Childrens Festival in sunny Suffolk

Sorry for the lack of updates - I've been tent-bound and festi-focussed. But, lots of pics coming soon....just nipping off to Paris for a writing course, am so excited - roll on the pre-EuroStar champers at St. Pancras!

Back next week where Jimmy will be doing his thing at the Bury St Edmunds and Haverhill Childrens Festival - 11th & 12th August.

If you're anywhere near then come on over - it'll be a veritable smorgasbord of entertainment.

Great to be home

I loved going back to Bury. I don't know whether I found it such a comfortable fit because it was so familiar or if it's that I am reassured by the cosy, miniature nature of it compared to London. I love adventures, don't get me wrong, but there is an opposing force in my nature - especially in the winter - that just longs to hibernate; snuggle into some pliant warm space and not emerge til March. Since I can't I take comfort from the likes of Bury - friendly, encouraging, uncomplicated and manageable. They even ran a 'homecoming' type piece on me in the Bury Free Press and hordes of people came by to wish me well and sample the wares.

Next chance to go back - I'm there.

Going home! Bury St Edmunds Christmas Fair - this w/e

I'm so excited because this weekend I'm jumping in the van and going back to Bury. This is where I spent most of my school life, discovered the great art of bunking, mixing pre-alcopop 'refreshers' in the Abbey Gardens, going midnight rambling and looking for as much trouble as a little old market town could provide. I loved it and can't wait to spread some of the cocoa love there.

If you live anywhere near and you need a pick-me-up of the chocolate variety, we'll be in the Abbey Gardens by the kid's entertainer (reminiscing on those gruesome Thunderbirds moments...).

Aldeburgh Food & Drink Festival

I left London too late on Friday to get away with an easy journey. It took hours of snailing along to Blackheath along the A2 and then onto the A12 from the M25 - but once I'd shaken Ipswich free and had slid off at Melton I was back in the world I love. I spent my early years living by the sea here - a marsh-fringed, thinly glazed vast tract of coast with a light to it all of its own. Inland a bit lay the woods. They were where the magic happened as far as I was concerned, and now, though diminished brutally, they still call me in, rustling enticingly.

I drove through the woodland, barely a soul on the road and inhaled deeply that great pine needle fug. Through the villages; Rendlesham, Eyke, Sudbourne until I reached Orford and the red dirt track that leads to my uncle's house. Barely through the front door and I had his six kids throwing themselves at me, desperate for ice cream. We all trooped down the garden path and I doled out the sweet stuff and then went in for supper and a nice cold beer with my uncle and aunt.

I slept a sleep of cool serenity and didn't even object at having to haul myself out of bed to get to the food festival so early. It was beautiful out there. Hares dashed luxuriously along chilled, moist fields and the sun bore sideways. Some places are just special. Maybe it's to do with fond early memories, maybe it's the ley lines, but the enchantment I feel when I'm back in East Suffolk is enough to see me through day after day of London cacophony.

The festival was a real East Anglian affair. Loads of blonde women stalked around in their pink sweatshirts and jostling pearls, directing traders onto their pitches. Hersuit old men came blinking out of the woodwork, tashes twitching, tweeds a-billowing and tables groaned all around with local produce. I wonder if I've reached saturation point but I'm feeling increasingly immune to a lot of this fare. Maybe it's not the fare that's the problem but more the fetishisation of it. It's like we have to keep giving ourselves such whacking great slaps on the back for producing anything that's half decent. Like it's not part of our fabric but a whole other piece of clothing that we parade around in.

Still, Aspall cider was there so I was pretty happy and the English wine on offer was working out quite well for me as well. Once again we had a wonderful sunny weekend and what with the brass band, the smell of the BBQ and the river shimmering away it couldn't have been a nicer close to Choc Star's festival season.

Now is the time to step up the pace and start making some new waves....

Sunny Suffolk

Back to Suffolk for a 2am party at Brent-Eleigh - Beppo, Vee and I burnt along the M25 and down the A12 to arrive at B.E for fun and frollicks in the garden til daylight. A gig over at Glemham Hall for the outdoor performance of Don Pasquale was a wonderful flop. I don't remember having such a bad day's takings since I first used to go round fly-pitching in Hammersmith. I think I took £25 - but what a beautiful place!

As the performers belted out opera (in rather disconcerting English: "Ohhhhhhh, I can hear the doorrrrrrrrrr. Dooor, dooor, doooor, oh I can hear the door", etc) Vee and I lay around on the lawn taking it all in and having a good old look round the great, empty house FULL of fascinating stuff.

Up to my Mum's for a day or so of BBQs, mammoth walks, and fixing Jimmy whose clutch had got to a body-seizingly horrendous level.

