Maddie Grigg

Lady Day

It’s Lady Day today and also my brother’s birthday.

Happy birthday, bro!

As the child of tenant farmers, it was always a date ingrained in my head. It’s the date when rent was due, the date when farm tenancies were renewed or smallholdings changed hands.

In the agricultural year, it’s a quarter day, the others being Midsummer Day on 24 June (the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist), Michaelmas (the Feast of St Michael and All Angels) on 29 September, and Christmas Day on 25 December.

Says Wikipedia: Quarter days are four dates in each year when rents were due, servants hired, and school terms started. They correspond to religious festivals and are linked to the Celtic and solar calendars.

Lady Day marks the date when the Virgin Mary received a surprise visit from the Angel Gabriel to tell her she was going to have a baby. Not just any old baby, but Jesus Christ.

It must have been a big shock: one, to be told she was pregnant when she’d never even been near a man and, two, that the dad was God.

As well as being an important date in the Christian calendar, Lady Day still holds significance, not just for farmers but those of us who are taxpayers.

Says Wikipedia: The British (personal) tax year still ends on ‘Old’ Lady Day (5 April under the ‘new style’ (Gregorian) calendar, which in the 18th century corresponded to 25 March under the ‘old style’ Julian calendar: the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 advanced the calendar by eleven days. 5 April is still the end of the British tax year for personal taxation.

Here in Lush Places, the date just happens to coincide with Ladies’ Night at the community pub, where, for £15, you can book in for a midweek treat of a glass of wine and smoked salmon & rocket linguine or goats cheese & beetroot salad.

If the boys’ night out last week is anything to go by, when two women were persuaded to stay and eat their meal rather than taking it home because they didn’t want to impose on the men’s fun, there could be some chaps along too.

So have a lovely Lady Day and here’s to a great birthday for my big brother.

March book reviews

A standout book this month, a pretty good one and two stinkers.

I won’t be reviewing that last pair here – they have a connection in that they are just far too long. I don’t mind 600 pages when the story and characters are compelling but get bored when the writer takes ages to get to the point while all along the way trying to impress the reader with style over content.

I admit to having the attention span of a goldfish. The sweet spot for me is around the 300-page mark, but I’m not averse to an immersive, long novel, such as The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (771 pages), Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (560) and The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman (504).

How about you?

This month, as well as putting page length under each title, I’m taking a leaf out of the blog, Is This Mutton, by one of my oldest friends, and classifying the book according to genre.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for advance review copies of these novels.

I’m hoping for good things next month, with Elizabeth Strout, Colm Tobin and Ann Patchett on my to-be-read pile.

Love Lane by Patrick Gale ****

(Historical fiction, 284 pages. Expected publication 26 March 2026)

After reading A Place Called Winter several years ago, I wondered what might have happened to the central character, Harry Cane. He was the young man shunned by his family for his homosexuality and exiled to the Canadian prairies from Edwardian England to make a new life for himself.

Love Lane revisits Harry as an older man, who, cruelly, has to head back home after a lifetime in Canada and now, in effect, exiled to England.

You don’t need to have read the first book to enjoy this sequel but I think it probably helps.

Harry is now older and wiser and, back in England, meets his daughter, her husband and grandchildren.

Through their stories, we get to know more about life before and after the Second World War and the social hardships faced by the characters. Theirs are ordinary lives, but there is no such thing as ‘ordinary’, everyone has a story to tell, secrets to keep or confide in others.

Patrick Gale writes beautifully and Love Lane does not disappoint. This is a gentle story of heartbreak, horror, love and the bonds that bind families together.

Natural Disaster by Lisa Owens ***

(Contemporary fiction, adult, literary -208 pages. Publication date: 25 June 2026)

The novel centres around one day in the life of a young mother of two. But it’s not just any day – it’s the last one before she goes back to her job after maternity leave.

Our heroine decides to make it a special day for the children – precocious Felix, aged four, and his baby brother, Rudy. However, all is not sweetness and light and the day deteriorates almost as soon as it starts, especially as she finds a female ‘item’ in her husband’s bag which is not hers.

She battles through the day alone, because he is working away, and everything seems to go wrong. She wants it to be a lovely day for both of her children but reality strikes, over and over again.

Some very funny scenes in this novel, especially the struggles in a corner shop with a double buggy and storytime in the local library.

The book will appeal to all parents – especially to mothers of children who were born close together but are now perhaps a bit older and don’t require the constant supervision and stimulation needed for younger ones.

I think if you have children of this age, the frustration and difficulties could be too raw and just hit home a little too hard.

Well written, funny, with a likeable central character who bears the guilt of working mothers everywhere and trying to do the right thing for her children.

