"Suffolkating": week one

""When do we leave London, daddy?" asks Emma, 9, as my wife races the rental car up the M11. "See that bridge up there?" I nod ahead where the M25 crosses the motorway. "When we burn - I mean - cross that bridge, we've left London." Strangely I feel nothing as we dip beneath London's corset and emerge into sunlight which seems more pure, innocent: there are 28 years of London in the rearview but I'm looking forward. Lynda drives like a demon to beat the removal truck, its two Romanian strongmen who spent the morning loading fridges and sofas and endless boxes of books and muttering about Kindle. On the back seat Emma and Sean, 7, play DS games, oblivious to the momentousness of the occasion. Only the cats seem as excited as I am: Katy, in her box on my knee, has been meowing pathetically since we started the engine; as we emerge into green fields, pastures new, a pungent aroma fills my nostrils. She's pooped..."

Read the rest of my first "Suffolkating" column at the Huffington Post here.