Esther Freud: If it's sunny we go to the beach. If it's rainy we still go. Ah, Suffolk in summer

Every summer for the past five years I've packed the cat, the children and as much luggage as will fit into my Renault Clio and headed for the Suffolk coast. Gone are the stressful London school holiday choices. Whether to go to the Natural History or the Science Museum? To Clown Town, Pirates Playhouse, or that labyrinth of tunnels and slides underneath the Westway? In Suffolk there is very little choice. If it's sunny, we go to the beach, and if it's rainy, we go to the beach anyway, and very occasionally we remember to take macs.

Ten days ago, when we arrived here in the middle of the night, eight-year-old Albie, who'd kept himself awake especially, jumped out of the car, grabbed a torch, and ran straight into the garden to inspect the fruit. The tiny wild strawberries were ripe, we ate a few, and there were several raspberries that hadn't been got by the birds, and a lot of gooseberries, very fat and yellow, hanging between perilously sharp thorns. The damsons were mostly hard. We found one that was ripe, and the greengages had at least a month to go. "Look," he shone his torch high along our neighbour's wall, "I can see at least three figs." And he ran off to test the apples. It was only then I thought to ask why he was suddenly so interested, never knowingly having eaten fruit before. "I'm going to set up a stall and sell it," he told me, "and then I can use the money to buy sweets."

When I first started coming to this village, 20 years ago, I rented a holiday house so basic that I found it difficult to persuade anyone to stay there with me, and if I did entice them, it was rare that they willingly returned. The house was really a hut, with two tiny bedrooms, a bathroom suffering from damp, and a bookshelf, the highlight of which was an illustrated hardback, Crochet for the Family.

So you can imagine how I felt when, after 15 years of precarious rentals, an elderly couple in the village decided they wanted to sell their house, and they wanted to sell it, if at all possible, to a member of my family. The house had originally been the village pub, but when a newer, larger pub had been built behind it, an enterprising builder had taken it apart and transported it, apparently by wheelbarrow, to the site it stands on now.

Not so long after, a friend of my grand- parents had bought it, a psychiatrist from Vienna, who had in turn left it to a cousin of my father. And so it was that the current owners, who had met this particular cousin in an internment camp on the Isle of Man, felt inclined to sell it to someone who'd cherish not just the house and garden, but all the possessions they planned to leave behind. And yes, that was part of the deal. Everything would stay.

When we moved in we found it wasn't just their possessions that filled every corner of the house, but those of the two previous owners as well. It was like a small museum, and like a museum everything was labelled. Not just the towels and sheets, but the napkin-rings had names attached to them, and almost every object had a sticker or a tag, so miraculously, for the first time in my life, I actually know where to find things.

Over the years that I've been coming to this seaside village it has changed enormously. Not so long ago the shop closed on Saturday before lunch and didn't open again till Monday morning. The tea shop sold sandwiches strictly between 12pm and 2pm and woe betide anyone who wanted anything more filling than a flapjack after that. "Look around," I was once told when I arrived, starving at five past two, "if I give you a sandwich everyone will want one." But now the shop is open late, sandwiches are served all day.

But what I wasn't sure about was whether the judges of the annual horticultural show were still operating on the strict guidelines that had disqualified my mother's carrots in the 1970s for being presented with their sprouting ends. Usually the show passes us by, but this year, the children (lured on by the promise of a cash prize) had submitted an entry.

Seven of them had worked together and made a model of the local stables out of vegetables. They made horses from fennel bulbs, onions and sweet potatoes, the gate and pens from slices of carrot, even the woman who works there, feeding and grooming for the past 25 years - depicted quite recognisably by four runner beans and a radish.

Our entry was taken to the village hall, the judges were led in and then at two o'clock almost the entire population of the village thronged in to see who had won. My heart in my mouth, I looked along the heaped tables. There were sweet peas and geraniums, cakes, and bread and jam. And although there were many prizes given, highly commended notices scattered liberally, the judges, it seemed, were still capable of being harsh.

"Far too much cream!" was the written consensus regarding a plate of butterfly cakes, "wings too thick." And some redcurrants were disqualified because seven bunches had been submitted rather than six. But hallelujah, our stables had won first prize and a special award too, which meant all seven of the children were able to rush out to the sweet shop (still open) and spend their 50p cash prize.

Esther Freud's latest novel is 'The Sea House', published by Hamish Hamilton