12 March

We have near neighbours who pass, these days for the local gentry. Mere yeomen farmers a couple of centuries ago, fortune has smiled kindly on them and their wealth has grown, unlike so many farming families. The other local farmers I know are Conference Division to their Champions League. They seem to own pretty much all of the land around the village; there are fields, footpaths, woods and church pews all bearing their name. It must give you such a sense of place, to grow up around such constant reminders of your genetic dominance, but possibly a rather arrogant sense of ownership too. The farmer and his wife are getting on now, with four grown-up girls all in London, and although they are scarily active in village life (even walking your dog seems to need their permission), I’ve never had much to do with them (avoided them like the plague, to be frank). I had to go and see the farmer this morning, however, after school drop-off, due to a school matter relating to access and rights of way. I’d been warned he could be difficult. He used to be a governor at the village school, but retired before I came on board; I would have been, ahem, challenged by the fact that he apparently vetoed everything, yet none of his girls were educated there. Anyway, the Jacobean manor (farmhouse doesn’t work, in this instance) is beautiful and imposing, but inside was unkempt and pitiful. There was literally nowhere to sit; every available surface crammed with mildewing newspapers, bits of odd material, plates (!) or coats . The damp, musty smell of loneliness and old age seeped through the timbers. Faint echoes of happier times came through as he mentioned one of his daughters, but something – just time? – has stiffened both his joints and his outlook.

He was a surly and cantankerous host; clearly not very comfortable talking to young(ish) women. He interrupted me, harrumphed and spluttered, kept his back towards me. His questions were too direct, to the point of rudeness, and he didn’t listen to the answers. Like most people, I cherish an illusion that I can chat to anybody. He shattered that illusion, cutting off my attempts at small talk and leaving me marooned in a sea of discomfort. I could feel myself starting to gabble. At one point, when the business side of things was coming to an end, (he was surprisingly reasonable), I asked him if he knew what our cottage had been called years back (we know it’s had it’s name changed many times). He stared at me in amazement and said “If I could remember, which I can’t, it would have just been named after whichever labourer lived there at the time”. That was me told. I have never felt so much like an irritation and an interruption. As I was leaving, he started shouting names at me, names of people in the wider area who he assumed I knew. I haven’t a clue who these people are, you irascible old man, I thought to myself, and made some quip about having only recently been accepted into the village community; I hadn’t branched out any wider, as yet. He suddenly put his arm around my shoulders, a gesture of surprising gentleness, and told me a joke, a pun, so unexpected and human that I snorted with laughter in an inelegant and embarrassing way. “We locals have a name, you know, for incomers like you who get absorbed into the village” he said, his rheumy old eyes shining with tears of mirth. “Suffolk-ated”.