Aldeburgh

I’m glad I didn’t die without visiting Aldeburgh (pronounced “Aldboro”). Now I know why K-Punk considers Suffolk to be his spiritual homeland. It’s a beautiful part of England, with captivating seaside and rolling rural fields of understated beauty.

Benjamin Britten wrote plenty of music in Aldeburgh.

The ghost story writer M.R. James also spent a great deal of time in this place, and his story “A Warning to the Curious” was set in “Seaburgh,” which is known to be Aldeburgh under a pseudonym.

I spent part of the morning reading James ghost stories down on the beach with seagulls squawking overhead. Later, I was walking with two guests near the beach and one of them found, of all things, a bone flute on the ground! That’s a bit creepy because in the James story “Oh Whistle, My Lad, and I’ll Come to You,” “Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad,” the pompous academic blows a bone flute he found near the beach and it summons a horrifying ghost into his room at night. (ADDENDUM: Just read the actual story this morning, which I knew only from the excellent filmed version before. In the written story it is a brone whislte, not a bone-flute.)

All right, it’s a bit lame to be live-blogging a party rather than attending it. Over and out till later, perhaps much later.