10N

I went blackberry picking yesterday.

The sun was high and licked my back with its burning rays. I hadn't been blackberrying since I was little, but it is a difficult skill to lose; find a spot, spot the berry, grab it gently and pull. Much like meeting a girl in fact and, the more I think about it, the more it is obvious that both are innate drives.

I climbed over a fence and ducked under some barbed wire and pioneered my way through brambles and stingers. I was wearing shorts and flip-flops and the heat had jumped me, held me down and ripped off my shirt. Perfect garb for a spot of off-road foraging.

Then, scratched, stung and sweating, I stopped and gazed in wonder, true wonder, at the weight of fruit before me. Frantically, like a primitive man crossed with a Roman emperor, I picked and gorged furiously. Entranced by the motorway hum of the flies and contemplating the gastronomic results of my labour I lost two hours of my day.

Footsteps on the path behind dragged me back to reality and I peered over my shoulder like Nosferatu, chin, lips and fingers shining with claret. MUST SAVE THE BERRIES I screamed, picking up a club-like piece of wood. I lurched towards the on-coming stroller grunting, caught my foot on a loop of bramble and dived face first into a parliament of nettles. My bare skin tingled with a billion, tiny electric shocks and the laughter of the passer-by served only to exacerbate the burgeoning discomfort. This never happened to Stig of the dump.

Two hours later, naked, my skin a pizza of sun-burn and third-degree stings with a flaky caking of calamine. My hands in plastic baggies and a face like W.C. Fields after a night on cognac and cubans, I contemplated evolution and human development and thanked god for supermarkets.