The world from my window

150th souvenir issue, 12 January 2019 It's the 150th birthday of the longest-running woman's weekly magazine in the world. Take a bow, The People's Friend . I have the joy of writing the Maddie's World column each week from deep in rural Dorset. It's lovely to be able to share the goings on in my very special part of the world with 400,000 'Friend' readers all over the globe.  W hen the 'Friend' was looking for a new columnist  four years ago and found me through this blog, I had to re-read the editor’s out-of-the-blue email to me at least three times.  'For some time now, we've been mulling over the idea of introducing a weekly columnist, but we haven't been able to settle on the right person,' she said.  'However, having looked at your blog, I think you might just be the writer we've been looking for! I like your ability to write with humour about the minutiae of daily life, but with a touch of emotional de...

Sitting in a railway station...got a ticket to my destination. So, here I am, sitting in an old railway carriage. It's at Station Kitchen , West Bay, the home of Broadchurch and today, for one day only, Channel 5's  The Gadget Show . I'm being interviewed by Jon Bentley about the pros and cons of two very different mobile phones. I'm not really a techie person but p roducer/director Robert Murray emailed me out of the blue and asked me  to blog about the whole experience. Along with a photographer and a gamer, I'm being asked to test out a cheap phone and a not-so-cheap phone and see what results I get. This photo was taken on the Honor 6X.  And here's Jon, in the same pose (and researcher George, looking a bit bored), in a picture taken on the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge.  You can judge the results for yourself. I'm also meant to be doing a little bit of blogging on each phone, having downloaded Blogger and WordPress apps. To be honest, I...

Well, the book's arrived and the launch at Waterstones, Bridport , has been announced. It will be this Saturday, 7 May, from 10am until 2pm. If you pop in after noon, you can have a taste of Thiasos wine, courtesy of Wessex Wines and made by one of the pioneers of the modern Greek wine revolution, Yiannis Paraskevopoulos, from vineyards in Nemea in the northeastern area of the Peloponnese peninsula. There's red and there's white . I'd planned to launch Good Morning, Corfu: A Year on a Greek Island  this Monday in my little village near Paleokastritsa. But I lost my dear dad a few days before so there was no way I was going to get on a plane and leave the family behind, especially after losing one of my lovely sisters suddenly in March. So the launch in the plateia will just have to wait and I will keep my Corfu friends posted. It's available as an ebook on Kindle, as a paperback or to order from bookshops. In the meantime, here's a taster ... ...