The world from my window

There is nothing quite like a steam train to get those nostalgic feelings surfacing. I was born next to the Chard branch line but can't remember the trains travelling along the track because it closed in 1962.  Apparently, though, I went on the last train, safely tucked up in a pram, with my parents and siblings. It's a nature reserve now, and well worth a visit. The old halt has been restored, and there's a lovely statue of a little girl who was evacuated to the village in the Second World War . There's something reassuring about a steam train, the sound, the sight and the smell of it taking people back to an age gone by, a period of time in which things seemed much more simple but probably weren't. That's what nostalgia does for you, it makes you look at the past through rose-tinted spectacles. So when I heard via Facebook that a recreation of the historic Devon Belle was going to pass through the main line closest to Lush Places - several miles from ...

The church clock strikes 9 as Mr Grigg ambles across the village square to get the Sunday papers from the shop. His walk holds a distant memory of a Ginsters pasty and an evening of celebrations for Oak Apple Day. He hobbles past the village pump which, while we were looking the other way, has sprouted a cement pot either side planted with bizzy lizzies. The sun streams through our bedroom window as if we are on holiday. Children's voices echo across the green, loud and then not so loud as they go up and down on the swings. A wood pigeon coos and a jackdaw rat-a-tat-tats. Mr Sheepwash flip-flops by with The Observer, the people up the road have their noses stuck in The Sunday Telegraph and a man from the council houses is wrapped up in the News of the World. But this is very much Mail on Sunday territory, as the Tory posters standing proud in gardens and on windows in the lead-up to the county council elections testify. Pelly once inadvertently picked up a note from the shop whic...