Blackberry, Slowberry

I started yesterday morning on a sofabed in Swanbridge. My headphone cable was wrapped around me - I had fallen asleep listening to the latest Interpol album - so I pulled it off, wound it up, and got up to greet the new day.

It was a wonderfully brisk autumn morning, so Sarah and I went out to pick blackberries. 'Cause that's what you do on Autumn days in the countryside (Swanbridge isn't exactly the countryside but it's a helluva lot closer than Cardiff), you pick blackberries.

Assuming there are some left. It seemed that someone had beaten us to it, 'cause most of the blackberries were either dead or not there. Sarah sadly suggesested that our search would have been a lot more fruitful  had we done it last week.

Fortunately, the people who had been at the blackberry bushes before us weren't gigantic freaks like I am. My tall stature and massive arms meant that we could access the high up and far away blackberries, and boy did I feel heroic when I jumped up to pull those berry-laden branches down to a harvestable height.

When we returned to Sarah's house, our hands were purple with blackberry juice and our tupperware box was about one-third full of blackberries. We'd also thrown a couple of blueberries into the mix; we weren't expecting to find them in Penarth in November but, heyho, it's all delicious.

Our intention was to bake an apple and blackberry crumble (Sarah already had some apples, we didn't pick those), and it was only when the assorted fruits were stewing in a saucepan that Sarah's dad pointed out that our blueberries...might not be blueberries. I had squished one of them earlier (just for fun) and was surprised to find a pip inside, but I decided that this must be a wild blueberry thing, and that I had been corrupted by my over-exposure to store-bought blueberries. How harsh and cruel nature truly is, I pondered.

But Sarah's dad said that they were foul-tasting slowberries, and although I hadn't heard of them then and can't find any evidence of their existence on Wikipedia now, they certainly didn't taste like blueberries so I'm inclined to believe him. Sarah's sister, who as the house's culinary whiz was helping Sarah and me overcome our kitchen clubfeet, removed as many as she could from the pot, but there were still quite a few pips to be found in the finished product.

Which was delicious anyway. Even Sarah liked it, and Sarah doesn't really like crumble. We just treated the pips like the silver sixpence in the Christmas pudding. Except there were loads of them.

When we came back to Cardiff in the evening, I found yet another empty Pot Noodle pot in the living room. Frustrated at Pete's repeated inability to use a bin, I decided to take action. I washed the pot out just enough that the remaining juices wouldn't go everywhere, placed a sticky note on the bottom reading "FUCK YOUR SHIT!", and hung it off the latch on Pete's door.

I felt pretty righteous until Pete got home from the pub quiz and pointed out that this particular Pot Noodle had been Soph's, not his. How embarrassing.

It's now on Soph's door instead.

Joel.