An old man with a thick scar zigging across his bald head sat on a bench in the fine rain eating an ice cream.

"How far you going, young lady?" he asked, as I packed my tent and paniers on to my bicycle.

He started to give me his life story. Before and after school- he left school when he was 14- he worked on farm land on what is now a forest belonging to the forestry commission. He was born in Walberswick and lived there all his life. A few years ago his car was hit by an oil tanker and they thought he would die. He survived, but his wife left him and wouldn't let him see his three children. He claims incapacity benefit- because the knock to the head obviously made him a little what the English like to call 'special'- and then his house burnt down. But life, he said cheerfully as I tried to protect my sleeping bag from the drizzle, has never been better because he lives on his own and can do what he likes. He got a new thatch roof on the insurance, too.

It was a magical weekend of sleeping in the sand dunes and waking to the perfectly wide and calm sea. We played cricket with some local boys on their stag weekend, using two burnt sausages as the bails, while the summer solstice sun lit us late into the night. We bundled firewood in the forest, strapped it to the bikes and cycled through the narrow lanes knocking into trees as we went. We ate Sandwich Spread sandwiches on Southwold pier and drank red wine from tooth mugs. We ate chips and drank Adnams in a pub while the rain came down, and had cream tea in a garden full of poppies and lavender. Back at Liverpool Street station, someone had put a piano on the pavement. As the perfect end to the weekend, H. sat down and played.

Late last night, while I was negotiating the London underground filled with eastern Europeans and African shift workers, a +221 call buzzed on my phone.

"Hello?" I said.
"'Allo. C'est qui?" asked the caller, a classic Senegalese way of making a phone call.
"Who are you?" I asked back.
"I'm looking for Rose. Rose Mbaye. She's a Senegalese. Are you a Senegalese?"

His squeaky voice made me think it was a friend playing a trick on me. While people rushed around me, I stood in the ticket office and giggled at this ridiculous conversation, enjoying it for its unique west African flavour. The guy eventually hung up. A complete, random mystery that in the cold light of a London Sunday night, was ultimately cheering.