We were just getting our little deck chairs out of the car like a couple of old codgers on a day out to the Peak District when we saw one of our neighbours (they live in one of the big houses round the front of the estate) coming up the back lane with three Tupperware containers in her arms piled high with blackberries. Are you going to beach? she shouted. No, I said, bold as brass, we’re going to sit here. She showed us the blackberries. They were just from the lane, she said, and there’s lots of red ones so more are on the way. We watched her walk off, her arms laden. Then he began his tirade about the cheek of it, her taking all of them and so on. It was semi-serious, semi-joking I believe. It makes me laugh. They are lovely people. And she is so cosy in her neat smallness. I’m off to make some blackberry and apple crumble, she said as she left, not for now but to freeze for next year. It’s like watching another life (we can see all their comings and goings from our upstairs window), one that I could never live out. It both warms and chills me such spectator-ing.
