Projects, opinions and local stories, mostly over tea.
Every street has one: eighty-four members, a name with an ampersand in it, and a notification habit that could wake a hibernating hedgehog. Here's a calm, affectionate taxonomy of the village WhatsApp group — and what it tells us about looking after each other.
Armed with a single fiver, a thermos and a notebook, I spent the first Sunday of November working three car boot sales within eight miles of home. What things cost, what nobody wants any more, and what a muddy field in 2026 says about how we live now.
I spent forty minutes on a Saturday morning picking up other people's rubbish and writing all of it down like a man compiling evidence for a trial nobody asked for. What I found was less about litter and more about the peculiar, biscuit-fuelled machinery of belonging.
Every year we gather in a cold car park to watch a star go up slightly crooked and a school choir mangle a Slade song. Here is my entirely unofficial handbook for doing it properly, from arrival times to the mulled drink queue to why the wonkiness matters.
I joined the allotment waiting list in a fit of optimism and was promptly told the wait would be up to four years. What followed was a strange, weed-filled education in community, patience and the careful business of growing cucumbers you never asked for. Here is what I learned before I was even allowed to dig.
Every charity shop has a shelf of books priced somewhere between a Wispa and a thank you. I have spent years treating it as a slot machine, and I think the randomness is the best thing about it. Here is what your £1.50 actually buys you, archetype by archetype.
Two hundred and fourteen noticeboards, three towns, and a year of walking about with a camera and a flask. Ted Targett on lost cats, sheds with some damp, and why the pinboard may be the last honest local newspaper we have left.
Two pounds, a clanking radiator, a drawer marked Miscellaneous and a mummified cat labelled Probably. Ted Targett makes the affectionate case for the volunteer-run local museum, and offers seven rules for visiting it properly.
I spent a fortnight rating my town’s bus shelters on wind protection, bench comfort, timetable legibility and local lore. What began as a silly project turned into a quiet love letter to the places where nothing is asked of you but waiting.
A damp fortnight of tea urns, wobbly staging and volunteer booking secretaries has convinced me that the village hall is Britain’s most underrated night out. Here’s what three halls taught me — and how to put on your own do without losing the plot.
The tea round is not a drink delivery service. It is a personality test with a kettle. Ted ranks the brew orders he has met in his kitchen and the local café, using a scoring system that takes itself far too seriously.
For years the shed at the bottom of the garden was where paint went to die. This autumn I gave it a desk, a kettle and a strict budget, and discovered that a commute can be twelve steps and still feel like a commute.