A quick visit to Meerkovo

You may recognise this as the 'Queasy Mongoose' in Meerkovo, the latest addition to the wonderful world of comparethemeerkat.com. However, for those of us who live in Suffolk, it's probably better known as 'The Bell' in Kersey, where the advert was filmed.

Kersey is probably best known in these parts for its 'splash', where a tributary of the River Brett runs across the main street, and it is a remarkable chocolate box confection of a village.

And now that Ros and I have a little time to ourselves, Ros has taken to showing me bits of the county that I haven't seen before, so we drove through Bildeston and on across the gently rolling countryside that is South Suffolk. It isn't dramatic, and consists almost entirely of arable farmland, but the beauty of the county is in its built environment. Oh yes, once upon a time the wealth of the country lay in villages like Kersey, with wool bringing in the money.

And upon the small hill overlooking the village is the church, much bigger than you might expect from a village the size of Kersey, but again the result of the wealth generated by the wool trade with Flanders.

Of course, beyond the hill is the council housing, out of sight of the main village, and something not exactly unusual in Suffolk villages, where council housing tended to be built on the edges. But you wouldn't expect to see that in Meerkovo, would you?...