I can imagine somebody reading this 10 years from now, amazed at how middle class life proceeded right up to the point when all hell broke loose. While we were away over new year, the President of the US illegitimately raided Venezuela and came away with the illegitimate President Maduro and his wife. If Maduro is a bad tooth, then Trump is a TV personality with no business in dentistry. Now Trump’s people control Venezuela and they do not propose to hand it to Edmundo González, widely believed to have won the 2024 elections making him the legitimate president. Instead they propose to keep Maduro’s deputy Delcy Rodriguez in place and force her to cede control of the oil infrastructure Chavez previously commandeered. Trump says the oil is his. He’s paying for it, as long as Venezuela spends the money on US exports. I’d say that the oil belongs to Venezuelans. Obviously to anyone following the IPCC, that oil should not be used in ways that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions or plastic pollution. The last time somebody this nasty and bitter had this much power, a lot of people died. Ha’aretz reports that the Delcy Rodriguez blames the Jews and shut down Venezuela’s Jewish organisations, what’s left of them.

News speeds up before a war. Perhaps this is my last holiday for a while, so here it is – and it was a blinder.

On the 27th December we took a short and easy train journey to a place I liked the look of: Rye, East Sussex. My criteria are that there should be good public transport, a bustling centre with things to do inside and out, history, pubs, vegan food and good walking. I arrived home yesterday feeling that Rye is the closest place I know for a total change of scene from Ilford. Here’s how we spent our time.

We arrived at 4 Ferry Road, our one-bedroom rental in the middle of town, at around 3pm and then set out again to Rye Heritage Centre round the corner for what turned out to be the wrong ghost tour – instead of walking the town we sat looking at the allbeit impressively and dynamically lit town model and watching a film about ley lines and hauntings.

Then we walked the 3 minutes back to the station where the supermarket Jempsons (a partnership with Morrisons) furnished us with the week’s provisions. To conclude the days-long festive cycle of cooking and cleaning for family, we went looking for somewhere to have dinner. We managed to book the last service of the evening at The Union, giving us two hours in the meantime to look at the pubs, including the ancient Mermaid Inn which was full, and the Ypres Castle Inn, which was stuffed with very tall people with dogs who seemed to know each other. We ended up in The Waterworks, Camra East Sussex pub of the year, where the shrewd guv makes sure every seat is taken and commands you to say hello to whomever you’re sitting with. We duly spoke to a local woman and her Belgian husband who now run a good pub south of Ghent. We had a nice chat about everything with three recent graduates. They were replaced by a local couple, I think he collected Bentleys but by then I had imbibed enough half pints of Biddendens extremely strong cider to blur the memory. The Union has a Michelin star, is good for vegans and enjoyable and probably no more pricey than it should be. We returned to 4 Ferry Road, made some guesses about the electric heating and went to bed.

I love 4 Ferry Road – Mim’s Cottage. Everything works, and everything is well chosen. We bumped into the owner and he told me he’s fussy. I love a fussy owner.

The morning of 28th was overcast but dry. Since we were in the Sussex Wine Triangle, we’d booked a vineyard tour and wine tasting at Charles Palmer vineyard about 4 miles’ walk north west of Winchelsea. Rye is surrounded by three rivers and we walked along the Brede, passed Henry VIII’s ruined Camber Castle, followed the defensive Royal Military Canal for a while and arrived at the farm around lunchtime. They’re very gracious at Charles Palmer, not only giving permission to trail mud into their Tasting Room but encouraging us to eat our christmas cake lunch on their sofa. We were lucky to have squeaked in before they close for a few weeks. We enjoyed learning about the grapes and the salinity of the soil, and the possibility of making decent still wine in southern England these days. In the barn we heard about how the machinery operates on the expensively smoothed floor to avoid shaking up the lees from the bottle neck. It was sobering to hear how Covid had accelerated the move away from mainly Ukrainian seasonal pickers to mechanised picking with a machine that is only used for a fortnight a year.

Everyone on the small tour was from London, including a man from another farming family looking to diversify. He had an amazing palate. I can only tell what I’m tasting by texture and colour, so to me everything tasted of wine. But what I loved about this wine was that it wasn’t very sweet. We left in the dusk with two bottles, and a couple from north London stopped in the lane to offer us a lift. On the way back I warmed my hands inside their dog’s jacket. More leftovers for dinner, in the minute kitchen that managed to comfortably accommodate a card table and folding chairs. 4 Ferry Road is a tiny delight of ingenious furnishing.

The weather held for the 29th so we decided to take the 100 bus to Hastings and walk back over the cliffs and Winchelsea beach. We barely stopped to look at Hastings but the net huts were striking. Then we headed up past the East Cliff lift and onto East Hill, hugging the English Coast Path in biting wind through Fairlight, where we were reminded again how invading armies have targeted this part pf the coast, and Cliff End where I saw the most beautiful house, though I would fear for a thatch in these times of heat, drought and fire. It was wonderful to be on the beach for a while, and we headed up through the down to earth parts of Winchelsea, up through the salt marshes where we saw a starfish decoy bunker that ran an operation to divert the Nazis from bombing their intended targets. We stopped in the Mermaid and managed to get a seat practically in the Giant’s Fireplace. Then back to Ferry Road for dinner.

The 30th was bright and bitter and we decided to walk down the other side of the River Rother to Camber Sands. There’s a substantial industrial estate that side – good to see more than tourism. We were diverted by ongoing flood prevention remodelling of the banks and mostly walked on a nice footpath by a fast road with the marshes stretching out to our left. The climb over the dune between the road and the beach was the steepest thing we came across that week.

