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.

Born & Bred: the movie

Last year I was involved in a project in my Dorset village.

This is the film that goes with it. It’s just been uploaded to YouTube and I thought you might like to see it.

This is the link to the accompanying article on the Windrose Rural Media Trust website that tells you all about it.

It was a privilege to lead this project, which combined oral history, creative arts and community participation to explore rural life and identity.

My cohort of local people were a joy to work with, and the film by my colleague Simone Einfalt brings tears to my eyes.

Of course we should listen to locals who are born and bred in a place. Not to do so is arrogant folly.

New projects with Windrose are on the horizon, if I can find the funding to implement them.

Please get in touch if you’re in Dorset, Somerset or Wiltshire if you think our creative paths could converge.

Spring is in the air

After a grey, grim old day yesterday, we have blue skies and signs of spring here in West Dorset.

There’s mud everywhere and it’s squelchy underfoot but the many puddles are reflecting the changing of the seasons.

We’re not there yet but it won’t be long.

On my morning walk, I glanced up when I heard the corvid call of rooks building nests in the tall trees in the copse.

And then a deer scuttled through the undergrowth.

‘The longer days are coming,’ said my farmer friend as he came down the hill from the community shop with his newspaper under his arm.

“But I fancy the daffodils are a bit early.”

I met a man in the lane who I thanked for his expertise in the community pub the other night when our very own Celebrity Farmer and his sidekick regaled the gathered throng with tales from their escapades on the Channel 4 show, Hunted.

(They should have done Bake Off.)

The man in the lane had provided his sound and vision expertise for the talk, which was just as well because the place was packed and none of us would have been able to hear it otherwise.

He told me he’s going to be at the village hall next weekend to help when I put on an archive film show as part of a project recording the memories of older people born and bred here in Lush Places.

It’s people like him who quietly get on with helping others who are the unsung heroes among us.

The international stage is a frightening place and there are personal situations all around where people are suffering.

But to be dragged down by all of that means the extinguishing of hope. We have to celebrate the small big things that make a difference.

I thought about all the volunteers in our pub who are keeping it going while we interview for a new manager. I thought about the volunteers in the shop who man the till.

The people who run the village hall, the people who keep our lovely church up and running, the people who lock and unlock the gate everyday on the multi-use games pitch, the people who listen to children reading at school and those who give up their time to look after our communal open spaces.

So many people, in small and big ways, doing their bit and keeping the community from coming unstuck.

To steal a well-known slogan, every little helps. And it really does.

We wish you a merry Christmas

It’s been a busy old few weeks – nay months – in the Grigg household.

Alongside freelance work, there’s been a weekend away in London with the granddaughters for The Lion King, an overnight stay in Bournemouth to see The Human League with my flatmate from forty-three years ago, a school nativity play, the village carol service and putting on an archive film show to a packed audience in Bridport.

And that was just in the past week.

I’m not sure where the time goes but the year’s gone by so fast, I had a devil of a job keeping up with it.

The Christmas cards, bar a few, are nearly all delivered, presents bought and wrapped and a couple of days have been set aside over the weekend to prepare for Christmas next week and the big day that is Boxing Day when the hordes descend on our little house.

A New Year’s Eve playlist needs to be compiled and fine tuned for the party in the community pub, where, at just before midnight on 31 December, we all go out in the village square and sing Auld Lang Syne, and the traffic has to stop, whether it likes it or not.

A manuscript of mine has been shortlisted for The Eyelands Book Awards, which is very exciting and still is, even if I don’t win the competition. The unpublished novel – a cosy crime set on a Greek island (a kind of Bridget Jones-meets-Death In Paradise-meets-Mamma Mia!) had already been shortlisted in two other prestigious writing contests this year so I’m crossing my fingers, toes and eyes for this one.

I’ll be pursuing my search for a literary agent with renewed vigour in the new year, as well as working on the sequel, with a writing buddy from Australia who I ‘met’ on an online crime writing course run by Curtis Brown Creative.

Last year, we exhanged 5,000 words a week for critiquing, which was helpful in giving us the push we both needed to get our novels finished.

If you’re a budding writer and looking for impetus, I’d recommend the CBC courses wholeheartedly. Seven years ago, I signed up for one and I’m still in touch with group members, many of whom are now published writers. The support and encouragement we give each other is brilliant.

I’m not much of a one for new year’s resolutions but I’m endeavouring to get on with things, ticking off my copious to-do lists and living life to the full.

Blogging might take more of a back seat than usual, and how I use this website in the future is still up for debate, but you can find my column each week in The People’s Friend, the world’s longest-running magazine for women.

So Merry Christmas to you and yours and here’s to a peaceful, healthy and happy 2025.

The Geate A-Vallen To

With Covid or whatever it was having only just flown the nest (it took nearly a whole month), we’re now back in Dorset to lovely weather (I jest) and a warm welcome (I do not jest).

This morning, I walked out along the lane with Ruby and Edgar to a gate which reminded me of a poem by the Dorset dialect poet William Barnes (1801-1886).

The Geate A-Vallen To was apparently Barnes’ last dialect poem and it’s one I love because it was a favourite of older family members who, although from rural south Somerset, could do a pretty good rendition of the Dorset dialect.

There’s a YouTube link at the end of this blog to a chap reading the poem. His voice is far too posh but you get the gist. But I recommend trying it out yourself first by reading it aloud:

The Geate A-Vallen To

In the zunsheen of our zummers
Wi’ the hay time now a-come,
How busy wer we out a-vield
Wi’ vew a-left at hwome,
When waggons rumbled out ov yard
Red wheeled, wi’ body blue,
And back behind ‘em loudly slamm’d
The geate a’vallen to.

Drough daysheen ov how many years
The geate ha’ now a-swung
Behind the veet o’ vull-grown men
And vootsteps of the young.
Drough years o’ days it swung to us
Behind each little shoe,
As we tripped lightly on avore
The geate a-vallen to.

In evenen time o’ starry night
How mother zot at hwome,
And kept her bleazen vier bright
Till father should ha’ come,
An’ how she quicken’d up and smiled
An’ stirred her vier anew,
To hear the trampen ho’ses’ steps
An’ geate a-vallen to.

There’s moon-sheen now in nights o’ fall
When leaves be brown vrom green,
When, to the slammen o’ the geate,
Our Jenny’s ears be keen,
When the wold dog do wag his tail,
An’ Jean could tell to who,
As he do come in drough the geate,
The geate a-vallen to.

An’ oft do come a saddened hour
When there must goo away
One well-beloved to our heart’s core,
Vor long, perhaps vor aye:
An’ oh! it is a touchen thing
The loven heart must rue,
To hear behind his last farewell
The geate a-vallen to.