Blackberry Picking and Autumnal Mists

It's a typical autumn's day. Misty first thing in the morning and the sun comes out later. It's beginning to get chilly but then it warms up considerably. A bit difficult to know what to wear, since you can never be sure that it's not going to rain. Particularly difficult as the windscreen wipers on the car aren't working. Must get them seen too soon as it can make long journeys difficult.

I've been out this morning and picked around a pound's worth of blackberries.  I went along the Redway behind the house and got most along the area immediately behind the hospital. There is a sort of clear space, a sort of path with lots of over-hanging brambles and really overloaded with berries. It seems amazing to me that people never seem to bother to go out and pick them. They are free and make good pies, jam and fruity sauces. I suppose I'm used to this sort of foraging as I lived in the countryside and we were always picking blackberries as well as finding mushrooms in the meadows behind Malting Farm where I used to live in Cardington village in Bedfordshire. You would think, with there being a so-called 'financial crisis' people would be falling over themselves to get something which is free, and ply yards from their front doors. But I hardly ever see other people picking blackberries and there are certainly plenty to go round. We still have quite a few bags left over from last year. We made some into a sort of sauce to have with ice-cream and pie. We got some really good bags in Sainsbury's, which can be re-used. They have a sort of fastener of them which are easy to open and made of fairly substantial plastic. Better than conventional plastic bags which are never worth re-using and can only be closed by knotting the neck. I think these are made to freeze homemade soup and stand up on their on when placed on the work-surface and make filling easy. 

I attempted to get Carol a doctor's appointment this morning. The surgery doesn't open until 8 a.m. and then you are lucky if you can actually get through. Just an engaged tone. Our old surgery used to have what they call 'ring-back' which means you press the '5' button on your telephone's keypad, and they ring back when the line is free. Then, after about half a dozen attempts, I got through to a human and was told that all appointments are booked for today, please ring again on Monday. Just annoying that you have to go to all that trouble and stress when they could surely allow you to book appointments a day or two in advance.