Village Country Diary continued from previous page


cut down brambles and then buy blackberries in the supermarket. Blackberrying is one of our com- monest foraging experience, even in cities where kids pick them on waste land – or used to! There are hundreds of different


micro-species of bramble, and you can recognise that some have fewer, bigger, juicier seeds, some come earlier or later, some are sweeter or sourer. Brambles used to be placed on graves, to deter grazing animals, and they were welcome in wood- lands once because they protect young seedlings from grazing animals. Now everyone seems to see them as somehow dangerous and to be cut down. This year is not such a great apple


year as last year, but they should be really sweet. Many of the brambles are a bit dry, but where they are within reach of water by their good roots, they have been lush and


Dried-up River Arrow


lovely. I have had my first blackberry and apple crumble already, which I make without sugar, using the natu- ral sweetness of the fruit. Remember you have to stop picking blackberries on Michaelmas Day (September 29) because the devil pees on them that day!


Old apple tree trunk


l We somehow managed to put the wrong caption on one of the pictures last month – the bottom picture on page 45 is St Dabeoc’s heath, not field maple.


This is a poem I wrote recently on the theme of childhood.


That girl


What would she think of me, that girl? Standing in the cool pantry, quiet and still Among the pans of clotted cream and butter Struck by a feeling of a future life With a knowledge of some sort of light That would guide her in difficult times. She was skinny, cross-eyed, pigtailed Hands smelling of cowshit, nostrils full Of the wild smell of barley, ears lulled At night by the sound of receding sea. She already wrote, wanting to catch The passing spring and press wild flowers Into words. What did she want to be? I forget. She half knew she would be a little odd Never happy in girly talk and dresses Bright and bookish, reading Wuthering Heights Non-stop on the living room sofa As the winter gales howled outside the window. I think she would be pleased with my life Though maybe it didn’t travel that far Still writing poems and smelling barley fields Sill fighting to follow where that light takes me.


56 The Village September 2018


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