Mum's the word

Youngest Child and I are picking our own in a rain-lashed strawberry field and I’m reliving my youth; red knees, guzzling my weight in fruit and my first taste of industrial action when the pickers demanded an extra 2p a punnet and we occupied the farmyard. With a miner granddad I knew I had to sit tight, but felt sorry for the farmer’s wife. However, that extra 2p bought a lot of Curly Wurly in the 1970s.

Then it starts, the city child behaviour.

“Which ones are ready?”

“Duh. The red ones. Taste them …”

“No mum! They haven’t been washed!”

“Eh? Get them down you.”

“I’ll wait till we get home.”

“Watch those nettles.” I say.

“Which ones are … ow. That’s your fault.”

“Rub it with a dock leaf.”

“A what?” she asks. How can a child not know about dock leaves? There wasn’t a summer’s night I didn’t fall asleep legs tingling with stings. I throw her one.

“It works!” Then, eyeing me with the gaze of a Salem witch accuser. “How did you know?”

“Women know things. Like when Aunty Thingmy knew Uncle Thingmy had been ‘at it’ when he got back from abroad. ‘One toe over the door, I knew,’ she said. ‘Just call me a witch.’” Three hundred years ago we’d have been douked.

“Will I know things?” she asks.

“Of course you will. Just stick with me kid.”