On the street where I live...

Imagine a narrow country road. On one side you will see a collection of scruffy farm buildings and a grain silo, the village pond complete with ducks and the occasional moorhen, a meadow with about a dozen cows grazing in it, and one beautiful house owned by the National Trust. The house is thatched, grander than any other house in the village, and is called Grace Farm. Living in it are Edwin Aldred, purveyor of fine wines, and his wife, Kamila Gorsko, National Trust conservator of fine art. Grace Farm is set back from the road, reached by a gravel drive flanked by fat lavender bushes. On the road to one side of Grace Farm is a tastefully converted barn, which is the workshop of the National Trust Fine Art Conservation Unit. I give you these details because Grace Farm Wines and the NT Fine Art Conservation Unit are the only two enterprises in the village that bring strangers into our midst.

The rest of us live in a kind of straggly collection of dwellings on the other side of the road - one new bungalow, a couple of converted barns, an old pub and some ancient cottages. Depending on where you live in The Street (as it's known), you either gaze out at the cows (as I do), jealously observe Edwin Aldred mowing his Grace Farm estate (bare-chested, on a ride-on mower), or enjoy the sex life of the ducks down by the farm buildings. There are not many houses, and we all know each other.

I find it hard to write about work, particularly (as now) when I haven't got any worth speaking of! So I've decided to share with you a snapshot of life in Bradbury, because it will hopefully keep me away from ruminating on the complexity of my family life - which, at the moment, is painful - and instead serve to remind me that I live in a fantastic, eccentric, supportive, complicated community that supports me every day.

More later!