The world from my window

In front rooms and in coffee bars, on sun loungers and all through the internet and the media, there is confusion and differences of opinion. There are so many aspects to this crisis. If I hear anyone nod sagely that the Greeks are at fault ‘because they are lazy’ I will personally insert an Olympic-sized discus up their rear end. Read more on The Lady Shed , for which I'm writing today. That's about it. Love Maddie x

Well, there's lots to sort out and lots to do before Mr Grigg and I head off for our Big Fat Greek Gap Year. One of my sisters is having the cats, my brother is having the car but I've still got to find a home for the two dogs. Meanwhile, one of my colleagues is so dismayed at me leaving ( so she says ) she's found a job in the middle of a war zone. I kid you not. I think an exchange of emails from our locations - me with a G&T by the pool and she with her tin hat on - could be the basis of an interesting book. I know where I'd rather be. Back at home, the bunting is still up, but not for much longer. We've had the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, the Olympics and now the Paralympics. It's all going to look very bare when the flags come down. But we do have the thermometer, which shows us at the level the village shop fund has now reached. It's at £20,000 and only £10,000 to go before opening time in October, when we will be long gone. This weeken...

So who will be lighting up the torch tonight? The union jack bunting is rather tattered now, as it flips and flaps against the drainpipes and fascia boards of The Enchanted Village. We've kept it up for the Olympics, which start officially this evening. Whether you like sport or not, you can't escape it. Not even here in Lush Places, where the Olympic bells are ringing at twelve minutes past eight this morning. (My feature writing friend on the Dorset Echo is trying to work the word 'bongtastic' into her colour piece.) Just down the road, the people of Weymouth and Portland are gearing up to go bananas tonight as the Olympic sailing events get underway. And our own Mrs Bancroft, my sweet neighbour who is as dear to me as a big sister, is working flat out over the next fortnight in her 'meet and greet' gear as a volunteer in the Olympic park. Thank God she managed to get into the trousers again after the final fitting a few weeks ago. There is much s...

So there we were, Mrs Bubbles Champagne-Charlie, Mrs Bancroft and me, sitting at the bar, swinging our legs from the stools while the men talked about the Olympics. As their chatter got on to the women's volleyball team (yawn), I decided to pep up the ladies' conversation by asking their thoughts on  Fifty Shades of Grey . Not that it's on The Enchanted Village's book club list but we've all read it anyway. Champagne-Charlie's ears pricked up immediately. ' Fifty Shades ...that's not the mucky book Bubbles has been reading?' he said. Mr Grigg snorted. 'Maddie said she'd read me extracts of that on holiday but she never did. I was most disappointed.' 'That's because it was rubbish,' I said, having read Erica Jong's Fear of Flying at an impressionable age. ( Fifty Shades hurt my feminist bone. And not in a good way). 'Rubbish?' said Mrs Bancroft. 'It was like a sexed-up Mills and Boon.' ...

My mother told me the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Well, the road to West Bay certainly is. We didn't make it last Friday night. Instead we were lured into our neighbour Mrs Bancroft's house with the cry: 'Coo-ee, fancy a glass of wine?' So we popped in and, an hour later, fell out again. The draining board was full of her best china from earlier, after the 'girls' (average age 65) called in for tea, cake and salmon and cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. This was a pre-fete meeting, where Mrs Bancroft butters up the ladies to prepare them for helping out with the teas. Each year, they dress appropriately according to the theme. This year it is children's fictional characters and she had an idea. But how would they take it? Hence all the grub. 'How about 101 Dalmatians?' she asked, dipping her toe into the water. 'Woof, woof,' they barked in unison. If they'd had puppy dog tails they would have wagged them. So tha...

We have a small band of kids in this village who are growing up to a be a complete pain in the arse. One of them snapped off a plum tree that was just about to flower. Destroying a tree, a living thing, is bad enough, but this tree was planted in memory of one of our own, who did loads for the local community. It's no wonder some people would quite gladly take the culprits round the back of the church and give them a damn good thrashing But violence isn't the answer. We have to shame them, make them realise that messing on their own doorstep is not very clever. Every once in a while this kind of thing happens, a particular child with parents who don't care very much or are completely blind to the thug their child is growing into. And then all the kids get blamed, they all get a bad name. So what to do in this situation? A notice has been put on the green to inform people what has happened and how sad it has made people feel. But in the grand scheme of things, it's not a...