Full of juice

On my way home from work tonight I picked blackberries. Every day I cycle past the same spot and over the last couple of weeks I've watched as the blackberries in this particular spot (unromantically by the side of a main road) have gradually ripened. My mouth waters every morning.

So tonight I take the opportunity - which no one else seems to have taken - and stop my bike to pick them into a tupperware lunch container. There's something nice about it - after a day fixing problems, ordering people around, getting bored with meeting after meeting and talking on teleconferences - to find a small space in my day to return, juicy fingered, to the primate part of me which likes picking fruit. Spiking my fingers on the prickly bushes, getting blackberry juice down my hands, my mouth watering as I savour the prospect of these blackberries in a crumble.

And all the while the traffic passes me - each rushing to their home, and perhaps shopping for blackberries at their local Tescos - oblivious to my feast of blackberries from the land - something sustainable and simple and pleasurable.