nature – Maddie Grigg

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

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

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.

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…

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 dogs but it’s not quite far enough, so I need to add a section at the beginning and end of the day to cover it.

Or otherwise achieve 7,000 steps every day, which the experts say is enough, especially when combined with some real bursts of energy.

I like what the British Heart Foundation has to say about walking: To boost the health benefits, aim to walk at a brisk pace, meaning you can talk comfortably but would be too out of breath to sing.

As someone who had a surprise heart attack ten years ago when I was fifty-four, that hits home.

Having had a bit of a slothful week of editing, where I mostly exercise my fingers while sitting at a laptop, I know I need to keep my body moving to improve my general fitness.

There’s more I can do but this is a good start. I’m not one for the gym or joining a class, preferring my own company and that of the dogs. I’m not an introvert exactly, and certainly not an extrovert but more of an omnivert, apparently.

Maybe I should lift a few weights next, or schedule my own personal dance class in the confines of my own home. Perhaps I should ask my old friend, over-50s fashion and lifestyle blogger Gail, at Is This Mutton?

All suggestions gratefully received.

In any case, eating more healthily and not drinking so much alcohol should help me achieve my goals.

I have a ‘health’ app on my phone but I don’t think it’s very accurate. I walked 3,790 steps this morning and several hours later it’s not showing any increase, even though I’ve got the phone in my pocket so steps around the house and up the stairs ought to count.

So I’ve ordered a ‘non-smart’ pedometer watch to help me in my quest.

It’s non-smart because I don’t want a watch to pay bills or receive calls and messages. For me, it’s better to be away from all that constant interruption, hence the need (I think) for a simple pedometer which also tells the time.

Along with that, I want to eat more healthily, cut down my alcohol intake and engage in constructive pursuits when I’m not reading and writing, rather than doom scrolling on my phone or laptop and getting depressed by a word gone mad.

I want to learn and see new things, whether it’s visiting an art exhibition or getting a close-up view of a golden beetle. I want to hear and identify birdsong and possibly learn the ukelele, although I don’t think I’m quite ready for that just yet.

Maybe just soak up the beauty of nature, as and when it happens. Live in the moment.

So there you go, those are my May resolutions – what are yours?

Have a great weekend.

Love, Maddie x

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 not a bird.)

Anyway, Mr Grigg began regaling the barbecue guests with a story about a very low aeroplane we’d watched in the sky one afternoon earlier in the week.

It went into a cloud and we had followed its trajectory, the two of us fully expecting it to come out the other side.

But it didn’t, which led me to suggest a Bermuda Triangle-type theory in which the plane used the cloud as a time and space portal to disappear into a different world.

I relayed this to the others, who were a bit non-plussed by this explanation, with one of them even humming the tune to The X-Files and another doing an impression of a cuckoo.

So I zoned out and gazed up at the night sky, which is my wont, while they discussed UFOs and other dimensions. In my own head, the theme music for Stranger Things was playing loudly, drowning out their scorn.

And that’s when I saw it, a long line of lights moving slowly towards the little full moon, which was about to appear above a tree.

I savoured the moment for a few milliseconds and then said calmly: ‘What’s that up there?’

All eyes turned to the sky. We watched this strange phenomenon for a minute or two as it traversed its night stage, seemingly on some otherwordly mission above our heads. We were transfixed.

By the time I took out my camera from my jeans pocket, the sight was dimming and so were my photography skills because I was so excited.

After the thing left our field of vision, silence ensued, followed by a feverish conversation about what we’d just witnessed.

It took me another five minutes to retrieve something from the back of my mind and to declare the thing we’d just seen was the Starlink satellite train. I’d heard about it once on the radio and had always wanted to see it, and now I had.

It’s operated by SpaceX, whose driving force is a strange man I do not like. I refuse to name him so my blog doesn’t get launched in to the outer atmosphere but just think of Batman gone bad and you’ll know who I mean.

That aside, we all rely on the internet these days, so the Starlink satellites have a job to do and, when you read up on it, you realise that there is so much in this world we do not understand.

And why am I telling you this? Because you need to know.

Also, the thing in the sky looked very like a Star Wars lightsaber moving gracefully across the universe. And as today is May the Fourth and I always put down my religion as Jedi on the census, I felt I needed to share that with you.

Have a great week.

Love, Maddie x