![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The day after our visit to our old home, my brother and I drove to Suffolk. (Well, he drove. He's the one with the car.) This wasn't a random trip: our grandparents lived in Suffolk, and it being a while - years in my case - since we had visited their and my father's graves, it seemed like something we wanted to do, and something we should do together.
Perhaps bizarrely - though it seemed perfectly normal to me - we took with us our mother's ashes. My brother had brought them from Oxford and they had sat in my dining room overnight; the cat had played with plastic bag containing the urn.
We had thought we might scatter a handful of the ashes over father's grave, but in the end we didn't: it was a wet, gloomy day and it didn't feel right. (I believe it is also illegal, though that wasn't actually part of our consideration.) We hadn't wanted a ceremony, but in the event it felt so unceremonial and gloomy we decided to do this at some other time, if at all.
I was surprised how unemotional I felt looking at the graves - I think I was expecting more of a reaction.
We didn't stay long, driving a short way up the lane to look at the house that had been my grandparents', which had changed very little. Of Tudor origins (I think), there is probably very little that could be changed from the outside. It was tempting to walk up the drive and peak through the windows, but it is a long drive to have to run down once the natives have been annoyed...
We had lunch at a nearby pub. Not the nearest - surprising, since it was the pub that our father used to escape to. Whilst I know I must have been there before as a child - and knowing the pub's name very well - I had absolutely no recollection of the building or its location at all. I had a couple of pints of beer (I wasn't driving, after all) and steak and ale pie for lunch - suitably stodgy pub grub. The pub was very busy for Monday lunchtime and its rural location: the carpark was nearly full, and the kitchen overwhelmed with lunch orders, so our food took ages to come.
After lunch we went on a wild railway chase. My brother wanted to explore a local railway museum: the "Middy" - the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway. Curiously, the railway didn't seem to run near any large villages or towns, which may be why it closed in the early 1950s (more than a decade before Beeching. It cut across country, a branch line from the London to Norwich mainline, without going anywhere. During the war it was used to supply ad hoc airfields with armaments.
The museum was closed - it is only open on holidays and weekends. (Curiously, every event they list includes a real ale bar. They take their railways seriously in Suffolk.) We poked about on the platforms, and I saw a sign advertising Hadfield's fertiliser in the waiting room (the railway's traffic was largely agricultural). Another old family business we knew nothing about.
There is also a family connection to this railway: our grandfather used it as the model for a branch line in a novel.
One of the railway volunteers saw us and came over; I was expecting to be told to go away, but he couldn't have been more hospitable. He had a broad, rustic Suffolk accent which I hadn't heard for years. He opened up the shop and my brother bought some stuff.
A successful day. I slept off the lunchtime beer as my brother drove back to London.
Perhaps bizarrely - though it seemed perfectly normal to me - we took with us our mother's ashes. My brother had brought them from Oxford and they had sat in my dining room overnight; the cat had played with plastic bag containing the urn.
We had thought we might scatter a handful of the ashes over father's grave, but in the end we didn't: it was a wet, gloomy day and it didn't feel right. (I believe it is also illegal, though that wasn't actually part of our consideration.) We hadn't wanted a ceremony, but in the event it felt so unceremonial and gloomy we decided to do this at some other time, if at all.
I was surprised how unemotional I felt looking at the graves - I think I was expecting more of a reaction.
We didn't stay long, driving a short way up the lane to look at the house that had been my grandparents', which had changed very little. Of Tudor origins (I think), there is probably very little that could be changed from the outside. It was tempting to walk up the drive and peak through the windows, but it is a long drive to have to run down once the natives have been annoyed...
We had lunch at a nearby pub. Not the nearest - surprising, since it was the pub that our father used to escape to. Whilst I know I must have been there before as a child - and knowing the pub's name very well - I had absolutely no recollection of the building or its location at all. I had a couple of pints of beer (I wasn't driving, after all) and steak and ale pie for lunch - suitably stodgy pub grub. The pub was very busy for Monday lunchtime and its rural location: the carpark was nearly full, and the kitchen overwhelmed with lunch orders, so our food took ages to come.
After lunch we went on a wild railway chase. My brother wanted to explore a local railway museum: the "Middy" - the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway. Curiously, the railway didn't seem to run near any large villages or towns, which may be why it closed in the early 1950s (more than a decade before Beeching. It cut across country, a branch line from the London to Norwich mainline, without going anywhere. During the war it was used to supply ad hoc airfields with armaments.
The museum was closed - it is only open on holidays and weekends. (Curiously, every event they list includes a real ale bar. They take their railways seriously in Suffolk.) We poked about on the platforms, and I saw a sign advertising Hadfield's fertiliser in the waiting room (the railway's traffic was largely agricultural). Another old family business we knew nothing about.
There is also a family connection to this railway: our grandfather used it as the model for a branch line in a novel.
One of the railway volunteers saw us and came over; I was expecting to be told to go away, but he couldn't have been more hospitable. He had a broad, rustic Suffolk accent which I hadn't heard for years. He opened up the shop and my brother bought some stuff.
A successful day. I slept off the lunchtime beer as my brother drove back to London.