picking and walking

My son's description of a strawberry-picking session in Japan and his quotation, from one of my father's books, of a passage about blackberrying in West Cornwall in the early 20th century prompted me to dig out a poem I wrote a year or two ago about picking blackberries with my wife near our home in Buckinghamshire.

BLACKBERRIES

A hundredweight of fruit they picked one year,

My mum and dad. That's, say, a dozen trips

Over a season of about six weeks,

So they must have brought home nine or ten pounds

Of blackberries between them every time,

Enough for bramble jelly, pies and tarts

For family and friends, a bowl or two

For Harvest Festival, and plenty more

To keep and eat themselves. No freezers then,

And soon they were all gone.

Once Dad came home

After a solo trip up on the moors,

Where he knew all the finest cuddies were. places to pick

His hands were purple and his fingers scrawed. scratched

He did not speak, but just put down his pail

Full of great sooters topped by cool green leaves. the largest, blackest berries

Mum handed him a two-pint milk jug, full

Of shandy made from lemonade and beer

Which had been waiting in the fridge all day.

He lifted it in both hands, and he drank

And drank, quenching his eight-hour thirst

In mighty gulps, then wiped a wounded hand

Across his mouth, put down the jug, and smiled,

Murmured a 'Thank you' and admired his fruit,

A full day's berry-harvest, which, though free,

Had been won by discomfort and mild pain.

All these years later, many miles away

From where he picked, my wife and I go out

With plastic bags, hoping, each summer's end,

To find and pick and eat, and so to join

In secular communion with the dead.

The finest poem about blackberry-picking I know is by Seamus Heaney, while the best one about picking apples is After Apple-picking, by Robert Frost. Both of them are about so much else.

To change the subject completely, I end by referring to the walk I intend to do tomorrow, unless the weather has it in for me. As Sue has chronic leukaemia, I'm planning to walk from our home to Wycombe Hospital on 5th April, Easter Monday, to raise money for Leukaemia Research. As the distance is about 13 miles or so, I'll be in walking a half-marathon in effect, and as I'm no athlete, although I'm used to waliking reasonably long distances, I need to practise. Hence tomorrow's effort. I'll just go for as long as I feel reasonably OK and get a bus back, using my senior bus pass, when I feel I've had enough. There will be ample time for other practice walks as the weather, I hope, improves.