The world from my window

The excitement is too much.  There are lights on in the pub and a fish and chip van's just pulled up outside the village green. A queue of people has built up in anticipation. The enterprising chippie chap put round a flyer during the afternoon: cod and chips for £4.50. Crikey, they're even doing curry sauce and mushy peas. Shame I already have a baked potato in the oven. And at the pub, our new licensees settle into their new home before throwing open their doors in a few weeks' time. Down the road, someone on the estate-of-bungalows tests out their new searchlight torch, throwing a white beam across the sky and hitting the constellation of Orion like a lightsaber slicing through a storm trooper. A quarter moon promises bigger things to come as February comes into view. The village is on Twitter, it has its own Facebook page and there is soon to be a community website. And the village hall arms opens up on Friday for the penultimate time before our pub sets sail ...

In The Enchanted Village, we are enjoying the strong light of October, the month that is to winter what May is to summer. The early morning frost sprinkles like fairy dust from passing Land Rovers. Wood smoke rises from the chimneys as we crunch through brown beech leaves. In the afternoon, cows graze under Flemish landscape painting skies and at night, a waning Blood Moon holds court over an impressive Orion and ever-present Plough. Oh, the joys of autumn. That’s about it. Love Maddie x