August 30, Thursday

The window of our bedroom at Sandlappers looked out over the back garden. We kept the windows wide open to capture the fresh country air. I loved the view, and stood by that window a lot just looking out and enjoying. I could look down and see Lionel mowing the grass or cleaning vegetables from the allotment. A big white goose lived back there. Margaret kept a pan near the kitchen sink for fruit, bread, and vegetable scraps for the goose. The dog lived there, too. He was very old. Mostly he slept on the warm sidewalk. Sometimes he would get up and walk slowly around the yard. If you were out there, he would regard you with sad eyes as if to say, “It's hell getting old.” We understood.

After breakfast on Thursday morning, Margaret and I went shopping. She took me to a lost-cost buy-out type store on the edge of Bury. She needed to get some jeans for Lionel. I looked at clothes, held earrings up to my ears in front of the little mirror on the sales rack, and considered shoes. I sorted through a rack of polyester neck scarves and chose two to buy. By then Margaret was done, and we checked out. From there to the more mundane, the grocery shopping. We got home just in time to fix lunch.

In the afternoon we walked over to the allotments to meet Lionel. They were roughly across from the village church. Lionel had driven over with his tools and the dog in his truck a bit earlier. He showed us his tool shed there, an old Anderson air raid shelter. It was made of wood with a Quonset-hut curved corrugated iron roof and side walls. It was small, about four by ten feet. He told us people buried these shelters halfway up in dirt in their yards for extra protection.

Bob's first job was to dig potatoes. He had not dug potatoes in over twenty years, not since we left Michigan. Lionel and I left him burrowing in the mounds with a shovel, and went on farther back into the allotments. My first job was to pick Italian pole beans. I can't tell you how happy we were to be messing around in a vegetable garden. It had been a long time. The smell of earth and bean plant leaves took us home again.

When we had gathered enough garden sass, we moved over to the church. Lionel wanted to clean the bell belfry. He had brought the church key from Jean next door, the warden. It was a huge metal key, straight out of medieval times. We went into the narthex of the church. There was a small, narrow door in one wall. Lionel unlocked it, revealing an old spiral staircase. The steps were rounded and worn. We went up.

The staircase ended at a small platform room. The bell ropes came from the ceiling above and then went down through the floor to the ringing balcony below. Lionel cleaned and checked the wiring and a small spotlight on the floor, the only lighting in the room. All lighting cords and cables are exposed in these old buildings. They run in bundles along the walls and at the backs of steps where they are least in the way. So they are subject to damage by rodents, bugs, and general wear and tear.

From the platform room a long ladder stretched up into the belfry bell chamber. Lionel went up first, then me, and lastly Bob. When we got to the top of the ladder, we had to step up onto a beam with one foot, step on another higher beam with the other foot, and pull yourself up onto the frame that held the bells. Bob took a look at that and bowed out. He couldn't do that with his artificial hip. So he climbed back down the ladder and walked home.

We had carried a broom and dustpan up the ladder. Lionel also brought a big plastic garbage bag. I was Girl Friday to Lionel. I followed him around the bell frame, handed him the broom, bag, whatever was needed, and gloried in the climbing and being in an ancient church belfry. The belfry openings are covered with heavy hardware cloth screening. Rooks are not too smart. They shove twigs, feathers, and other nest-building debris through the openings in the hardware cloth. These all fall to the sill of the belfry openings and accumulate as piles of unidentifiable black stuff. This is what Lionel was cleaning out.

Change bells do not just hang from ropes. Each bell is are mounted on a big wooden wheel. Four of the bells we were working around dated back to the 1700s. Then there were two newer bells. St. Andrew's had a six-bell peal. Change ringing takes some practice and skill. You have to control a bell that moves in a full circle on its wooden wheel. Bell patterns are not done by musical notes, they are by number.

I don't know how long we were up there; I was having too much fun to care. Lionel was not as enthusiastic. He was doing the dirty work. I'll have to admit I was apprehensive at first about the process of getting off the ladder and up onto the frame. I wasn't sure I still had the strength and agility to pull myself up there. But the more I rambled around on the frame, my old feel for climbing and heights came back. When we were done, I was back off the frame and onto that ladder with a careless speed that even surprised me.

Lionel brought buckets and buckets and baskets and baskets of produce from his allotments. Margaret turned out great meals. Nothing fazed her. If he turned up with green beans, she dreamed up a dish, slapped it on the AGA, and we had it for lunch or dinner. The excess veggies went to the neighbors or into cans or the freezers. She had three of them. One morning I came down to breakfast and she had already canned jam from plums off the tree just outside the breakfast room.

Then there was the evening we had corn on the cob that had been on the stalk just hours before. Talk about wonderful!

At night the cool breezes from the open windows wafted over our big fluffy duvet. The air was fresh with the smells of trees and grasses. It was perfectly quiet. Ah, the country.

