Hot. Dense ground-mist early this morning. Many blackberries now ripe, very large & fairly sweet. Also fair number of dew-berries. Walnuts now nearly full sized. Plenty of English apples in the shops.
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Hi George
how are you ? it’s 70 years after ur death , people talk and live another type , now u can see a 12 years old girl reading his friends blog rss feed in her wireless smartphone , checking her emails, however many things changed , today i read NYtimes and see ur blog , it was fantastic , I am a persian boy from iran , living in tehran , in a country with a crazy political system , some fool men dominating here , but great changes will occur gradually , someday we can sing together about humanity and growth , good luck man . me have a blog too , my blog is in persian that probably u can’t read , i write there about my thoughts . I am civil engineer , I am growing , it’s good .
i hear ur voice even after ur death ( George , we write ” Your ” Like “ur” today )
Sincerely urs : omid
I forgot george , I put ur blog link in my persian blog as ” George Orwell’s Memories”, not to expect any similar act instead , but will be happy that u put my blog link in ur blog , with the name u like ,u are a blogger and also a writer , u can name better , bye
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The last line explains it all. The statement of English apples means that fresh fruit was a welcome and notable change from imported goods; hence the preoccupation with free and wild foods. Fresh local produce depends upon the weather and seasons; something we need to be less concerned about these days, with our world wide produce perpetually on sale.
My knowledge of England was not gained through personal experience, but via Sherlock Holmes, Shakespeare, Hercule Poirot, 007, Mystery!, umpteenillion miles of WWI/WWII footage/reportage, Pink Floyd, Puritans, The Time Traveler and so on. I don’t think that qualifies me as an “Anglophile” except as it concerns my ancestry.
Anyway, (so far) this blog, in my world, isn’t “literature”—it’s a wormhole.
I’m actually there (for a second or two), seven decades ago this afternoon, serene in this [my] familiar, comfy, cozy microcosm of the English countryside.
JimmyGiro has a point – we older ones tend to forget, and the youngsters may not even realise, how dependent we were on the seasons for fruit and vegetables. Imports of exotic fruit and vegetables were limited to those that could stand long sea voyages [ no flying in of Californian strawberries] Freezing had only just begun and few houses had refrigerators let alone freezers
As a country boy growing up during and just after the war I can remember
how eagerly we waited for various fruits and veg to come into season and how delicous they tasted. It was a real treat in late August or early September to find a hedgerow laden down with gorgeous ripe blackberries
I was 8 years old before I even saw a banana.
Brian B
seems to me like he needs to take full advantage and start bakin’ some pies… think we can come up with some good marketing?
As I have just turned 70 I thought I’d read Orwell’s diaries from that time. I have found it interesting in that he is more concerned with the countryside than what is going on in the world. I live in Toronto now and miss the blackberries and the hedgerows. It takes me back to my childhood picking ripe blackberries. Oh those lovely purple fingers.
We can buy blackberries at the supermarket but they don’t have the wonderful taste of those wild ones.
Like Brian B I was about 8 before I saw a banana.
I’ll read along with the diaries for a little longer.
Diana S
Brian B,
If you asked kids today “Fancy going scrumping?”
You’d probably end up on the sex offenders list.
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Biscuits.
Butter.
Jam.
:shock:
YES
In New York, the wild blackberries were ripe in mid July, a week later than usual, the apples not yet in. I wonder if the difference has to do with geography or climate?
On that note, the social/political climate now meets his imagined climate dead on.
When I was a kid we could ride horses through the woods behind my house, up an old logging road, past a spot where a shallow creek had formed a nice swimming hole in a limestone pit, on to a graveyard on a hillside where no one had been buried in 150 years.
The logging road passed through a clearing in the woods, a blackberry thicket. We’d take baskets with us in the summertime, and on the way back we’d fill them up, and go home with a weeks worth of berries.
It’s all a golf course now…
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Andrew:
That’s a travesty. It’s a friggin’ crime in and of itself.
Oh George, it`s still another month until the mikans are ripe…! Driving me mad with all this talk of fresh fruit.
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I am addicted to this site. Every morning, after I get to work, I must read an entry. It sets the tone for the day.
Oh Andrew, you literally brought tears to my eyes! Go and read “Last Child in the Woods.”
70 years on and the Kent countryside is again replete with blackberries. How many will get picked is another story. What with health and safety concerns or the risk of infringing some rule dreamt up by the EU in Brussels, I am going to leave them well alone.
For any 1910-1930 history fans,my alltime favorite writer is Sigfreid Sassoon (sp?),specificaly “Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man”
Britain before WW1,and an excellent view of the war as well. I’me sure he and G.O. must have crossed a few paths…
Excellent initiative. Greetings
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I feel dewberries, English apples, walnuts are his favorite fruits!!!!!!!1
EATAHOLIC
I liked this post… boy were times different in the 30’s now we think about stupid things.