大象传媒

As hedgerows continue to be destroyed, my thoughts turn to lovely plump, juicy blackberries. Evacuated from the bombing of Belfast in WW2 days, we were glad of blackberries to help supplement our pocket money. Factories wanted blackberries and rose hips, and were willing to pay. Babies needed a vitamin syrup, which was extracted from rose hips. But the manufacturers used the blackberries for jam bulked out by a certain amount of mashed turnip. Our village grocer was given the job of being a fruit-collecting agent.

We soon found out that rose hips yielded a poor harvest so we turned attention to prickly brambles. A well-filled bucket of blackberries netted half-a-crown, but it took most of a day to fill one. The most luscious berries were always on the other side of the ditch and as we leaned over to hook the fruit, we often fell into muddy water. The fresh air caused great hunger pangs and sometimes the berries went straight into our mouths.

Then there was the long walk to the village to have the fruit weighed and collect our precious earnings. First of all, the bucket was weighed and then the bucket with the berries inside. The grocer was young, and, as far as the girls were concerned, he turned a blind eye if the berries were a little short on weight. The juice badly stained our cotton dresses and our mothers complained that it would take a half-crown's worth of elbow grease to get the stains out. Mothers in those days were always moaning about our lack of elbow grease. Unreachable blackberries were left on the brambles to await a visit from the devil. In those parts nobody would gather blackberries after the end of September. Folk said it was then that the devil kissed them.