August 31, Friday

We did laundry on Friday. It was sunny and in the 60s. This, we figured, was the last laundry we would do before we flew home on September sixth. So everything that even might be dirty went into Margaret's washing machine. We also sorted out clothes that we didn't want to lug home with us, and gave them to Margaret for charity.

I took a walk around Tostock with my camera. I took pictures of things I'd already taken pictures of in case they weren't good, and took new pictures. I took a picture of the Tostock sign on the green, and one of the sign for Gardeners Arms.

When I got done in the village center, I walked back past Sandlappers towards the edge of town. I didn't take any pictures, just looked around and gloried in being in the sun on a country lane. There were brambles along the lane. They were laden with the biggest blackberries I had ever seen, save the ones we were served at Wincheap Guest House. I picked a few and ate them as I meandered.

When I got back to the house, I told Margaret about the blackberries and asked if she'd like me to pick some. “I thought they were gone for this year,” she said. She handed me a bucket. “You pick them and I'll make a berry crumble for dinner.”

We had had her fruit crumbles before. She bakes the fruit under an almost cobbler-like topping. Then she serves it hot with bowls of double cream and yogurt for toppings.

I got Bob and we both went berry-picking. Despite what we ate while we picked, we got a decent-sized bucket of blackberries to take back to Margaret.

The hot blackberry crumble appeared on the table as promised. I had two dishes of it, topped with double cream. Might as well go for the gold.

BURY ST. EDMUNDS AND LAVENHAM

September 1, Saturday

Syd's daughter Jill, and her husband, Michael, were stopping in at Syd and Marian's for a couple of days at the end of their holiday. That gave us a chance to meet them.

We took a local bus on Saturday at 10:30 a.m. from Tostock to Bury. It was Market Day in Bury. We strolled through the market on our way to Marks and Spencer. Bob like his new sandals that he wanted to get another pair. I wouldn't have minded a pair, myself. But it was too late in the season. They were all gone.

As we walked towards Syd and Marian's home, we passed a health food store I remember from another trip. I bought my very first Green and Black organic dark chocolate bar there. It was immediate addiction. I went in. They didn't have Green and Black chocolate any more. They carried another brand. I bought one. It was pretty good, too.

We got to Syd and Marion's at noon, as planned. Jill and Michael had just got there, themselves. We were introduced, and repaired to the lounge to get acquainted. Marian soon served a light lunch in the dining room.

After lunch Syd, Bob, Jill, Michael and I got in the car and Syd drove us to the historic town of Lavenham. Like Castle Comb and Lycock, Lavenham is a time capsule. It was a busy center in the wool trade. When that dropped off, the town stagnated. Lucky for us, Lavenham is rich in original Tudor and earlier buildings that have not been modernized, at least on the exteriors. In the original half-timber buildings, the timbers were left on their own to gray with time. It wasn't until the Victorian era, some hundreds of years later, that it became fashionable to paint the timbers black, as we see them today.

All of us had been to Lavenham before, but not recently. The Wool Guild Hall exhibits had been updated and expanded. They had, in fact, such a large exhibition on hall history and the wool trade that we didn't have time to see it all. It was in that Guild Hall, in 1992, that we bought our first National Trust membership.

I wanted to have digital records of some of the old Tudor builsings that I had photographed years ago on film. So I cut short the hall exhibits and headed out into the sunshine to get photos.

The others were soon on the streets, too. Bob took Michael to The Swan Hotel, where American servicemen had written their names on the wall during the Second World War. The wall had been covered with glass to preserve the names. Michael had not known about that wall, and was very happy to see it. Being closer in age to the war than the young man, Bob was able to give him insights into the Americans in Suffolk during the war. The rest of us strolled the streets and I took photos.

Marian, in the meantime, was home putting together our dinner. She was preparing a special dinner for Saturday night. She had been telling me about it all week.

We got back to Bury at teatime. But instead of tea, we had wine in Rutland's lovely back garden. After a while the breeze grew chilly. Everyone went into the house to see a recording that Syd had made of the Coronation. Everyone except Jill and me, that is. We were deep in a conversation and never made it inside. As the sun lowered, we pulled our chairs closer to the house to catch the last warm rays and nattered on. Jill is a surgeon, and I am an artistic type. We were on the scientific personality versus the philosophical/literary personality, and couldn't let it go.

When Jill and I came in, Syd was scurrying about getting the dining room lighting arranged. Syd and Marian have a candle chandelier over their table that holds four tapers. That, with two candles on the table and some low lamp light, gave a lovely soft golden glow to the room.

Marian served her triumphant dinner. We started with a course of fillets of trout served with asparagus spears and a creamy dressing. The main course of lamb and vegetables followed. Marian served a raspberry and apple brulée for dessert. There were red and white wines poured during the meal. After dessert, as is the English custom, crackers and cheese were served, this time a French brie. The meal finished up with coffee and chocolates. With all the courses and all our chatter, the meal took up the evening. It was a a perfect way to spend an evening.