Today is World Poetry Day

Years ago, I was shortlisted for a poem in the internationally-acclaimed Bridport Prize competition.

To be honest, it wasn’t very good but it was a pleasing accomplishment because poems aren’t really my thing. This is probably because, despite studying them quite closely, I find them tricky to analyse, decipher and I always get a bit flustered with the rules.

It’s silly really, because I love the poetry in many song lyrics – I’m thinking Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Ian Dury. I adore those lines in National Express by the Divine Comedy about the jolly hostess and her large behind…

Here’s one of my favourite Joni Mitchell numbers.

If that isn’t poetry, I don’t know what is.

I think perhaps it’s because I’ve studied poetry closely for a creative writing degree that it’s reinforced my natural – and lazy -resistance to anything that requires me to think rather than just imbibe through natural osmosis.

So I need to cast off the hang-ups and fear of getting it wrong and just enjoy poetry for its lyricism, rhythm, cadence and imagery. I should just go with the flow and embrace the sheer joy and beauty in hearing or reading a great poem.

So, on World Poetry Day, tell me – what are your favourite poems?

I like the Spike Milligan one about the worm:

Today I saw a little worm, wriggling on his belly. Perhaps he’d like to come inside and see what’s on the telly.

I like The Voice by Thomas Hardy. I like anything written by Christina Rossetti. I like this one by William Butler Yates:

He wishes for the cloths of heaven

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

But come to think of it, my favourite poem is Ithaka by Greek poet C P Cavafy. I saw somewhere that it was read at Jackie Kennedy’s funeral in May 1994.

Here it is read by the wonderful Sean Connery with music by Greece’s own Vangelis. Cheesy but profound.

That’s about it.

Love, Maddie x

Bouncing into spring

When does spring begin?

It’s so confusing, even when you look it up, because there are different ‘types’ of spring – meteorological spring, astronomical spring and even phenological spring. Who knew?

Meteorological spring is already here. It began on 1 March, following the tried and tested formula of three months per season – so December, January and February are winter months, March, April and May are in spring…and so on.

It makes sense and is easy to remember.

But the date of astronomical spring changes slightly each year due to the orbit of Earth around the Sun. This year the spring equinox is tomorrow – Friday, 20 March, when the night and day are of equal length.

EDIT! I’ve just seen this on a new BBC story: In the UK, 12 hours of daylight and night time comes a few days before the equinox – the equilux. Here’s the link.

As if we’re not confused enough already!

But, in a previous article, the BBC points out: you may also want to consider phenology – the behaviour of plants and animals in response to the changing weather and climate – as another marker for the start of spring.

And, to cap it all, the clocks spring forward an hour on the last Sunday in March, meaning that British summer time begins.

Spring, summer, shrug of the shoulders, I don’t think any of mind too much as long as the weather is better and the days are longer.

So a happy spring equinox to you all – here’s to a positive adjustment to our internal equilibrium.

That’s about it.

Love, Maddie x

Dorset is beautiful

We’re part way through English Tourism Week.

You might not have known this, as most ‘weeks’ begin on a Monday and finish on a Sunday.

But being English, and maybe a bit eccentric, this official week, which shines a spotlight on all the lovely things on offer for the tourist in England, started last Friday (13 March) and runs through until this coming Sunday, 22 March.

Most weeks last seven days, but this one goes on for 10 days.

I don’t know why but I’m assuming it’s because the dates incorporate two weekends, which gives visitors more time to time to explore this beautiful country of ours.

And, despite the naysayers and doom mongers, England is a beautiful country and, when you think of the rubbish going on all over the world, we’re very lucky to live here.

Yes, it has its faults (where doesn’t?) and the weather can be a bit iffy, but all the beauty of this earth is right on – or not far from – our doorsteps.

Here in the south west, we’re blessed with a wonderfully long and varied coastline, and the most sumptuous hinterland anyone could wish for.

It’s the season when daffodils are in full bloom, the primroses are lining the grassy banks, the birds are chirruping and excited about the arrival of spring. And it won’t be long before the trees will burst forth with green leaves and the damp, grey winter is long forgotten.

According to the Visit Britain website, tourism is one of England’s largest, most valuable industries, supporting hundreds of thousands of small-to-medium sized businesses, over two million jobs and generating about £127 billion annually for the economy.

And Dorset is no exception.

“Our visitor economy is vital – it sustains vibrant rural and coastal communities and contributes £1.73 billion to the Dorset economy while supporting 30,000 jobs,” says Dorset Council leader Nick Ireland.

As an interloper from Somerset, I’ve been in Dorset for the past forty-four years. And despite travelling here, there and everywhere, there’s nowhere I’d rather be than here, hidden away and tucked under the radar in Lush Places.