Heaney

Blackberry Picking

by Seamus Heaney

Late August, given heavy rain and sun

For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.

At first, just one, a glossy purple clot

Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.

You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet

Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it

Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for

Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger

Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots

Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.

Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills

We trekked and picked until the cans were full

Until the tinkling bottom had been covered

With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned

Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered

With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.

But when the bath was filled we found a fur,

A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.

The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush

The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.

I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair

That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.

Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

Brambling

The Rivelin Valley on the outskirts of Sheffield (Click to enlarge)

Last Sunday, I took a constitutional walk in the Rivelin Valley. Just a stone's throw from the city proper, it is characterised by ancient dry stone walls, old country properties of various dimensions, meadows and green pastures. Tumbling along the bottom of the valley and guarded by woods is the Rivelin stream itself. Once this sweet little river powered at least eight watermills en route to the larger River Don which it meets and enlarges at Hillsborough. Today the evidence of those mills has been cunningly disguised by Mother Nature who has a rare talent for healing the wounds that industry invariably leaves behind.

West of Sheffield there are many paths - public rights of way. Some are well-trodden but others retain an air of secrecy and you will often find stiles hidden by summer vegetation with no sign that anybody has climbed them for months. I guess some walkers will imagine that our country paths have been devised for city strollers with rucksacks, flasks and Gortex boots but this network of footpaths is in reality a legacy of past times when country people in a pre-motor vehicle era had to get from a to b - usually for a purpose - delivering eggs, going to church, visiting friends or sweethearts, driving sheep or pigs, paying bills, buying manure or hay. There was much more purposeful walking in past centuries.

On Sunday, I came across one of these secret paths and as I scrambled over the be-nettled millstone steps that led through a small fallow field, I noticed such an abundance of brambles in briary tangles that I made a mental note to return and pick a container full for jam-making and crumbles. Sadly, the weather this week has been rather unsettled so it wasn't until I got up today that I felt confident the late morning would be summery and rainfree.

For almost two hours I picked but I was well-prepared with garden gloves, secaturs and suitable clothing to get right in amongst the thorny runners and nettles. Nobody passed by apart from one solitary walker whom I startled as he emerged from the bushes at the bottom, no doubt lost in his own thoughts and not expecting to see a soul.

Eventually, I tottered up the grassy slope, with a bramble-brimming Tupperware cake container to the dead-end lane where I had earlier parked my trusty Astra. It had been a lovely late summer morning with butterflies and swallows in the air. No sign of the rabbits I saw on Sunday with their debilitating eye infections that reminded me of mixamatosis. Perhaps it was that. They had loitered a couple of yards along the path chewing leaves, clearly unaware of my size elevens plodding along. Maybe, mercifully, I should have killed them.

Back home I weighed my booty. Ten and a half pounds of juicy black brambles. Co-incidentally that was my birth weight though I should point out that I am of course not a bramble... I'm a banana!

Poem

Waziristan

Had you forgotten me?

Still here where contour lines swirl

Into impenetrable defiles

Where sparrowhawks spiral

And mountain streams tumble

Down to the Tochi River and beyond

Last night an aroma of palawoo

Wafted through the pistachio grove

Below our cavern and I thought of home

The compound in Riyadah

And Nona in the kitchen wreathed in steam.

Oh I know what is happening my friends

And all about my demonisation

It's there on my Toshiba laptop

I see it all the time

But the word of Allah is as crystal clear

As Shawal's sweet springs -

"Cast into Hell every hardened unbeliever...

Hurl him into the fierce tormenting flames!"

I'm sorry

Had you forgotten me?

I am

أسامة بن محمد بن عوض بن لادن‎

And like these mountains

I endure.

Notes:-

defiles - very narrow mountain valleys with single file paths.

Tochi - one of the principal rivers of Waziristan which eventually feeds into the Indus

palawoo - a goat stew much prized in the region

Riyadh - in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden's childhood home

Shawal - one of the high hill ranges of Waziristan

أسامة بن محمد بن عوض بن لادن‎ - Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden

Wight

Jimi Hendrix August 30th 1970

It's hard to believe that this coming weekend will mark the fortieth anniversary of the famous 1970 Isle of Wight music festival. It was one of the highlights of my teenage years and memories of that long, wonderful weekend are still stored near the front of my brain.

Let me take out the box, dust it down and blow the cobwebs away. What do we see? There's me aged sixteen with my little ex-army rucksack and a rolled up sleeping bag onto which I have had my mother sew a small union jack flag. And there's Lee Dalley aged eighteen from our village. We're standing just outside Hull on the A63 with thumbs raised skywards. By the early evening we're at Lymington on the edge of the New Forest, waiting for a ferry over to Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight.

