25th October 2021

Bilberries still forageable at Swallowship on my visit to Hexham. Some blackberries, though many dried on the stem. Where are the children with jars and purple fingers? Wasn't this once blackberry week? The blackberries came early and the children with their jars late, too late. 

Fingers stained blue-black and crimson, I took my lateral flow. Maggie smiled over brambling the wartime Solway. Then clouded, for there the Hudsons from Silloth dropped berries. The trainees drank a last tea from her father's canteen. If blackberries came in time, the boys fell early, too early.