The world from my window

It's a blazing hot, autumn day and I'm out here in the sunshine, my best man by my side, and we're laying a hedge. A hedge . Me laying a hedge. My farming dad and grandfathers would be proud of me. Well, maybe not proud of the way I'm struggling to swing a billhook into the stem of this hazel. But perhaps proud of me for trying. Each year, the Melplash Agricultural Society puts on the annual hedging and ploughing match . Next Sunday, it's at Chideock. It's a great day out for all the family.  I'm taking part in a free, hedgelaying taster day at Mangerton Lane, near Bridport, where groups of up to four are being instructed in this age-old art by experts in the field. It's a lovely part of Dorset, bordered by a line of beautiful, rounded hills running from Loders to Powerstock. It's an enchanted landscape where the swallows and swifts gather for the last hurrah before the long journey south. A quick demonstration on the roadside hedgerow ...

It's my birthday and I wake up today with the words of Tina Turner rasping in my ears: "Women of a certain age..." I get up later than usual, because of the occasion and because I can, and take the dog out on a long walk across the fields, to a hamlet where I often think I'd like to live, because it's got a tucked-away church, a farmyard full of stuff and the smell of cow dung is never far from my nostrils. The sky is a beautiful blue, made even more blue by my camera's new polarising filter, and I am loving the light, the definition in the landscape Thankfully, Tina Turner has wandered off stage and out of my head (and I say, bloody good riddance, I like you Tina and all that, but, frankly, I'm more of a Nutbush City Limits -type of girl and I Don't Wanna Lose You gets on my nerves). And Leonard Bernstein, with whom I share a birthday, don't you know, floats by on a low, wispy cloud and I hear him singing the words 'there's a plac...

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...

I t's a strange day today. Black as the inside of a bag and raining like billio. I don't like it. We had snow last week. Just five minutes of it, but snow nonetheless. It's as if the natural world is protesting at what's going on in the unnatural world. Refugee crisis, terrorism, Trump... Don't get me started. And since my Brexit heartbreak , the landscape has been changing. Literally. Here's a couple of trees whose progress I've been following since the summer. (Excuse the quality of the photos, they were taken on my phone. I blame Brexit). Indulge my flight of fancy, but I think they look like the British Isles. I am always seeing symbolism in nature. This is what the trees looked like in the early summer. Scotland was a big dodgy and the west and south east coasts of Ireland weren't quite right, but you can see what I mean, can't you? Fast forward to the late summer/early autumn. Wales has dropped off but Scotland, surprisi...

I've been a little bit preoccupied of late so, until I write another post, here's a word from a friend of mine about A Dorset Year , which tells seasonal tales about the countryside in this neck of the woods. I'm really grateful to Nathalie for her lovely pictures. I look forward to the next nine months working with her in charting the story of this special part of England. That's about it. Love Maddie x