seshat's blog post - No news

Thanks for the comments on my previous blog. I haven't heard from my mother in two days, so I'm not sure what is going on with my grandfather...

The other day, I needed to post a letter after work, so I got off at a bus stop I don't often use. As I walked home, I passed some hedges and noticed a blackberry. Somehow, brambles had infiltrated the hedge, peeping out here and there.
As I spotted that blackberry, I thought back to November last year, when I had also walked home that way and had noticed two lonely berries still waiting to be picked in the winter cold.
And then I noticed a few more blackberries to the left, and then to the right. I couldn't resist picking the full black ones, despite knowing that they probably looked more delicious than they would taste, due to the shady location.
And as I ventured my hand into the sharp brambles and picked the ripest ones, I suddenly remembered that I had done this before: as a child, with my grandfather. We would ride our bikes to a nearby canal bordered by giant bramble bushes. Or maybe they just seemed giant then because I was small. I stayed at the front, where most of the berries had already been picked, but he ventured deep into the bushes, not caring about the thorns as he filled his bucket with the plumpest berries, the ones that come off the stem without really pulling.
Later that day he would do one of the few tasks in the kitchen my grandmother didn't take care of, apart from making fries and baking waffles: he made bramble jelly, enough jars to share with the whole family.