At low tide Camber and Winchelsea beaches are similarly sandy, but Rother mouth is channelled to the east by a long groyne protecting the Camber side from shingle at high tide, so that east side of the beach is higher and extends further, affording lovely views east. For lunch I had vegan fish and chips at The Owl, which was warm and welcoming, and when I asked about alternative routes I was reminded in a pointed way that people who work on their feet all day may not go in so much for recreational walking. Fair. On the way back we passed the Discovery Centre across the Rother but from that side it gave little indication of what a lovely place it is to visit, and anyway there is no way to get to the other bank until Rye Harbour. We returned to Ferry Road, got changed, had a relax and then ate a good Turkish meal at Diamond Koz (pseudo falafel, but Turkish – Kurdish? – people will be the first to tell you that there isn’t a great tradition of falafel where they come from).

New Year’s eve was piercing cold, which raised my spirits because I’m old enough to know that’s how it always would have been if we hadn’t ruined the climate. We went to the supermarket again to prepare for a visitor late that day, then soaked a country vegetable soup mix and assembled garlic bread. The visitor arrived at roughly the same time as a collapse or a collison in the road close to our front door. This necessitated a lot of people standing round a person on the ground covered in blankets, and no ambulance for at least 30 minutes. I hope they’re recovering. After a pot of tea we went out to lunch at The Old Bell, one of the ancient pubs. They serve a good bean stew for vegans and the wintery sun streamed in. They say the Old Bell and Mermaid are connected by a not so secret, or perhaps fictional, tunnel from the smuggling days. Another thing about Rye is that it has two second hand record shops, numerous home clearance and antique shops, and shops for country gentlemen. This was catnip to our visitor, so we browsed for some time. From the cook shop I bought a tiny whisk and a proper pastry brush, both of which I’d struggled to find in any shops I pass day to day. The weather stayed clear and bitter and I felt unusually happy. While we were in Grammar School Records a town crier sounded and down Lion Street came a bridal party mostly dressed for summer and heading from the St Mary’s church to their reception at The George.

I really enjoyed being out in a bustle of happy people at their leisure and at the same time so close to home. We had some more drinks in The Ypres, The Ship and The Mermaid, which we left at dusk.

At Ferry Road we had our meal and a fair amount of wine including our Charles Palmer demi sec, which was delicious. At around 9 we headed to the Waterworks where we inevitably talked to other pub denizens and I drunk roughly half as much as anyone else. The music was at a hilarious volume where you have to listen quite hard to hear it over the talking. The local police arrived for a head count at around 10.30 which nobody seemed to take amiss, and then again after midnight. It was a bit like Early Doors. After they’d gone we got the theme tune to Z-Cars followed by the theme tune to The Bill.

The bongs came and went and eventually we wove our way home and danced until about 3am in the dark in the tiny kitchen.

On the morning of the 1st I fell down the last few steps of the steep staircase that ends abruptly just before the partition wall necessitating a sharp turn at the bottom – but because I was probably still a bit drunk I flopped onto the ground with no harm done. Drink taketh away and drink giveth. We had vegan sausages and mushrooms on toast for breakfast, and then set out for a walk through the marshes along the other side of the Rother to the Discovery Centre in Rye Harbour Nature Reserve. We lunched on vegan sausage roll, drank blackcurrant and apple juice, looked at the ribbons of gleaming water over the marshes and browsed the lovely shop. It’s a very hospitable place, and a warm haven in the bitter weather. I don’t think you have to spend money to have a sit down inside.

There were a million people with a million dogs, but Rye seems to be a place where you always find a seat. We continued down past more World War 2 pillboxes and onto the shingle beach before turning back to beat the dusk home. We met a Sussex Wildlife Trust membership recruiter who told us it was too busy and nobody could concentrate for long enough to consider membership because of all the dogs and all the kids. He wasn’t sour about it. I’m already a member and donor of an extra £50 pcm. After our friend had got on the Eastbourne train we watched the final episode of Stranger Things (a bit disappointing) and the first episode of Traitors (as fascinating as ever) before going to bed.

The 2nd was our last full day, and we were expecting a large group of friends to converge at 11.45. This transpired smoothly, and we retrod our path to the Discovery Centre, noticing on the way that there’s a zip line in the Rye Harbour play area. This time we were sitting near the binoculars cabled onto the benches along the windows, and I saw some lovely waders I knew the name of at the time. Then to the beach, over the shingle and onto the hard ridged sand. One of the kids’ faces scraped along a concrete groyne – he was very brave but the grazes bled a bit and looked very sore. The sea wall was frozen and slippery, and the mud was on the verge of freezing too. We made our way back past Camber Castle and along the River Brede, hurrying to catch Merchant & Mills the fabric shop before closing time. I bought the Celeste pattern and some buttons.

Then we gathered in The Cricketers pub on Fishmarket Road where it was happy hour with all drinks half price. It’s a friendly down to earth pub. For dinner we all went to Diamond Koz again, after which some started the car journey back to Waltham Forest and the remainder returned to The Waterworks until it was time for the penultimate train back to London, which you can get to very easily from The Waterworks via a level crossing. The Waterworks is a truly great pub. We even bought their tea towel.

We cleared out of 4 Ferry Road on the 3rd. I bought some new jeans on sale in The Golden Fleece, that has a good line in Seasalt stuff. The journey to Stratford was smooth, with a brief change at Ashford. Even the Central Line was kind. We returned to 9 degrees inside the house, but by then we were acclimatised.

I’ll miss the aerated shower, the always-on towel rail, the hooks on the wall near the bed, the bedside tables with drawers, the latches, the ingenious tiny space furnishing, and living so close to a narrow winding passage that in 20 metres transports you to the centre of an impossibly delicious little town with so much of interest in it and around it.

Everything went right. Everything was lovely. We had money in our pocket. I don’t know what the future will bring but nobody can take away my lovely past.