We moved from Essex to Suffolk fourteen years ago, leaving a metropolitan area on the edge of London to come to a hamlet surrounded by fields. Some of the first people I met were my immediate neighbours.

Pretty soon, I found that these ladies baked, made jam and went blackberrying while still managing to work and bring up a family. I felt a touch inferior, the city girl who used shop-bought crumble mix and didn’t know a crab apple from a bullace.