Sleepy Suffolk

I was born and brought up in sleepy Suffolk, so called because routinely, pretty much nothing of note happens there. It’s not really on the way to anywhere, you don’t really pass through Suffolk, unless you happen to be unfortunate enough to live in Norfolk (some prejudices never die), or you are a lorry driver, taking containers to Felixstowe.

I was born and educated in Ipswich, although we lived a little village called Raydon until I was about 12, when we moved a to an even smaller one a few miles down the road.

If anyone had heard of Ipswich generally it was because of the football team. Less so now, but they were a top team in the late 70’s and early 80’s, and I have many memories of going to Portman Road to watch them as a young lad.
I haven’t lived in Suffolk now for nearly 20 years, so it is pretty weird for me to suddenly see Ipswich as the lead story on the news. No longer a quiet provincial market town, but the centre of an unprecedented murder hunt and media frenzy. All these places, that I remember growing up, suddenly invaded by news crews scavenging for the latest scoop. Hintlesham, the location of the first woman to be found murdered, was only a short few miles down the road, from my childhood home, and we passed by Copdock (location of the second victims body) every time I went to school.

I have no desire to return to Suffolk to live, but there is something that draws me to the genteel part of the UK. It’s not just that my parents live there … but something of my past life there. My memories. My innocence. My childhood. My roots.

I have heard a number of people over the years, say they want to move back home, having been away from home a number of years. I sometimes wonder if that is us responding to something deep in us yearning for our lost innocence, to recapture our childhood, to go back to place where we felt secure, certain, loved, safe (I appreciate many people don’t feel that way about their childhood!). But I wonder if that desire should take us forward to the future, rather than back to the past. Ultimately, in a chaotic & uncertain world, that kind of certainty and innocence can’t be re-created. But is does demonstrate a longing deep in our hearts for that kind of love & security. Maybe that is what the Bible means when it says that God has “set eternity in the hearts of men”. We long for a different home.

While I wait in the “in-between” stage, maybe that is why I find it so unsettling that Ipswich and Sleepy Suffolk is now headline news with “unprecedented” evil.