Tasty memories!

Isn't it strange the way that a certain smell or taste can instantly revive memories of a day or event way back in childhood when something that wasn't necessarily memorable suddenly takes centre stage in your mind. It was like that this evening when Eden and I had our dessert. I had made a blackberry and apple crumble from the berries that we picked yesterday and although it was a simple dish, it took me back to when I was about nine years old.
In those days, we used to have to wear our 'Sunday best' clothes and I had to take my sister to mass in the morning. When we got home, we could go out to play but we had to keep our clothes pristine so Sundays were limited to skipping and games where we didn't get grubby or untidy.
After a Sunday roast for lunch, about this time of year, we would all be made to change into our scruffiest clothes and a pair of wellies, even if the weather was scorching. Then we were given a stick and a basket and all of us, Mum and Dad and five children would traipse off to a hill where brambles grew all along the lower hedges around the bottom of the hill and some further up. The farmer used to graze his cows here and that was the reason for the wellies.
Mum and Dad would pick the berries from the higher branches and we were all given a patch to pick according to age and height. My youngest sister was about three and my older brother was fifteen so I think you could say we had everything covered! At the end of the afternoon, we would all go home and have tea then Mum would weigh everyone's basket to see who had picked the most.
During the next couple of days Mum would pick over and wash the berries then make a large blackberry and apple crumble which we would have mid-week and the rest would be made into jam or bramble jelly. As we were a large family, Mum would buy the ten pound sweet jars from the sweet shop for a few shillings and all our jams and marmalades were stored in these.
We used to go blackberrying every weekend when the weather allowed and sometimes I used to go with Dad on a Saturday just to get enough for a pudding on Sunday and to let Mum know if it would be worth us all going on a trip the following day to gather the free harvest.
In the depths of winter, (in those days we used to get really cold winters and we had no central heating,) we could enjoy the taste of autumn sunshine when we had that wonderful rich, dark fruity jam on our toast or home-made scones, mmmmmmm!
The taste of that crumble tonight brought all this back to me. I think it's sad that today families don't enjoy these simple pleasures together anymore. They dispense with church and make do with a quick trip to the supermarket for a ready made pudding which is invariably full of additives and too much fat and sugar then they sit in front of the television to eat. They don't know what they're missing.