Shropshire Star

Peter Rhodes on a great British treasure, our plastic legacy and the politics of no-change change

Sutton Hoo, Suffolk.

Published
The Sutton Hoo helmet

OUR Suffolk trip took us to Sutton Hoo where a fabulous Anglo-Saxon ship-grave was uncovered in 1939. The grave and its treasures became one of those Great British Things, along with the Queen Mary and Mallard steam loco, that appeared in every children’s encyclopaedia and comic you ever picked up.

I ALWAYS meant to visit this place but never did, until now. On a sunny spring day with the gorse exploding across the plain and the magnificent National Trust centre not yet open, we walked around the burial mounds, admiring the view down the valley to Woodbridge and wondering, now that the treasures of the first mounds have been removed, polished and replicated, what other glories remain to be found.

ONE of my great-uncles mischievously told me when I was about nine that Sutton Hoo has a famous owl colony, which he pronounced Sutton Hoo-hooo. He also told me about the pepper mines of Ashow and Britain’s world-famous bicycle-bell factory at Tring. What else are great-uncles for? Incidentally, on your travels don’t forget the neo-Gothic headquarters of the United Kingdom Swearing Society at Effingham. Similar contributions welcome.

NO prizes for guessing what buried treasure we are leaving in the ground for our descendants 1,000 years from now – plastic. You may have noticed that the ring-pull can which has served us well for the past few decades is being challenged by an aluminium version with a clever flip-top opener and the claim “an infinitely recyclable alternative to plastic bottles.” But the flip-opener is made of a piece of plastic and the contents, spring water, come all the way from the Austrian Alps. They still don’t get it, do they?

AND nor do some celebrities. The mocking of Emma Thompson who flew thousands of miles to join the Extinction Rebellion demo, may mark the beginning of the end of celebrity do-gooders. The so-called “0.1 Per Cent,” the super-rich who are so small in number yet own so much of the Earth’s bounty, are already scorned in the US. The same will surely happen here. Put simply, you can either save the planet or live a celebrity lifestyle, but not both. Camels, needles, and all that stuff.

WE walked from Aldeburgh along the shingle and dunes to Thorpeness, a pretty little fantasy holiday village opened, with disastrous timing, just before the First World War broke out in 1914. It has the same unreal, timeless feel as the fake village of Portmeirion in north Wales where The Prisoner was filmed all those years ago. If Patrick McGoohan were chased down the main street of Thorpeness by a big white balloon, I’m not sure anyone would look twice.

THIS has been just a short holiday. Back to politics tomorrow. Incidentally, does anybody know why the party that wants to keep everything the same calls itself Change UK?