The world from my window

It's England's national day and the St George's Cross is flying high on the church flagpole. Across the road, the brewery has just picked up a load of empty beer barrels from the pub and stocked up its cellar with full ones. In the fields, there are cuckoo flowers. Great drifts of them. The naked ash tree is silhouetted against a bright blue sky and the old shepherd and his dog on my late father's weather vane trudge ever onwards. In the village hall where Mr Grigg and I had our wedding reception many moons ago, they're clearing up the remains of the cider festival. The golden nectar of my grandparents' days, when they made cider from their own orchards and no additives were involved, is now quite rightly enjoying a resurgence. Thomas Hardy loved it, as you can gather in this extract from Great Things : Sweet cyder is a great thing,      A great thing to me, Spinning down to Weymouth town      By Ridgway thirstily, And ma...

We've been promised a heatwave of sorts here in England next week. And about time, too! Spring's been a long time coming. Still, in the words of Louis Armstrong, I don't care what the weatherman says, when the weatherman says its raining, you'll never hear me complaining. Unless it's snowing and I slip and hurt my back.  But that's all in the past. The agony of back pain is forgotten, at least for the moment. Trees are beginning to come out in blossom. I even saw a swallow in Lush Places the week before last! Deep joy. They fill me with such happiness. And the wallflowers too. I love them. And mine are beginning to come out. Their scent is going to fill me with paroxysms of delight, I just know it. While we've been waiting for spring to spring, ITV has been very cleverly spoon-feeding us sunshine ever Sunday night in the shape of The Durrells , the television series loosely based on the Corfu Trilogy by Gerald Durrell. It makes for v...

It's International Women's Day today, a day that takes on more significance this year as women across the world press for change. The history of this named day is interesting if you want to find out more. But I've taken to the blog today not to talk about the women who inspired me (my mother, my teacher-aunts, my big sisters and Anne Boleyn. Anne Boleyn? Yes, I always did back the underdog) but to talk about the companions of my childhood in the 1960s. Dolls. I still have two of mine - Holly and Milly. The latter was named after the My Boy Lollipop singer.  I hadn't taken on board that, unlike me, she was black. She was just my doll. I had another doll called Abigail who came from a toy shop in Ilminster (as did Randy, my teddy bear named after the cowhand in The Virginian ). But Abigail was not made from as stern a stuff as Holly and Milly. She finally went to doll heaven when I was in my twenties. (As a Somerset girl, I used to pronounce the word ...

'Isn't it lovely?' I said, smiling to a young girl. She was going back home to get into warmer and waterproof clothes, ready for a bit of sledging down the hill with her friend. By the time we got there, Arty and I, most of the sledgers had gone. My dear dog ran around in it, never having see snow before, and then met her old friend, Ted, for a quick swoosh around the slopes.  She looked like a woolly mammoth without the trunk and tusks. 'It's great, isn't it?' said one of my neighbours, coming up the hill to find his daughter. 'Everyone's talking to each other and smiling.' It was true. This long-awaited snow reached us on Thursday afternoon. We'd had plenty of warning and were ready and waiting. We'd be snowed in for about two days, we reckoned, and that blitz spirit would see us through until the weekend. The red of the village phone box stood out against the blizzard, a beacon of Englishness in the village square. ...

The dog and I both have colds. She's listless and lethargic and has a runny nose. It hurts my head when I cough. What a pair we make. I'm fed up with this darned virus. I had it for three weeks before Christmas and then for five days a few weeks ago when I should have been enjoying the Caribbean sunshine. And now I've got it again. I had to Google 'can dogs catch cold?' And yes, they can. I'm reluctant to take her to the vet because I've spent so much money lately on pills and potions for her sore skin and gunky ears that I'm in danger of becoming the Imelda Marcos of animal medication. So I'm following the advice I've found on the internet about treating dogs with colds. And it seems to be working.  I've been keeping her warm and dry and limited the time spent outside during cold weather, which actually suits me fine because I'm doing the same. But we ventured out into the sunshine today, me with my new, red wellies on af...

I've long been a fan of Coronation Street .  According to my mother, the first music I ever hummed along to was the theme from this long running soap, which came to life in 1960, a good year before I was born. I'd forgotten this, as I always thought ITV was banned in the household of my childhood. But apparently, I was brought up with Corrie. A self-confessed telly addict, I've dipped in and out of it over the years - watching it with my parents in the 60s and 70s and then gorging on it with my flatmate in the early 80s. In those early days, the sharp comedy provided by characters like Stan and Hilda Ogden and then, latterly, Jack and Vera Duckworth, were what I enjoyed the most.  That regular delving into an 'Oop North'  lifestyle seemed,  to me in the rural West Country,  as comfortable - and funny - as an old coat with tricks up its sleeve. Mr Grigg and I used to watch Corrie religiously. But then the humour diminished and the writing became fl...

Picture: Dave Doe, Flickr It's not the Supermoon (and a blue one at that) everyone is talking about around these parts today. No, Supermoons are ten-a-penny. You only have to turn on the telly or tune into the radio to hear that this or that planet can be currently seen in conjunction with Elvis going into the pub for a pint of Palmers  Tally Ho! or that  Cassiopeia has been spotted, romping hand-in-hand through the meadows with Shergar . But I like to think that perhaps the magic of the Supermoon has rubbed off on mobile phone coverage in the village. Because I can suddenly get four, wonderful bars inside my thick-walled house. Previously, I had to balance on a chair, breathe in deeply, stand on tiptoes and hold my mobile phone up as high as I could in the corner of the conservatory to get a chance of any signal at all. This means I can now receive texts at home. Which would account for Arty chasing her tail today - I'd forgotten that my text notification on my...