Blogging is a new experience for me, so forgive me if I don't yet understand the protocols, or what is usual for a blog subject. To set out to amuse and entertain must, however, be right. So I wondered if anyone might be interested in a weekly blog diary of my village and it's doings through the seasons. There are so many things to write about - the people, cricket team, pubs, church, the season's rhythms in a farming community, the castles, village day, the ecology of the hills…
I decided to try this post, and if I detect any interest I shall try to continue it weekly.

Our small English village was old even before William the Conqueror sent out his inspectors to compile the Domesday Book. We have half-timbered thatched cottages, an embarrassment of pubs for such a small community, five castles along the ridge of the nearby hills and a church dating back to the 1100's complete with tombs of ancient knights and an admiral who served under Drake in seeing off the Spanish Armada. There are three nearby towns, each with narrow streets and half-timbered buildings, each town growing larger the further it is from the village. It is a pretty place with lots of children and a very active community - many off-comers as well as original village families. We are in the off-comer category. Although made very welcome, off-comers have to accept that it takes at least three generations to become recognised as a village family.

In this first post I want to share my joy at the return of the House Martins. We live in a new house, a pastiche design to mimic the local vernacular - which means that it has rafter ends poking out rather than boarded fasciae. House Martins like rafter ends for their nests and a family of martins built a nest in ours a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, the nest dried out in the warm weather and fell down. I wove a support of small twigs and plastered it with reconstituted mud and moss from their fallen nest and it worked! They took up residence again and after much disgusted tweeting about my nest- building skills, they finished the nest off. Now the family returns each year and makes babies outside my open study window. Last year the twittering of the chicks sustained me as I wrote The Hitler Canvas. I am not a nature nut, but there are few things I find more attractive than the sight of these wonderful creatures diving and swooping in the warm sunset of a English summer evening as I sip my wine in the garden.

More next week, possibly.
Ian Conway
(Goodreads Author)