Suffolk

Early morning. I dragged myself out of bed after only a few hours sleep, kissed a very sleepy Charles on the forehead, and pointed Molly, my car, in the direction of Suffolk – home of my friend Rachel. I felt very unprepared – my phone was low on battery, I only had a biscuit with me for breakfast and no water to drink, I had little petrol in the car, and hadn’t checked the tyres either, nor was there any windscreen wash ready to squirt over my windscreen if it got dirty. Quite unlike me as I do tend to worry if I'm not fully prepared for every eventuality! But I needed to get going before the roads filled up with traffic and so pushed all my worries to the back of my mind and just drove, hoping all the while for a petrol station where I would be able to deal with everything except charging the phone. As it turned out every petrol station I came across was either on the wrong side of a dual carriageway, miles off a motorway turning, or invisible until I was just past it! But, despite being convinced that my tyres were going to pop and the car run out of petrol, I really enjoyed the drive... once east of London and off the North Circular the roads were empty, with more squashed pheasants on the roads than there were cars, the sun was shining, and I could just put my foot down and motor along.

I managed to get all the way to Stowmarket without getting lost or spluttering to a stop. Phew! Once in the town I asked directions to Rachel's road and ended up parked in a supermarket car park. I turned my phone on and rang Rachel who came to find me. We found that I had very conveniently parked only two minutes from her house (and had actually been just by her house when I was asking directions – I should have just shouted out of the car window and she would have heard me – save on phone calls!)

It was so nice to see her again, we haven’t met up in absolutely ages. Not since my birthday last year in fact, and there were far too many other people around then to have a proper chat with her. So all through the afternoon we chatted and chatted until our throats were sore, and then chatted some more! She cooked a lovely meal of salmon, roast potatoes and honey roast parsnips, with two puddings and Battenburg cake for tea. My tummy was very happy, I can tell you!

I was quite sad to have to leave. However, I didn’t really want to drive home in the dark because that makes me sleepy, and it was already 6.30pm with sunset looming and a two and a half hour drive ahead of me, so I had to go… but could easily have stayed chatting all night.