St Matthew’s, Ipswich
With the help of an unassuming little one-way street my satnav wasn’t aware of, a roundabout and some road works, one third of my journey time was consumed by the last hundred metres of travel. So I arrived at the church somewhat flustered, and was met by a suspicious man at the door wanting to know what I was doing there. I hadn’t been told to pick up a key at the church office – at least, I didn’t think I had – but clearly this person wasn’t expecting me, and was concerned about locking the church on his departure.
I offered to ring the office, and Tami, my contact, kindly came over with a key. But then a further problem arose: the man, who turned out to be the gardener, wanted to lock me inside the church. I wasn’t too thrilled by the prospect, even though I was now in possession of a key. It wasn’t that it made much practical difference: my objection – horror, even – was due to the motivation behind such a suggestion, rather than the reality of being locked in.
Not long before Covid hit, I’d written to six owners of private churches in Suffolk to ask if I might come along and play to them in their houses. As with the 
I rang the churchwarden at Sproughton with some trepidation: even so near the end of my church tour, I still found it hard to phone churchwardens or vicars out of the blue. But my additional hesitation came from the fact this church was in the same benefice as 
For once, I should have trusted my satnav – or at the very least reminded myself of the exact location of Carlton Colville in relation to Lowestoft before I set off. I thought I had plenty of time, but my decision to drive through Herringfleet into Lowestoft made the journey nearly half an hour longer than it should have been, in part due to a single-track-road delay caused by an astonishingly large herd of farm machinery. But thankfully there were no serious consequences: only a few people had stayed on after the service, wandering about the church in no rush for anything to happen, as far as I could see. Which was a relief, as I felt pretty rough this morning. My church appointments had to be kept, but it had occurred to me that I didn’t actually need to get home today. 
I didn’t fancy a long drive after my church visits were over, and I hadn’t yet managed a walk in Loddon, where I was staying – which seemed a grave omission – so that morning I’d arranged to stay an extra night to enjoy a leisurely Sunday afternoon.
Herringfleet was the only church on the Broads that I had yet to visit, as it was under scaffolding and full of builders the last time I was in the area. I’d arranged with the vicar that it would be left open for me, so I walked confidently up to the door at noon, only to find it locked.
I’d arranged a full weekend of church visits in and around Lowestoft, with the result that I was giving at least two concerts, if not more, in two days. I’d slightly lost track of which ones were concerts and which weren’t. I took pains to stress they would be very informal: I was out of solo performance practice and my stamina wasn’t up to a full recital. But I knew that if there were more than a handful of people attending, they would feel like concerts anyway.
By some miracle, I managed to find a parking spot without too much difficulty. The fact it was limited to 3 hours made the afternoon’s logistics a bit more complicated, however: I would have to move my car before going on to my next church, St Helen’s. Walking over the bridge to St Peter’s, I suddenly felt daunted by the prospect of visiting four churches in a day, and wondered how my stamina would hold out. Not my cello-playing stamina so much as my bodily stamina: I was, as usual, feeling unwell in multiple ways, and it had been a while since I’d visited so many churches in a day. 
And this was Ipswich, not the countryside – with accompanying navigation, car-parking and cello-carrying difficulties.
Athelington was to be an unusual church visit: Mike, a sound artist and friend of Steve’s, was joining me to make a recording for BBC Radio Suffolk. My first, and no doubt only, radio broadcast church visit. It was the hottest day of the year so far – 27°C – and it was odd to think that just a month ago I was playing in Felixstowe church in a scarf and fingerless mittens.
It was an idyllic morning when I arrived at Willisham church to play at a Sunday service (though clouded over by the time I took this photo!). It was finally time to meet the cello-playing vicar I’d heard rumours of three years previously, made even more intriguing by the fact his cello – our email correspondence revealed – was made by Joseph Hill senior, the father of the maker of my own cello.