Egg shells, a thin layer, a dawdling dog and all things blackberry

Abundance: Friday 5 September 2025

The road up to the high woods has been resurfaced. Of course it has: a cynic might point you to the price of the houses. Even the tapering tributaries which once might’ve carried a milk float, and are now likely to see little more than a golf cart, are freshly done.

On the busiest stretch, the surface ripples, the gravel in waves, as if a dark tide is washing down the slope to meet you. Someone drove the big lorry past the big houses too soon for the tar beneath; chunky tyres immortalised for half a generation or more to witness. Walking on it sounds treading on eggshells. I close my eyes to remove the visual, to better listen, and take two steps. No: it sounds like fresh, deep snow.

The dog has, if not exactly a spring in his step, a willingness to at least only lag behind far enough that I can still actually see him. We stitch our way up the footpath, him distracted left and right by smells undetectable to his owner; his owner on the search for wild fruit.

On the top of the hill, out past the trees, having passed enough blackberries hard as Heaney’s knot to displease the noisy dunnock, the crabby crows and the chattering wren that kept me company, I found a stretch in better light, fuller breeze and sandier soil that were plump as babies’ toes. And there’s plenty still in the red for the weeks to come.

The garden blackberry couldn’t be more generous this summer, with fruit as luscious and winey as I’ve ever tasted, but these wild on the hill marbles have an older flavour, something from childhood, like the smell of beer on an adult’s breath that it seems we no longer pick up once in big school.

Tupperwareless, and low on the poo bags that so often double for it, I’m take only whatever my hand reaches as I dawdle past, to eat like sweets. In an effort to create the laziest of metaphors, the bushes along this path all hold their chubbiest, ripest, juiciest blackberries just out of reach.

I realise that proximity has me picking those flourishing in the garden for crumbles and stockpile, while laziness and busyness prevent me turning up on the hill with tub in hand and robbing the wildlife of their natural inheritance. I’m lucky to have the option.

It’s become so autumnal that to deny it is autumn is too contrary for most. To me, mid September is the crossover that feels natural, but there’s no denying it: the sky falls away earlier, the morning dog walk is full of cool air, and two days ago the curtains pulled bare to a thin layer of condensation.

The sun still breaks through though - hot at times it is too - which makes a cold drink (see below) still as welcome as in June. That said, I found myself humming Solid Air¹ while walking the dog first thing today, and my thoughts are turning to stews and to the oven where a week ago all I wanted were raw tomatoes and whatever else to go with. I better order some logs.

Blackberry martini

This is a take on the mulberry martini in Abundance. It will have the odd person telling you it’s too much vermouth: knickers to that. The right amount of vermouth is the amount that suits, and to my mind these quantities bring out the best in all three ingredients.

Makes 1

80ml gin
20ml dry white vermouth
10 blackberries

Squish 8 blackberries in a glass. Skewer the other two berries on a cocktail stick.

Pour the gin, vermouth and squished blackberries plus their juice into a cocktail shaker along with a handful of ice. Shake for 30 seconds. Pour through a fine sieve into a chilled glass, lie the berry cocktail stick across the rim to admire it for a second, then allow it to submerge, soaking in just a little booze to be a delicious treat.

Enjoy in the garden if the sun is out, or where you plan to snooze if it’s raining.

Abundance reading

Continuing with blackberries and with my book Abundance published a few days ago, I asked some friends to read an episode. Here, my old friend, playwright, actor and author Seamus O’Rourke² reads words from the book that I wrote this time last year, when blackberries stole my attention. What a way - even with someone else’s words - he has.

I hope you enjoy it.

Lastly…TODAY I’m doing a Substack ‘Live’ with the brilliant Farrah Storr

We’ll be talking about Abundance, how I wrote it here on Substack, perhaps how one became the other, and maybe about how Substack might become the place you make the most of as your writing home. Joining is easy: just click below and follow the few simple steps. It would be great to see you there.

I'm doing a 'live' tomorrow

1. John Martyn’s song about the equally autumnal Nick Drake, of which this is my favourite version, dipped in the connection of decades of two people - Martyn and Danny Thompson, the bass player. Such gorgeous shorthand between them - a ‘hup’ seems to mean ’to the chorus’…a deep inhalation = ‘on you go and play a bit’. I saw them the same year as they made this clip together and it was very special indeed

2. His books are so entertaining, moving and brilliantly written as to - depending on your mood - make you want to give up, or resolve to get better