WE VERGE on Lent 3. David and I bump along the valley floor in his Land Rover. Ploughs are out everywhere; the gulls are spoilt for choice. Owing to the rain, nothing could be done until today. The sodden months passed one by one, and then - this perfect growing week for the loam-marsh farmers. Their immense machines rock and roll on either side, and have the companionship of birds. We ride through the distant view in Gainsborough's Cornard Wood, and between the birthplaces of two hymns: "Hills of the North, rejoice!" and "My song is love unknown".

My friend Margaret from Scotland is the priest for this holy landscape, and her husband is the Reader. I know it like the back of my hand, and have to be careful not to bore David with this knowledge. So I listen to his farm-talk with gratitude, keeping an eye on the ploughing, and the gull snowstorm that almost blinds the tractors, and feeling the March gladness when we enter the twisting ravine that announces Sudbury.

To the left, although I keep him to myself, is James Samson, a medieval priest in full rig, a brass fashion-plate for those who like to dress up, and who died in 1349. The Stour writhes and glitters through these old inhabitants. Its muddy fields are drying out. Its seeds are taking. Its temperature is rising. Its air is delicious.

Back at the ranch, we step into floods of snowdrops. The white cat mutters at blackbirds through the window. I find something to say for Sunday. A writer must always have something to say, else all is lost. I water the pot-plants, and promise them freedom once the May frosts have gone. Not long now. Ash logs are piled to comforting heights in the brick corner. I rake off its winter carpet of moss from the cat-slide roof whose tiles at this point are only five feet from the ground - not that the white cat has ever slid down it, being decorous and contemplative by nature, and not scatty. Also bone idle. Although this is a slur, for who knows what a cat is thinking? Who knows what is sleep, and what is contemplation?

All that is certain at this moment is that the spring has come and that the crops know it. And that the Ash Wednesday collect must be said after each Lenten collect.

A book of harsh black-and-white photographs arrives from Germany. The peasant flesh is ploughed with weather and toil; the farm buildings are tottering, but will never fall. The photographer Wolf-Dietmar Unterwegers has an eye for wear and tear. For snowy hair and bitter weather. For the decay of buildings and bodies. For the beauty of what is vanishing. There were Suffolk farms and Suffolk workers who looked like this when I was a boy. Tousled old men, enduring old women, tottering barns, bleached iron, still "useful" bits and pieces. And the cold! When was I last cold, like the people in this shivery book? And their clothes so thin. And their hands so prayerful. I shall make it my Lenten study.

But then there is the Benedicite to be sung. And that is another story. "You will find it at the back of the green prayer-book," I tell the congregation. And the Franciscan repetitions fill the ancient church. The choir keeps its coats on and doesn't robe. The Pope flies away in a helicopter. The past is fast asleep; the birds are wide awake.