BUGS, BAD LANGUAGE AND BUMPS ON THE HEAD!

After yesterdays eulogy on the delights of autumn and the pleasures of prudent house keeping I am today in the mood to show the other side of the idyll,after all ,let us be honest of die trying!

Harvesting the fruits of ones labours should be, and often is a very rewarding experience,I get a real buzz from knowing that the food on the table was grown by my own hands and with the sweat of my brow,yet it must be faced,there can be drawbacks.

Many of the fruits have thorny branches,enough said , one expects to pay for ones pleasures.

Then there are the biting beasties,of which there are a great multitude, gnats,midges,horse flies,which lay there eggs under ones skin ,the resulting grubs are called Bots, and very unpleasant creatures they are.

Wasps, always feisty are, at this time of the year drunk through eating rotten and fermenting fruit in which condition they will sting you just for the hell of it! I have in the last month or so spent a fortune on insect repellent, most of which seemed to act more as a relish than a deterrant!

Then there is the experience of picking fruit in the pouring rain, this not unusual occurrence made today’s picking of ten pounds of damsons damned unpleasant and the damp air caused the gnats to be even more voracious than usual.

Picking apples,especially in a group requires the deployment of a tin hat,similar to those worn by A.R.P. wardens in the second great war. The alternative,bumps on the head or worse rotten fruit in ones hair.

The making of jam is a messy business,bubbling cauldrons of jam splash the kitchen with a substance similar to Kensington Gore and are often found a considerable distance from the pan. Then there is the matter of the damson stones, which have to be skimmed of as the jam cooks,failure to perform this annoying task can lead to broken teeth and fractured friendships. It is a job I detest and I usually say a rude word to every stone as I chase it around the bubbling pan with a skimmer,getting spattered with boiling jam the while.

Storing the blessed jam jars during the time they are not in use is a right royal pain in the rear as is scrubbing off the labels which proclaim the jar's former use. This task is often the cause of much course abuse on my part as the recalcitrant labels refuse to budge.

Having said all of this I still believe that it is fun to make ones own preserves........most of the time!