Walberswick's whimsical wildlife

When we decided to come up to Suffolk, I started looking forward to long walks surrounded by wild foraging and ancient trees and a wonderful array of birds and wildlife. Out here, on the edge of the country, I mused, surely there would be some wild-ness?

Well, sort of. We've got apples (cookers and eaters) and blackberries and sloes and damsons and rosehips. We've got land cress and ground elder and a variety of lethal fungi. We've got wood pigeons and corvids and little tweeters and pied wagtails and magpies and blackbirds. There are many, many rabbits. Some of the trees, including one enormous pine, are splendid - but most are sycamores and silver birch. It's all lovely, is what I'm saying, but there's nothing much here that's out of the ordinary.

Apart from the pheasants. As the shooting season begins, Walberswick is amok with pheasants. They walk up and down the road, looking for all the world like Italians enjoying the passeggiatta. They roost in trees too flimsy to take their weight and, memorably, on the top of my neighbour's hedge, which is perhaps six feet high. They rattle and hoot and honk, sounding like a grumpy gang of cantankerous old codgers, then flap and fuss like old maids. Soon most of them will be dead, shot as part of the big commercial shoots that make these farmers a welcome chunk of cash each year. I'll miss them, funny strutting characterful little things. And then I'll eat them. Yum.

And the muntjac. Yesterday, me and the dog went for a route march, in the hope that she would stop trying to dig her way out of the kitchen in the middle of the night if she was physically exhausted, her little paws practically worn to stumps. As we were coming to the end of our walk – quite weary now, so going quite slowly and quietly – along the back lane, an adult muntjac deer crossed the lane ahead of us, no more than 12 feet away. It was so close I could almost smell it. There was another just behind it, but by then they'd caught our scent, and I knew that there was no point waiting quietly, hoping for another sighting. There's such a thrill in that moment, when you come face to face with something truly wild.

So I'm surrounded by a whimsical assortment of wildlife. Some of it I live with. Some of it isn't really wild. But out there, hidden among the brambles and the ferns, are all the creatures we read about as children. Knowing that, and hoping with my eternally childish heart to get another peek at Bambi and Thumper and, maybe, if I'm really lucky, proud Mr Badger, there will now be two walks a day. Poor dog.

The Sunday Afternoon Conundrum

So your visitors arrive on Friday evening and you have supper in the pub and lots to drink and go to bed tipsy and happy. On Saturday you have long country walks and eat good food and have nice things to drink and you put on a film and everybody falls asleep in front of it. On Sunday you have delicious breakfast and read some papers and all the while you're chatchatchatting and then, suddenly, they're gone.

And then what do you do?

Normally, I would have a very long bath and then polish myself to a high shine. But in the absence of a tub, I become like a bear with a sore head. I can't lie on the sofa and watch movies because Herself thinks that's the DEVIL'S WORK and also has to do actual work. The dog is begging not to be taken for any more walks. So I tidy up, which is sad and boring because it means the fun's over and gone back to London. I do the washing up, which is sad and boring because it means the fun's over and gone back to London. I wish I still smoked. I wish I drank on Sundays. I wish something, anything, would happen to relieve the boredom.

It's like being 14 again. Awful.

Herself's theory, and it may prove to be a good one, is that we should have decided on something very delicious to eat on Sunday night, rather than our usual leftover whatever. Cooking! I can do that. Plus I think there should be sticky buns or at least crumpets to have for tea. And I'll go for a wet sploshy run, too. Is this the answer to the Sunday Afternoon Conundrum? We'll see...

The New Normal

This is our fifth week in Walberswick. Herself has begun her course, I've been to Ireland, and now normal life can resume.

When we were in London, thinking about this move, we said to ourselves, 'How different could our lives possibly be? We spend all day at our desks and all evening on the sofa (if we're not out with friends) and we'll have desks and a sofa in Walberswick.'

And it's true, of course. We don't have any friends here in the village, so our weekday evenings are our own. I spent yesterday doing jobs and trying to get my head back into my book. It's lovely being at my own desk, rather than somebody else's, by the way. Then at 5pm I took myself off for a walk, and that's where the normality ended, briefly. My hour-long walk took in marsh and river and sea and cows and sheep and blackberries and the setting sun. Don't get that in central London. Then I fed the dog and started making supper. Back to normal.

