Southwold, the birthplace of Big Society?

Happiness is sun, sea, sand, your most beloved family and a beach hut. In order to celebrate my birthday, the five of us stole away to Southwold in Suffolk this weekend, rented a beach hut and had a simply wonderful time. As we all know, the weather was great and just hanging out, having a BBQ, knitting, drinking and playing Scrabble until the sun went down was a little slice of heaven. The kids swam in the sea and played cricket until they couldn't see the ball and hubbie and I set the world to rights. Perfect.

Did you know that Southwold is heavily featured in the story of the Big Society as 15 of its residents led by local Simon Tobin clubbed together last year to paint the seafront railings themselves thereby alleviating responsibility and cost from the council? While doing such a civilised thing would seem a more obvious course of action in a largely well-heeled place like Southwold, there is something about human-scale places encouraging people to behave more like human beings towards one another. In any event it is a lovely spot and I can report the railings are very smart indeed.

Taking the highroad to the long drop

Slater Bridge, Little Langdale

It was too, too funny. They said it was ‘basic’ but for that read ‘time warp.’ I speak of our recent week of life in the 19^th century.