Lezzie Pickin's

Ah the joys of blackberry picking - stained jeans, bramble-scratched hands and an assortment of bugs in your crumble if you don't wash them carefully! Yes, there are a few down sides to this bramble-scrambling lark, but I love it anyway. Charlotte and I went down to the woods today and thankfully every bear that ever there was wasn't gathering there together because we deliberately didn't go to a wood where bears gather. I have nothing against a bit of outdoor fun, but I'd rather not watch it while I'm gathering my blackberries thankyou very much. No, apart from the occasional dog walker and one or two families out for an afternoon stroll, Charlotte and I had the wood to ourself - just us and nature.

There's something about being at one with nature, especially when you live and work in London and it's all so urban. I get that feeling from my garden too, but the woods are so wild and untamed. The blackberries were actually rather small in size. In the garden they're huge but we don't have that many. Oh well, we've enough to make a crumble, or a blackberry and apple pie (plenty of apples in the garden now), but I've persuaded Charlotte to create something delicious using blackberries in a main course this week, so watch this space for that. In the meantime we had a very tasty blackberry cocktail - creme de muir, vodka, gin and fresh blackberries. You like the sound of that? There you go, the perfect incentive to go pickin' yourself, that is if the fact that they're totally free isn't incentive enough!