Mellow fruitfulness

This morning there was a carrier bag full of apples on the front step, a present from a friend. Another friend turned up with some apples and a box of blackberries from her garden. Then, delivering a birthday card, I staggered away under a weight of beetroot and marrows.

“Please help yourself to tomatoes,” said another neighbour, who couldn’t face making any more chutney.

Gardeners are a generous bunch. Years ago when I was single and had an allotment, digging, planting, weeding and watering saved my sanity at a tricky time in my life. Even though mine was never the most productive patch I always wobbled away with my bike laden with fruit and veg piled on top by fellow allotment holders – mainly old chaps with trousers up to their chins - who were determined I shouldn’t starve.

We seem to have lost the knack of maintaining our own cabbage patch. Since gardens became outdoor rooms to play or lounge in, few people grow their own veg or have their own fruit trees. Shame.

In a country where more and more people are having to rely on food banks, there is something incredibly wicked – and sad - about good fruit being left to rot.

No chance around here. Helped of course by the bumper blackberry harvest. I’ve cooked plenty up with some of those apples. We’ve eaten our fill and there’s still plenty in the freezer.

So in the chilly misery of February I shall remember a perfect September day picking blackberries and also the generosity of neighbours.

IF only we’d realised at the time…

When an old friend produced a photo of our teenage selves – with bikes, triumphant on top of a mountain road – we were stunned to realise how good we looked – fit and healthy with glossy hair, peachy skin, perfect teeth and that glow of youth and energy which can’t be bottled or faked.

Back then, of course, we saw it differently. All I could think of was my little piggy eyes and my big bum.

Jackie hated her nose, her big feet and her flat chest. We spent hours every Saturday evening doing our best to hide these inadequacies so we could brave the disco – where the lights were so dim that no one would have noticed if Quasimodo himself had come swinging in.

Teenagers have always felt inadequate. It goes with the hormones. What they don’t need is everyone else agreeing with them.

Luckily for us, the only remedies we had were what we could buy from Boots with the profits of our Saturday jobs Not much scope there then. Green eyeliner and painted on lashes was about it.

But today’s teenagers don’t only have all the dreadful bullying pressures of social media to contend with – the constant comparisons and judgement and sly comments – but they have charlatans willing to profit from them.

Inspired by reality TV stars such as Kylie Jenner, 17, the youngest of the Kardashian clan, more and more girls as young as 14 are having surgical fillers and augmentation. Many of these procedures are carried out by people with no principles and little or no training and the resulting complications can be disastrous.

But what teenager is going to believe that?

Responsible clinics refuse to carry out work on children. But there are others not so principled. And even, I suppose, parents willing to pay. More fool them.

Teenage girls have never looked so groomed and gorgeous. And never has their self-esteem been so low.

It’s not parents' job to pay for Botox, it’s their job to convince their daughters they absolutely don’t need it.

And they shouldn’t have to wait thirty years to realise how great they look just as they are, right now.

I’M no fan of Cliff Richard, never have been. But after the appalling way the police tipped off the BBC when they went to search his house for evidence of child abuse and the threat of action which has been hanging over him for a year and not getting anywhere, it was quite cheering to see the old trouper out wowing his fans.

Whatever the clean-cut, septuagenarian version of waving two fingers at his accusers is, this was definitely it.

IN all the chaos of election defeat, resignations and leadership excitement, Harriet Harman has proved to be a safe pair of hands, keeping the exploding Labour party almost on the road.

So what does new leader Jeremy Corbyn do at the party conference? He gives her a bunch of flowers. Patronising or what…

I can only admire her restraint in not whacking him over the head with them.

A primary school in Scotland sends its pupils out to run or walk at least a mile a day. The result is happier, healthier children, not one overweight – and other schools are copying the idea. Even more necessary when so few children walk to school.

Back in the 1950s my overcrowded state primary did the same. Between lessons, the 45 of us in my class were regularly turned out to run around the playground.

I’d like to think it was for our health. But, more likely, I fear, it was so that our teachers could grab a sneaky smoke…

FOR weeks helpful signs had warned us that Grange Road in Darlington would be closed all day on Sunday, September 27.

So, of course, they closed it early on the morning of Saturday 26th – and wondered why there was chaos.

Many thanks to the Arriva bus who backed up so a queue of cars could get through.

But never believe anything you read on road signs…