For a long time, nothing bad ever happened to me in Framlingham. In fact, for years it seemed like a perfectly idyllic spot. I admit that the place is rather anonymously sited, not distinguished by being particularly in the north or particularly in the south. Instead, it's sort of in the east - in mid-Suffolk, conveniently close to the A12 for anyone returning to London from an excursion to Southwold or Aldeburgh.
It is very pretty, however. There are two old postboxes with the slits placed vertically, which is a good idea, if you ask me - well, just as good as having them horizontal at any rate - and a pub with pictures of old Framlingham, which looks just like the Framlingham of today. It's all beautiful Georgian and pre-Georgian higgledy-piggledy houses, and the presence of the castle in the middle of town gives Framlingham what I think of - ahistorically, I know - as a feudal cosiness.
I was there last week, when the 56th Annual Framlingham Town Gala was in full swing. Naturally, it was a very good gala. At one stall, my wife bought something called a Ceanothus (a clue for readers: it comes in a plant pot), and spent the rest of the day saying it was a terrific bargain. At the refreshments stall, I ordered tea for myself and my sons, and the woman who was serving set off towards the urn before reconsidering and saying: "I'll tell you what, I'll make you a pot of fresh."
Later, we all went into the castle, and walked around the battlements. The witty children's author Philip Ardagh once wrote a book called Why Are Castles Castle-Shaped?, and he might have called it Why Castles Are Framlingham Castle-Shaped, so delightfully typical is the building. (The only drawback is the fact that all visitors are issued with audioguide handsets, which means everyone wanders about looking like a BT engineer, and similarly confused.)
After a walk around the battlements, I took a stroll through the castle's dried-up moat, where I came across a very un-Framlingham-like sight: a group of youths drinking lager from cans. Within a second, an electric circuit was completed: I didn't like them, they didn't like me; one of them said . . . well, it was an observation about me. I see no reason why I should perpetuate it before the (relatively) enormous readership of the New Statesman. It has put me off going back to Framlingham again and, worse than that, it made me reflect that my affection for any number of other small English towns is tenuously dependent on nobody ever having made a remark such as that uttered by the lank-haired lager swiller of Framlingham.
London, by contrast - a place where at any given second two complete strangers are exchanging insults - has one great benefit: the impossibility of disillusionment.