We pitch up our ancient two-man tent in an area nicknamed "Desolation Row". It is already becoming busy with festival goers - united in our love of music with knowledge of Woodstock, flower power and the peace movement fresh in our minds. If we had gone back in time just ten years to 1960, such a festival would have been absolutely unthinkable but by 1970 youth culture was strong on both sides of the Atlantic. We were redefining what it meant to be young and we had our heroic troubadours to provide the theme music to this cultural groundswell. Nothing could stop the music.

Lee and I quickly made friends with a bunch of Welsh lads and a couple of London girls from the next tent. How we laughed! The weather was gorgeous and remained so throughout the festival which is contrary to the description given in the Guinness Book of Popular Music but records verify that only on the very last morning, as the "hippies" drifted away, did a thin rain begin to fall. On the Friday morning, I recall walking over the grassy down that overlooked the festival site to Freshwater Bay to see hundreds of naked young people swimming or basking in the sun. We simply had to join them. It was as if we were stripping off the prejudices and hang-ups of postwar Britain. We felt not only young but also free.

And then the music began. I was lost in it. It was stupendous. Most sessions we were very close to the stage. I remember the brass section of the band Chicago - like an engine making the music motor along. And there was the New Yorker - John Sebastian, formerly of the Lovin' Spoonful singing "Do You Believe in Magic?" and we did. I discovered a new hero - Richie Havens strumming his guitar with such wild abandon, his eyes closed as he sang "It Could be the First Day". Another vivid memory is of Tiny Tim, one of Bob Dylan's first buddies when he arrived in New York City in 1960. Accompanying himself on a ukulele, Tiny Tim sang "Tiptoe through the Tulips" in a weird falsetto. It went down a storm as bubbles drifted across the vast crowd - estimated at 600,000.

Aerial view of the 600,000+ crowd

The festival's bountiful line-up included Mungo Jerry, the raunchy English band Free led by their brilliant frontman Paul Rodgers, the lovely simplicity of Donovan Leitch, the marvellous yet fragile Canadian songstress Joni Mitchell, Jethro Tull, The Moody Blues, The Who, Miles Davis, Joan Baez, The Doors led by Jim Morrison and then as the last night bled into the following day on to the stage came the legend who was Jimi Hendrix. Little did we know that within three weeks he'd be dead. He stood there in the cool night air, in a colourful silk poncho, his amplifiers turned to "max" as he made his plectrum deliver an ironic slow version of "God Save the Queen" with wailing electrical feedback and wah-wah. England had adopted him and built him into a huge world star and now he was playing our anthem just as he had played "The Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock.

As dawn approached, Leonard Cohen's words mingled with stars and pale wisps of clouds over in the east. I knew every song and had read every word he had ever had published. How could anyone describe this man as "morose" or "funereal"? He was a communicator, an intellectual, a wordsmith, a vulnerable realist. When Richie Havens finally put down his battered guitar, in the dawn of Monday August 31st, the festival was over.

Leonard Cohen at The Isle of Wight 1970

The site cleared rapidly and in the thin rain some people huddled under plastic sheeting like desperate victims of a natural disaster in the Third World. Lee and I headed to the steam ferry at Yarmouth but by night-time we had only made it to Winchester in Hampshire. A man noticed us standing forlornly outside a chip shop and invited us back to his house for the night. Things like that happened back then. He was a doctor at the local hospital. He said he'd be gone in the morning and we were just to push the keys through the letterbox when we left. "Make yourself some tea and toast".

There are tales of anarchists and fence breakers, people intent on disrupting the 1970 festival but I swear that as a music lover in the middle of it all, I was absolutely unaware of any such happenings apart from when some idiot jumped on the stage and grabbed Joni Mitchell's mike. The Isle of Wight Festival 1970 was brilliant no matter what lies are told about it. I know because I was there.

Endcliffe

The cafe

Sheffield's industrial development owed a great deal to its five little rivers. They powered water wheels at the end of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth. Without them there would have been no steel production, no cutlery industry and therefore no city at all.

The closest "river" to us is the Porter Brook. It flows down from the wild moors above Ringinglow descending to a flat flood plain half a mile down the hill from our house. Once this was farmland and in Sheffield Wednesday FC's very early history, it provided an occasional football field for the homeless club. However, as in many industrial cities, as municipal wealth and social conditions advanced during the Victorian era, our city fathers decided to purchase this land to create a park for public recreation. They called it Endcliffe Park after the sandstone cliffs that overlooked the area.

