First posting, 20 January 2008

Hi everyone! This is my first ever blog, so I hope it works. I shall try to find a photograph before I write this again, and post it here. But for now my blog consists of just words - and as words are my trade as a writer and desk editor, perhaps that is only right and proper.

So first of all, what can I see as I look out of my window, here on our windy, exposed ridge?At the moment Cornwall, UK, is wet and windy, and it has been like this for most of the year so far. Grey skies, no sunshine to power our solar panels (but we wish we had a wind turbine!), and we get soaked just walking from the house to the garage to get out the car. It's very British to start out by commenting on the weather, I expect, but there we are.

I've called this blog View from Trevadlock Cross because that is where I live, a tiny hamlet (four houses, including a converted chapel) on a crossroads looking south-west towards the peaks of Bodmin Moor two or three miles away. In summer it is beautiful, the hills changing from hour to hour as the light moves across them picking out rock, grass, wooded slopes and heather in flower. Even in winter, as long as the sun shines the panorama is magnificent and clear. But when the clouds come down and the mist hides the hills it is bleak and uncomfortable. Every winter I hate the relatively infrequent periods when it is continuously like this for two or three weeks at a time. But eventually it passes, and the skies clear and the hills hove into view again.

So this is my view from Trevadlock Cross; I promise the blog won't always be about the weather - or at least not just about it. I mean to share my thoughts about issues, too, political, environmental, social and so on. Whether anyone will actually read them or not remains to be seen. If you do, I'd love to hear your comments.

Jane Anstey