Maddie Grigg’s Blog

  • May book reviews

    I’m ploughing my way through another long book, which I’m enjoying but haven’t finished yet. It’s The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett, who wrote The Help. It turns out her latest novel, which has just been published, is longer than I first thought. I’m also in the final copy edit stage of my own novel,…

  • A visit to Plymouth

    I’ve just been to see the Beryl Cook exhibition, Pride and Joy, at The Box in Plymouth. As it happens, it was just in the nick of time because it ends at the weekend. It’s a wonderfully thought-out display of Cook’s work. It makes you appreciate her influences and great skill as an artist. I…

  • Come into the garden, Maud…

    Apologies for the dearth of posts this past week or so. We’ve done a bit of travelling and are now heavily involved in a village event coming up at the end of May. The weather here in Dorset is absolutely splendid and it’s wonderful to get out in the garden and soak up the sights…

  • Stepping out

    I’m determined to up my steps each day so I hit the magic 10,000, a figure dreamed up by a marketing campaign but not a bad one to aim for. It’s the equivalent of 3.9 to 4.9 miles, depending on your stride length, speed and height. I walk a couple of miles every day with…

  • The first time ever I saw your face

    Did you see that news story about scientists claiming to have discovered the ‘real’ face of Anne Boleyn? Now that would be some feat, because her real face would have been on the head cut off by a French swordsman in 1536 at the behest of the corrupt court sycophants surrounding Henry VIII. She was…

  • In a galaxy far, far away…

    We were sitting there, out in a French garden last Friday, listening to the sound of a midwife toad (look them up, they’re incredible). (The noise they make is more like a scops owl, but it doesn’t show up on the Merlin bird app on my phone for the obvious reason that a toad is…