Book launch – save the date!

I’m delighted to announce I’ll be launching Plashy Fen on Saturday 10 October at Washingpool Farm Shop, Bridport, from 11am-12 noon.

It’s a particularly appropriate venue because one of the key locations in my new novel is a village farm shop, run by Derek and Maggie Galpin.

Like the Holland family who run Washingpool, my fictional couple started the business years ago, way before farm shops were a ‘thing’ and farm-to-plate food became fashionable.

Derek and Maggie were far ahead of the curve and worked as hard as a pair of oxen to get where they are now.

Things happen at the farm shop in Plashy Fen, an imagined Dorset village overlooking the sea.

A jar of olives get spilt on the parish council welcome pack that has been put on the counter. And a couple of hoity-toity incomers’ children scrump the apples on display, much to the annoyance of Derek’s sister, Lindy, who works there part-time.

Lindy is the glue that holds the disparate yet desperately connected village together.

She works at the farm shop part time, in between looking after grandchildren and studying for a back-to-nursing course.

The Holland family started their business in 1971, when Lindy would have been still at primary school.

When I first arrived in Bridport as a young reporter back in the early 80s, I remember the Washingpool market stall and shop in West Street.

The business has grown dramatically. Now, it’s an award-winning farm shop on the outskirts of town, with a restaurant,  two holiday cottages and a caravan and motorhome site, set on a 80-acre working farm produging its own Devon Ruby Red beef, eggs and an array of fruit, vegetables, flowers and potatoes.

I’m looking forward to seeing you if you can make it on 10 October. If you’ve already bought a book (it comes out on 29 September), I’ll be happy to sign it but I will have copies available.

And just a thought, if you were thinking of coming along, you could book in for lunch…

All the best.

Maddie x

Rabbiting on

One from the archives, this.

A few years ago, in a field above Lush Places, I stumbled across this.

It scared the bejeezus out of me. I thought I’d ventured on to the set of Donnie Darko (which I’d never seen because I was too frightened) or Harvey, which was actually one of my favourite old films from childhood.

This weird gatekeeper was like some fearful love child of Watership Down and a Roald Dahl book.

One of the things I love about Dorset is that you can go for a completely ordinary walk and then you’re stopped in your tracks by the unexpected.

If my memory serves me correctly, I checked around to see if anyone else was about and then ran up to it and yelled ‘Hazel-ra!’ before hot-footing it up the hill.

The dogs went bananas.

I didn’t fancy the journey down much either.

That’s about it.

Love, Maddie x

The woman in the window

I went to a wine festival a few years ago in a village in south west France and passed this most wonderful shop front.

The shop itself had been closed for some years – or so it seemed – but the faded, beautiful paint on the doors and fascia led into this most marvellous mural.

A thoughtful, serene woman looked back at me. She sat on a flight of stairs, her bare feet pointing at each other in a comfortable, pigeon-toed pose, arms and hands across her knees.

I don’t know who she was but she had the sort of face you felt you’d known for years. A woman with a calm, kind disposition. A friend. In my head, I named her Estelle.

You could share a glass of wine with Estelle outside a laid-back cafe. You could have a moan about something tricky in your life and then both roar with laughter at the sight of a cowboy-hatted passerby dressed in triple denim in a heatwave, trying hard to swagger but looking more a constipated fool than the epitome of cool.

I’ve thought a lot about that woman in the window ever since. When I revisited the village a few weeks ago for another wine festival, I was looking forward to renewing our acquaintance.

Sadly, the shop front is now completely boarded up. The bat above the door has flitted off and Estelle has been erased forever from her staircase perch overlooking the street.

I didn’t take a photo, it was too sad.

I wanted to remember Estelle as she was when we last met.

That’s about it.

Love, Maddie x

Why Plashy Fen?

The title of my new novel, Plashy Fen, came to me in the middle of the night a few years ago.

I wasn’t happy with the working title I’d given it, as who the hell did I think I was, calling it Dylan’s Wake, in a nod to the author of the wonderful Under Milk Wood, which is one of my favourite books.

And anyway, early beta readers told me they thought it was going to be about the funeral party of someone called Dylan.

I’ve been writing a column for The People’s Friend for over a decade now, after the then editor emailed me out of the blue telling me she’d seen my blog, The World From My Window, and would I like to write for the magazine?

She said (and it’s etched in my mind): ‘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 depth, too.’

So I introduced my village to Friend readers as Lush Places, named after the fictional newspaper column by the hapless and fictional nature writer William Boot, who, through a case of mistaken identity, becomes a war correspondent for The Daily Beast.

Lush Places from Bluebell Hill

Boot is the main character in Scoop by Evelyn Waugh, which was published in 1938. It’s dated now and very politically incorrect but I loved the juxtaposition of a naïve, gentle writer in the cut-and-thrust world of horrid Fleet Street hacks out to make a name for themselves in a forgotten corner of the world.

I was redrafting my latest novel about Lush Places’s seaside sibling when the new village’s name – and book title – came to me during the early hours of the morning.

There is a line in one of Boot’s nature columns – ‘feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole’ – which has come to signify an affected style when it comes to nature writing.

I guess the the term plashy fen must have stuck with me. It’s become a bit of a personal joke and serves the purpose of making me check my prose style every now to make sure I’m not coming across as a complete jerk.

So that’s the story of how Plashy Fen got its name.

But the characters, well, they’re a different story…

A village made up of characters

Every rural village has its characters.

The person who knows everyone’s business.

The person who minds their own.

The person who quietly organises everything.

And the noisy person who claims all the credit.

The person who has lived there all their life.

And the person who’s been there five minutes and think they know it all.

In Plashy Fen, all these characters live – not always harmoniously – side by side.

Over the next few weeks, in the run-up to the paperback coming out, I’ll introduce you to some of them.

I’ve been thrilled with the response to the novel so far. Thank you for all your lovely words of support from home and abroad.

But, to be honest, it’s a bit weird because the people who live in Plashy Fen have been in my head for so long I thought everyone else knew them all – and the imagined village- too.

Hopefully, it won’t be long before you get to know them and decide who are your favourites.

Have a great week.

Love, Maddie x