Saturday, August 05, 2006

Berry berry late

I always seem to be in England for the redcurrant harvest. They are not my favourite summer berry; I prefer raspberries, which, happily enough, were also in season.

Year after year I have waded through a tide of redcurrants to my mother's ever-surprised "Oh, it's a good year, this year!" It's always a good year. For it not to be a good year, it would have to freeze in June, or something, and with global warming let loose, this is either an unlikely event, or the least of our worries depending on which side of global warming (freezing or over-heating) you adhere to.

Thus, just before departing for Wales, valuable panic time was taken up picking the sodding redcurrants which then had to be strung and frozen on baking sheets. Of course, since we were down there, we picked the blackcurrants too.

It's amazing how much stuff crops up just before going off anywhere for a number of days. You suddenly realise that all that things you had been putting off doing (paying bills, sundry administrative tasks, visit to doctor/dentist for urgent treatment, ironing mountain of clothes washed so as not to come home to nothing to wear) has to be done in the 48hrs before you leave for somewhere with no known form of communication except morse code. You quake at the prospect of opening the letter box because of the certainty that yet more demands on your time will come tumbling out of its cavenous interior. You pay for your procrastination and vow never to do it again...

And when the time does come to leave, it's sometimes unwise to rely on your nearest and dearest to get you to the station/airport on time, as you being on time is absolutely the last thing they wish to happen. I'll never forget my ex-h once deciding to tidy his toolbox before taking me to the station to catch the train to Paris for a flight to London. Forty minutes before departure. We were 30 minutes from the station. We did make it, with 1 minute to spare, me, my knuckles white and nails broken from gripping the seat so hard with the anxiety of it all.

Coming back from Wales, we had 'a perfect window of time' to pick the blackberries, and I arrived back in France my forearms lacerated as though I'd been in a fight with a ferocious feline beastie.

The worst of it was that I could eat none of it, my mouth not having fully recovered from its stomatitis - ulcers everywhere but the kitchen sink.

Never mind, I can look forward to it all next year...
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2 comments:

  1. i could never, ever ever remember the different berries over there. strange. one of those things, i guess.

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  2. Well, if you really want to know, here is a link which shows pics of them all: http://www.foodsubs.com/Fruitber.html

    Yum, my mouth is watering at all those fruit.

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