But this is a normal with knobs on. Neither of us is currently bringing in any income, we have French tenants for that. Merci bien. I'm not slogging off to a box to make money for somebody else. Herself is not sitting in the attic trying to sell her good ideas to moronic twentysomethings with too much power and not enough talent. I am writing my book and she is learning to be a teacher. The dog is still the dog. But this life, here in Walberswick, is the new normal – and it's great.

Solace (and sloes) by the Sea

To say that Herself's first day at college did not go well is to put it mildly. She got home tired and dispirited and feeling she'd made a serious mistake – it was a very sad sight.

In London, she'd have disappeared into her office for an hour, and I'd have poured her a drink and we'd have sat round the kitchen table discussing it all. Yesterday, I turned off the heat under my sloe jam and we went straight down the lane to the sea.

We walked along the beach at low tide, looking at the waves and the sky and the dogs running in and out of the surf. We had the same conversation we'd have had in London, but the beauty of our surroundings, and the perspective the sea and sky always put things in, helped to ease her furrowed brow in a way no amount of kitchen table psychology ever could.

I hope that we're still sending our troubles out to sea in a year's time, when it comes time to leave. It will mean that we've held on to our love of Suffolk's bleak beauty and can still feel its power. For now, though, it continues to bring solace to those in need of comfort, and sloes to those in need of jam.

A Process of Adjustment

The dog is finding it hard to settle. She paces around after me, looking slightly anxious. There's nothing wrong with her, she just has to adjust. She has to find the comfy, sleepy spaces where she feels safe and calm and she just hasn't done it yet, that's all.

Same goes for the rest of us. All this new stuff is fun and exciting, but sometimes you want old stuff - a touchstone of familiarity. I'm finding those touchstones in weird places. Hearing my Mum's voice on the phone is one. Riding my trusty old bicycle is another. Making the spare bed up with the linen we use at the beach. Making chilli jam or stirring the bechamel for macaroni cheese. I've realised that things don't make a house a home, although they make it look right. It's the life you lead inside your house that makes it your home, I think; the people you love and share it with, the meals you cook to nourish and welcome, the washing and cleaning and laughing at the dog attacking the hoover. The conversations and parties and moments of peaceful quiet.

We'll make this house a home; it's getting better with every day. It's just a process of adjustment. And in the meantime, we'll make it up as we go along...

A very pretty corner

There is, of course, absolutely nothing to do here. Apart from walk, or bike, and stare out of the window and listen to the birds. Internet shopping gets boring quite quickly when you never see anybody and earn no money, so, guess what?! Might as well write that novel.

Maybe even a psyche as addled as mine understands that if you give up your job and abandon your friends and family and your home so that you can write your book, what you do is write your book. It's become like a physical imperative, as well, rather helpfully; something I have to do, as well as want to do. So I have boxed myself into a very pretty, lonely, wind-blasted corner. Let's hope I don't end up chewing off my own foot.

The walk to Southwold... and a picnic

Southwold is Walberswick's nearest neighbour, separated from this village by the river Blyth. The sun was shining when I woke up this morning, in defiance of the week's forecast, so I decided to walk into Southwold to do some marketing (as the deeply old-fashioned refer to it). I could have gone on my bicycle, but walking is good for the back.

It takes half an hour, at a reasonable clip. Today I went through the village, along the river, across the bailey bridge, along the lane, across the golf course, across the common and into the town. I bought a strange variety of items, including some chuck steak and a computer cable (Southwold has everything) and headed home.

The sun shone, the birds tweeted and as I walked I started looking forward to my lunch. I contemplated going to the Bell (favourite pub) for half a pint and a sandwich, but I didn't want to leave the poor old dog alone too long. So I made a picnic and dragged her to the beach. Photo below. And sitting there in the sunshine, with my sandwich and a beer and the crossword and my little dog I wondered if anybody in the world was a jammier dodger than me.