen met Thomas Hardy. And still the British bikes hum through the Enchanted Village, as the wedding guests snuggle down into unfamilar beds and the bride tries to get to sleep after a Baileys or two, remembering that this time tomorow she will have a completely different name. And 350 years ago tomorrow, on Oak Apple Day, King Charles II was restored to the English throne. An auspicious date for a weddin...

A group of us is thinking about pooling some of our resources and investing in a communal boat. A boat, at a time when the credit crunch is biting hard and we are all meant to be pulling in our horns because nearly all of us are feeling the pinch. So what better time to get a boat, when prices are low and everyone is fed up? Especially when the village is so near the sea. Near enough, but not so near that we get tangled up with day trippers and second homers. The reason for this possibility is that we suddenly have an opportunity. And we're not sure what to do with it. Some years ago, when Mr Grigg was having a Howard's Way moment, he put his name down for a mooring at Lyme Regis . This is the place made famous by fossil collector Mary Anning, in Jane Austen's novel Persuasion and John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman. The place where ichthyosaur skeletons were discovered, where Austen's heroine Louisa Musgrove dramatically banged her head because of her...