Black Days and Blackberries

On Friday morning I got a rejection. It was a black day.

Then, on Saturday, I went blackberrying.

I don't know if I can do the experience justice. I wandered out of our front door with a couple of bags in my pocket, and went for a walk up the lane that's just down the hill from here. It's an old lane, used for as long as people have lived in our village, and worshipped at the other end of the lane. It's not beyond the realms of probability that people have been walking down that path on a bright September day to pick blackberries for more than a thousand years.

It kind of puts you in your place.

The sun on your back, the breeze just lifting your hair. Scarlet rosehips gleaming like boiled sweets among the ferns and frilly yarrow leaves. The bright gems of honeysuckle berries, beside the last, fragrant blooms. The spikes of the blackthorn, sharply proud. Hazel and oak, ash and crab apple, each with their autumn bounty.

Far away, the hum of cars on the main road. But far, far away. Distant enough to ignore in favour of the blackbird's alarmed shrilling, and the laughter of the crows, playing in the updraft.

Here the broad, flattened path of a badger. There the more secretive tunnel of some vole or stoat. A single red admiral butterfly, dancing from sun-patch to sun-patch. The smell of good earth and honest green.

And the fruit itself, squashing overripe and warm between your fingers, plucked with care from between the thorns and nettles, gleaming black and plump in your hand and in your bag. So sweet and wild, it tastes as if it's already been spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger.

I took some, and left more behind for the mice and the voles, the birds and the crawling things.

And when I went home, mulling over crumble or pie, the rejection was just another step on the road, another medal of valour.

After all - they said not this story, not this time.

There is another story. And there will always be another time.