I was obliged to take a walk into town today, due to transport issues – GOSH-DARN INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES, WHY WERE THEY EVER INVENTED? But there were compensations along the way, abundant compensations. Primary amongst these were the vetches in the hedgerows and the woods – multi-headed purple vetches, and purple vetches are almost my favourite vetches. (Apart from birdsfoot trefoil, and that’s an unfair competition, because birdsfoot trefoil is also colloquially called eggs-and-bacon in the UK, AND HOW CAN ANY DECENT WILDFLOWER BE EXPECTED TO COMPETE WITH THAT?)
Vetches are the prettiest things. The internal combustion engine is the annoyingest thing, but vetches are the derndest prettiest things.
Also the blackberries are not quite yet finished off – or pissed on by Satan and rendered inedible, as the folklore has it. (It’s the maggits in wild brambles that bother me more than Satan’s theoretical outdoor hedgerow slashes while out on the piss. Copious amounts of salted water, to deal with the wildlife, can render them uneatable anyway.)
There were even some unripe blackberries still hanging high, fruit and flower everywhere, nature in profusion and gloriously fertile.
It rained a little, and I’d forgotten my brolly. But I didn’t feel I had too much to complain about, all told. I came back with biscuits, after all – and biscuits are the comfortingest things.
*Brian Jacques.
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