The world from my window

The village square is on its knees. Tumbleweed drifts slowly by the old village stores, where the blinds have been pulled for a couple of years now. Across the road, the shop last used a few months ago by the church on Saturday mornings, as a gathering place for coffees and a natter, has its windows whitened out. The jackdaws gather. Ominously. And not a drop of water comes out of the old pump under the signpost. In a new development, the downstairs windows of the pub were boarded up on Monday. Six workmen waited outside for an hour until they could get in and seal off our hostelry from the outside world. In the last sixteen years, I've never seen that happen in between landlords (and we've had nine of them in that time). Let's hope it signals a refurbishment and not closure. We need our pub. In the meantime, the community spirit that is so endemic in this village is alive and well and living in the village hall. There's all sorts of stuff going on here...

I was trawling through the internet the other day, looking for something specific, when I came across something completely different. (That's the thing with the internet. It can take you down rabbit holes - some of which land you, like Alice, in Wonderland while others take you to a painting by Hieronymus Bosch.) Anyway, I came across a number of videos that formed part of Forever Archive, a project I helped research back in 2012.  Scarily, I was the subject of one of the inteviews, as they ran out of people to film. Here's the blurb: In 2012, the Forever Archive project set out to increase awareness of archive film and its relevance to our lives today, and to put across that the idea of archive film is a continuous process – the films from a hundred years ago are a fascinating insight into the way we used to live and similarly, the films we create today will be of huge interest in another hundred years. Archive film is not something alien and remote, locked into a...

As I write, the hunt has just left the village square after its annual meet hosted by Mr and Mrs Champagne-Charlie. Mr Grigg holds a whisky mac while shovelling up horse manure with the other hand and puts it on my roses. The fragrant Mrs Putter and Mrs Bancroft dodge the back ends of horses to take around sausage rolls and dainty sandwiches to the assembled throng. Mostly, the riders are polite, but there are an ill mannered few who seem rather sniffy. The Sheepwashes are notable by their absence and I justify my attendance by recording the event with my camera from the window.  I'm not a hunt fan, despite being a farmer's daughter brought up in south Somerset. Conversely, though, I did not approve of the hunting ban, which was imposed on the countryside by an urban government. Today is a chance for the village to socialise in the open air, watching the horses, riders and hounds and partake in light refreshment.  Since our pub closed in September, we grab any chance...

Oh, calamity and woe. Not only has our shopkeeper had another change of heart and is shutting up the store on September 1, our pub is due to close when the landlords leave in October. The brewery is looking for a new publican, but how seriously, no-one can tell. Cripes. After a village square full of activity, I fear there will be only a village square full of nothing. It's as if the ley lines beneath our feet have shorted out. There are people working hard behind the scenes to sort this out. As I write, Mr Grigg and Mr Putter are in deep conversation...in the pub. I am half temped to say 'I'll do it!' But having run a pub for Palmers Brewery for three years, I can safely say it's not the easiest of tasks. (If you go to the link and have to take a step back from the screen, I apologise. Someone should tell them black is not a good background for a website). We increased the trade, but at some cost to our personal lives. Number One Son's second cousin ...