Country Life

I went down to see my friend Bad - aka Bad - for the evening in Suffolk last night, which was very mellow and pastoral.

As is usual with an evening with Bad, we:

1) Ate too many oysters
2) Drank mad drinks - sherry, vodka with Angostura bitters etc.
3) Smoked some fish (it's not a euphemism)
4) Admired his garden. He grows great stuff like loganberries (they are posh raspberries) and artichokes and fennel and figs. I asked Bad how come he knew so much about growing stuff. "Masters First Class in Tropical Agriculture," he said.
5) Talked about his kids who were away with Mrs Bad at that festival that David Cameron is threatening to attend to show his green cred. I think it is called The Green Festival. (Literal PR lot you've got there David.)
6) Discussed Bad's work, which is very cool and all about trying to create affordable housing out of used containers.
7) Discussed my work, which is currently very uncool and involving me trying to get people to employ me when all they want to do is go on holiday and forget about work for a while.
8) Took a few calls from our respective wives to make sure we were okay. (Women, huh? You and your mate try to recreate a Russian Banya in his garden on one snowy December evening, and then you burn some Calvados to see if it will explode. And they never forget it.)
9) Took a dip in Bad's new pool
10) And generally hung out and talked about life. (Bad on life: "It's not what you get at the end of it. It's how you get there." He's smoked a lot of fish over the years.)

When I spoke to mrs househusbandnot this morning before I got onto the train she asked me why I was sounding a bit flat. I think it was because I had been thinking about us getting the hell out of London and growing loganberries and figs. But when I was done talking with mrs househusband, Bad told me a ferret had killed all four of his chickens, and that there wasn't a shop within 20 miles to get me a paper to read on the train home. I'll stick to the vicarious visits rather than the full transfer for now.

(Sorry this post is a bit late today. The Badger Line train back in from Suffolk took ages and ages, and ages. I never realised quite how slowly a train could go while technically moving.)