One of my earliest memories is of dreading bedtime every night when I was a small child of two or three. I should explain that back then we lived in a four hundred year old Flemish farmhouse, which is still on the farm to this day. I know because one of the first things I did when I came back to Beccles was to cross town to walk the mile and a quarter from the town sign to touch the southern wall of the house I called home back then.

Its only heating was from the ancient coal-fired range in the kitchen and the heavily sooted open fireplace in the living room. While it had electricity and running water, we all used to wash ourselves in a tin bath in front of the fire. As for the toilet it was a soil closet which dad used to empty every couple…