Category: lifestyle

A quirky charity shop find and rising Facebook ‘likes’

I have writer profiles on both Facebook and Instagram.

I used to have Twitter but evacuated that platform after You-Know-Who took it over and it became a hate-filled place. It’s a shame because I’d had some very pleasant years when I actually met really nice people in actual person at local ‘Tweet-ups’.

I toyed with Threads for a while but couldn’t really see the point. I’m pretty sure my Instagram posts are shared there automatically but I never look to check.

I like Instagram and the pretty grid of photoes but I don’t have many followers. And a lot of the things I follow seem vacuous and self-indulgent, a carefully-curated ‘country life’ style that’s not really for someone like me. I’m from a rural working class background in south Somerset and can spot a London luvvie fake a mile off.

It’s my Maddie Grigg Facebook page where the feedback magic seems to happen.

And why does this matter? Because I need to spread the word now I have an indie-published novel out. (Plashy Fen, in case you missed it.) And it’s good to engage with my reader base where they hang out and have a conversation.

This week, I was astonished when a picture and a story about a cute charity shop purchase hit more than one hundred ‘likes’ on my Facebook page and generated some warm-hearted comments.

It’s still going up.

Have I been targeted by good natured bots? I don’t think so, but who knows the vagaries of algorithms and what jumps out at Facebook users as they scroll past all the rubbish adverts on their feed.

Anyway, I’m reproducing the words and picture below. If you’re reading this, maybe you can tell me how I can keep up this engagement, because I’m darned if I know how to do it.

I saw this in a charity shop window in Ilminster and bought it for someone as a Christmas gift – but then decided to keep it myself. 🤣 Well, it is so sweet and reminds me of a vase we used to have at home when I was growing up.

It was an interesting morning in the town – just a mile or so from the farm where I was born and brought up. I saw an older woman in the most fantastic outfit, which included trousers in a leopard skin print. I commented on her fabulous ensemble and she promptly returned the compliment with a smile.

I then saw a couple of older ladies chatting outside the wonderful Ilminster Emporium (which used to be Dyers’ drapery and clothing shop, and still has the Pretty Polly parrot I remember from childhood). Anyway, they both looked very pretty in pink and I politely interrupted their conversation to compliment them on their incredible coats.

We then began rabbiting on and they told me they were 85 and had known each other since they were very small children. I asked them if they were brought up around Ilminster and they both were. So when I said I was too, they asked my family name. Turns out they remembered my late aunties and my mum. It it was just lovely. Sometimes you just have to stop and talk to people at random. It’s good for the soul.

And the rabbit jug will always remind me of a cheerful day.

#charity #charityshopfinds #rabbit #somerset #china

If you have ideas on how I can follow this Facebook post, please let me know. In the meantime, have a good week.

Love, Maddie x

Fiction, snobbery and a book launch

I’m busy practising my signature for the launch of my new novel, Plashy Fen, which happens this coming Saturday at Washingpool Farm Shop, on the north western outskirts of Bridport.

As I write fiction under my pen name, my signature can be anything I want it to be – but I do need to make sure it fits and looks right on the page.

I had a short story published in My Weekly magazine last week, which features one of the characters from Plashy Fen who, in the novel, is an elderly widow by the name of Beattie Dominey, who talks incessantly and unashamedly to her late husband.

In the My Weekly story, entitled A Feast for Michaelmas, Beattie is a young newlywed in 1959 who fears her goose may well and truly be cooked if she doesn’t stand up for herself very soon.

It’s the first short story I’ve ever submitted to a women’s magazine – one, because I have an innate fear of rejection and, two, because I’ve been such a snob over the years by dismissing short stories in popular magazines as being pulpable rather than palpable.

It’s taken me a long time to untie my prejudices and cast off the sneering voice of an old acquaintance who poured scorn on me landing a weekly column in a national magazine eleven years ago because it was The People’s Friend, which clearly didn’t measure up to her literary tastes.

I had been buoyed up by being emailed out of the blue by the editor who had seen my old blog online and told me: ‘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.’

To be approached like this by the world’s longest-running weekly magazine for women is something which still makes me smile. Especially when D C Thomson also publishes the Beano.

Their publications reach real people. Lots of them.

There is so much snobbery around fiction. And I can’t stand pretentiousness, superiority and massive egos.

Something I saw recently on Instagram by writer Matt Haig stopped me in my tracks.

Yes. This.

It’s so true – there are books and genres for everyone.

I don’t know about you but I like all sorts of fiction and writers. I prefer coming-of-age stories set in small towns, fast-paced thrillers and exquisitely written prose by quiet writers like Elizabeth Strout, Anne Tyler and Ann Patchett in which universal truths and common humanity are found in the everyday and mundane.

