The truth is, it hardly rained. While the rest of Britain has been justifiably gutted by the Met Office’s breezy hands-up, Sorry Guv, (shooting’s too good for ‘em) – the Eastern seaboard has been as dry as a cream cracker with no butter. This was evident in the yellow hues that greeted us as we left the go fast stripes of the A12 - grass verges like straw, sand, gasping leaves. Don’t worry, we did get wet and spattered up the back of the calves one afternoon as we headed into the bird reserve, with thunder wagging its finger at us but by the time we came across the RSPB man-stick-fire guy filmed by Jon burning off the tall stuff, the sun was out again. Another time, it teed it down at night. That was weather’s best effort at being duff.
Me, I wasn’t asleep. I was awake in a bed big enough for a shire horse to stretch his fetlocks as I listened to the sound of nothing much beyond the lick of a shower on the 1930s seaside windowpanes. As dawn broke, there was the drift of a milk float, an aural glimpse of a lost bird in the fading smoke on the reserve and breathing in the distance, slumbering on the shingle, I could hear the sea snoring.
R & D’s house is a quiet wonder; waiting patiently behind tall pines, like a shy tea-dancer, the place is pretty as a pinafore and occupies the best possible landscape, beside the town, alongside the marshes and opposite the beach. The demure interiors are warm enough to trap a sunbeam, cool enough to provide relief. Spacious, furnished with a seemingly light touch, nothing, but nothing is there unnecessarily; function, form and domestic modesty. It is, as a dwelling, a lesson in measured taste.
I tried to be measured then. To take it like a country mile. It was frustrating though because for Jon, the novelty of a real live holiday combined with a nice big sofa instantly flipped the snooze button. And for the children, a house with walls and windows with glass in, instead of mosquito screens and shutters or the Decathlon swish and rip of the New Forest, and a telly and board-games and three lavs and a Maytag fridge with water dispenser – cue Fred with an anguished beaker: hmm, cube or crush, cube or crush? – offered little incentive for the use of legs. Luckily, the garage was full of bikes. At dad’s, just down the road from here, a bonerattler ride means a cobwebby hunt for the pump amidst the mowers and deckchairs first, a cloud of WD40 and a subsequent crash involving the dislocation of ancient brake callipers.
Not in this garage. There was a team of magic machines of various sizes and styles all champing at the bit and though the elderly Henderson door swung down to give Jon a good rap on the bonce, just incase he had any ideas about showing off his cycling acumen, trusty steeds were quickly matched to riders and after some persuasive sugar-lumps, my family eased into the saddle to take to the paths. Their street shins were magnets to the brambles, burrs got into waistbands and they smacked the innocent frolicking butterflies out of their faces like they were horseflies but, once they’d got the hang of cycling and having a view to look at, they began to enjoy bombing around the countryside and falling off into nettles.
A picture postcard holiday ensued full of pub lunches and blackberrying, rowboats and windmills, arcades and ice creams. For a week we were living a little English dream. We bought homemade jam from two posh boys on Crag Path, we listened to Britten while we baked the silvery ying-yang seabass we bought from the sheds; we conjured picnics out of bland Co-op baskets, and then spent too much on sprauntzy samphire and local grown peppers for sale out of designer delis.
We skimmed stones, rummaged in junk shops, forgot the kite and met up regularly with the old man - the kids were so pleased to see their granddad, who was able to do the penny behind the ear switch without any of the stress of actually having us under his feet for longer than it took to eat a roasted joint of sweet Suffolk porker and a tray of double-cooked spuds. Jon even forfeited rare lie-ins to spend most mornings with Fred on the municipal tennis courts, where there were no queues or syringes.
His sister and brother-in-law dropped by and seamlessly entered the groove, stripping the lane of sloes to make gin, eagerly crashing the shandies and sausage and chips, dawdling at the Maytag: cube or crush? And thanks to R & D, we fitted right in with the Southwold set. It was a pristine time, neat as knick knacks. And while Aldeburgh teemed with Boden buggies and Walberswick with the rugby shirt brigade, Thorpeness twinkled with the smiling oldies that joshed with us at the Mere, acknowledging their good fortune at still being alive. All the while, in the distance, basking in our bucolic perspective, the white sphere of Sizewell seemed as benevolent as Humpty Dumpy dangling his toes in the sea.
It has taken me a while to blog this last bit of our summer because it seems in writing it down I am also saying goodbye to our past, a final shake of the dome before the golden motes settle. It was as if we’d stepped through a gateway marked IDYLL to get there, leaving our worries on the dual carriageway like dumped shoes. Now, returning down the lanes, past the heathland and farm shop, our holiday had to remain behind like the sea – we couldn’t take any of that perfection with us. Reality awaited us on that A12, as were undertaken by the Essex boys.
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