Cover girl

I’ve only ever once in my life been on the cover of a magazine (cue the opening bars of Vogue by Madonna).

That was back in 2015 when I became a columnist for the world’s longest-running weekly magazine for women, The People’s Friend, on the strength of a previous blog, The World From My Window.

It was like a dream come true, to be honest, even though some of my friends claimed they only ever saw the mag in the waiting room of their doctor’s surgery.

Pictured by my old friend, Gail, at isthismutton.com

I’d always wanted to be a columnist and to be plucked out of the blue like that, just because the editor saw and liked my blog, well, it was amazing.

It was a good feeling to see my face there, especially as it didn’t occupy the whole page but was inset on a rather attractive painting of a landscape.

I remember once having a photo byline when I was a trainee journalist and getting rather excited until an old schoolfriend told me he’d seen it – under his fishcake.

Anyway, my rambling is getting to a point.

I’m on the cover of a magazine again. This time, it’s my local Marshwood Vale Magazine and as my real self.

Luckily, it’s only the online version, so no dropped groceries at the shocking sight of it in shops or anything, because it’s only printed every other month.

Still, it’s a lovely photo (as my needlework teacher once said, ‘working well with rather difficult material’) and a nice article, even though I do feel like a bit of an April fool.

Catch up with you next week.

Love, Maddie x

Goodbye dear Bella

It’s going to be the end of an era when this little beauty goes under the hammer at the end of the month.

I’ll be writing in my People’s Friend column about my adventures in Bella over the last 20 years.

Twice, we’ve been in this special car across the continent to Greece, along with trips to France.

She’s a joy to drive and a real head-turner.

I’ve never been one for giving a car a name but this one became Bella when we drove down through Italy to Greece. People we passed shouted: ‘Bella, bella!’

Sad to see her go after 20 years but I don’t use her any more and it’s high time she had a bit of joy and excitement in her life. The auction is on 30 April.

Fingers crossed she finds a lovely home.

Here’s to blue sky thinking

We arrived in France on Thursday, just as the weather changed.

By Good Friday, in the south west of the country, the sun was out, the sky was blue and we were thanked for bringing the weather with us.

As if.

Just like the UK, it has been a cold and wet winter here in France. So to see – and feel – that shining orb looking down warmly – well, it’s been a welcome visitor with a smiley face and absolutely no baggage.

Today, our part of Dorset is similarly clad in warmth. Spirits soar and everything in the garden is lovely, if you forget world events and personal traumas and focus instead on the trees ditching their winter wardrobe and grabbing their spring and summer clothes from nature’s rail.

Lush Places gets back to normal tomorrow, with temperatures plummeting and roadworks all over the place as super-superfast broadband is installed by a roving crew, leading to faster internet speeds and frazzled drivers.

Here, we’re set fair until Sunday when temperatures, too, will plummet along with (if there was any justice in the world) fuel prices. But we all know justice is in short supply these days so I’m not going down that particular route for fearing of reaching a dead end or one great big pothole.

Gather ye rosebuds while you may and make hay while the sun shines and all that.

Be kind, hope for the best but expect the worst and you will never be disappointed.

Speak soon.

Maddie x

Happy Easter

https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/

May the Easter bunny bring you all the chocolate eggs you can eat in one sitting.

No, but seriously, following the austerity of today, Good Friday, when we’re all feeling a bit sad because it was the day Jesus was crucified, it’s the day when we can now officially eat Hot Cross Buns, even though they’ve been on sale in Morrisons for months.

Sunday is the day of the resurrection. So Easter Day is a day of rebirth, when eggs become symbols for new life and we can gorge on chocolate now that the period of fasting is over.

It’s a celebration day for families to get together and enjoy Easter egg hunts and shared food and rejoicing.

If you’re religious – and even if you’re not – you can go to a church service for one of the most important days of the Christian calendar.

We’ll be in France and I’m not even sure our closed village church will be open.

And family will be back home, so we’ll be making the most of it by celebrating Easter Sunday with friends instead.

Happy Easter to you all, and here’s to new life.

April Fools’ Day

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It’s that jolly japes day when you can never be quite sure if what you’ve seen or heard is actually true.

April Fools’ Day was the date you’d love with a passion as a child because it meant you could play tricks on your parents or siblings with impunity, at least until noon.

After midday, the joke would be on you.

Over the years, there have been some classic and cracking April Fools Day jokes, such as the Panorama spaghetti harvest of 1957 and the San Serriffe fictional island nation invented in 1977 by The Guardian newspaper.

Done well, April Fools’ Day jokes were superb, pulling in the gullible with no harm done because the jokes weren’t mean.

This was back in the day when we took what we now call ‘fake news’ in good spirit, especially when it was funny.

We could all do with a laugh in dark times but, these days, ‘fake news’ is everywhere. It’s made cynics of us all. And it’s mean spirited.

‘Fake news’ has also become a popular retort when someone who should know better wants to shut down a valid story.

When an April Fools’ joke is done on social media, it invariably backfires and leads to a string of puzzled, worried, baffled comments by people who’ve forgotten what day it is.

Is it an age thing or are April Fools’ jokes wearing a bit thin?