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I’d been hanging about, waiting for a delivery.

When the time slot came and went, I went online to track my parcel.

‘Insufficient information – please ring this number.’

So I rang the number three times, went through the various ‘press this number for this, press this number for that’ options, only for the call to be cut off each time.

Feeling increasingly like Victor Meldrew, I went back online. Looking in more detail at the tracking information, I could see that the driver apparently couldn’t find me because he needed more information about my address.

Usually, a house name, street, village, town and postcode does the trick. There are only about six other houses here with the same postcode. It’s not that difficult to find.

Maybe I should have hung out a big sign from the window saying: ‘DELIVERY EXPECTED HERE TODAY’ with a massive arrow pointing to the front door.

I went online again to see if there was a number I could call to speak to a human. When I put the company’s name in the search engine of my laptop, dozens of terrible reviews came up. They could have been written by me.

Awful service. Bad service, would not recommend. Appalling service.

I found a Twitter address so messaged the company that way.

Bingo, a response came back almost instantly from Charlotte in Customer Services. She arranged for the parcel to be redelivered the next day. (I’m waiting for it now.)

Having wasted several hours, I gathered up my things. I just had time to stick the dog in the back of the car and drive into town. I dropped off a package at the post office at a quarter to five and then lugged two bags of unwanted clothes to my favourite charity shop.

It was ten to five and the manager was cashing up.

She took one look at me and the bags. Her face fell almost to the counter, her shoulders dropped and she let out a massive, irritated sigh.

Taken aback, I turned round and walked out of the shop.

‘It’s all right, it’s all right, I can take the bags,’ she shouted after me.

‘It’s okay, I’ll take them somewhere else,’ I said. I don’t usually get the hump and she’d probably had a bad day too, but it’s put me off going back there for a while.

So I drove to West Bay, where the wind whipped up the sea and the dog chased a tennis ball, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.

With the fresh, sea air on my face, the waves crashing on the shingle, I thought to myself, get a grip. If this is a bad day, it’s not so bad at all. I really should be grateful for small mercies.

Any road up, the doorbell’s ringing. It could be my parcel.

I love October.

There is something about that change in the seasons. Cosy nights in my PJs in front of the fire, wearing jeans and wellies when I’m out with the dogs and then colourful tights and boots at other times.

Velvet and corduroy, russet orange, autumn greens and burnished gold, burgundy and deep navy.

Over the border in south Somerset, the land of my birth, October is the month when the carnival comes to town. It always puts me in mind of my favourite Ray Bradbury story, the dark fantasy novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, with this classic opening:

First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Not that all months aren’t rare. But there be bad and good, as the pirates say. Take September, a bad month: school begins. Consider August, a good month: school hasn’t begun yet. July, well, July’s really fine: there’s no chance in the world for school. June, no doubting it, June’s best of all, for the school doors spring wide and September’s a billion years away.

But you take October, now. School’s been on a month and you’re riding easier in the reins, jogging along. You got time to think of the garbage you’ll dump on old man Prickett’s porch, or the hairy-ape costume you’ll wear to the YMCA the last night of the month. And if it’s around October twentieth and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash gray at twilight, it seems Halloween will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets around corners.

The first Saturday in October is always Ilminster Carnival, which is followed a week later by Chard’s. It always fills me with great pride to see the colourful entries from my home towns – the big floats (not so many these days) and the beautiful costumes people have spent hours, days, weeks and months putting together.

People who bother, people who care.

Extraordinary loud music, balloon and glow stick sellers pushing their carts through the crowds and the smell of hot dogs and onions filling the air.

After a stop at Tesco for the loo, we walked along the old railway line to the funfair. Underdressed teenage girls and boys with mullets hung around the dodgems.

One ride on the waltzer was enough for me, as was watching the grandchildren defying gravity, going forwards – and backwards at great speed.

The two of them had been full of bravado but by the end of the evening, both were very quiet. And rather pale.

We walked through a housing estate and back to the car. And we drew into Lush Places by the light of the Hunter’s Moon, tired, a bit sick but happy.

