I ve been out picking blackberries today at Portmuck. Got two large tubs ful. It reminded me of two very happy times in my life. The first was when I was a child. I don’t  remember how old, but my aunt, uncle,my two cousins and I went off in my uncles “tooty car” to pick blackberries. It was a lovely warm day in September and we three kids squashed in the back. It didn’t really have a back seat as it was a two seater sports car. ( a Morgan I think). We had  a picnic on the grass with the sun beating down.I think we had a squabble as we usually did as either June, Lorna or I were eating all the blackberries, I can’t remember who.  Uncle Ion and Auntie Maureen had the most. Auntie Maureen was a great cook and she made jams and pies . She probably made wine too because she used to make wine from the scrapings of old jars of jam.  When we got back it was decided that we would decorate the kitchen. We would all paint on the walls. Uncle Ion did some lovely paintings of flowers. I painted a bird sitting on a tree.  They laughed because it looked as if the bird was doing a poo. All our paintings stayed on the walls for years after that. I loved Caerleol which was the house that my mother and her brothers and sisters were brought up in, and where my aunt ,uncle and cousins lived. It was a wonderful place for freedom and creativity.  The second happy memory was when I was picking blackberries near Chard in Somerset. I was wearing a long navy summer dress and was eight months pregnant with Lizzy, my youngest daughter, although I didn’t know it was a girl, as you couldn’t tell in those days. Again, it was a lovely sunny day. We were camping and my eldest daughter Si and  I were picking blackberries and Bob my husband was driving round the field in his land rover with Ben, who was almost three sitting on his knee. Life was perfect.

We didn’t know that in a few years Bob would lose his mind and when my sanity was hanging by a thread my eldest daughter would be taken from me in a horrible betrayal.

It’s always easier to dwell on the horrors and to forget the happy times