Sorry about the delay on this post…Busy busy and all that.

Last Thursday, on my little jaunt down to Suffolk to see Stuart, he decided to take me along the east coast to to Southwold, a little seaside village that in effect, is in the middle of nowhere and a hour and a half drive from Colchester.

When we arrived after what seemed an eternity of flat landscape through oldie world villages, the breeze had a chill and the clouds were tumbling in off the north sea; on the face of it, it seemed pretty bleak, especially as, in the distance, you could see the Sizewell nuclear reactor.

However, as we meandered (a bit like an aging couple) from the pier and along the sea front and into the town, it was actually a nice little place with tea rooms, quaint pubs and as a bonus, a cheese shop called Nutters.

Walking around the town (by now we were almost holding hands) it was noticeable that the folk of Southwold are quite a rugged bunch featuring leathery faces that had experienced a life of stiff north easterlies, sleet and intermittent sunshine that demanded heavy duty pastel coloured clothing, even when the rest of the country was basking in the June sunshine.

Those of you out there who are lovers of Real Ale will also know that Southwould is the home of the famous Adnams brewery and in the town there is the Adnams gift shop where you can by all sorts of beer as well as some over-priced trinkets and if it is your wish, some chutney or jam.

Where the relation to a brewery is in these products is, I just don’t know…Perhaps a junior member of staff was press ganged by an over zealous chutney salesman from Norwich?

We rebelled against the masses and didn’t spend anything, choosing instead to walk down to the Lord Nelson pub and have a pint and then another, despite the daunting prospect of bladder problems on our return journey.

The pub had about six different bitters and we were invited to have a sip of them all before making our crucial decision. We contemplated having all six and shacking up under he stars (or clouds) but we resisted and instead, started chatting to some local old ladies who were only too eager to chat to, what in their eyes, were two raging homosexuals.

One of the old ladies appeared quite eager to get absolutely shit faced and start singing Dame Vera Lynn songs but the other was far more conservative in her approach to life, deciding to keep an eye on her health despite just passing her 85th birthday. If I get to 85, it will be such a miracle that  I wont give a flying fuck about my diet, I will just be glad to be alive.

We then chatted to a couple from Gloucester who were delighted to announce that they were visiting Southwold for the 27th year in succession and I couldn’t help but wonder what you could do in Southwold twice, let alone 27 times…It’s very quaint but 27 years in succession had me suspecting a debilitating mental illness.

Perhaps they were related to the Nutters cheese empire?

So, as a summary, Southwold is a lovely part of England that is relatively unscathed from commercialism and it obviously works hard to maintain its identity. It is worth a visit for just for that, a pint or two of Adnams and the great hilarity of frantically holding in a piss in a rush hour traffic jam on the outskirts of Ipswich.

So try Southwold once, however, in my humble opinion, 27 years on the trot may be a bit much.