20 June 2025

Our son and daughter-in-law came for a meal last week. They brought us a welcome gift – two punnets of fresh fruit bought on the way to St. Andrews. One contained the sweetest strawberries, the other the plumpest raspberries.

They reminded me of summers spent picking berries in the berry fields around Blairgowrie. Before we were old enough to get paid employment at home, my brother and I were sent off to granny’s cottage in the Perthshire countryside.

She always hired bikes for us to cycle to the berry-fields. Worse than that, she always woke us up at 6am in the morning. We were sleeping in a bed settee in the living-room and so granny was always there to make her breakfast. She worked as a cook in what we called ‘the big hoose’.

The trouble with the 6am wake up call was not that we had to get up just then but she always put on the radio. The music I remember being played then was the ‘Air’ from Handel’s Water Music Suite. I will never forget the association.

On the berry-fields we were not alone. There were families from Glasgow, travelling people and local families with their children. It was quite a community. Often there was a folk  singer or an undiscovered tenor singing things like, ‘I’m nobody’s child’ or ‘Ye canna shuv yer grannie affa bus’.

We worked in the berry-fields during the summers from a young age until we were about fourteen.  The money which we stored in jam jars didn’t come to us. It was used to buy clothes for the new school term. But the vivid experience of interfacing with so much of Scotland’s culture was enriching and unforgettable. Good training for a future ministry!