At first there was boating, a bandstand, a bowling green and a network of paths where Sheffielders could simply promenade. Today it remains a much loved public park and it is joyous to see it on sunny summery afternoons. There are picnics in progress, football matches, joggers jogging, frisbees being thrown, dogs being walked, children paddling in the Porter, the park cafe inundated with visitors, ducks being fed leftover bread, young lovers embracing on rugs, mountain bikers heading up the valley towards Forge Dam. It's how a city park should be.

In this park I taught our son Ian how to ride a bicycle. When Frances was a baby I would often take her to the play area in her pushchair. We have visited November 5th bonfires there, travelling fairs and circuses. Once - when Ian was ten - with a group of other schoolboys they had to enact a wartime football match for the BBC. They were telling the story of the American B17 bomber that came down in the park on the afternoon of February 22nd 1944. All ten crew members were lost following an abortive bombing mission to Denmark. A memorial stone called the "Mi Amigo" monument continues to attract wreaths and flowers to this day.

However, the most recognisable monuments were removed to the park from the city centre long ago. They were both purchased by the city to mark Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1887. There's her now well-weathered bronze statue (1905) and a marble obelisk (1887). Both stood in the very centre of the city close to the Town Hall at the top of Fargate. Let me share some more Endcliffe Park photos with you:-

The Jubilee Obelisk (1887)

Alfred Turner's bronze statue of Queen Victoria (1905)

The Hunters Bar entrance

The "Mi Amigo" monument

copyright Ian D B (Flickr 2010)

Kate

Kate Rusby was born in Sheffield in 1973 - a true Yorkshire lass. Her singing voice proudly reflects her Yorkshire heritage. This YouTube clip shows her unaccompanied but in concert. The song is followed by some banter which I wouldn't have minded editing out. Her folk repertoire is wide and she has been a leading figure in our country's folk revival. She married in June of this year following the birth of her first child last autumn. To overseas visitors - "half a crown" was one of our pre-decimal coins. The clip made me chuckle so I hope you also enjoy it:-

Etiquette

When I was a lad, there were plenty of "rules" surrounding the fundamental business of eating. I guess it was the same in many British households. It was somehow as if by dining correctly one would win brownie points on the nation's leaderboard of manners. I was lucky to grow up in a loving home. There was laughter and love and an absence of physical chastisement. However, at mealtimes - which were always taken round the dining table - there was an unwritten list of rules that you were expected to obey. Let me see if I can remember the main ones:-

1. Sit up straight at the table and do not slouch.
2. Elbows on the table are not allowed.
3. Keep your elbows tucked by your sides.
4. Don't talk with your mouth full.
5. Close your mouth when eating.
6. No burping or making other unpleasant noises.
7. If you want something passed to you, always say "please" and then "thank you".
8. The fork should be held in the left hand with tines facing downwards.
9. The knife should be held in the right hand, with your index finger pressed down on the blunt side to assist any cutting required.
10. Hold your fork and knife in your hands until the meal is finished.
11. To show you have finished your meal, put the knife and fork together to the left of your plate.
12. If you need to leave the table, ask to be excused by saying: "Please may leave the table?"

On a daily basis, these rules overshadowed our lives much more vividly than the ten commandments. As I say, we were never hit by our parents but our mother's expressions of displeasure at the dining table could be positively canine - nay lupine. "What do you say?" - "ELBOWS!" - "Close your mouth! We don't want to see what you're eating!" etc.. We all got the message and hence as we grew older most mealtimes were trouble-free.

We lived televisonless till 1960 - something that I remain very grateful for. I remember watching a black and white American show. Sergeant Bilko was eating with a fork turned upwards in an unholy fashion. He was using it as a little shovel to fill his mouth. "It's disgusting!" judged my mother peering up from her intricate glove-making. She had met several Americans in the early forties - before she was posted to India with the Women's Royal Airforce - and had observed their casual eating habits first-hand. The USA might have become the richest and most powerful nation on Earth but so what if its citizens didn't have proper table manners?

With our own children, we were rather more relaxed though some of the rules remained. Shirley had grown up with a very similar code for dining. We always had meals round the table - and still do - without distraction from televisions or radios. Our view is that people should relish their food and enjoy the business of eating. The dining table is a place where a family can come together and talk between mouthfuls - catch up on the day and one's immediate plans. We detest the idea of meals balanced on knees with eyes glued to the latest trashy TV programme. Eating like that, how could you possibly relish your food? And family conversation would disappear to be replaced by inane comments from the deplorable Simon Cowell or Scooby Doo.