And I like whip-smart, contemporary novels that make me laugh, science fiction by the likes of Ray Bradbury and Stephen King and classics such as The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy and, my all-time favourite, The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald.

We’re all different but the main thing that connects us readers – and writers – is the very act of reading itself.

The luxury of immersing ourselves in a good book and being able to escape from all the dross life can sometimes serve up is just priceless.

So. here’s to happy reading and writing for all, whatever your preferences may be.

There is no such thing as good or bad taste – it’s just someone else’s.

And if you’re around Bridport way on Saturday, please pop in and say hello. There could be cake.

Paperback publication day

Plashy Fen is now available in paperback today.

Publication coincides with Michaelmas Day, one of the quarter days I write about in the novel:

Today, Maurice’s ghost is taking in the autumn sunshine. It is 29th September, Michaelmas Day, the Feast of Michael and All Angels, a day that sits on the edge of winter, the last date for the harvest to be in.

When Maurice was alive, he and Beattie used to celebrate the day with a fattened goose to protect themselves and the girls against financial hardship.

“Eat a goose on Michaelmas Day,  want not for money all the year.”

The ghost of Maurice Dominey is one of the many characters in Plashy Fen, a small village layered by the stories of its characters.

There’s put-upon Lindy Vickery, hard-as-nails estate agent Anna Arborio (Maurice’s elder daughter), the teenage triplets Merlin, Ralph and Billy and the Symes brothers who live in three separate caravans in far-flung corners of their field.

There’s a celebrity chef, a nice and not-so-nice pub landlord who, naturally, are bitter rivals, and a grief-stricken vicar questioning his calling.

Possibly too many characters to get your head round straight away, but stick with it, rural villages can be a bit like that until you get to know them.

Said one reviewer: “By the end, I felt that I knew the people of Plashy Fen. In fact, if I ever walked into the Raven’s Head and found them sitting at the bar, I’d happily buy them a pint—or a glass of wine—and join them.

“A warm, funny, poignant and beautifully observed novel. Five stars.”

You can order Plashy Fen from bookshops or Amazon. It’s also available on Kindle.

September reviews

I’ve been a bit lax lately when it comes to reading books, being so caught up in promoting my own. (In case you didn’t know, Plashy Fen comes out in paperback on 29 September. As you can imagine, I’m very excited.)

I had been reading a doorstep of a novel, The Year of the Locust (2023) by Terry Hayes, and was finding it very easy to sink into its short chapters and fast pace.

However, I’m about an eighth of the way in and have decided to quit while I’m ahead. I don’t feel much engaged with the protagonist and there is more to life than ploughing through a big book just for the sake of it.

This spy thriller, published in 2023 is more up Mr Grigg’s street than mine, which is what I initially thought about Hayes’ debut I Am Pilgrim (2013) before I picked it up at a book swap a few years ago.

I couldn’t put it down, it was gripping.

My well-read friend, The Fragrant Mrs Putter, told me she felt the same, so I was in good company.

It still hasn’t been made into a film yet, which I find astonishing, although there are references online to Pilgrim being in production.

I’m about to embark on The Cuckoo and the Cuckquean (2025) by Patricia Román. The novel is about Spanish Suffragettes – a new subject for me, but it’s good to move out of one’s comfort zone every now and then.

I finally read Michael Palin’s Hemingway Adventure (1999) as part of research into one of my family stories and, although I still don’t very much like Hemingway as a man, it confirmed my view of Palin as an extremely engaging and talented writer.

While I haven’t been reading, I have been listening to quite a few podcasts.

I’m hooked on both the UK and the US versions of Goalhanger’s The Rest Is Politics, which are such ear openers when it comes to staying informed about the corridors of power and the strange things happening on planet Earth right now.

The BBC’s Disclosure Investigates series are really good. I’ve listened to two standout documentaries – Charmain And The Prophet {2026) and Matched With A Predator (2025). The programmes’ common link is the horrendous consequences of controlling behaviour by men over women.

To provide some light in the darkness, I’ve also watched The Magic Faraway Tree (2026), ostensibly a children’s film based on the book of the same name by Enid Blyton.

It was beautifully done, and so, so enjoyable, with the original story updated but still with a glorious, life-affirming fantasy at its heart.

Fearing I might have gone a bit soft in my old age, I looked up the reviews afterwards to see if the critics agreed with my verdict. They did, wholeheartedly.

We’ve also binge watched Last Tango In Halifax (2012-2020, BBC) – great, character-led drama which is down to the brilliant script of the show’s creator, Sally Wainwright, and the superb cast.

Now starting, rather late in the day, on Ted Lasso (2020-present, Apple TV) and enjoying it immensely.

Can’t wait for the new series of the BBC’s Small Prophets (2026) to appear on our television screens. And with Slow Horses (2022-present, Apple TV) flying out of the traps, telly just got a whole lot better.

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