The world from my window

Late one summer Saturday morning, Mr Grigg and I - along with Nobby Odd-Job and Spanish John - venture out from Lush Places for an ‘experience day’ at Black Cow Vodka . It’s approximately eight minutes by car from the village, but we still manage to get lost, deep in the Dorset hinterland. “I thought it was this way,” Mr Grigg says to our good friend and neighbour, Mrs Bancroft, who’s agreed to drive us there and pick us up again three hours later. “And I thought it was this way,” I respond, pointing in the opposition direction. Spanish pipes up to save the day - and our marriage. He connects to the map app on his mobile phone, which politely directs us on our way. And then it blots its copybook by suggesting we go on the road to nowhere up an unmade track. “I don’t think it’s up there,” says a cautious Nobby Odd-Job. “We should just follow the lane.” Round the corner and there’s a Black Cow sign. At last we’ve made it - but with only minutes to spare. And then Mrs B r...

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...