Hooting And Howling in Suffolk

Seeing as this blog is called East Angles, so it would be a dereliction of duty if I didn't feature East Anglia at least once. I was back in Norfolk for, well, not long actually - but it was odd to see the Subversive Spaces exhibition I really enjoyed at The Whitworth in Manchester take pride of place at the Sainsbury Centre.

The real reason for being back in the land of milk and honey was to usher at my cousin Richard and his new wife Jess' beautiful wedding in Suffolk. This is supposed to be a culture blog so I won't go all Country Living on you, but I was really impressed by the way the idyllic country manor they had their reception in had not only beautifully refurbished rooms but a really sympathetic modern extension. No horrid mock Tudorness here (it's slide 36).

Anyway, we spent the best part of the rest of the week in a tiny village called Dallinghoo. A proper country retreat, where I read Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger in prep for an interview. What a fantastic ghost story/social commentary/thriller - and it got me thinking that perhaps where you read a book impacts on your enjoyment of the story. Usually, I'm sitting on a comfy leather bucket seat (no, I'm not wearing a smoking jacket at the same time) but this time I was in a 400 year-old thatched cottage in the middle of nowhere. The Little Stranger is set in a mysterious old hall, and Dallinghoo Hall was just across the field.

So for a few days we were living amongst incredibly shy wild deer, with snowy owls hooting and much howling from garrulous pheasants (that's one for the Wild Beasts fans). Fantastic stuff, made all the more interesting by the discovery of a cute gallery in Debenham down a back alley. Some lovely work in there, which if they'd been part of the Own Art scheme I might have signed up for. And now I can't find the card I picked up, so it'll forever be a lost opportunity.

And it was most serendipitous to come back to Manchester and get a commission within hours of my return to write about... a Suffolk artist. Let's say I was in the zone for this one. But going to see Maggi Hambling's work at The Lowry was a pleasure and an eye opener: as she suggests herself, she's the Constable of the sea, but there's something more modern and less twee about her work than that. I loved it. And, despite Ipswich Town, I love Suffolk, too.