We Had 29 People Lined Up For Our Special Street Supper

In her weekly column, Maddie Grigg shares tales from her life in rural Dorset . . .

- Maddie Grigg

THERE’S nothing like a bit of competition to get Mr Grigg up and running with an idea.

This time, it’s the fact that a small hamlet – just down the road from us and across a stream – manages to organise a meal in the pub once a year for all its inhabitants.

“Well, if they can do it, why can’t we?” he said to me a few months ago. “It’ll be a great excuse to get neighbours together, and it’ll also support the pub. With any luck we’ll have more sitting down for supper than that other lot.”

“Why do you want to beat everyone all the time?” I asked. “Life’s not a competition.”

He gave me a look as if to say, “Oh, but it is”, then began to plan.

We decided to extend the invitations beyond the Lush Places village square, otherwise it would have been about ten of us. So we went a bit further west and down the bottom of the road to the stream.