...there undoubtedly is something unnerving about East Anglia. Whether it's those huge skies, that almost aggressively flat landscape -- or the sheer, slightly agoraphobic sense that the world could at any moment tilt and swallow you up -- it's a place that makes the heart race, the blood quicken. It's a landscape that makes you tread cautiously, glance behind you, check your tracks.
-- Julie Myserson in the foreword to Line Dancing: Stories from East Anglia
Suffolk is a strange place. In part, I love it. That "two decades behind the rest of the world" feel, the friendliness of the staff in the market town shops and the beautiful rural countryside. I spend quite a lot of time there right now, because it's where my mother lives. I look forward to my visits there, and quietly dread my return to the thronging metropolis at the end of my stays.
And yet.
When talk turns to the idea of moving to Suffolk, both Lorna and I hesitate. There's something uncanny in the beauty of Suffolk, an edge to it that keeps me from loving it fully because, truth be told, I'm more than a little afraid of it.
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