Right in the middle of the city

Yesterday I said I had already picked some brambles along the cycle track. But this picture was taken right in the heart of an industrial area of the city, next to a major road junction. (I put it on the Flickr map if you want to find it to go brambling.) Looks like another week will see these bramble bushes laden with ripe fruit. Look out for me in the middle of the patch with my plastic tub as you speed by.

Bramble and apple jam is likely to be the outcome if I can also find some suitable apples. Talking to my cookery advisor, Brian, he tells me that the reason apples and brambles are used together is because the pectin level in brambles is quite low. On the other hand apples have a high pectin level and this helps the jam set better. What about plums then? What’s the pectin level like in them? They are the fruit chosen for the jam-making contest at my village show. As I can’t recall seeing plums until the late part of the summer, and the show is the first week of September, I might struggle to get some made in time.

I am one of the few people (of my age) who was born in the village and still lives in the village. This year I have decided to have a go at winning a prize in the village show. The show was revived a few years ago after many years of not having one, although I can vaguely remember the original one, which was held in a farmer’s field known as ‘Showfield’ (there’s a surprise). I’ve often wondered about the naming of roads and streets in villages. Every village you visit seems to have a street called ‘Main’, ‘Church’, a ‘Mill Lane’ or a ‘Dale Road’, or a ’something Bottoms’ . Fair enough with an isolated village, but it must have come as a shock for people when they did visit the neighbouring village to find that all the streets had the same name as the place they left. Shows a distinct lack of imagination. Alternatively it might have been quite comforting. Of course now the ’showfield’ in my village is a housing estate.

Rambling on about brambling has been a displacement activity. I should be practising for my audition on Saturday.