Dorset – Maddie Grigg

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.

Mary Anning at Lyme Regis

This bronze statue of palaeontologist Mary Anning strides off towards the cliffs she once explored with great success at Lyme Regis, Dorset.

It was created by sculptor Denise Dutton and unveiled in 2022 on the anniversary of Mary’s birth in Lyme in May 1799.

The story behind the statue is very inspiring. It’s all down to a 11-year-old girl, Evie Swire, who started a campaign, with the help of her mum, for a monument to the 19th century scientist. The campaign highlighted the bias of UK statues of men to women (more than 85% men).

Despite false starts during the COVID-19 pandemic, a crowdfunding campaign was eventually launched. The Mary Anning Rocks group also sold T-shirts to raise money to commission a statue in honour of the scientist, whose discoveries in the Jurassic marine fossil beds at Lyme brought her to international attention and contributed to changes in thinking about prehistoric life and the Earth’s history.

Mary discovered the first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton when she was just 12.

The statue was unveiled by Evie and Professor Alice Roberts.

It beautifully captures determined movement. The level of detail is astonishing.

It’s behind the Marine Theatre overlooking Black Ven.

To live without my music…

In the words of singer songwriter John Miles, ‘would be impossible to do’.

It’s funny, I’m not keen on that song much, but, for me, the lyrics are so true.

I’ve been surrounded by music all my life, growing up in the 60s and 70s as the youngest of five.

And I think my siblings’ influence gave me eclectic tastes. I also have a son who is my musical guru when it comes to ambient, electronica and chillout.

I’m not one of these people who live in the past and complain that the music today is rubbish. It’s just different.

I love hearing new stuff in all genres, from all over the world, which is why I listen to BBC Radio 6 Music, especially on Saturdays and Sundays (especially Sundays with the wonderful Cerys Matthews‘ show and Guy Garvey’s Finest Hour.)

Headphones are always part of my writing kit when I’m trying to focus on getting words on the page.

Instrumental music taking me into imagined worlds and cutting out world noise is what suits me best.

When I was writing my new novel, Plashy Fen, my go-to album was Synaesthesia, by the Fresh Handmade Collective. You can listen to it on YouTube here.

The blurb on Bandcamp, where you can buy the album, states:

Bird song and an orchestral score place you in the Dorset countryside on a perfect English Sunday morning.

Passing through the day into a fantastical twilight, you arrive at the heart of a still forest in the dark, deep, depth of the night.

Soft rain brings in a glorious dawn chorus and the clarion calls of rooks and jackdaws herald your journey off the Scarborough Fair.

It was created by the late Simon Emmerson, Lush founder Mark Constantine and musicians from The Imagined Village collective, for use in Lush’s spa treatments.

It’s beautiful and was my personal soundtrack for Plashy Fen, blending perfectly the sounds of nature and the gorgeous musicianship of Simon – who lived and recorded in my Dorset village – and his talented friends.

Now that Plashy Fen is an actual book (out on Kindle now and published as a paperback on 29 September), I’ve put together a playlist of music to accompany it.

I’ll post a link to that soon, together with a bit of an explanation as to why I’ve chosen some the tracks. Listening to it is not compulsory, but when – and if – you read the book, you’ll understand my choices.

That’s about it.

Love, Maddie x

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.