Tuesday 7 April 2009, 8:31AM
An East Anglian interlude
Just returned from a very peaceful week's holiday in East Anglia. I'm finding it quite hard to get back to working, and so far have only been good for answering a few urgent emails and posting pictures taken during the week to Flickr.
We stayed in the house my grandparents owned in Lowestoft, on the furthermost tip of East Anglia, inherited by my mother. I spent my earliest years in Lowestoft, and it will always be a special place for me, nearly every street and park evoking childhood memories. Visiting it is a bit like walking into myself. Unfortunately it's become a rather shabby old town since its primary industry, fishing, declined a few decades ago. The dear old place desperately needs some love, and some efforts have been made in recent years to restore its seafront, whose genteel Victorian architecture and gardens retain a memory of its former status as a popular holiday resort.
Lowestoft may have seen better days, but I was reminded again that East Anglia really is a lovely part of England. We managed to get to Beccles, Southwold, Cambridge and Norwich, ancient towns and cities whose centres still manifest their medieval, and in some cases Saxon, origins. We both fell in love with Norwich during the final day of the holiday, Kate for the first time. It's hard to believe, but there are 39 medieval churches in the city centre.
It was also great to visit my friends, and now Kate's, Mark and Katy Tattum-Smith, who moved from Edinburgh to Suffolk a few years ago. They live in a fascinating little village deep in the Anglian countryside that is straight out of Jane Austen: huge medieval church, pastel coloured cottages, a pub and a rectory, and a country house set in huge landscaped grounds, with follies. It's just one of dozens of similar hamlets dotted around Suffolk. We also caught up with other old Edinburgh friends, Nick and Esther Clarke, who were visiting Katy and Mark.
I return with the usual resolution not to allow my life to become swallowed by work, which I've conscientiously observed thus far. Will do two or three hours now, then a visit to the coffee shop is in order, I think.
Comments (8)
1 Kimberly ~ Tuesday 7 April 2009, 1:31PM
an excellent resolve. I hope you are able to keep it.
you seem to have caught the trees at their best too.
2 Doug Aitken ~ Tuesday 7 April 2009, 4:22PM
I agree, I hope you are able to keep to it. I’m just on my 3 week holiday from University and I’m looking at expanding my wings a bit, stop sitting in from of an LCD screen for hours on end.
I’m glad you enjoyed it so much, seems like a really interesting area! however whenever I hear or read Lowestoft, all I can think about is Gene Simmons Rock School 2, the BBC (I think) programme from a few years ago.
As an aside I’ve had 7 views from your blogroll today!
But when wordpress lists the referrer, it is changeanddecayinallaroundisee.com without the www. and when I clicked on it, it is the Lucent Web Design site.
Thought you might want to know as people will come to your business site rather than your personal blog if you link to them.
3 Heather Wilson ~ Wednesday 8 April 2009, 1:59AM
ooh, that sounds WONDERFUL! Can’t wait to look at the pictures!
4 Elizabeth Anderson ~ Wednesday 8 April 2009, 7:20AM
Sounds like you two had exactly the holiday you needed. And the photos are absolutely gorgeous - made me really want to get down to that part of the world again.
5 Justin Reynolds ~ Wednesday 8 April 2009, 7:56AM
Thanks very much to you all for your comments, and glad you liked the pics.
Doug, thanks for pointing out the referrer issue - I will take a look at that.
I dimly recall the Gene Simmons School of Rock programme. That was momentous, but Lowestoft is remarkable for two other things as well. The town spawned The Darkness, the short-lived heavy metal phenomenon of 2003/04: heady days indeed. And, believe it or not, the composer Benjamin Britten, usually associated exclusively with Aldeburgh, actually came from Lowestoft.
6 Doug Aitken ~ Wednesday 8 April 2009, 3:22PM
Ah of course, I forgot that The Darkness came from there too! I didn’t forget the Darkness, who could…
Britten as well? My, I really must give this place a visit at some point!
Also is your captcha an EE plugin/module? I like it! Simple but really effective! No squinting eyes at blurry words or anything.
7 Justin Reynolds ~ Friday 10 April 2009, 10:31AM
Hello Doug. No, I promise, you really don’t want to go out of your way to visit Lowestoft. There are nice places all around though. The local Britten shrine is at Snape Maltings, near Aldeburgh, which is well worth a visit if you are ever in that part of the country.
The captcha is indeed an EE plug-in, called ‘Accessible Captcha’. I like it because I find regular captchas almost impossible to fill in, and without an accompanying audio file they don’t meet website accessibility guidelines. Unfortunately quite a lot of spam still gets through. It seems quite a bit of spam is submitted manually, as well as through machines.
By the way, fixed the ‘www’ referrer issue. My .htaccess file wasn’t quite right.
8 Virginia Gal ~ Monday 13 April 2009, 4:57AM
Thank you for the lovely vacation description! Now I want to visit, especially when you mention anything Jane Austen.