(If you’d like to see my videos from the carnival, please hop across to my Instagram and Facebook pages. I refuse to pay WordPress extra to enable me to upload my own videos to this page.)

There is something very special about an English village church when it is decorated for Harvest Festival.

Those beautifully rich, autumnal colours. The smell of apples and chrysanthemums from gardens and allotments. The glorious morning light coming in through the latticed windows.

When the congregation sings Come Ye Thankful People Come (even a congregation as small as the one at our church yesterday), you get a sense of the people who have been singing this harvest hymn for generations: the farmers, the farmworkers, the ploughmen, the hedgelayers, the planters, the haymakers, the dairy men and women bringing in the cows, doing the milking and churning the butter.

After the service, we pulled the tables up to the chancel to enjoy food brought to share, thankful for what we had and mindful of those who have not.

We think we are so sophisticated but nothing much has changed. Here in rural Dorset, poverty is not just a thing of the past. It’s with us still.

Up on the hill this morning, there is a stillness in the trees. I look out on the view across farmland and also to the sea.

For the beauty of the earth.

God bless the Queen. Long live the King.

I’m not a Royalist. But the Queen has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.

I recall her image on a postage stamp in the 1960s. She looked so much like my godmother, my next-door-neighbour Mrs Thomas, who I called Mosses. I was so young, I couldn’t say Mrs Thomas.

I remembered saying to Mosses: ‘That lady on the stamp, she looks like you.’

Mosses was impressed. The Queen was the epitome of elegance, grace and duty. It was a big compliment. (I’ve lost touch with Mosses. She moved to a tenant farm on the Somerset Levels and I have no idea what happened to her.)

The Queen has been a part of my life, a part of all my friends’ and family’s lives, for all our lives.

My mother is 96 and is as quietly wise and remarkable as the Queen, in a Westcountry, tenant farmer kind of way.

Along with everything that that has happened in recent times, including a personal family meltdown in 2016 when anyone of any importance died, then Brexit, the worldwide pandemic and the war in Europe, this is a real changing of the guard.

The Queen – and we – were prepared for it. Now we have to move on and make the best of everything, and agitate for all that is good for the planet.

I wish the new King Charles the best of bloody luck. He’s been a Green advocate for much longer than has been fashionable. And one to challenge the international politics of the day, to the greater good, methinks.

I’m a bit of a Diana fan (same age, used to be compared etc, although I’m still not a Royalist) but King Charles III has his heart in the right place.

So God bless the Queen and long live the King.

May we live in interesting times. Let’s move forward, maybe tentatively, but united in positivity.

It’s the best we can do.

With much love, Maddie x

It’s the Winter Solstice today – the Shortest Day.

I was before the sunrise but it was disappointing in the grey gloom. Never mind, I’ll go up the hill with Ruby another day.

With just days before Christmas, I took the opportunity last night to visit Abbotsbury Gardens while they’re still illuminated. The event, which runs until 23 December, is now sold out.

This magical, annual happening sees this subtropical paradise subtly floodlit from the ground, turning the landscape into something from a fantasy film or a magic mushroom trip.

I didn’t take Ruby, I left her home in the warm, although plenty of other people took their dogs. She’s such a puller on the lead, I wanted to enjoy the lights at a leisurely pace and soak up the atmosphere.

So I took Mr Grigg and the littlest granddaughter instead who, at eight years old, believes in magic as much as I do.

Having booked our tickets in advance, we headed along the coast road between Bridport and Abbotsbury. In the light, this is one of the most beautiful routes I know. But it was dark and the first bit of beauty hit us when we descended the steep Abbotsbury Hill and glimpsed pink and fluorescent green trees in the valley below.

Car parking spaces were at a premium – it seems everyone else had the same idea – but once we were inside we just followed the trail and gazed at the wonderland around us, the birds gaily trilling as if they didn’t know their Christmas from their Easter.

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Just magical.

Enjoy your Christmas, wherever you are.

That’s about it.

Love, Maddie x