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.