Connections

Duplicate bridge as extreme sport? Hardly, but it is a dangerous game. You only have to think of all those hands, 68 of them yesterday, using tissues and hankies, touching their faces and worse, and then handling the cards, to get the picture. You don't need a vivid imagination. And so it was hardly surprising that I woke up this morning with a runny nose. The first bridge after the Christmas break and they got me. I try to remember not to touch my face when I'm playing bridge with so many people, and especially my mouth, until I've been to the bathroom. I even have a small bottle of sterilizing gel in my bag for emergencies. But when H brought me a cup of tea and two chocolate digestives halfway through the afternoon, incurring the unspoken wrath of our newest opponents for being late back to the table, I must admit I fell on them with unprotected paws. I was hardly going to use my eyebrow tweezers.

I spent the morning indoors, ironing, reading, watching the rain fall from a drab sky, but the afternoon brought clear blue, and so I set out for a walk, streaming nose notwithstanding. And what an eventful walk it turned out to be! First I encountered a sporty looking lady with silver hair, my sort off age, running down the hill. She stopped for a brief chat, and we exchanged fitness regimes. Then I came upon Sarah from across the lane, and she invited me over for a drink. The air was filled with the sound of water as the morning's downpour dashed and hurtled into the ditches. Such a thrilling music, and so satisfying to see it neatly herded and corralled. At the bottom of the second long hill I stopped outside pretty Garden Cottage, mouth agape. For the River Alde, usually just a trickling stream, was in full spate around the outside of the house, literally cornering like a slaloming skier where it had to follow the bend before speeding on across the field. I hung over the fence and watched, exhilarated by the sight, soaking it up, and noticing for the first time the remains of an old tower by the edge of the water. Then who should come by but my running lady, and so I pointed out the river to her with delight, eager to share my discovery with someone. "I live there!" she told me, and I got the full story of how she and her architect husband had bought it as a dilapidated mill and turned it into a thing of extreme beauty. "I'm literally going in to change and go out again, but next time you're passing come in and have a cup of tea, and I'll show you the house," she said. We introduced ourselves and shook hands - Shirley and Robert, they are. I've been longing to see Garden Cottage: what luck.

The River Alde steaming through Garden Cottage

The river was once navigable all the way to Aldeburgh

I walked briskly home, uphill and down, for 20 minutes. Shirley had told me of her feelings cycling down the hill to her house from mine on a summer's evening, the fields on either side filled with golden wheat. "It's heavenly," she breathed. "The most perfect spot in Suffolk. There really is nowhere prettier." Well, I didn't argue. As I had neared her house earlier I was thinking that happiness is such a strange concept, and it can take so little to invoke it. At that moment I had tried to imagine anything, just one single thing, that would make me happier than I was feeling just because the day and the countryside were so lovely and I was privileged enough to be experiencing them. And I could not think of a single thing.