The time has come to start the journey that will lead to the publication of my next book Down to Earth.

I just love reading books by long dead Suffolk writers that have stood the test of time and speak to people today. I can only hope that my books will remain current when I am long gone.

A day spent at an East Suffolk Council event was quite unlike anything I’d attended before. It left me optimistic about the future, and pleased to be living back in Suffolk.

It’s been a long journey, but finally, we are living in the home where we will grow old together.

As both a writer and a Quaker, a visit to the former Meeting House at Needham Market, a town that was my home more than 60 years ago, helped me see my future.

I hope I never take for granted the fact that we now live a ten minute drive away from Snape Maltings, one of the world’s best classical concert halls.

I’ve just discovered another Suffolk author, H W Freeman, whose books have stood the test of time. Another h ard act I aspire to follow!

Three of the people working on our new home yesterday were members of Belinda’s extended family. I think this illustrates how Leiston’s population differs from others towns.

Last night we were at Snape, gaining a musical insight into the lives of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. This deserved to be a sell-out performance, but the concert hall was far from packed.

The simple pleasures that living in Suffolk brings, are somehow special.

Belinda’s great grandfather bought this Garrett steam tractor in 1926. Now in 2023 I find myself a trustee of the museum that tells the story of Garretts and how as they prospered, so too did Leiston.

For 25 years, Turnpike Farm was where we lived, worked and had so many experiences, some positive and some from which I learned tough lessons. Now it has been sold and I can at last focus on our new life here on the Suffolk coast.

A chance conversation on a train has led me to see pollarding as much more than a necessary pruning of our two giant lime trees. It’s set me off on a whole new creative journey!

I’ve discovered a new word, that describes how I’ve felt for most of my life. Cherophobia is the fear of happiness. Now I have named it, I have to banish it from my life.

It is understandable that people in Leiston are concerned about the danger of gentrification, but are we examples of that phenomenon?

A piano concert at Aldeburgh’s Jubilee Hall in the morning, a participate workshop in the afternoon, then a chance to watch the BBC Philharmonic orchestra rehearsing. I love living on the Suffolk coast.

I was probably the only person watching Sarah Abliss’s opera Giant, who unlike Charles Byrne, want to be placed on public display after my death.

Buying an electric car has made me realise that if Leiston had plenty of public car charging points, visitors to the Suffolk coast would come and spend a couple of hours in the town while they charge their EVs.

However hard we pretend to be, we are all fragile and vulnerable. I know this perhaps better than most.

In 1847 Richard Cobbold wrote a story based on the life if his mother’s servant. It became a best seller, because he wrote about what he knew, and wrote well. I don’t know the subject of my next book as well as Cobbold knew Margaret Catchpole, so must take my reader on a journey, so that we can find out together.