Blessings. Mary Craig

the new slave. Look, the bathroom in the extension is flooded, and the water’s seeped into Edward’s room, and the whole place is in a terrible mess. Would you mind frightfully going over there and seeing what you can do? Good. I’ll go and get a bucket and mop.’ And with that she was off, leaving me feeling as bewildered as Alice accosted by the White Rabbit. I looked down at my good suit, and suddenly saw how ridiculous I must look, standing there kitted out for the London Hilton rather than for flooding bathrooms in deepest Suffolk. The girl was now back with mop and bucket. Resignedly I dumped the suitcase on the gravel, and went off in the direction in which she had pointed, mop-handle tucked under Windsmoor jacket sleeve. ‘By the way,’ the girl shouted after me, ‘I believe you can cook. Well, when you’ve finished cleaning up over there, do you think you could manage supper for seventy? We’ve got a whole group of survivors over from Poland on the Foundation’s Holiday Scheme, as well as the Bods who are always here.’

      That was my introduction to Sue Ryder’s Headquarters (not untypical, as I later discovered). I was sorely tempted to turn right round and head for home. Instead I meekly went off to tackle the flood.

      Two days, several hundredweight of peeled potatoes and many gallons of soup later, I felt I had been there all my life.

      The village is an unlikely backdrop to the lives of the people who have found refuge there. It is a peaceful, sleepy place which minds its own business and does not take all that kindly to foreigners. Sue Ryder’s mother had lived in the converted farmhouse for several years and was much loved in the village, but when Sue moved in with her patients, Mrs Ryder, amid general mourning, went to live in the near-by village of Clare.