To tell you the truth, I was still a bit bombed out from the night before when I arrived at this churchyard. I had been sure that the bike ride would clear my head, but there was still the distracted throb, the glint in my peripheral vision, a sense of wonder that seemed to come from somewhere outside of myself. The steep churchyard was full of birdsong and early spring sunlight, and it was like the ultimate chillout room. I hauled my bike off the road, and climbed into the noisy silence.

A blackbird's pipe scraped across the old ironwork of the fenced graves. A distant air rose like a rising lark, but couldn't be; it was a flurry of coal tits, hurling out of the woods. I walked to the top of the graveyard. The earth exhaled its mushroomy dampness, the fragrant wild thyme early among the tussocks. I sat down, my back against a headstone facing down towards the east, and took the photo you see above.

Mettingham is a mile, or less, from Bungay, but I would not call it a suburb. It is high on a hill, the town in the valley below. It is part of the peace that surrounds all activity, the real world beyond our transitory bustle. Once, there was a college of Priests here, and a castle, just like Wingfield. Wingfield is famous, and Mettingham isn't, but part of the castle survives, on the road towards Ilketshall St John.

For the first time in months, I felt the glimmer of heat on my skin; the sun yearning closer to the equinox, urging the Earth alive. I thought of Larkin: The trees are coming into leaf, like something almost being said. It had been a strange winter, and I was no longer the person I had been when it had begun. Now, I lifted my face to the glow, closing my eyes: Last year is dead, they seem to say, begin afresh, afresh, afresh...

My heart was full of this gentle moment. Here in the woods above the Waveney, I felt at peace for the first time in months. I imagined myself alone in the world, deep in a heady isolation that seemed to ramify and echo around me. I had recently read something Keats wrote in a letter to his brother: I believe in the holiness of the heart's affections, and the truth of the imagination...

I stood up, and wandered down into the amphitheatre of this pretty building's setting, a jewel in a cushion of emerald and granite. The stones on the south side were older, 18th century; Mary was the relict of Shadrach Hafflett, and wife of George Robinson. Cherubs and skulls abounded, a gorgeous frisson of birth and death, of the glorious flying away of time.

My mind colluded with the mood. I turned the corner, and saw a mason had been at work, restoring the stone of the windows. His scaffolding and tools lay waiting, and I thought of Hardy, and poor Jude, and how, when we visit a medieval church, we place it in a context so different from most of the years it has travelled through to meet us.

I thought, is it right to think of Jude, and those passionate Victorians that this building meant so much to? The 19th century was our last great age of Faith, and perhaps one of the greatest of all. Or should my imagination travel further back, and watch the gravestones disappear, and the Reformation come and go, and where would I be then? Here on this hill top, in the woods to the east of Bungay, who would I see five hundred years ago? For then, this was the centre of all power, and all imagination, the touchstone for generations.

Shall I tell you that this church is round towered, and that it is a beautiful round tower, which Mortlock thought Saxon? There is a splendid Norman doorway in the north wall, and you can see the original roofline of the church above it. A jolly grotesque looks down on you while you do this. There is a squarish south aisle, and the porch that leads into it is grand, but probably no longer used. The main entrance is now to the north.

I've no idea what All Saints is like inside, because obviously, so obviously, I found it locked without a keyholder. There weren't even any churchwardens listed. I happen to know that the Rector lives a few miles off in Ringsfield, and would like his churches to be open, but they aren't. A building and graveyard like this is one of the best single acts of witness the church of Christ has in the world today, but the oafish parishes of the Waveney valley are more concerned with the protection of their property, so you won't be able to enter into their ancient peace, and be consumed by their transcendence, by the sheer eternity of their continuing presence. They are locked, and become yesterday's buildings, for yesterday's people.

I went and sat in the graveyard again. I watched two doves flutter and flirt out of a pine tree, unselfconscious, unaware of their part in the circle of things. They began their gentle mating on the wing. Suddenly, dropping from the air, a kestrel fell, a stone smashing them apart, grabbing the female, hurling her to the ground. The violence was shocking, and shook me out of my mood; but it made me think that the beat of passing generations is not the gentle peace of a springtime graveyard, but the noisy rhythm of birth, sex and death. This is what places like Mettingham are about - not the cold stones, but the sheer ecstacy of human activity, the vivid wrench of real life, of people surviving and somehow triumphing, and handing something on; not a baton exactly, more a way of being, a way of continuing. Life isn't kind, or fair, or peaceful; but we exist because other people survived it.

I had been here too long. Bungay was calling, churches, breakfast and all. I felt alive, clear headed, my bloodstream free of the last traces, the mounting heat of the day beckoning me onwards. Let life begin again, I thought, begin afresh, afresh, afresh. And I left.

All Saints, Mettingham, is on a hill just outside of Bungay, on the way to Beccles. Guess what? I found it locked.