Mick Hartley

It’s blackberry picking time again. I love blackberries. Get a lidded container, fill it up, cycle home with the container jumping up and down in the shoulder bag on your back (make sure the lid fits, and put it in a plastic bag just to be sure) then when you get home tip out the juice that’s collected at the bottom and drink it. Now that’s a fruit juice.

For years I did what everyone else did: head out to some local bramble-rich location, and spend a couple of hours getting my forearms scratched, stretching ever further for that elusive just-out-of-reach clump. It was always sunny somehow. You’d be sweating, getting stung by nettles, your trousers and t-shirt constantly snagged on thorns – but it was all worth it for that box full of berries you’d managed to collected.

Then I got spoiled. What I’d got used to, without ever thinking too much about it, was going to well-known public places, where there’d always been people there before. Every blackberry was some kind of effort; hard to reach, a battle against the brambles. Maybe that was part of the pleasure. Maybe there’s a thesis in there somewhere. Other warmer countries have peaches and grapes and stuff, all soft and friendly and accommodating. Here our best most succulent wild fruit has to be fought for. You have to suffer. It’s Weber with fruit: Blackberries and the Spirit of Capitalism. But yes, a few years back I headed down to the Lea valley, to Walthamstow Marshes, and there, by the railway, where you’re not meant to go and it’s all fenced off, I came across brambles completely untouched by human hand.

If all you’ve ever known of blackberries is bushes where you’re maybe the tenth picker that week, then a virgin bramble is something you don’t forget. Those big succulent bunches, just out of reach, where you stretch and stretch, and just touch with the tip of your finger but can’t quite get hold of and the bastard falls….they’re right there in front of you, chest high, waist high, knee high….just waiting to be picked. Hundreds of them. You can fill a whole bucket without stretching, just shifting your weight from one leg the other, changing arms every now and then as you tire. These are big ripe juicy ones, the kind that you barely twist on their stalk and off they come.

After that, the idea of struggle and strain and scratched forearms lost its appeal. Plus, I’ll admit, I rather liked the illicit feel of it all, squeezing through railings. Back then these were the old friendly railings, and there was a kind of understanding that yes, British Rail or whoever made some effort to keep people out, but no one was taking it too seriously. Railings were bent back and little paths appeared where men and their dogs liked to go for an evening stroll, and you knew you weren’t meant to be there but, really, what was the harm – it’s not like it was busy line or anything, and clearly it was up to you not to do anything daft like sitting on the rails reading the paper.

That was alright for a few years. Late summer I could nip down there after supper and in half an hour pick enough to fill a decent-size lunch box. But then they started getting stricter with the fencing, repairing the gaps. For a while there was a steady response from the locals: a new fence would go up, and a few days later you’d find a spot where someone had sawn through, and a new path was formed. But it soon became clear that these people meant business. The old railings were replaced with these ugly new tough ones with spiked tops. Any breach would immediately be repaired. Anti-climb paint was spread all over the place. For a couple of years I found a way in by a bridge, which meant tramping for half a mile along the back of an industrial estate. The bridge – a footbridge over the railway – had graffiti going back decades. Something about Hawkwind. Hawkwind! And on the outside, in large white letters visible only from the tracks, “PAKES OUT”. But the writing really was on the wall. Last year, for the first time, I couldn’t get in. Not anywhere. The bridge was given a new coat of paint, its fencing upgraded, and that was that. All those blackberries growing, ripening, and rotting – unseen and unmourned, except by me.

After that steady supply of illicit top quality blackberries, it’s been a struggle going straight, to be honest. I keep my eyes open, but there’s not much good quality stuff around. Last year I ended up in an old waterworks turned nature reserve. I went there again this week. There’s a “no cycling” notice on the way in. I wheeled my bike past the entrance, and then, out of sight of the office…got on and cycled! Oh yes! Then I climbed over a fence into a little field with some brambles. It was only an ordinary wooden fence, and there wasn’t anything saying you coudn’t climb over, but they wouldn’t have put the fence there if you were allowed in the field, would they? So I picked some nice berries, but I had to wander around a bit, and I’ve still got the scratches on my arms where I had to stretch. It’s just not the same. Or maybe I’m just getting too old for this lark.