Welwyn Garden City and the Art of Foraging: Blackberries in Sherrards Park Woods

Since I was a kid, I’ve loved scavenging. My mum used to despair of the stuff I’d pull out of skips and bring home. That also extended to blackberry-picking and (more illicitly) scrumping apples. Oh, the lure of free things!

Nowadays, most people seem to have lost the art of foraging. Emily, the kids and I went for a walk through the woods yesterday, along a path lined by brambles. The path is a popular haunt for walkers, so I was amazed to find the blackberry bushes were still full of ripe fruit. Free food! Being ignored! It’s crazy…

The family collected a good haul of the delicious morsels. I made a rather nice blackberry crumble that evening. Thank you to everyone else for ignoring them!

Contrast this with Brittany, where we recently went for a break. Every beach was full of French families ‘foot fishing’ – carrying little picks, trowels and baskets, looking for mussels, cockles and other fruits de mer.

Maybe as the UK sinks further in recession, the art of foraging will see a revival?

The woodland path and the bridge where kids obviously hang out at night.

Sarah Palin's Kids Names - Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking?

Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, and Trig. Not a luxury range of bathroom fittings! The names of McCain running mate Sarah Palin’s kids. It’s Trig I feel sorry for – at least the rest of the brood have proper words as names. What happened with Trig? Could she just not be arsed any more?

Equally, there’s no over-all theme – now that’s just lazy. ‘Track’ could have led to a set of kids named after thoroughfares – Track, Road, Street, Alley and Cul-De-Sac, for instance. Maybe they’d still get the piss taken out of them at school, but at least it’s a concept!

Anyone know of a Sarah Palin kid name generator? Surely there’s one online somewhere? If not, I’ll just come up with a few:

Range, Brick, Plane, Blah, Gink, Book, Trowel, Spec, Dunt…

Any more suggestions?

In a world where voiceover artists die...

Having found out the original ‘deep-voiced movie trailer voice-over guy’ Don LaFontaine on this very blog, I was sorry to hear he’s just gone and kicked the bucket. Having recorded over 350,000 voiceovers, I can only assume he died of over-work.

Still, here’s to you, Don – trailers won’t be the same without you…