Ежевичные хроники и Leper Chapel (En)

Funny how our walk yesterday near the river and towards the Leper Chapel inevitably transformed into another blackberry hunt: we didn’t plan it, that’s for certain, yet after a nice relaxing stroll along the Cam, with its agitated signets and smoky boats (one of them was piled with rubbish, but looked unkemptly cosy: it would appear that the owners were cooking something, using real wood, and the smoke smelled delicious), we proceeded to the Leper Chapel, which seemed to look somewhat different: maybe it got a bit polished during those lengthy lockdown months.

Another new thing was the fence in front of the Chapel, with children’s (or, rather, children’s-like) graffiti, which was about “the biggest mediaeval fair and not only in the city, but in the whole world” (a slight exaggeration, which has to be forgiven I assume), where much later

“One red apple falling to the groundThis was somethingIsaac Newton foundAnd he said if apples fall straightdown the groundThen it must be gravity pullingthem southbound.”

And then we found ourselves in Coldham’s Common again: we were here exactly two weeks ago, and nothing had changed much, except the rose-hips and hawthorns getting bright red and thistles still blooming fiercely in the grass, full of fresh and tempestuous nettles (boy, did they sting though).

There were only a few blackberries at first, and we didn’t think much about it, but the more we went in the depths of the prickly bushes, the more berries revealed themselves. We didn’t expect it at all: I was sure that everything was over at least a week ago. But no: that Seamus Heaney’s “At first, just one, a glossy purple clot

Among others, red, green, hard as a knot” repeated in a more boisterous way: there were loads of them, and we didn’t have anything with us but an old plastic shopping bag, which soon was pierced in a few places by blackberry thorns.

But nevermind: we picked them as quick as we could, and went further and further into a grassy meadow—“we trekked and picked until the cans were full,” not cans exactly, but our old ragged bag, and then we brought them home, and yet another jam, full of late summer, emerged.