A day trip to Diss. to sort out the geography and the places to eat so that we know what we are doing when the Rileys meet us there for a concert in the church in a couple of days. Hot day but blown through by a cool wind. Only The Two Brewers opens early enough to be of use on a concert evening, so it would be better, maybe, to picnic by the Mere. Water up to the concrete brink, with ducks, geese and pigeons… these last flounced up, strutting, ready to mate.

We buy a rug for the landing, warm red, from an Oxfam shop, then drive out to Hoxne where King Edmund’s golden spurs reflected in the brook from where he was hiding under the bridge, and a newly married couple revealed him to the Danes, so he was shot as full of arrows as a pincushion.

The church there has big very faded wall paintings... Seven Deadly Sins as fruit on a tree, each fruit a dragon with the sin in its mouth, and a sprightly young man on top of the tree, as Pevsner says… who is Pride, the church guide says... two devils saw down the tree at the bottom, which seems rather disadvantageous to them but completes the idea of Pride going before a fall. I suppose. An aisle full of noticeboards about the past of the village, links with St Edmund, the Hoxne Hoard. Then the north-east chapel blocked off with benches etc., for restoration.

Against the east wall ...