Far better off up North

What is it with Suffolk? The last twelve months alone has seen the mass slaughter of prostitutes in Ipswich, two separate outbreaks of bird flu, the arrival of midge-borne bluetongue disease, and an almost deadly tidal surge. One of my cousins is married to a Suffolk vicar. I can’t help thinking that his prayers are proving singularly ineffective. Indeed, they seem to have been positively counter-productive, calling down the twenty-first century equivalent of a Biblical curse.

In fact, the only redeeming feature I can detect is that it gives us all the chance to cloak a well-known obscenity in geographical decency:

“How are you feeling, old man?”
“Completely and utterly Suffolked.”