Gleanings: a chapter from A handful of Broken Biscuits

Again, this is a chapter from my late father's book, which I have latterly been editing. If you buy my next book (out at the beginning of May -- I will pass on info about stockists for this and my previous book, which is curently being reprinted, nearer the time), you will find this extract where it should be -- with Autumn! But enjoy it here, now. 

The sections of the book which intercut my writing are all about the getting, giving and making of food -- memories of a childhood in the 1930s, which my father felt abrupted by the beginning of war. The text is set in and around Burrington Combe and Langford, in Somerset on the edge of the Mendips. My father is characterised as 'John'; my grandmother as Beth and grandfather as Ed. Here we have walnuts, blackberries, hazelnuts and mushrooms.

There was always someone ready to collect whatever bounty the countryside offered and there were particular places where each windfall fell thickest. In early September walnuts bounced and split open under the big tree on Havyatt Green or the one leaning across the hedge that bounded Hillier's orchard. Since the throwing of sticks was vital in bringing down a shower of the finer, more elusive nuts, the boys of the village were always happy to be of help.

Blackberries ripened in every hedgerow, on waste ground or around the ponds, but they grew in greatest profusion in the wild, tangled triangle of open scrubland immediately below Mendip Lodge and alongside the old driveway. The bushes rambled freely, and the big, glistening, darkening fruit gave off a sweet, distinctive perfume after the smell of late summer. The gleaners, wearing their oldest clothes, moved methodically  from patch to patch, rolling the sweet luscious fruit into their baskets, fingers staining ever-deeper-red-purple as they picked. They reached with crooked stick, drawing the furthermost branches to them: picking or rejecting with smooth, deft and unhurried movements. An afternoon's basket of six or eight pounds would provide pies and blackberry and apple jam in plenty.

As the Autumn days became misty and the leaves began to change colour, the long tall hazel hedges in the deep lane at Bourne clustered thickly with nuts. It was essential for the timing to be right. Go a few days too early and the nuts were not ripe enough; shaking or whacking the bushes with sticks would not bring many down. Go a few days too late and many would have fallen into the undergrowth to be nibbled or gobbled by mice and squirrels. But arrive on those few crucial days and the nuts came down like hail -- a harvest that meant a hoard of nuts to be put aside for Christmas.

Pearly-necklaces, low-slung cobwebs, a thin mist on the field, and a warm humid morning were the sings that mushroom picking time had arrived: the feel of the air was just right. Up with the first light of dawn, on with the wellingtons, a two pound basket on the arm. Then a steady, methodical travrsing of the field, moving the sheep along as you went. Folding sheep on the land encouraged the growth and spread of mushrooms, it was said, but John didn't know the truth or otherwise of that lore. yet he was prepared to believe it as he walked in a line gfive yards parallel to his father. The darker grass circles and crescents were the give-away signs of mushroom presence and suddenly he would find a patch of three or four, of fresh grey-white with a  scattering of small buttons.

Each time he found and picked he was conscious of the beauty of the early morning. There was a hush, a newly-washed innocence all around. The wild creatures that crawled, scampered or flew were up and doing, but doing it quietly. They wanted time and the world to themselves and had no wish to rouse the lie-abeds. John smelt the pleasant,  faint fungoid smell and touched the beautiful pink-brown suffusion of the newly opening gills. It required an effort of will to be up so early to join Ed in these forays, but it was worth the quiet, calm sensuous pleasure he enjoyed. By half past seven Ed and John were back in the house and soon the delicious smells of frying mushrooms and streaky bacon signified a satisfying early morning journey.