It gives me great pleasure to see people picking blackberries along our roadside hedges. I feel such people must appreciate the countryside. Most are middle aged or elderly. You don't see many young people doing it. And like them I can think of no better dessert for an autumn Sunday lunch than blackberry and apple tart.
This year the harvest of the hedgerows is huge. You don't have to pick for long to get a bowl full. Which must give our local pickers even greater satisfaction than usual as they take advantage of the free food during the credit crunch.
But why do some of them leave their cars parked along narrow lanes restricting and delaying tractors trying to drill wheat? And when we workers try to access our fields through gateways in which other of their vehicles have been left why do the drivers behave as if we shouldn't be there and that their right of way greater is than ours?
So, despite my instinctive pleasure at seeing the pickers I am sometimes almost guilty of blackberry rage. If any of them read this I ask them, please, to accept that some of us have work to do and to park their cars accordingly.