The world from my window

A woman's relationship with her hairdresser is something very special. Mine has taken me through my short and spiky phase twenty five years ago to sleek bobs and many things in between. She's encouraged me when I wanted something different and berated me when I just went in for a trim. 'Go for something different, go on. You want to be a funky monkey not boring.' And I always went for something new, at least twice a year. I valued my ears so went along with what she said. My hairstyle changed more often than the tyres on my car. Friends and colleagues would get used to it and then, bloop, I changed it again. But for the last few months it's been the same. Boringly the same. I wanted to grow it long, you see, so I could have it like Meryl Streep's Mamma Mia hairdo for my Big Fat Greek Gap Year. I figured it would be easier that way, rather than having a new cut every six months. My hairdresser pleaded with me. 'Have it cut. You're too old fo...

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...