Widgeham Barn, on Poplar Farm, at the edge of the picture perfect village of Fressingfield (pubs, including the renowned foodie Fox & Goose, church, village stores, all enfolded by flat East Anglian farmland) appears to eschew identikit holiday house sanitisation in favour of an increasingly rare commodity - idiosyncratic style. The email confirmation tells me to look out for a giant gnome. Someone has a sense of humour (or a garden full of gnomes).
The plastic gnome is not in the first flush of youth and a pink hand-painted sign for Poplar Farm is almost obscured by a hedge. Andrew Smith is here to show us in (though he and his wife Jojo are not always on hand to do this, I discover, so they really should make that sign more visible from the road - or even erect one which says Widgeham Barn).
My bloke dumps our bags inside the door, next to the centrepiece - a football table. It's going to be impossible to get from the dining area to a sofa without a game. "Come and enjoy yourselves," this place seems to say.
We don't quite know where to look next. In the elongated living space, everything vies for attention. "Maximalist minimalist," says my bloke with glee.
There's a gold, padded cocktail bar, and a Philippe Starck orange Ploof chair with a bubblegum-pink Chairman Mao print cushion. Acid-coloured florals cover a sofa beyond red iron pillars - they hold up the bedroom floor above. A pendant light made from magnifying glasses hangs over a table. Through a latch and brace door, the main bathroom has a mirror designed as a giant TV screen. A metal medicine cabinet contains Andrews liver salts, plasters and a tiny plastic bust of Louis Pasteur.
Two separate wooden staircases lead to a double and a bunk room (with a tiny window for spying on the grown-ups downstairs). The ground-floor double bedroom has a bijou shower room with blue mosaic floor.
Andrew and Jojo pop in to check everything's OK. Andrew was born at Poplar Farm and has lived here all his life. He teaches art at a local school. Jojo runs a mobile hairdressing service (work outfit: lipstick pink tunic, matching 50s sunglasses).
"We just adore 50s, 60s and 70s stuff," she says, adding that they are both inveterate collectors who struggle to keep their collection to a manageable size. Thankfully, their latest acquisition takes up little space - a Penelope Pitstop sticker - now adorning the windscreen of their pink and white camper van parked outside.
Once they leave, hunting for things is a voyage of discovery. The corkscrew, resting among cocktail glasses and plastic flowers, has a miniature blonde starlet handle, and brown "flower power" table mats still bear the old St Michael labels. Every nook and cranny hides a treat - party poppers, obscure board games (Bungayopoly anyone?) and we waste no time putting on dodgy CDs (Medallion Man has hits by Lou Rawls and Tony Christie) and flicking the light switch marked "glitter ball". Illumination strikes the overhead orb - instant disco fever.
When I throw open the bedroom window in the morning and lean out, cows in the field amble over to stare. Downstairs, French doors are flung open, breakfast is on, and so is Johnny Cash.
Bed linen has been chosen for pattern not thread-count, and the en suite shower could have been a wet room, instead of having a curtain which sticks to you. But we don't care - this barking barn is laughter therapy.
Top tip Go for a pint at the un-prissy 16th-century Low House pub in Laxfield.