North Suffolk is like the '50s

Up to Ketts

I peeled myself from the Brent-Eleigh oasis and charged up to another, different kind of heaven - my Mum's house in north Suffolk. She and her boyfriend, Eddie, bought the very retro, '70s conversion in 2000 and have imbued it with their own kind of retro charm. Cor, talk about an e-Bayer's paradise - the place is dripping with goodies and quirky collectibles. Eddie likes things like Michelin Man statues and mannequin's legs; my Ma likes trays with pictures of the Royal family, circa 1960. And Elvis pop-up books and Oaxacan ponchos. It all swirls together down a long bumpy track surrounded by pea fields.

This is flat Suffolk, but with gorgeous water meadows and lazy creeks all around. Now I'm getting away from the influence of London - no leisure communities or polished lawns, just straight up, unaffected countryside.

They're having a lunch party. My mum had thought it might be funny to call up all the people in the phone book whose name has anything to do with chocolate and invite them over. All she could come up with though, was a guy from Sri Lanka called Mr Choktanasakulchai... and she thought it might be a bit perplexing for him.

WHO CAME: Mum, Eddie, me, George & Ingrid Franks and my old pal Lettie.

WHAT WE ATE: Started with some more rum punches - pretty hefty ones - then onto wine with lunch. A big pan of oven baked chicken with fennel, olives, garlic and tomatoes; beatola and mushrooms from the field. Then the most delicious salad in the world ever - watercress, lettuce, marjoram and lovage. This is the taste of the land. It is the taste of the sweet, green lushness of May with just a touch of wild bitterness. I love it and could eat it forever.

DINNER TABLE TOPICS: George is a venture capitalist and I want to pluck as much info from him as possible. He's not giving much away - I don't think he likes talking about himself. So we talk about Lettie's album release and her recording sessions in Woodstock. And how delicious it is when you pour red wine into mash potatoes. Tongue in Scotland is banded about as a destination for me - I fear I may not make it up that far but would love to smash through to the tippy top of Britain.

THE PUD: Relieved of my duties my mum has made a chocolate bread and butter pudding with Willie's chocolate. She's grated cinnamon into it for that Mexican flavour. We all go for it on the cream front and I'm not shy when it comes to seconds.

MY BED FOR THE NIGHT: I stay in the room that they call 'Shit Alley'. I dunno...the name has just kinda stuck and we call it this with a real fondness(!) It is cool and dark and very silent and I end up staying for three nights, idling away in this remote place. A hot, grey/blue haze of days that make me feel like I'm in a Camus novel.

Ferdie's BBQ

I grew up in the garden of my grandparents' house. Off the main road, down into the village, over the river and up the hill stand a pair of gateposts that let you into a world that knows nothing of modern life. It rambles quietly, laying out long sweeping lawns and dense wilderness. The Victorian walled garden is engorged with edibles: strawberries, peas, broad beans, runner beans, purple sprouting broccoli, yellow tomatoes, Jerusalem arthichokes, rhubarb...and as the garden bursts the house quietly crumbles; a prize racehorse still standing but without teeth.

My brother is having a BBQ. He's the greediest person I know and also one of the best cooks and the term 'eat, drink and be merry' could have been made especially for him. When I turn up the boy is cooking!

WHAT WE ATE: Jerk chicken, marinaded pork belly, spicy lamb burgers, meatballs, Sea Bream, sausages, potato salad, radish and lovage salad, tomato pasta salad, rice & peas, green salad.
WHO CAME: Loads of friends and family.

The sun had kind of disappeared but it was still warm enough to all be out on the portico, drinking rum punch, swaying to music and having a blissful day.


THE PUD: My mum made the most cushiony yellow lemon cake ever. You just wanted to grab it up in your hands and sink your teeth into it and then convince everyone else that it had never existed. I produced a batch of very fudgey brownies and a plate of Venezuelan truffles.

Northants and into Suffolk

I'm in love with this touring business. I'm getting to see parts of the country I'd never have thought of before - I mean who knew that Northamptonshire is such an adorable, rollicking part of the world? Sometimes it dips and holds you in dank thickets, but then it will roll out great tracts of sown fields. They have their own Cotswolds which seem that bit more wild and untrammelled then the more famous ones. Honestly, I was the only person on the road that fed away from Tim and Bev's farm - barely nothing around except a tacker and her horse and endless sheep-filled fields. I even managed to do a hit and run on a big old country pile without getting chased off the premises and discover the best village shop ever.


Back on the A14 I couldn't bring myself to land in Cambridge for the night when my home land, mi corazon, was only a few miles on. I called my friend Tasha (who happened to be in the middle of a rum transaction at the time...oh dear) who told me to get on over.

There I hung for a couple of days of R&R. Caught up with hundreds of e-mails and admin, did an 18th birthday party which had a food sculpture, the likes of which I've never seen:

and then got right back to my roots as I drove over to Brent-Eleigh where I grew up and where my brother's birthday BBQ was happening...