Well, as I never tire of saying, August is an autumn month. If you doubt me, consider this : There are twelve months in a year, so each of the four seasons has three months. Midsummer’s Day is June 21st and therefore if June is in the middle, the summer months are May, June and July. Therefore August is the first of the autumn months. And I can really feel it today – although the sun is shining here there’s little real warmth in the air. I hang out a line of washing and it takes all day to dry whereas on a sunny day in July I can dry two lines full.
The blackberries are ripening fast, as are many other fruits. I always loved going blackberrying, even if I only came back with a handful, they were great in blackberry and apple pie. Mushrooms were another treat. There’s nothing like newly gathered mushrooms fried up for breakfast in the morning.
When I was a child a group of us, including uncles and aunts would often go mushrooming, early in the morning when the dew was still wet on the grass. One of my aunts was really deaf and a bit ‘away with the fairies’ as we used to call it. I usually used to walk round the fields with her because she carried toffees in her handbag and would always give me some. Once she spotted some mushrooms in a field with a large bull in it.
‘Come on,’ she said, climbing over the wall and dragging me with her, ‘We’ll get plenty of mushrooms in here.’
‘But there’s a bull over there, aunty-ah.’ (In common with many Welsh children, especially from the valleys, words that end in the letter ‘y’ have a final ‘ah’ added on for good measure.’)
‘No, it’s a cow. Don’t worry about it.’
I stared long and hard at the bull. The bull stared back. ‘Aunty-ah… it don’t look like a cow. There’s nothing there for the milking…’
But my aunt, remember, was deaf as a post. ‘It’ll be fine today I think,’ she announced.
We started picking mushrooms, and I kept an eye on the strange ‘cow’ down the end of the field. It came nearer.
We picked all the mushrooms from the first fairy ring, then the second, then my aunt spotted yet another and took off in the direction of the bull.
‘Aunty-ah! Come back! The bull’s coming!’
My aunt, heaven help us, had started to sing. ‘Oh, how we danced, on that night, we were wed…’
‘Aunty-ah! It’s pawing at the ground!’
We were really into cartoon territory now, like something out of Tom and Jerry. The bull, head down, had steam coming out of its nostrils and was pawing the ground like something demented. My aunt looked up briefly, quite unconcerned. ‘No, it’s just dancing.’
Dancing? The rest of the family were in other fields, so there was nobody else to appeal to for some sense. ‘Aunty-ah! We’ve gotta go!’ I grabbed her arm and started pulling her towards the wall where we’d come in. ‘It’s going to run at us!’
We got to the wall just as the bull began its charge. I swear I felt the ground shaking. White faced, my aunt threw her mushrooms in the air, seized my arm and somehow got us both back over the wall. We landed in a patch of nettles, but nobody was complaining about that.
And my aunt went off down the lane singing ‘The sun has got his hat on.’
Happy Days....
'Seeking the Green' by Tylluan Penry, published soon by Capall Bann. For more info, please watch this space!