out to tea

The Systems Administrator's old school friend, who resurfaced a few months ago after a gap of fifteen years or so but was about to go on holiday to Thailand, got back in touch again in due course, and today we went round for tea.  They have got themselves a house in a quiet spot outside Stowmarket, with a large south facing garden overlooking a golf course, and have acquired a new dog.

The dog is a springer spaniel, which is not surprising since all the old school friend's previous dogs have been springers.  The latest is only five months old, soft as butter, and well behaved other than that he has not learned not to jump up at people, and last Friday he ate packet of Ibuprofen and had to go and have his stomach pumped out and his system flushed with oodles of saline at vast expense to the management.  We are not good discipline-enforcing visitors for a dog that is supposed to be learning not to jump up at people, since we both like dogs and encouraged him shamelessly.  I have a few clothes I wouldn't want a large springer puppy jumping on, but it wouldn't occur to me to wear any of them for tea with the old school friend, not so much for fear of dogs as fear of appearing overdressed.  The old school friend's partner had made fresh scones, and got in a large pot of real clotted cream, which was nice of her and made me realise I hadn't made scones for ages.

We drove there via the back route through Hadleigh, since we weren't in a hurry and the A12 and A14 are not pleasant roads.  That part of mid Suffolk is almost insanely pretty at this time of year, like driving through an unrolling Constable painting.  The larger villages are charming, Raydon and Hadleigh looking like places I can imagine wanting to live.  As you penetrate further into the countryside they become more elusive.  Where exactly is Semer, or is there a there when you get there?  You pass a road sign that says Semer, then a mile down the road a wooden hut that proclaims it is Semer village hall, next to a single house.  Another couple of miles gets you to a handsome village sign with a ploughman, elm tree and church, but still very little in the way of a village.  I mused that it must be light soil round there, eliminating the need for cooperative ploughing with teams of oxen, and the SA reminded me that historically it was sheep country.  The village where our friends now live is so non-existent that it is called Onehouse.

They have acquired a useful collection of sheds, along with their house, and a slightly dilapidated but fascinating octagonal conservatory with a domed roof topped with a clerestory, and holes through the brickwork where the trunks of grapes were once led.  It needs some refurbishment, and we mused on the best way to get access to the roof, the SA favouring sliding the glazing out and tackling the woodwork from the inside.  Wooden shelves at intervals up the glazing bars looked as though they might originally have been intended to rest planks across to give access for maintenance, but as the old school friend said, they might have been up to the 120lb weight of the Edwardian garden boy, but would they take the twenty-first century middle aged man?

The neighbours so far have appeared friendly, and faintly bohemian despite the proximity of the golf course.  Golf in deepest Suffolk is maybe not the same as in Surrey.  That's just as well, since the old school friend has already parked a camper van in the front garden, along with a rectangular box shaped trailer with a fin on top which I realised meant he still owned a glider.  Many years ago, when the old school friend ran a despatch business, we got back from our summer holiday to discover that he had left a van parked in our garden after buying it at the nearby car auction site and discovering it had mechanical problems when he drove it away.  The people looking after our house that time had tried to protest, but been no match for the old school friend's assurances that he knew us and that we wouldn't mind at all.  People with a tendency to accumulate sheds and geriatric vehicles, like the SA and the old school friend, are wise to choose to live in faintly bohemian settlements, well away from conservation areas and neighbours who are overly concerned by MoT expired camper vans or ex builder's flat bed trucks, polytunnels and greenhouses, or new externally visible stove pipes.  Even if any of us could afford gardens this size in Hadleigh, which we couldn't, we'd lower the tone.