The world from my window

A Happy New Year to you all! Here's hoping that 2020 is peaceful, healthy, everything you hope for and full of blue sky bunting. After twelve happy years, I've decided to give up this blog. I wanted to say a big thanks for all your support. The World from my Window has opened many doors (and indeed windows) for me during that time, including an appearance on Channel 5's  The Gadget Show , and a weekly writing slot on the world's oldest weekly magazine for women, The People's Friend . I love sharing my stories with readers of my Maddie's World column and the People's Friend team are a joy to work with. Long may that continue! Through this blog, I've had a loyal host of followers from all over the globe, including particular champions in those dozen years. It's a huge boost and very humbling. Thank you. Since I was a young child, writing has been my thing. I started this blog during a creative writing course with The Open University in 2...

150th souvenir issue, 12 January 2019 It's the 150th birthday of the longest-running woman's weekly magazine in the world. Take a bow, The People's Friend . I have the joy of writing the Maddie's World column each week from deep in rural Dorset. It's lovely to be able to share the goings on in my very special part of the world with 400,000 'Friend' readers all over the globe.  W hen the 'Friend' was looking for a new columnist  four years ago and found me through this blog, I had to re-read the editor’s out-of-the-blue email to me at least three times.  'For some time now, we've been mulling over the idea of introducing a weekly columnist, but we haven't been able to settle on the right person,' she said.  'However, having looked at your blog, I think you might just be the writer we've been looking for! I like your ability to write with humour about the minutiae of daily life, but with a touch of emotional de...

As the wind rages around me and the rain lashes the roof, I'm thankful to be inside, drawing up my personal campaign for the year ahead. I've got various writing and research projects to get my teeth into, including the paid and the not-paid. January is as good a time as any to plot the days, weeks and months ahead. As far as my health and fitness goes, I need to get back to the gym on a regular basis, to firm up and also shed some of the pounds I put on over Christmas. I'd like to walk farther on my twice-daily trips with Arty, but that's not always possible on dark mornings and nights and through never-ending mud. I'm even contemplating getting Arty a playmate this year, although two dogs are double the work. I want to do some voluntary work outside of my own Lush Places community because I need to get out more. Being chained to a laptop every day - writing - does nothing for my sanity. So I'm currently looking at a number of options which I might enj...

The second series of The Durrells started last night, bringing with it the warmth of Corfu and that wonderful, feel-good factor so important for Sunday nights on the telly. If you love the show and all things Greek, imagine what it would be like if you moved there yourself. That's exactly what Mr Grigg and I did for a year. We even had our own Spiros protecting our backs. You can find out more in the May edition of Saga magazine . And if you can't wait for episode two, here's a link to my book, Good Morning Corfu: A Year on a Greek Island . You can download it straight to your Kindle and it's also available in paperback. 'Just like the film Mamma Mia, you'll want to get on the next plane and be there.' 'Inspired me to follow my dream and do just what Maddie did and go spend a year on the beautiful island of Corfu.' 'If you have ever wanted to escape a place,job or relationship, if you love Greece or just want a holiday read, I recommend i...

There's a bit of news on the horizon - my book Good Morning, Corfu: a Year on A Greek Island is due to be published in paperback and for Kindle over the weekend of UK May Day bank holiday and Greek Easter 2016. I'm planning to be in Corfu to launch it and hope to have a signing session in Dorset a week or so later. I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, I leave you with this, the work of a talented young illustrator, Laura Brown, who created this short, graphic novel for a university course, with the help of some quotes from me, last year. Things have moved on a bit since last year. But if you're thinking of going abroad this summer, visit Greece. You will not be disappointed. That's about it. Love Maddie x

After a period of blogging, not blogging and blogging again, I'm back, but in a slightly different form. A new year is about to begin and it's time for a new project. I will continue to use this as my website and personal blog. So if I'm in Budapest, as I'm going to be later this month, you can read all about it here. And if I have a book to launch, which I will do in the spring, I'll let you know about it on these pages. And I still have the joy of writing my weekly Maddie's World column for The People's Friend Magazine , who found me through this blog. But for a while now, I've missed writing consistently about the ebb and flow of nature and country life in my neck of the woods. So I'm going to try a little experiment.  It's called A Dorset Year and I hope you're going to like it. That's about it. Love Maddie x

We've just had a photo session, Mr Grigg and me, here in the kitchen. It's usually me behind the camera - I've never been much of a one for inflicting my fisog on the world. Invariably, pictures of me on the web are of tea cups, tiki masks and Fra Newbery's painting The Spirit of Bridport . I also use this one a lot.  I like it. I took it. But I'm not in it.  'Smile girls,' I yelled from afar. 'Jump up and down a bit.' So they did.  It's one of my favourite pictures. But, over the last few months, it's me who's had to be the subject of the photographs.  'Can you send me a nice photo of you by the sea?' the feature writer at Good Housekeeping said to me last summer. 'Do you really need it?' I said. 'Can't you use a picture of the Greek village we lived in, or a back view of me?' 'Well, not really,' she said. 'It's a two page feature and it's all about y...