The world from my window

The fragrant Mrs Putter sighs deeply as she inputs data on to a spreadsheet from the parish plan questionnaires. (And this is before she gets to transcribing people's suggestions on alternative uses for village common - 'flood it and turn it into an ice skating rink, grass it over for polo or use it for dogging'). There is an intake of fresh breath as she pores over the forms and reads: Question: What is your age range?  Answer: 0-4 years. Question: How long have you lived here?  Answer: 65 years. For a moment, Mrs Putter has visions of Benjamin Button hunched up in front of a log fire, dressed in a baby sleep suit and muttering scribble talk gibberish in between sucks on his dummy and a smoke on his pipe. The Enchanted Village population is getting younger by the hour. There's youth dew in that parish pump. That's about it. Love Maddie x

Market day morning in my kind of town and the streets are paved with the bourgeois and the bohemian. It is bank holiday Saturday, the toffs are down from town and tourists with all the time in the world shuffle past stalls jam-packed with pretty things you don't need, bijou bollocks and frippery fuckwittery. In the almost 30 years since I have lived here, the town at certain times of the year lives up to its broadsheet moniker 'Notting Hill-on-Sea'. Jerry Hall was spotted on the arm of a local entrepreneur in the audience at a comedy night last week, and writers and artists are two a penny, holed up in the folds of the landscape while young locals struggle to get on the housing ladder. But after two o'clock in my kind of town on a Saturday, everything changes when the underbelly fall out of bed to stalk the streets with their exposed midriffs, gold chains and a choice turn of phrase. Meanwhile, inland, the weekend starts well, with the village square a hive of activity...