The world from my window

We fell in love with the Villa Oleander as soon as we walked through the front door. It belongs to a writer's family and I hoped some of her success might rub off on me. Mr Grigg, meanwhile, saw it as a place to wind down into retirement. 'We're going to live here,' we said, when we saw the house back in June last year. 'We'll let our cottage in Dorset and have a gap year in Corfu.' 'Why?' asked our family and friends. 'Why not?' was the stock response. I could spend the time writing and Mr Grigg, newly-retired, could do a bit of work around the house. Part of the deal was to tidy the garden and spruce up the inside in exchange for a cheaper rent in the winter. It needed a bit of love, this place, a bit of love and a bit of life. The owners haven't been here for a while and it showed. The first week we spent cleaning right through, wiping down mouldy window frames and chasing away the dust. And then the garden. Ah, the gar...

So there we were, swimming up and down rather leisurely, in an indoor pool all to ourselves and bathed in soft blue light. The Book Club girls on tour, enjoying the hospitality of Darling Loggins who is still living in her rented cottage on a campsite on the coast while her wooden house takes shape on the hill back in The Enchanted Village. Outside, the skies were clear, sprinkled liberally with sharp constellations: the eyes of Cancer, the horns of Taurus. Up country and down in Cornwall they've had snow. But here in Dorset we had one of those beautiful, cold winter days where the sky is blue and the light seems like it's been imported from Photoshop. In the sauna, we got fired up and pulled apart the book we'd been reading ( Sister ), all agreeing we were either irritated, puzzled or underwhelmed. Which was reassuring, because you never really know if people are on the same wavelength as you. We dined on vegetable curry and pears poached in cider, compared books-we-have-l...