Jagody madness

A couple of weeks ago, on a walk around Affetside, we found a patch of blueberries (jagody in Polish) that were just about ripe enough to pick. Mid-way through our scrumping, a police car went past and, seeing us mid-scrump, stopped to ask us if we'd seen anyone thereabouts 'stealing berries'. We said no, but we'd let them know if we did. The urge to ask if they'd seen any police doing some crime prevention was on the tip of my tongue but I managed to keep the words inside. What a patrol car was doing up there, so far off a main road was anybody's guess but when you're on double-bubble of a Sunday, any time-wasting exercise will do. Pardon my cynicism.

We were ill-prepared last week, which meant we had to eat what we picked. Hence the new Goth look of black lipstick sported by Agnieszka:

This week, we set out specifically to pick some and were armed with two boxes and a couple of bags. The sun was beating down as we spent two hours picking up near Belmont and we came back with a kilo and a half, or approximately three pounds in old money.

Checking supermarket websites that night, I found out something quite interesting. I tried Tesco first, but the website won't let you browse without registering. Three attempts to get around this got my back up so I sacked it off in favour of somewhere else. In Asda, you can buy 125g of organic blueberries for £1.98. Sainsbury's were on offer at £1.99 for 225g, although they were normally £3.99 for the same weight. If we had bought the same weight at the supermarket, it would have cost us over £25. I will think of that every night this week as I chomp my way through fresh, succulent, sweet-smelling blueberries that cost us a couple of miles of diesel and two hours in the sun. What hardship.