Eight years ago one of my very good friends died. She would have been 81 this year. What was remarkable was that, from the very early 2000s before blogging was so universal, she produced her online ‘Rural Ruminations’, a monthly blog of anecdotes of her life in Suffolk, of the village where she lived, parish problems, and the difficulties of coping with a nonagenarian mother and a husband ten years older than she was. It was full of the foibles of those she knew, though never unkind; it was fun, and it had stunning photos.
This is no attempt to replicate that. I couldn’t. But it is my inspiration. I don’t know how often I shall post, and what the proportion of words to pictures will be, but I want to see where it takes me. Walking from Canterbury to Rome in 2016 I wrote a blog – just an illustrated diary of the journey – for the first time. I enjoyed doing that, enjoyed writing again for other people’s eyes.
The title “Common or Garden in Suffolk” alludes to the twin daily preoccupations – my walks with the young dog, and my patch of land where I grow vegetables. For any non-anglophone readers I should just explain that “common or garden” is an English expression that means “ordinary”, for such is my life.
Suffolk, July 2017
