I went to Virginia Woolf’s house at the weekend. I’d never heard of it before but it’s right here in our midsts and it is beautiful. It’s in Rodmell which is quite difficult to find. I got lost on the way.

I’m glad I made it. Monk’s House is so quintessentially Sussex that at a first glance you can’t be sure if it hasn’t just been built by the tourist board as a local equivalent of Disney World.

The 17th century house is delightfully small and ramshackle, early summer bees buzz around the lavender in the exquisite garden which is just coming into full bloom, blossom bursting from the fruit trees.

A little further up through the garden is Woolf’s summer house where she wrote some of the most innovative novels in English literature.

The bucolic setting is, on the surface, a strange setting for such revolutionary activity but that is the least of it in the short tormented life of a literary giant.

For stunning work, critical acclaim and heavenly surrounds could not save Woolf. Stalked by depression for her entire life, possibly brought on by abuse in her childhood, she filled her pockets with stones and walked into the nearby Ouse in March, 1941.

The voices in her head had simply overwhelmed her. Her cremated remains are buried under an elm in the garden at Monk’s Walk. Walking around is at once to be filled with wonder at natural beauty but also reminded that even that can’t save some of us from the demons that haunt.

S o it’s the annual shall we/shan’t we? Go to Latitude Festival I mean.

We’ve been going for five straight years, and while the Suffolk music festival might be described as a mecca for Guardian readers, three foot of mud and slanting rain is no respecter of skinny lattes and cinnamon croissants.

I’ve got a VW camper van (Westfalia if you please, none of this modern 1980s rubbish) which gives me some degree of comfort while my sons recklessly pitch camp in a small tent as close to the arenas and the footfall and the noise as possible.

Even so as I get older it becomes harder. Four nights without sleep, standing for hours in fields, drinking and eating greasy noodles and paying through the nose for the privilege has drawbacks. And Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds are headlining. Nevertheless I do love living in the bubble of the festival.

The Man’s not allowed in and you find yourself sporting an inane smile for most of the time.

Keep away from the main arenas and you discover some brilliant youngsters playing great new music. So its creaking limbs versus unbridled hedonism.

Shall we go? I think we shall.

I know you’re all bored of the election but I hope you don’t mind me remarking that the confounding of the pollsters made me smile.

I was a news editor at a paper in Labour stronghold Hull in 1992 where we had prepared a front page that said something like, Prescott (John the local MP) In Line For Top Job, so certain were the polls that Neil Kinnock would beat John Major.

At around 11pm the key swing seat of Basildon stayed true blue, the 24-page supplement was quickly downgraded to 12 and, with a quick stab at the delete button, the editor consigned the front page to the dustbin of history.

Five years before as a reporter I was sent to cover the crucial swing seat of Gravesend.

Again many pundits and pollsters said Labour would take it from the Tories even if they were unlikely to oust Mrs Thatcher from Number 10. At about 9.30 I approached the previously ebullient Labour candidate and asked him how it was going. With a sweep of his arm at the piles of papers in the blue corner he said: Not a chance, never did have. You learn your lesson.