THE CHILLI plant that my husband bought from Joy Michaud at the Melplash Show was the best thing we have bought at a food show, ever. I didn’t even particularly like chillies when I met my husband but he cooks with it quite a lot and my palate has evolved over the years. I suppose [...]

WE’VE LOST touch with nature. We have no idea where our food comes from. What does our farmer down the road get up to? As I buy Denhay bacon and their Farmhouse Cheddar ends up on my cheese plate, I went to check out the Streatfeilds’ estate when they – and many other farmers around [...]

IF YOU’RE a stranger to these parts, you will one day be astonished by what is known as ‘The Beaminster Tunnel Effect’. It’s when you approach the tunnel in fog and mist from one end and come out in brilliant sunshine on the other. You can be driving through a murky Mosterton, go through the tunnel [...]

HAVE YOU ever tried walking from the corner of East Street and Barrack Street, in Bridport, to the kitchen shop in Barrack Street? Well let me put you straight. It’s a long haul and it is all uphill. So I usually have a little sit down and a drop of refreshment half way up the [...]

It is Bunting Day in Lush Places, a Saturday in early June when the village menfolk crowd around the bottom of a ladder with copious cups of coffee while one brave soul climbs to the top and puts the flags out. The annual village fete will soon be upon us and so will the football. [...]

Odd’s fish, it’s Oak Apple Day: Charles II’s birthday and the 350th anniversary of his restoration to the throne. Here in Lush Places, the day passes by unnoticed, as people scurry under large umbrellas across the village square in a dance choreographed jointly by Renoir and Magritte. They charge to the shop for their Telegraphs [...]

… TO THE QUESTION that has seen me tossing and turning at nights over the years and has, no doubt, troubled most of you in a similar manner. It is such a relief to have, at long last, learned this figure. I am indebted to Mr Graham Burridge, Bridport’s affable postmaster, for finally putting my mind [...]

THE PLIGHT of the villages of West Dorset is fast becoming dire. The shops, Post Offices and pubs are closing like the rat traps in Hamelin before the arrival of the Pied Piper. Yet that is only the tip of a very worrying iceberg. As well as these important ingredients of rural life an historical [...]

On Bluebell Hill, overlooking Lush Places, the colours are so intense they are almost blinding. The clean, lime green of the beech trees, the swathe of bluebells, an ocean of them, oh so blue. And then very occasionally, a white one pops up out of nowhere. This place is magical at the best of times and [...]

I SUPPOSE that Bridport Town Council will have to re-arrange their seating plan now that, nationally, the Liberal Democrats have become the Conservative 2nd XI. Instead of baiting those on the other side of the splendid chamber the poor old No hopers, jokers and rogues, as the Fisherman’s Friends might describe them, will have to [...]